Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

@amethyst I think we could do a Jammy build. In fact I will try one right now. But that Jammy will not be outfitted in anyway close to the polish of F96.

This what I mean. If I knew how to do it I would be taking the F96 ideas of being outfitted and making the changes to woof-CE. I do not yet know how to do the details to have woof-CE generate a polished distro

UPDATE : Started a build of Jammy with woof-CE. After that I will generate a VoidPup and see how that comes out.

rockedge wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 3:46 pm

@amethyst I think we could do a Jammy build. In fact I will try one right now. But that Jammy will not be outfitted in anyway close to the polish of F96.

This what I mean. If I knew how to do it I would be taking the F96 ideas of being outfitted and making the changes to woof-CE. I do not yet know how to do the details to have woof-CE generate a polished distro

What's this, apparently built from woofce viewtopic.php?p=60939#p60939

This is a remaster of vanillaupup-22.04.39 similar in the construction method of F96. Base is woof-CE generated then manual additions, then remastered, So not much different in the methods used to make this one compared to F96 I would assume.

It does not come out of a woof-CE build as it is being offered without manual work and remastered.

rockedge wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 3:55 pm

This is a remaster of vanillaupup-22.04.39 similar in the construction method of F96. Base is woof-CE generated then manual additions, then remastered, So not much different in the methods used to make this one compared to F96 I would assume.

It does not come out of a woof-CE build as it is being offered.

Vanilla is Debian, this is Ubuntu?

It appears to use a mix of both Ubuntu and Debian.

F96 is based on Ubuntu Focal Fossa and the proposed Jammypup will be Ubuntu Jammy Jellyfish at it's core. They will both use the Ubuntu repos accordingly.

On ./1download right now on the new Jammy build.

I thought this debian/ubuntu mixing was only related to 32-bit builds.

@rockedge and others,
I hesitate to get involved in this argument and I do not wish to antagonise any of those who are involved but I would like to make a couple of points. I have a feeling that there are many within the puppy community who use these OS's as is. They may add packages from a ppm, perhaps use a .sfs loaded on the fly, or use a portable or even an appimage and might even not install an alphabet drive that contains say a browser they do not like and install another. I have tried all of these. However, I am unlikely ever to edit or try to produce my own versions of these drives. I am currently using F96_4-radky6. I think it is very good. I particularly like the use of pulse audio. The way these drives are used does not currently seem to affect the way this OS works and if it did I am sure those of you that fully understand this stuff could affect a repair. The argument about what should be contained in which is of limited interest to me but as long as the OS works.

I think F96 works almost exactly the same way Slacko, Lucid, tahr, xenial, bionic, focal do. I seem to remember all kinds of changes between each one.

I have used four of the OS's mentioned above. One is still my all time favourite However, I had to rely on the fact that those who made them knew what they were doing. I guess they too were built to a recipe but recipes can vary. If the recipe can be varied and still produce a good puppy I for one see no problem.
If the idea of all this was to attract new users to this forum after having read a revue on distro watch then let me say if I was one of these potential new users I would be put off by reading the recent posts this thread.

We can get it to F96_5-radky6-CE with the replacement of Pkg with Pkg2 and with all of the mechanisms as they are now.

Does this mean that have done this the work on F96_5-radky6-CE would make an rc? If so could I suggest this is a way forward for most of us.
I have the feeling that as I am mere user this post will simply be ignored, however I felt I had to say something.

Regards,

Ken.

keniv wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 4:06 pm

@rockedge and others,
I hesitate to get involved in this argument and I do not wish to antagonise any of those who are involved but I would like to make a couple of points. I have a feeling that there are many within the puppy community who use these OS's as is. They may add packages from a ppm, perhaps use a .sfs loaded on the fly, or use a portable or even an appimage and might even not install an alphabet drive that contains say a browser they do not like and install another. I have tried all of these. However, I am unlikely ever to edit or try to produce my own versions of these drives. I am currently using F96_4-radky6. I think it is very good. I particularly like the use of pulse audio. The way these drives are used does not currently seem to affect the way this OS works and if it did I am sure those of you that fully understand this stuff could affect a repair. The argument about what should be contained in which is of limited interest to me but as long as the OS works.

I think F96 works almost exactly the same way Slacko, Lucid, tahr, xenial, bionic, focal do. I seem to remember all kinds of changes between each one.

I have used four of the OS's mentioned above. One is still my all time favourite However, I had to rely on the fact that those who made them knew what they were doing. I guess they too were built to a recipe but recipes can vary. If the recipe can be varied and still produce a good puppy I for one see no problem.
If the idea of all this was to attract new users to this forum after having read a revue on distro watch then let me say if I was one of these potential new users I would be put off by reading the recent posts this thread.

We can get it to F96_5-radky6-CE with the replacement of Pkg with Pkg2 and with all of the mechanisms as they are now.

Does this mean that have done this the work on F96_5-radky6-CE would make an rc? If so could I suggest this is a way forward for most of us.
I have the feeling that as I am mere user this post will simply be ignored, however I felt I had to say something.

Regards,

Ken.

I think we have moved pass the additional drive issues now. The point is to get this as a "polished version" before it can be released on a public forum like Distrowatch. Things like help files etc. needs updating as mentioned. The other thing is that Fossa is already long in the tooth, may as well spend efforts and focus energy on Jammy which is the newest Ubuntu with long term support.

rockedge wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 3:55 pm

This is a remaster of vanillaupup-22.04.39 similar in the construction method of F96.

I think you should use a build from https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... ammy64.yml instead, it's built using a much newer woof-CE and it's much more stable.

Or, you can build it yourself - see https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... -on-GitHub.

@amethyst
Thanks for the reply.

I think we have moved pass the additional drive issues now.

I'm very glad to hear this. Presumably things can start to move on from here if they hadn't already done so.

The point is to get this as a "polished version" before it can be released on a public forum like Distrowatch. Things like help files etc. needs updating as mentioned.

Can I ask if this is a huge amount of work as compared with what has been already done? I have seen complaints that some here ask for things to be done but others have to do the work in order that these requests are achieved. I have sympathy for this view and also feel some guilt that I cannot take part as I do not have the skills. I'm sure there must be others that feel the same way.

The other thing is that Fossa is already long in the tooth, may as well spend efforts and focus energy on Jammy which is the newest Ubuntu with long term support.

I appreciate that Fossa is now quite old but as I understand what has been said the idea of F96_5-radky6-CE was to fill a gap and once this was done to concentrate on Jammy as you suggest. Surely filling this gap could then provide the time need to produce a "really polished" version of Jammy.

Regards,

Ken.

dimkr wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 6:18 pm

Or, you can build it yourself - see https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... -on-GitHub.

Already almost finished with 3builddistro on a local machine build. I pulled the latest from woof-CE, ran merge2out and then ran the scripts in the Jammy woof-out directory. So far build has gone smoothly and looking at the terminal step 3 is going along well.

I'll report on how it finishes up and I can boot it

Regardless of how it turns out F96_4-radky6-CE or the following version of it, should be offered because it works well right now. Users will like the polish and functionality of F96 I believe as it is today. Just finish the replacement of Pkg with Pkg2 and call it ready. There is enough flexibility in F96 to call it a solid base platform for general user's and still a blank canvas for users to set it up the way they want in al kinds of ways.

Sure Fossa is getting older but there are people out in the world using Tahr-6.0.5 and Xenial still. F96 works and is efficient and can run many types of applications.

We'll catch up to proper protocol with the work on the woof-CE Jammypup's

The Jammy build failed and the script bailed out right around installing the kernel. So I went got the artifact from GitHub
ubuntu-jammy64-5

This is about 'finalizing'. After spending most of yesterday to figure out what was going wrong with pulse-audio on my system, I've concluded that to a large extent the problem might be my system. It's a desktop whose sound is generated by an internal card and/or USB-Speakers.

With F96's pulse-audio it will produce sound. Something my computer running S15 can't do, even after swapping its kernel with that used by F96. But there are some things I discovered which fall under the heading 'finalization'. And of future concern when woofing a 'jammy'.

F96 still includes the files for multiple-sound-card-wizard, to wit, /usr/sbin/mscw & mscw2. These can be deleted. Any attempt to invoke them results in a notice that pulse-audio controls sound. As far as I could tell, there’s no way to divest pulse-audio of that control.

This screenshot is of the GUI displayed by Right-Clicking the Taskbar-Sound Launcher.

This screenshot is of the GUI displayed when, after selecting Preferences from the Taskbar-Sound Launcher, the Playback tab is clicked.

The default playback setting of the builtin palemoon is LADSPA Plugin Eq on C-Media USB Audio device*. It generates no sound. To obtain sound it has to be changed to Built-in Audio Analog Service. None of the options from the Taskbar launcher can be used to change that setting except, of course, selecting Preferences and then the Playback tab.

The same is also true of Portable Waterfox, portable Chrome and portable Brave.

@ MikeWalsh, I could obtain sound under all portable web-browsers EXCEPT Iron and Slimjet. FYI, these are fully functional under Fossapup64-9.5.. I think all your other portable employing sound, e.g. KDEnlive portable, which functioned under Fossapup64-9.5 also functioned as did AppImages relating to sound Except the Olive-Video Editor AppImage. That didn't get far enough to test sound.

Notice the green 'speaker' with the red line thru it to the left of 'Built-in Audio Analog Stereo'. While clicking it can mute/unmute sound, the icon remains the same. Kind of hard to figure what's going wrong when you're trying to configure sound. Edit: Never mind. The GUI didn't open all the way. So I didn't notice and the screenshot didn't capture the box next to that icon which 'dims' when mute is selected, and clearly displays when not.

Similar to my experience with the builtin palemoon was what happened when I tried to use the builtin mpv to play videos in any format. Again the default playback was a LADSPA plugin. To obtain sound that had to be changed to Built-in Audio Analog Service.

At least on my computer, none of the offered LADSPA plugins functioned. While you could choke that up to ideosyncrasies of my computer, the following can not be. After changing playback to use 'Built-in Audio Analog Stereo' for mpv and functional web-browsers and executing a Save, on reboot those changes hadn't been preserved. Where are configuration files used by pulse-audio stored? Are edits only written to /tmp or some other folder which isn't preserved?

The 'off' on the taskbar launcher's GUI does not turns off neither sound nor pulse-audio. To obtain sound on my system I have to have the settings 'Analog Stereo Output' and either mono or multichannel input. Fortunately it defaults to the former. Selecting anything using the taskbar launcher's GUI seems accomplish noting. For any change to be effective I have to click Preferences and then make a selection under the Output Devices tab.

Worse than doing nothing, the Launcher GUI creates the impression that it's supposed to accomplish something delaying further exploration which will reveal what has to be done.

-==-=--=
* It has only now occurred to me that the issue I have with the USB-Speakers may be the absence of the needed driver or firmware.

@mikeslr :-

Well, I don't know. Here I was, all set to jump to your defence & side with you in regards to figuring out how to exterminate PulseAudio and re-instate ALSA & Retrovol. But Radky's gone and done it again.

The "other" version of Fossapup64-96, woofed directly from Dima's work on Woof-CE, without any work on it, simply wouldn't function for me as far as the audio went. PulseAudio was functioning, yes.....but even after literally hours of fucking about, trying everything under the sun, it point-blank refused to "see" half of my devices, and I couldn't get it to play out through the system audio at all. As far as IT was concerned, I only had a pair of headphones plugged-in!

Such behaviour only reinforced my original disgust of PulseAudio in mainstream distros 10 years back, and why I was so pleased to find that Puppy had ALSA controlling everything when I made the switch to Pup all those years ago.

But Roger has worked his usual magic again, been through literally everything with a fine toothcomb, and teased all the wee bugs out from everywhere. Here, PulseAudio is behaving itself as I would expect it to, without the need to have to literally fart about with the bloody thing & end up pulling-out much of what little hair I have left!

(I've only just a few minutes ago deleted the other F64-96 and installed this one in its place. Right from the word go, everything here is perfect, as I've kinda come to expect from Radky. I haven't even shut-down and created a save-folder yet, 'cos I was expecting to use this first install as a sacrificial lamb, or 'test-bed', as a means of figuring out a script to delete PA in its entirety from the system as painlessly as possible. But it doesn't appear that I need to.

I don't 'hate' PA, per se. But until this moment, even in mainstream distros, it's never worked 'properly'. Not the way I've always felt it ought to.)

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

Posting this from Chrome-portable, which as soon as I fired it-up pulled its built-in auto-detect routine and has just updated to the brand new v109.......flawlessly. Yeah, I think this one's gonna be a 'keeper'.

Way to go, Roger! NICE one. You've just been awarded Uncle Mike's 'seal of approval'...

Mike.

And I've played some more with it. Note the edit to the previous post regarding the 'mute' icon. Suspecting that the plugin speakers might have caused confusion I unplugged it. MPV still requires the previously noted change. But Chromium produces sound whether LADSPA Plugin Eq on C-Media USB Audio device or Built-in Audio Analog Service is selected. Selecting 'off' from the taskbar gui will turn sound off and deselecting it will turn sound back on. But if sound is turned off from Preferences>Configuration the taskbar gui won't turn it back on.

Now to test Iron and Slimjet. I'll be back.

P.S, I'm glad we're off the alphabet stacking question. Nothing that previously could be accomplished under fossapup64-9.5 can't be accomplished under F-96 with a little forethought and planning. All that is really important is knowing how the system functions as a whole and how to use Save2SFS if desired.

I'm back. Iron and Slimjet are still as dumb as a doornob.

I think the important issue is "After changing playback to use 'Built-in Audio Analog Stereo' for mpv and functional web-browsers and executing a Save, on reboot those changes hadn't been preserved. Where are configuration files used by pulse-audio stored? Are edits only written to /tmp or some other folder which isn't preserved?"

@mikeslr Could you try an experiment?
open the PPM and update it. Then search for pulseaudio. Find the package pulseaudio-utils_13.99.1, look for it in the PPM near the bottom of the list in the ALREADY INSTALLED zone. Click on it and attempt to install it.

In my case the PPM reported it was installed but it wasn't in fact.

I also was able to install alsa-base alsa-utils which would be alongside pulseaudio. So best to use the PPM to reinstall those 2 packages as well

Then restart pulseaudio. Test if those browsers can generate sound.

Thanks, rockedge. I'll do that. But it may not be the problem. Thinking it might be that something about the browser which changed --Iron 108 worked under Bionicpup64 while Iron 97 didn't-- I went to my 'archive'. I hadn't kept 97, but did have 93. It produces sound. But that was without any of the extensions I had installed in 108. So I rename its PROFILE and opened it with no extensions. Still no sound. [I almost never use Slimjet unless someone asks about it. But Iron has long been my go-to Web-browser].
Will post after I try your suggestions.

Edit: posting after installing the suggested. Neither just restart-x, nor Saving the Changes and rebooting produced sound using Iron 198 or slimjet. This is probably not the latest slimjet. I just checked and it's Version 31.0.2.0 (based on Chromium 90.0.4430.93). I'm downloading t'other Mike's slimjet 35. It may work. Or like it appears with regard to Iron 108, the issue may be something in the build, itself. Not a flaw in F-96 or its pulse-audio.

Edit2: No sound from Slimjet 35 either. But to be noted regarding Iron, Ungoogled-Chromium does generate sound. And I just discovered an interesting fact. With both Waterfox and Ungoogled Chromium open, the Playback GUI shows displays for both.

I might actually get to appreciate pulse-audio once I've internalized how to control it.

rockedge wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:59 pm

The Jammy build failed and the script bailed out right around installing the kernel. So I went got the artifact from GitHub
ubuntu-jammy64-5

I know this thread is not about jammypup64, but I tested the iso.

It was impossible to use IME with Chrome on this version of puppy. Does this mean that a puppy built with woof-CE does not comply with Chrome?
We can use IME with Chrome on jammypup64 9.7b / 9.8 by Grey. I wonder what the difference is.

@mikeslr , What version of slimjet are you running? For myself and a number of people on the slimjet forums, nothing since version 35.0.3.0 will play youtube or most videos, no matter how much libffmpeg fiddling is done.

I'm running FP64_radky6 using only the main SFS. I have pcmanfm, pupsysinfo, galculator, pupmd5sum, lxtask, lx-rightclicks, evince, and my themes/panel/configurations on my ydrv. It's been rock solid and pretty slick.

pulseaudio came up with analog stereo duplex chosen for my laptop speakers and basically has just worked with the newest Brave and ungoogled portables and with slimjet 35.0.3.0. Volume control works.

After reading @mikeslrs' post above, I turned the speaker off using the system tray app, OK it's off, turned it on and NOTHING short of a reboot would get sound back. Manually restarted the apps in /root/.config/autostart and tried the autospawn script in /etc/init.d as well as killing and restarting pulseaudio in terminal -both as root and as spot- My guess is it's a permissions thing.

Kind of like my actual pup, when she's good she's perfect. When she's not...... oh well.

rockedge wrote: Wed Dec 28, 2022 12:47 pm

With the continued support and contributions by the members of the Puppy Linux community F96_4-radky6-CE is in the rigorous testing phase and by all accounts is living up to and exceeding expectations.

This brings us to the point where the production name of the distro will be pressed into service.
F96_4-radky6-CE will leave the den as the first production version FP96-CE.

This link for the F96-radky6-CE has not worked for me in some days. Any suggestions?

@Geek3579 Here is another option : F96_4-CE_radky6.iso

I changed the first post link as well.

@mikeslr :-

I'm glad Marv's mentioned about the mega cock-up with the Linux build of Slimjet, r.e., video & sound. They just don't work any more, so this is why I've dropped it for the time being. As far as I'm concerned, no NetFlix = no good!

Marv's been a staunch Slimmie user for a LONG time, but I believe this is why he's given up on it, too.

(*shrug*)

Mike.

rockedge wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 3:46 pm

This what I mean. If I knew how to do it I would be taking the F96 ideas of being outfitted and making the changes to woof-CE. I do not yet know how to do the details to have woof-CE generate a polished distro

@rockedge
There are a number of mechanisms in Woof-CE that can be used to customize your build..........

https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... /README.md
is a comprehensive overview

The use of the mechanisms is illustrated by some of the build recipes - e.g.
https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... upupjj%2Bd

If you can identify the changes you would want to make to the existing JammyPup64 build recipe then I'm sure we can suggest which mechanism to use to implement the changes......

@mikeslr :-

AFAIK, Mike, PA will show a volume bar for every single item that is open & actively interfacing with the audio system in some way. It's always done this.

I have, however, come to realise one thing myself. Although PA works properly here, it seems as though either modern audio chips are becoming more complicated, OR PA's settings have been rewritten to function differently from what I remember. Because once you try to switch devices, things start getting complex. A lot of things seem to require actually switching off, rather than simply re-directing.

PA was even slicker in KLV Airedale when I was last using it. Maybe @rockedge knows if there's some additional PA stuff needs installing? I remember with KLV, when you click the volume icon, a panel opens that gives an "output" level bar, and also an "input" level bar.....along with the ability to switch sources for both "output" and "input". That, right there, is to MY way of thinking one of the most useful pieces of functionality PA has ever offered.

Everything the average user is likely to want to do, audio-wise, can be managed from that panel.....without the need to open, or bring up anything else.

T'other Mike.

If anyone is still interested in jammy64 development, I strongly recommend you to try the latest bi-weekly development build:

https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... #artifacts

It has a nice selection of lightweight applications and it's quite snappy.

dimkr wrote: Mon Jan 16, 2023 10:10 am

If anyone is still interested in jammy64 development, I strongly recommend you to try the latest bi-weekly development build:

https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... #artifacts

It has a nice selection of lightweight applications and it's quite snappy.

Is this the more "traditional" Puppy in the way it works?

I just installed F96_4-radky6-CE on my hp laptop. It look very polished, also, dt colors match my machine nicely.
Everything, at first sight, seem working OOTB. Surprisingly, even brightness function keys work, whereas they didn't in fossapup64.
Great job.
Sadly, I had no luck in customizing iptables list, and I'm searching a way for uploading my own lists on the run, when needed. I did it with Tahrpup32 quickly (yes, some people still use Tahr, a real successful puppy) by some xterm commands and sym links.
Also, Brave browser does not even start (Brave-portable.tar.xz), while it worked perfectly on Fossapup64 9.5.
My first impression is positive and I hope in some workaround in order to fix the problems above.
English is not my native language, I apologize for some mistake.

@rockedge

Unetbootin, the popular USB installer, is a portable program on both Linux and MS Windows and we often recommend it on the forum. Currently it cannot, by itself, create a UEFI bootable USB from a stock F95 or F96 ISO (does work on Friendly-Fossa64).

As we near a release, I'd recommend this for the ISO:
-Include the EFI directory and puppy.cer file in the root of the ISO

Doing this will allow it to create a UEFI bootable USB drive with no extra steps (some not even possible from MS Windows).

Extra Note: Unetbootin has the additional advantage of being able to install to a USB with a ext3 format partition. This allows a user to have the better "save folder" rather than a save file on the drive.

Thanks
wizard

Brave browser running from extracted .rpm (downloaded for testing in other Puppies...)

One request if i may: CUPS-PDF seems to be broken. Either fix it or remove it...

@HerrBert
@radky
@rockedge

CUPS-PDF failure confirmed, error message: Backend /usr/lib/cups/backend/pdf-writer does not exist!
Tried copying pdf-writer file from F95 = no change

Thanks
wizard