Vanilla Dpup 11.0.x Development Builds

[dimkr]

As some of you probably noticed, beta builds of Vanilla Dpup 10.0.0 no longer change much and they're pretty stable. It's a solid daily driver already. Debian 12 should be out in June and that's when the stable 10.0.0 release will be out, for those who don't want to use anything labeled "beta".

This nearing release of 10.0.0 is also good news because development efforts are now shifted to 11.0.0. Currently, it's built from Debian Sid packages, and it will break and change over time, especially after Debian 12 is out and Debian development accelerates again.

9.3.x, built using Debian 11 pacakges, is mostly a traditional Puppy, but migrated from aufs to overlay, migrated from ALSA to PulseAudio, migrated from PPM to apt and almost fully migrated to GTK+ 3, but still with X.Org and few GTK+ 2 bits.

10.0.x, based on Debian 12 packages, is an evolutionary change. All packages are much newer, PulseAudio is replaced with PipeWire and there's a second "flavor" that replaces X.Org with dwl+Xwayland, but still runs JWM and ROX-Filer. It looks like the same car from the outside, but has a new engine. The plan is to keep 9.3.x alive alongside 10.0.x, until the Debian 11 EOL date, because 9.3.x is lighter.

11.0.x is meant to be a revolutionary change: a "pure Wayland" Puppy with labwc and without GTK+ 2, X.Org, JWM, ROX-Filer and aufs. A Puppy with labwc and native Wayland applications (with Xwayland support that's unused by default) is smaller, lighter and snappier than a Puppy that runs JWM inside Xwayland under a Wayland compositor. (If Debian doesn't drop X.Org [and other factors permit], maybe there will be a "retro flavor" with X.Org, JWM and ROX-Filer. Currently, the focus is labwc and labwc only.)

It's slowly starting to look like a Puppy:

labwc.png (181.13 KiB) Viewed 3280 times

(As usual, development builds are at https://github.com/vanilla-dpup/unstable/releases)

It supports themes and now has a panel and a launcher (thanks to @01micko). I added a set of labwc themes that match the 6 GTK+ themes included in Vanilla Dpup, but maybe I'll drop some themes later, because labwc doesn't support gradients and some JWM themes don't translate 1:1 into labwc themes.

If development continues in this good pace, I'll consider adding a labwc flavor of 10.0.x, so users can enjoy labwc on top of a stable Puppy with bugfix releases. Otherwise, all the goodies will wait until the first stable Vanilla Dpup 11.0.0 release, based on Debian 13.

[Jinx]

This 11.0.x is beta but fun to use.

The Firefox is tightly bound to Spot so it cannot be used to open html help files. Is there a way to create a root profile for Firefox? My work around was to install hv3 using Synaptical and modify /usr/local/bin/defaulthtmlviewer

Code: Select all

#!/bin/ash
#exec xdgdefaultapp "text/html" "$@"
exec hv3 "$@"

The computer drives don't show on the desktop but Pmount will make them visible to the file browser (Nautilus?).

Maybe make a "light" iso without kbuild.sfs, docx.sfs and nlsx.sfs since these are unlikely to change for the beta updates.

[dimkr]

modify /usr/local/bin/defaulthtmlviewer

defaulthtmlviewer is just a placeholder for backwards compatibility with old packages and tools that assume ROX-Filer. You should change the default handler for .html files via the file manager (currently, it's spacefm) instead.

The computer drives don't show on the desktop but Pmount will make them visible to the file browser (Nautilus?).

There are no desktop icons, and won't be

Maybe make a "light" iso without kbuild.sfs, docx.sfs and nlsx.sfs since these are unlikely to change for the beta updates.

Won't happen, for two reasons:
1. The idea is razor sharp focus, not the other way around. I do this in my spare time, and I need to invest my time and brain CPU cycles wisely. For now, the plan is not to add more flavors but focus on one build.
2. We're probably 2+ years away from the Debian 13 release and these are super early development builds. Things will change a lot.

[TerryH]

I installed Vanilla DPup 11.0.19 yesterday as a manual frugal install to an existing USB flash drive with other installations. As a new beta release, it is an excellent release. Everything tried so far looks nice and clean and runsnice and slick on my Asus laptop with AMD Ryzen 5800H / 16 GB RAM.

As a first time user of this release with Wayland/labwc / sfwbar, it was fairly straight forward to be able to manage the panel and launch bar. The sfwbar-config GUI works well, if quite limited. Manual edits to the config files were simple to work out, to be able to do more than the gui currently caters for. For many years now, I have set up my desktops with out launcher icons on the desktop, preferring to use launch bars, so this current release suits me well. All apps work well. Bluetooth is the smoothest I've experienced with a Puppy. The look and feel of DPup 11 is first class.

I only have one small issue/ annoyance with the launch bar, it does not appear to be accessible when covered by a window, hovering the mouse over the border, does not bring it to the foreground. So far I haven't found a setting to change this, the window needs to be moved/reduced to be able to click icons in the bar.

This is a very impressive Puppy release. Going forward I will be using it on a regular basis. Hoping to get more knowledgable with configuring sfwbar and launcher. At this early stage this is heading towards being my go to Puppy.

@dimkr Thank you for the development work you have done to advance Puppy. Looking forward to future releases.

[Clarity]

How to set the taskbar to disappear when not navigating it, then re-appear when the mouse touches its monitor edge?

Thanks in advance

[dimkr]

I only have one small issue/ annoyance with the launch bar, it does not appear to be accessible when covered by a window, hovering the mouse over the border, does not bring it to the foreground. So far I haven't found a setting to change this, the window needs to be moved/reduced to be able to click icons in the bar.

https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/4039 should fix this

[Crion]

How to set the taskbar to disappear when not navigating it, then re-appear when the mouse touches its monitor edge?

I just added support for this in the current git version of sfwbar. You can use action SetBarSensor [id], "delay" ( I.e. SetBarSensor "500", will set all bars to disappear after 500 milliseconds). The bar is replaced with a red line 1px thick, which acts as a trigger for the bar to pop back up. It's red for the debug purposes only, in the final version it will be transparent.

[Jasper]

@dimkr

Would you recommend using Nala Package Manageras a frontend to APT?

https://gitlab.com/volian/nala

I have not used it just yet and am a little torn between using your Wayland+ iso and the new offering by Radky.
One of your builds had some tearing on video playback (cannot remain the build ) and Radky's offering works perfectly for my onboard gfx.

I thought I would mention it as it might be useful for some members who are not very comfortable with the APT package manager.

[dimkr]

I'd recommend using what works for you. Personally, I prefer low-level tools like apt or apt-get, because they don't hide information and flexible enough to fix the problems the "friendly" tools refuse to solve.

(Forgot to mention: use 10.0.x, not 11.0.x if you want something similar to radky's builds. 11.0.x will be vastly different and will start breaking soon.)

[Jasper]

LOL ............ I was going to jump head first into your 11x build as I like the idea of floating toolbars. Pipewire & Wayland are the two technologies I wanted to familiarise myself with.

I saw yesterday that you had a new ISO built and had to stop myself from grabbing it

Great work as always

[retiredt00]

Dear dimkr
I tried to test dpup 11 (vanilladpup-11.0.37-labwc-bios.img.gz) but have troubles reaching the kernel and SFSs files in the gzipped download and extracting them, so I can load them in my test stick along other puppies, using the refind boot loader
I decompresses the file to an IMG file but this image can not be mounted
Kernel (dmesg) says can not find a file system.
fdisk indicates that is only one bootable partition with a linux filesystem (in the bios version).
So I am stuck.
I would appreciate any suggestion or reference on how I could get the files out of the gzipped download in a linux system, without resorting to VMs or writing to a stick.
Thank you

[dimkr]

losetup -fp --show

You're probably trying to mount the entire image as a partition, although it's an image of a block device that contains a partition.

[retiredt00]

losetup -fp --show

You're probably trying to mount the entire image as a partition, although it's an image of a block device that contains a partition.

Thank you
although the command failed (the -p opption was not accepted) it put me in the right track
For others that might be interested the command that works (in vdpup10.0.14) is
losetup --partscan --find --show vanilladpup-11.0.37-labwc-bios.img
# works and returns /dev/loop6 in my case. BUT
mount /dev/loop6 /media/ # does not work
mount /dev/loop6p1 /media/ # does work. ie you have to specify partition 1

After the manual isntalation Dpup11 booted to desktop just fine!

I understand that is early development builds but is missing some very basic things that may make wider testing easier
For one it fails to generate a savefile.
After the prompt and the definition of the file size, just exits and shuts down
Missing kbuild
so in my case I have no network as I need the broadcom driver (dpkg fails to install it because is missing dkms)
LXterminal does not save bash history
Missing basic file associations
Missing a location to run post X scripts (like wlr-randr --output eDP-1 --scale 1.5)

Would also help if you point out what might want tested in current builds

[dimkr]

Would also help if you point out what might want tested

Currently, nothing. They're broken in many ways and some important functionality is missing.

Wait until the Debian 13 roadmap is published if you want something that maybe can work as a daily driver.

[retiredt00]

Currently, nothing.

I see.
So one could assume the dpup 11 releases in github are mainly building process tests and should not bother till you announce them "usable/to test".
Correct?

[dimkr]

They're development builds, 1.5-2 years away from release and probably >1 year before I can recommend them to anyone.

[TerryH]

A new manual frugal install of Vanilla DPup 11.0.41 to a flash drive. Running very nicely. Just a small issue, the bat.widget is not displaying icons in the tray, only an sfw icon. I checked in '/usr/share/icons/Adwaita/scalable/status', the icons are present. Plugging or unplugging the laptop charge cable does not alter the display.

Otherwise all running nicely.

Once again thanks for your development work for Puppy.

[kris777]

I tried to save on this version with the so-called . LUKS encryption option ...all OK until system reboot. Then, unfortunately, the system starts normally as if I did nothing ... i.e. there is no option to enter a password?

[dimkr]

@kris777 These are very early development builds, encrypted save files were broken. The last build or the next one should fix them, but they can break again.

(Already fixed in the stable releases, since 9.3.29 and 10.0.17)

[kris777]

OK....thanks for the info it's working now!

[bigpup]

They're development builds, 1.5-2 years away from release and probably >1 year before I can recommend them to anyone.

Strongly suggest you put this information in the first post of this topic.

Would also help if you point out what might want tested

Currently, nothing. They're broken in many ways and some important functionality is missing.

Wait until the Debian 13 roadmap is published if you want something that maybe can work as a daily driver.

If you do not want any feedback or reports on using this.
Why even offer it for a download????

[dimkr]

Why even offer it for a download????

For the very very very few people interested in contributing by looking for bugs and submitting fixes.

[bigpup]

Strongly suggest you put this information in the first post of this topic.

[TerryH]

New manual frugal install of VanillaDPup 11.0.49. All went well, running smoothly. The latest documentation on Vanilla DPup 11 states that the vanilladup.sfs's aren't loaded to RAM. On boot, error messages are displayed that these sfs's failed loading to ram, this is confusing. Was this left in intentionally?

On an earlier version (11.0.41) I reported that the battery icon was not being displayed in the tray, an sfw missing icon was being displayed. On first few boots of the latest 11.0.49 the battery icon was now being correctly displayed. However, after several boots, the sfw icon is now being displayed. Nothing was done, that I am aware of that would cause this to occur.

Once again thanks for the continued development of Puppy Linux.

Edit: The sfw icon was only being displayed when the laptop was plugged in and fully charged. On viewing the /root/.config/sfwbar/bat.widget, shows the icon as battery-full-charged-symbolic.svg. As none of the other icons had the .svg suffix, I removed .svg. The battery icon displays correctly now.

[dimkr]

Was this left in intentionally?

It's a bug, these development builds are still in a slightly broken state, and sometimes they gain new issues.

[dimkr]

Lots of exciting development!

• Copying to RAM is now disabled when Puppy files are on a SSD - this is waste of RAM because the RAM vs. SSD difference in reading speed is often negligible in this case. You can still force it with pfix=copy.

• SFS copying to RAM now happens by copying the SFS to the page cache, and not to a ramdisk. This means that this memory can be freed if running low on RAM.

• SFS copying to RAM now happens in the background with low I/O priority, so the boot process can continue. If the disk is super slow, you don't have to wait for copying to complete to reach the graphical desktop.

• SFS files (*.sfs) in psubdir and the partition root are loaded automatically, after numeric sorting (0something.sfs added to the bottom of the SFS stack, then 1something.sfs, so the former is "above" the latter). SFSs that use the "traditional" Puppy names are put at the same layer as before, so you get the best of both worlds: you can auto-load a SFS without having to configure anything (good for those that always use PUPMODE 5), you can control the stacking order, and you can keep using your adrv/ydrv.

• setup-spot now uses /usr/local/bin for wrappers, making package upgrades safe even if you install your packages not through apt: you can update your browser and it won't forget it needs to run as spot.

• ram-saver and connman-puppy no longer patch Debian binaries, allowing glibc and connman to be updated without losing this Puppy customization.

• initrd.gz is now initrd.zst: it's compressed with zstd, for faster decompression.

• Many packages (for example, lxtask and weechat) that were previously built from source are now replaced with Debian packages plus special Puppy configuration, reducing ongoing maintenance and making development easier while also allowing users to receive bug fix and security updates directly from Debian.

• The boot process is much shorter and faster now.

• The init script is cleaner and shorter: many boot options (things like fdrv=...) are dropped or limited.

• The "Help" menu entry now works and starts https://chiselapp.com/user/jamesbond/repository/mdview3. I'm writing documentation for many things, especially differences compared to upstream Puppy.

[wiak]

[*] SFS copying to RAM now happens by copying the SFS to the page cache, and not to a ramdisk. This means that this memory can be freed if running low on RAM.
[*] SFS copying to RAM now happens in the background with low I/O priority, so the boot process can continue. If the disk is super slow, you don't have to wait for copying to complete to reach the graphical desktop.

That's a good idea, as is Puppy Linux derived distro finally using numeric sfs sorting too (presumably this will be in woof-CE so similar adoption by official Pups too).

[dimkr]

This won't be merged into upstream woof-CE probably, most of it is unmaintained yet developers complain when somebody touches their stuff. I can't touch anything in initrd because people write patches to overcome its limitations and complain when the patches break, or try to improve it by adding even more options and use cases, but don't upstream these changes.

I'm not going to do this, but anyone who wants to is free to upstream changes in my fork.

[wiak]

This won't be merged into upstream woof-CE probably, most of it is unmaintained yet developers complain when somebody touches their stuff. I can't touch anything in initrd because people write patches to overcome its limitations and complain when the patches break, or try to improve it by adding even more options and use cases, but don't upstream these changes.

I'm not going to do this, but anyone who wants to is free to upstream changes in my fork.

Fair enough.

[dimkr]

Slow but steady progress!

Thanks to @01micko, now there's a native GTK menu instead of the previous hack (a tool that injects an alt+F1 event to display the labwc menu near the click location):

Icons come from Puppy's pack of .svg icons and look unlike all other icons, because Adwaita doesn't have equivalents for all of them. I hope to fix this soon.