Which 64-bit Puppy for 2.4 GHz Celeron + 512 MB RAM?

[Zedward]

Help with pnethood, please.
nbtscan works fine and i can manually connect, typing pnethood <hostname> in console
no automatic scanning in program's window

[Clarity]

You posted

... I want to to prevent students to change the system...

Yet, you ask about pnethood.

I ask:
Do you have SAMBA installed? AND do you want your students to use a resource from another LAN PC?

Forgive my asking the following...just trying to understand
AS I have been a lead on past school installations and classroom startups, I just trying to envision how you foresee the student or staff use of these terminals.

• Is it strictly for non-internet local use with LAN resources only?

• Or is it for Internet only?

• Or is it for both?

Can you help my understanding please, as I seem to be missing your direction.

[Zedward]

First of all, I need network to install and configure system .
Later I will think about manage network access. I would like students can use LAN resources and Internet both. By the way, responsible students can connect their devices to lan so we need simple way to scan and find their shares.
But now I can't scan network in PNethood window It's a problem.
---
by the way, I tried stretch-7.5-uefi-k4.1.48 on that machines and found his performance the same as the bionicpup32-8.0-uefi and launching of PaleMoon is still long. Now I can't choose, what I really need: Debian or Ubunta.
I tried finally precise-5.1.1-retro and it was very fast, connected to Internet without problems, scanned all my shares, but I stuck on russian letters in filenames and didn't try launching normal browser yet (Opera and Seamonkey by default don't open https).
Maybe it will be the compromise? Because I found for school more 3 notebooks only with 1Hz 32bit processors and 1024 Mb RAM onboard.

[amethyst]

First of all, I need network to install and configure system .
Later I will think about manage network access. I would like students can use LAN resources and Internet both. By the way, responsible students can connect their devices to lan so we need simple way to scan and find their shares.
But now I can't scan network in PNethood window It's a problem.
---
by the way, I tried stretch-7.5-uefi-k4.1.48 on that machines and found his performance the same as the bionicpup32-8.0-uefi and launching of PaleMoon is still long. Now I can't choose, what I really need: Debian or Ubunta.
I tried finally precise-5.1.1-retro and it was very fast, connected to Internet without problems, scanned all my shares, but I stuck on russian letters in filenames and didn't try launching normal browser yet (Opera and Seamonkey by default don't open https).
Maybe it will be the compromise? Because I found for school more 3 notebooks only with 1Hz 32bit processors and 1024 Mb RAM onboard.

The problem with an old Puppy like Precise is that it will not run with the latest browsers. Now here is a thought. Part of your better performance may be because of that Precise Puppy's retro kernel. So try a kernel swap with a newer Puppy. So you replace the vmlinuz and zdrv of DPupStretch for instance with the vmlinuz and zdrv of that Precise Puppy. Rename the zdrv to the zdrv name for Stretch.

[rockedge]

yes I agree with @amethyst that taking a Bionicpup and swapping in a kernel from the Precise Puppy's retro kernel era is a really good suggestion.

I can offer this non-PAE kernel -> kernel-3.17.4_noPAE

this kernel can be swapped in using the change_kernel utility in Bionic32 also I think Tahr-6.0.5 but I am unsure now if in Tahr the kernel swap needs to be done manually.
This is pretty easy to do by some renaming and copying steps.

[Zedward]

vmlinuz and zdrv of that Precise Puppy

where can I get them? In /init/mnt/zdrv only empty folder

[rockedge]

The zdrv is replaced by the swapped in kernel.
Although it might come in handy to have the Precise zdrv SFS. Get all those files from the Precise ISO file or the root frugal install directory.

[Zedward]

I found Bionic with nn-PAE kernel 3.18.138 here viewtopic.php?t=4746
I'll try it. Shoul I try your kernel and Precise's kernel or they are the same as this?

[rockedge]

Yes that Bionic version should be good for you!

Let us know how things go....

[Zedward]

I can't install this version. It swiftly closes it's window on boot
Tomorrow I'll try it on real computer, not on VMWare.

[Zedward]

I installed old kernel with noPAE suppot into bionicle and it gave significant performance boost, I can even launch SlimJet and run online-video in 360p on it!
As a result we have:
— 1024 Mb RAM and 2048 Mb linux-swap on disk;
— installed bionicpup32-8.0-uefi (it's not so obsolete as Precision and has less problems as Stretch);
— changed kernel to nn-PAE 3.18.138;
— boot in usbflash pupmode-13 to prevent unauthorized changing of system;
— installed browser PaleMoon 28.9.3 becasue it is the last 32-bit version.
I don't use pfix=nocopy to keep performance and don't use pfix=ram because of small amount of RAM.
This is probably all that can be done to revive these computers to reasonable work with Internet.
I think them will work for a few years, until the 32-bit Internet finally dies or until Santa gives us a bag of laptops. Thank you all for your valuable help!

[amethyst]

I installed old kernel with noPAE suppot into bionicle and it gave significant performance boost, I can even launch SlimJet and run online-video in 360p on it!
As a result we have:
— 1024 Mb RAM;
— installed bionicpup32-8.0-uefi (it's not so obsolete as Precision and has less problems as Stretch);
— changed kernel to nn-PAE 3.18.138;
— boot in usbflash pupmode-13 to prevent unauthorized changing of system;
— installed browser PaleMoon 28.9.3 becasue it is the last 32-bit version.
I don't use pfix=nocopy to keep performance and don't use pfix=ram because of small amount of RAM.
This is probably all that can be done to revive these computers to reasonable work with Internet.
I think them will work for a few years, until the 32-bit Internet finally dies or until Santa gives us a bag of laptops. Thank you all for your valuable help!

You can download the latest Palemoon from here (the 32-bit one is compiled by a third party) https://software.opensuse.org/download. ... e=palemoon Firefox also still release new 32-bit versions officially.
In your case I would use the pfix=nocopy parameter and I will also create a swap file of 1,5GB otherwise you could run out of memory when browsing heavy sites. Another mention: a site like youtube is extremely resource hungry if you want to watch videos. See my post here for an alternative way to view youtube videos: viewtopic.php?p=62927#p62927

[Zedward]

Thank you!
When Palemoon starts, it take 15-30 seconds, but later it works fast.
Can I put it into the RAM when boot computer at once?
By the way, if i boot my frugal puppy with pfix=ram, it starts empy, don't load savefile. What can I do?

[amethyst]

The big browsers do take a while to load the first time, it's normal. Will take a little longer with your setup. Loading from RAM will be slightly faster. The waiting time is only at first startup anyway. pfix=ram tell the system you want to work in RAM only and the savefile is not loaded. Do pfix=nocopy. That way you have most RAM available for operational purposes.

[mikewalsh]

@Zedward :-

This is probably all that can be done to revive these computers to reasonable work with Internet.
I think them will work for a few years, until the 32-bit Internet finally dies or until Santa gives us a bag of laptops.

Certainly, the Puppies should continue to work. The browsers, however.....that will depend entirely on the environment they were compiled against, and whether 32-bit builds are still being created.

An older version of a browser will continue to work for a long time, but you'll gradually begin to notice problems creeping in with certain websites; content refusing to load, certificate errors coming up, etc.

That's "progress", I'm afraid!

Mike.

[Zedward]

Do pfix=nocopy. That way you have most RAM available for operational purposes.

But system will be more slow because it will work from IDE, not RAM?

[amethyst]

Do pfix=nocopy. That way you have most RAM available for operational purposes.

But system will be more slow because it will work from IDE, not RAM?

Not really. This is how Puppy works - If the pfix parameter is set to ram or copy, the base sfs, zdrv and other drives are copied to RAM at bootup BUT this is important - the files are copied as is, ie. in the compressed SFS state which means that the files inside the archive will still need to be extracted when you want to use an application. All my Puppys run with the nocopy parameter and I can tell you now that the difference is absolutely minimal compared to running otherwise largely because the files required for bootup to desktop and the important system files have already been extracted and sitting in RAM (no matter what your boot parameters were). You may notice a small difference at first startup for big applications but it's really negligible. What is more important for speed is to use the fastest decompression method and in Bionic's case this will be gzip compression/decompression. I think the Puppy files for Bionic is in xz compression format so you may want to re-compress them in gzip format (the compressed files will be bigger). I have done this to all the Puppys I have used. But try all options and see what is best for you. Your available physical RAM is very limited so my advice will be to use the pfix=nocopy parameter. I have 2GB of RAM and use the nocopy parameter and a smallish swap file. So in short - if the sfs drives are copied to RAM at startup the only advantage would be that you may notice that very big applications start a little faster at first use, that's all.

[Zedward]

How does the size of the swap file depend on the availability of physical memory? What ratio will be the most productive?

[mikewalsh]

@Zedward :-

Amethyst's suggestion is the route you want to be taking with elderly, low-resource systems like these.

Traditional doctrine says that you want twice as much swap as you have RAM.....but that would only give you 1 GB of swap. I think you want to be looking at at least 2 GB of swap space.....preferably, a swap partition. I don't know HOW these new-fangled swap files work, but by all accounts they don't seem to work for everyone..?

A swap partition, on the other hand, will always work for Puppy.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I would also suggest the strategy of moving your browser's cache OUT of the save-file/folder to an external location, then sym-linking it back into position. This will allow the browser to function as it should, while at the same time keeping the one item that expands very quickly outside of "Puppy-space".

Caches fill up FAST when you do a lot of browsing.....dependent to some degree on how other settings have been implemented.

This is especially important with a Chromium-based browser like SlimJet. Cache is nowhere as easily managed as it is with the 'zilla-based browsers & 'forks'. 'Zilla browsers let you manage cache from the Settings. With the Chromium-based browsers, you have to add what are called "--switches" to the exec line of the wrapper script that launches it. Easy enough to do, but it's quite a bit more 'fiddly' to implement.

Mike.

[amethyst]

How does the size of the swap file depend on the availability of physical memory? What ratio will be the most productive?

This will depend upon your specific usage. The biggest and most resource hungry application I run is the browser (Palemoon most of the time). My swap file is a mere 128MB and is almost never in use. You have upgraded your physical RAM to 1GB if I'm correct. I've already suggested you create a swap file of 1.5GB at least. As mikewalsh has pointed out, twice the size of your physical memory is normally the suggested ratio.

[mikeslr]

How big a swap file/partition?

I thought this was a rather informative post, https://itsfoss.com/swap-size/. My take-away. The basic reason for having a swap is to avoid crashing when the application you are running exhausts the available RAM. Because of the difference in speed between RAM and 'Storage', 'relying' on swap, while it may avoid a crash, will result in degradation of performance to the point that the application can become unusable.

So, it depends on what application you are running. With ram-intensive applications like compiling and the codex trans-coding of video-editors --where you can walk away or sleep while the program runs-- a large swap can avoid crashes. But if you're surfing the web, trying to stream a video or view graphic-rich content, although your browser may not crash, you are likely to experience the unacceptable delay I mentioned in this post: https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... +stripping
[The computer had 418 Mbs of RAM and a 377 Mb Swap].

"Entering “Cats Images” into a google-search in seamonkey pup-sysinfo reported
Actual Used RAM: 408 MB Used - (buffers + cached)
Actual Free RAM: 10 MB Free + (buffers + cached).

Moreover, it was also reported that 8 Mbs of the 377 (swap) has also been used. It should also be noted that it took about 3 minutes to load the web-page; and after it loaded it took over a minute for pup-sysinfo to complete and display its report."

This is the only "reasonable" explanation of the 'twice RAM' rule I found, https://dineshjadhav.wordpress.com/why- ... linuxunix/. Basically, it added up all the RAM and 'hardware' cache available to a computer and concluded that Swap beyond that number would not be used. I have doubts about its reasoning, certainly with respect to modern computers and how Puppys are designed to function.