F96-CE_4 Latest Stable Release

[rockedge]

@Subito Piano It might work. I am not sure why the Fossapup64-9.5 save file is not loading after the prompt to upgrade it. There should be no structure changes to stop it. I have never used the save file option only the save folder so I don't have anything to test with.

What does the boot stanza you are using look like?
What is the save file named before and after any "upgrade" occurred?

[Subito Piano]

Thanks, Rockedge!

When I installed Fossa last year, I put everything (vmlinuz, adrv, fdrv, etc.) in a directory called FossaPup; likewise, when I installed P96, I saved everything in a directory called P96-CE. When I set up both Fossa and then recently F96, I saved the session to a sub-directory, not a save file (not an sfs or whatever). I noticed that both Fossa and F96 both use the same name for their save sub-directories, i.e., "fossapup64save." So when I attempted to use the Fossa save file for P96, I moved the P96 save file somewhere else and replaced it with a copy of my save file from Fossa. I don't believe the name changed.

I notice my installation of F96 did not generate an "adrv" sfs file...hmm.... (i.e., there is no adrv_fossapup64_9.6).

Boot stanza? I had to look that up. I think this is what you want, the entry in my Grub2 file:

menuentry "P96-CE Puppy Linux" {
insmod ext2
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set c79a69d3-0447-42b0-8532-1bc4d1858161
echo "Loading vmlinuz"
linux /F96-CE/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd pdrv=Files-Puppy psubdir=/F96-CE pfix=fsck,fsckp,trim TZ=EST5EDT,M3.2.0,M11.1.0
echo "Loading initrd.gz"
initrd /F96-CE/initrd.gz

[rockedge]

@Subito Piano Yes that's the boot stanza. It looks okay and should point to the save file.

F96-CE_4 doesn't come supplied with an adrv SFS, though a custom one can be used if so desired.

There is a possibility to convert the save file into an adrv SFS

[Subito Piano]

Ye--ah. That worked...sort of!

I compressed the old Fossapup64save directory and saved it to the F96 folder as adrv_fossapup64_9.6. Booting into F96, I got my familiar desktop, icons, and several programs I had previously installed worked -- but not all. I couldn't even get on the net, blueman didn't start...

I seem to keep coming up with these unanswerable scenarios to post on the forum.....yiii.

I'll be away tomorrow at least, maybe not back on the forum until next week. If you (or somebody else) has an idea off the top of their head I can give it a go, but please don't invest much time or effort in it. I'm starting to throw good money (er, time) after bad, meaning it looks like it would have taken no more effort to install P96 and tweak it than to try to re-use my old save file. I certainly don't want to ask others for a chunk of their time to save me using my own!!!

Thanks again -- oh, and I'm liking what I see, thank you for building this new Puppy!

[amethyst]

Sound does not work for me from builtin laptop speaker, says "unavailable". Headphones do work so there is sound. New kernel works okay but waiting time at the start of bootup (normal?). Tried an old kernel and got message "failed" when making filesystem usable but everything seemed to work okay despite this message. Don't really see the point of the ydrv with the additional applications. Just 44mb, may as well have included the contents in the base sfs so one can use the ydrv for something else. I notice that Pulseaudio and Conky are huge resource thieves (luckily conky can be disabled). BTW - desktop looks terrible with that grey/white/black theme, enough to put any new user off. Seems to be working well on my old machine though (apart from the speaker problem), nice and polished look (apart from the dull default desktop).

[mikeslr]

There's a significant learning curve with pulse-audio. I'm not running F-96 just now. But either Left-or-Right-Clicking the 'speaker' icon on the taskbar will offer 'Preferences' as an option. The Left-Most Panel, Playback, has a tool to select which sound system to use with each application capable of rendering sound. I have not yet able to obtain sound from some web-browsers. Pulse-audio wants to select the Ladspa 'files?' and neither Iron nor Slimjet's publishers include them.

As you know, desktop graphics are highly personal. You didn't like radky's choice. Someone else complemented it as modern and soothing. I so hated 666philb's choice for Bionicpup64 that even before updating PPM and creating a Save, I changed it.

[amethyst]

There's a significant learning curve with pulse-audio. I'm not running F-96 just now. But either Left-or-Right-Clicking the 'speaker' icon on the taskbar will offer 'Preferences' as an option. The Left-Most Panel, Playback, has a tool to select which sound system to use with each application capable of rendering sound. I have not yet able to obtain sound from some web-browsers. Pulse-audio wants to select the Ladspa 'files?' and neither Iron nor Slimjet's publishers include them.

As you know, desktop graphics are highly personal. You didn't like radky's choice. Someone else complemented it as modern and soothing. I so hated 666philb's choice for Bionicpup64 that even before updating PPM and creating a Save, I changed it.

Must be colour-blind. In preferences it's reported as "unavailable" for speaker. Doesn't work with the laptop builtin speaker but does from headphone jack. It's not recognizing the builtin speaker. I've used pulseaudio before with Busterpup so not totally unfamiliar with it. Can't recall having this problem before.

[rockedge]

BTW - desktop looks terrible with that grey/white/black theme, enough to put any new user off.

Lucky there is a wallpaper at all.....I wanted a black screen, no background image just color and that was either black or dark grey......
Considering this "was the look" when I suddenly realized I was really interested in computers......
Exact OS I learned on: the RSTS/E operating system on a PDP 11/70 mini-mainframe

delta.png (39.32 KiB) Viewed 3491 times

Give it a whirl -> https://www.pcjs.org/machines/dec/pdp11 ... gger/rsts/

Screenshot(57).jpg (34.09 KiB) Viewed 3484 times

[mikeslr]

amethyst: " In preferences it's reported as "unavailable" for speaker. Doesn't work with the laptop builtin speaker but does from headphone jack. It's not recognizing the builtin speaker. I've used pulseaudio before with Busterpup so not totally unfamiliar with it. Can't recall having this problem before."
May be missing drivers or firmware needed for your computer's speaker. I note that F-96's fdrv (firmware) is only 68 Mbs. Some are much larger. First try swapping in an fdrv.sfs from a Puppy which you know supports your computer's speaker. If that doesn't work, try swapping in a vmlinuz and zdrv.sfs.

[amethyst]

amethyst: " In preferences it's reported as "unavailable" for speaker. Doesn't work with the laptop builtin speaker but does from headphone jack. It's not recognizing the builtin speaker. I've used pulseaudio before with Busterpup so not totally unfamiliar with it. Can't recall having this problem before."
May be missing drivers or firmware needed for your computer's speaker. I note that F-96's fdrv (firmware) is only 68 Mbs. Some are much larger. First try swapping in an fdrv.sfs from a Puppy which you know supports your computer's speaker. If that doesn't work, try swapping in a vmlinuz and zdrv.sfs.

Nope, tried an older kernel too (it's an old laptop), same result. All my non-pulseaudio Puppys (new and old) have no problems.

[rockedge]

@amethyst Have you swapped out the fdrv SFS only ?

You mentioned changing the kernel, did you try with one that is proven to work? Does the working kernel on those other systems have an fdrv SFS?

[amethyst]

Well, this morning I booted up F96-CE again and mysteriously everything works fine. Strange but maybe not so strange with this particular laptop. Sometimes when I boot different distro's with this laptop in quick succession, I get odd behaviour. So a hardware problem, I think.
Edit: Actually - when I booted now, the sound was totally muted but I must have muted LADSPA last time in preferences when I tried to get the builtin speaker to work because that box was checked for muting. Unchecking that and everything worked. So don't know, maybe the problem is with LADSPA and toggeling its muting switch may solve the issue. I'll check if I get the same behaviour in future...

[greengeek]

Well, this morning I booted up F96-CE again and mysteriously everything works fine. Strange but maybe not so strange with this particular laptop. Sometimes when I boot different distro's with this laptop in quick succession, I get odd behaviour. So a hardware problem, I think.
Edit: Actually - when I booted now, the sound was totally muted but I must have muted LADSPA last time in preferences when I tried to get the builtin speaker to work because that box was checked for muting. Unchecking that and everything worked. So don't know, maybe the problem is with LADSPA and toggeling its muting switch may solve the issue. I'll check if I get the same behaviour in future...

Can you confirm if you are running without any savefiles or savefolders ?
And are you capturing any prior sessions via adrv or similar?
Thanks!

[amethyst]

Well, this morning I booted up F96-CE again and mysteriously everything works fine. Strange but maybe not so strange with this particular laptop. Sometimes when I boot different distro's with this laptop in quick succession, I get odd behaviour. So a hardware problem, I think.
Edit: Actually - when I booted now, the sound was totally muted but I must have muted LADSPA last time in preferences when I tried to get the builtin speaker to work because that box was checked for muting. Unchecking that and everything worked. So don't know, maybe the problem is with LADSPA and toggeling its muting switch may solve the issue. I'll check if I get the same behaviour in future...

Can you confirm if you are running without any savefiles or savefolders ?
And are you capturing any prior sessions via adrv or similar?
Thanks!

Have a save file only.

[amethyst]

Copy and paste operations very slow for me with this Puppy...

[greengeek]

Not sure if this has been reported before - but when I am saving a file the file manager dialog shows residual drive labels that don't exist on my system:

ResidualDriveLabels.jpg (50.64 KiB) Viewed 3547 times

This system only has sda1 and sda2 available so the others must be hangovers from initial development i guess.

[rockedge]

@greengeek Looks like the /mnt wasn't cleaned before ISO creation. Slight adjustment will be made and the ISO repackaged

[amethyst]

Looks like the right-click tools of my suite have not be installed. This one however is quite useful for those interested. Copy it to /root/.config/rox.sourceforge.net/OpenWith (remove fake .gz extension). To use: Right-Click the sfs you want to edit and access the utility from trhe right click menu.

[Chelsea80]

@ rockedge

You said:

"Slight adjustment will be made and the ISO repackaged"

So would it be possible to add to your first post at, or under:

Download links ->

"Updated (date)"

This would enable me, and possible others, to determine if we have the latest version in use, thank you.

_______________________________
On a completely different note.

I do not understand why the 'Chat' box on three web sites that I use ( ISP - energy supplier and bank) do not work on:

BionicPup32+28 (UPup Bionic Beaver) - Frugal Install - Internal HDD. Firefox 115.0.1 (32-bit)

Yet on F96-CE_4, Firefox ESR portable 64 (running on a USB memory stick)

the 'Chat' box works on ISP and bank but not on energy supplier.

Exactly the same settings are used on both the OS.

Best regards

Chelsea80

[geo_c]

Here's a desktop background:

[gychang]

CE4 webiste recommends xfburn to burn a bootable CD from the CE4.iso. I downloaded from the PPM and when I typed in xfburn on terminal or try to start from the menu I get this gstreamer error. Do I need to download more dependencies and gstreamer has many variation in PPM which one do I need? Just to clarify I am on CE4 but want to make a bootable CD for another PC at home.

[Subito Piano]

If you downloaded through the default setup of PPM, IDK why that would happen. You could uninstall, restart window manager, then reinstall xfburn. Personally, I use the "traditional, non-auto, user interface option" that forces me to look at the dependencies needed and check to install them.

All that said, xfburn is great, but have you simply tried using pburn? Make sure to choose "Burn ISO-image."

[gychang]

All that said, xfburn is great, but have you simply tried using pburn? Make sure to choose "Burn ISO-image."

CE4 website specifically recommends xfburn. Thanks for your input.

[mikeslr]

Out of curiosity I just used PPM to download xfburn and all its dependencies, then used PaDS, viewtopic.php?p=6355#p6355, to combine them into an xfburn.sfs. The SFS loaded and the application ran but reported the same error as gychang had. However, if you click the 'Close' button, a GUI appears which suggests that the application is at least partially functional.
AFAIK, gstreamer transcoder is not necessary when 'burning' an ISO. It may (or may not) be if burning an audio disk.
Currently, my access to the web is at less than 40% of it potential strength. So I'm not going to try to track down why that error occurs. Neither ListDD nor the control file in the xfburn deb identify gstreamer transcoder as a dependency.

[wizard]

@gychang
Just use Menu>Multimedia>Pburn, it should do the trick. The xfburn recommendation was really meant for non-Puppy Linux users.

wizard

[Marv]

@gychang

Another option (I use it in @ozsouths' Fossapup64-bas where in my trimmed install pburn isn't present) is burniso2cd. Short and sweet, start it in terminal with burniso2cd, and it it is present in F96-CE_4 also. Minimal options but has worked every time on my circa 2012 laptop stable.

[Subito Piano]

BLUETOOTH & PIN

The blueman included in F96-CE is a blessing! However, my phone requires a PIN confirmation to connect, and while I can confirm the PIN on my phone so as to commplete the connection, I could not do so on my laptop. Across my display I saw the PIN notice in a pink strip, but was given no choice to confirm the PIN or not; hence, bluetooth failed to connect. Searching around the 'net, I found that installing notify-OSD would solve the issue. I installed through PPM (and also installed the notify-OSD icons, though I doubt that was necessary), restarted the graphical server, and voila! -- te interactive notification popped up, I clicked to accept the PIN, and was able to connect.

I'm not sure whether anyone else has this issue, but hopefully this will save someone some time and grief. Apparently PIN connection security has been superseded by a different system...but my phone is an older Pixel 3.

[geo_c]

Another version of my previously posted desktop background:

previous found here: viewtopic.php?p=93644#p93644

[bigpup]

All that said, xfburn is great, but have you simply tried using pburn? Make sure to choose "Burn ISO-image."

CE4 website specifically recommends xfburn. Thanks for your input.

That burn a CD information is for people trying to make a boot-able CD using some other operating system, not Puppy Linux.
Notice it talks about doing it in Windows OS.

That Linux information is for people trying to burn a CD using some other Linux operating system.
Not knowing what OS you are using and what burn programs it may have.
xfburn is suggested as a simple program to use in any Linux OS.

Puppy Linux versions always have the Pburn program to use.
That is best to use in Puppy, because it is already installed and just works.

You discovered the one weakness of PPM providing software.
Some of the repositories of software provide more than just the program and may have it broken down into different parts.
It sometimes is hard to figure out what exactly is needed.

WELCOME TO LINUX SOFTWARE!

[hundido]

I've been meditating on what would make me like F96 even more than I already do.

What if, on the website, added to the features area, or linked to the features area, was a page of all the .pet, .sfs, appimages, etc, that have been tested to work wtih F96?

When I search for .pet packages on the forum, a lot of times it takes me a lot of time reading through people just talking about a program or learning how to use it, and not where to download the program and install it.

If on the website somewhere, there was an easy to find programs download page or list, it would be a unique, artisanal program collection. That's actually one of my favorite thing about puppies. Collecting .pet packages is somehow fun.

What if we had a list on https://f96.puppylinux.com/ maybe like this viewtopic.php?t=5104 , where people could collect .pets, so people could have a frictionless, fun experience when they need another program for F96 puppy?