Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

@mikewalsh
That's cool getting it going with Tahr:
1. So you use your portable version of Firefox as is with Tahr 6.0.6 without having to do any other upgrades to the system?
2. Any reason why this won't work with Tahr 6.0.5? As far as I can remember there weren't really much difference between Tahr 6.0.5 and 6.0.6 (may be mistaken).

BTW - Gone all retro in the last week. Dusted off an old desktop and having some fun using my revamp of Racy called Racy Resurrector almost all of the time. Restricted to Palemoon as newest browser of course but mostly using Opera Mini for general browsing (saves up to 95% data). Everything works like clockwork (videos, Wine, etc. no problem). Magic to do all with a 55MB base sfs operating system.

amethyst wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 5:17 am

@mikewalsh
That's cool getting it going with Tahr:
1. So you use your portable version of Firefox as is with Tahr 6.0.6 without having to do any other upgrades to the system?
2. Any reason why this won't work with Tahr 6.0.5? As far as I can remember there weren't really much difference between Tahr 6.0.5 and 6.0.6 (may be mistaken).

@amethyst :-

Yes, this IS the standard Firefox-portable build, as it comes OOTB.

I don't think there were many differences between 6.0.6 and 6.0.5, Nic.....from what I can tell, the major difference is that GTK-3 is already built-in, plus all the previous system 'updates' and bugfixes up to 6.0.5 are all included OOTB. It was kind of Phil's final 'roll-up' release of Tahr before he moved on to Xenial full-time. And no; as far as I'm aware, I haven't added anything extra.....with the exception of running the k4.1.30 huge kernel that was made available for the later Xenialpup. (I had to do this in order to get functional audio, because the chip-set in this HP desktop didn't even exist at the time of the 3-series kernels....)

(*shrug*)

But that's the only one I know of. Curiously, using the SlimJet and Vivaldi legacy releases I've never been able to achieve a 'clean' re-start after an over-night suspend (it's always been 'jerky' & 'juddery'); with this current Firefox, everything is as smooth as silk, and seems to be behaving itself. So that's another plus point in its favour..!

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

EDIT:- No, I tell a lie. I've also replaced the default ffmpeg with the 3.1.2 'static' build Fred found on John van Sickle's site. Along with this, I've deleted the built-in avconv & avplay, and re-created them as sym-links pointing to ffmpeg itself. Tahr was the one release where for some inexplicable reason Canonical decided to use the 'alternative' avconv fork of ffmpeg.....which was utterly useless. With Xenial, they returned to their senses and reverted back to ffmpeg again.

In MY experience, this makes a big difference to media playback codecs'n'stuff. But it doubtless depends a lot on your hardware, I guess.

Mike.

mikewalsh wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:30 am

amethyst wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 5:17 am

@mikewalsh
That's cool getting it going with Tahr:
1. So you use your portable version of Firefox as is with Tahr 6.0.6 without having to do any other upgrades to the system?
2. Any reason why this won't work with Tahr 6.0.5? As far as I can remember there weren't really much difference between Tahr 6.0.5 and 6.0.6 (may be mistaken).

@amethyst :-

Yes, this IS the standard Firefox-portable build, as it comes OOTB.

I don't think there were many differences between 6.0.6 and 6.0.5, Nic.....from what I can tell, the major difference is that GTK-3 is already built-in, plus all the previous system 'updates' and bugfixes up to 6.0.5 are all included OOTB. It was kind of Phil's final 'roll-up' release of Tahr before he moved on to Xenial full-time. And no; as far as I'm aware, I haven't added anything extra.....with the exception of running the k4.1.30 huge kernel that was made available for the later Xenialpup. (I had to do this in order to get functional audio, because the chip-set in this HP desktop didn't even exist at the time of the 3-series kernels....)

(*shrug*)

But that's the only one I know of. Curiously, using the SlimJet and Vivaldi legacy releases I've never been able to achieve a 'clean' re-start after an over-night suspend (it's always been 'jerky' & 'juddery'); with this current Firefox, everything is as smooth as silk, and seems to be behaving itself. So that's another plus point in its favour..!

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

EDIT:- No, I tell a lie. I've also replaced the default ffmpeg with the 3.1.2 'static' build Fred found on John van Sickle's site. Along with this, I've deleted the built-in avconv & avplay, and re-created them as sym-links pointing to ffmpeg itself. Tahr was the one release where for some inexplicable reason Canonical decided to use the 'alternative' avconv fork of ffmpeg.....which was utterly useless. With Xenial, they returned to their senses and reverted back to ffmpeg again.

In MY experience, this makes a big difference to media playback codecs'n'stuff. But it doubtless depends a lot on your hardware, I guess.

Mike.

Hi Mike, maybe not a bad idea to upload that upgraded Tahr version of yours. I'm sure it will be useful to some. Thanks.

@amethyst :-

I'll make those few mods to a clean download of Tahr 6.0.6, then re-pack the ISO again, and upload it if ya like. Most of the necessary stuff is already there, but the k4.1.30 kernel does work very well in my experience. There again, like I said it's probably hardware-dependent; just because that combo works well for ME is no guarantee it'll do the same for others!

Leave it with me. jrb's "PupBuild Tools" still come in very useful, y'know?

(This will have the standard glibc 2.19. Or do you want the one I've upgraded to 2.28? That one's functional, though for some reason I can't get audio to work.... )

Mike.

mikewalsh wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 12:54 pm

@amethyst :-

I'll make those few mods to a clean download of Tahr 6.0.6, then re-pack the ISO again, and upload it if ya like. Most of the necessary stuff is already there, but the k4.1.30 kernel does work very well in my experience. There again, like I said it's probably hardware-dependent; just because that combo works well for ME is no guarantee it'll do the same for others!

Leave it with me. jrb's "PupBuild Tools" still come in very useful, y'know?

(This will have the standard glibc 2.19. Or do you want the one I've upgraded to 2.28? That one's functional, though for some reason I can't get audio to work.... )

Mike.

Nah, just leave the glibc as is, as long as it works with your portable Firefox. I'm basically interested in your remastered/edited base sfs (pack it maximum xz compression) only so you can just upload that or if you want to make an iso (for others) up to you....and of course give a link for that Firefox that works with it.

@amethyst :-

Right, Nic. This the link you'll want.....everything's in the one directory (ISO, SFS and Firefox-portable):-

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/iqdq9l ... 2_remaster

Having burnt the ISO, it refuses to run on this HP desktop! Not in the least surprised, TBH; I don't know why, but of all my Pups, Tahr is the only one that's given me real problems to get it installed on the HP.....32- OR 64-bit, they're both problematic! I suspect the Nvidia GPU might be the culprit, but I have no proof of that. However, I've given it a test run on the Latitude around an hour ago; that actually comes with an Nvidia Quadro mobile chipset as standard.....and it ran A-OK on there. Firefox-portable was trouble-free, too. Fired straight up.

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

Sorry about the size of the base SFS, but as I've often remarked, I'm not your regular Puppian. I know sweet FA about maximizing compression; never needed to bother. I've always had resources aplenty and to spare...

I guess you can probably make that smaller if you want to; I know you've got the tools, AND the knowledge to use them. Tar.xz is the furthest I ever take compression myself; beyond that, I'm afraid, I neither know nor care...

(Dreadful attitude for a veteran Puppy user, ain't it? )

Anyways; hope those are of some use to you.

Mike.

@mikewalsh
Thanks, will download and check it out sometime when I have enough data. The suggestion for max xz compression was for distribution/download purposes. Some of us do not have unlimited data or the fastest download speeds.

amethyst wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 4:01 am

@mikewalsh
Thanks, will download and check it out sometime when I have enough data. The suggestion for max xz compression was for distribution/download purposes. Some of us do not have unlimited data or the fastest download speeds.

I guess I'm going to have to look into compression a bit more. You're in the same boat as we were around 9-10 years ago; a strict, quite small data cap.....and heaven help you if you went over it! (The penalties were ridiculous...)

What compression do you use? Obviously, you're a bit more "au fait" with this stuff than I am.......and it's got to be something that's common to most Puppies without the need to install extra stuff...

Mike.

mikewalsh wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 8:59 am

amethyst wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 4:01 am

@mikewalsh
Thanks, will download and check it out sometime when I have enough data. The suggestion for max xz compression was for distribution/download purposes. Some of us do not have unlimited data or the fastest download speeds.

I guess I'm going to have to look into compression a bit more. You're in the same boat as we were around 9-10 years ago; a strict, quite small data cap.....and heaven help you if you went over it! (The penalties were ridiculous...)

What compression do you use? Obviously, you're a bit more "au fait" with this stuff than I am.......and it's got to be something that's common to most Puppies without the need to install extra stuff...

Mike.

Mike - Maybe I should just make something clear. There's absolutely nothing wrong with our internet coverage in SA (5G, fibre, unlimited if you want, etc.) but you may have gathered by now that I'm a bit of a minimalist so use basic data services (connecting with my old 3G cellphone modem for example) which is more than adequate for me. My internet data usage is very basic (self imposed). The maximum compression is useful for distribution purposes as mentioned (smaller size, quicker download). xz compression (max) will give you the best compression rate of those commonly available to us with our distributions. For operational purposes (running Puppy) one should use the fastest decompression available. I use gzip with the old Puppys I'm using which is much faster than xz decompression and also much lighter on resources. Newer distributions have zstd available now I think which is even faster. As far as compression levels are concerned, there are various utilities available to make/rebuild sfs files (with different compression levels). You can use my sfs editor tool or Packit for example as far as GUI tools are concerned.

@amethyst :-

Uh-huh. Okay; I see.

I was just mulling this over. In all honesty, I can't see how it's possible to make the Tahrpup base SFS much smaller. I do use Packit, most of the time.....and with tar.xz - which I now use in preference to tar.gz, for its smaller size - I tend to crank the compression up to max anyway.

From what I can see of it, looking at various Puppies- I guess your Racy SFS is quite heavily edited, from what you've said in recent months - even with the original Racy 5.5 base SFS, it's still only around half the size of the Tahrpup one to start with. And I tend to be cautious; unless I really know what I'm doing, I tend to leave well alone.....I daren't remove too much for fear that I'll make the thing unusable, so......yeah.

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

I've noticed summat with Firefox 110-portable this morning. While YouTube plays absolutely fine, some video players on smaller sites will either crash the browser when you try to run them, or else they sit there 'spinning' for ever with nothing happening. My guess is that this is probably due to YT using HTML5 - which is a hassle-free, mature technology in modern browsers now - whereas those others are probably relying on AV codecs/containers & stuff within the OS to actually function. Doesn't bother me, 'cos I watch precious few videos apart from on YT itself.....but I felt I ought to at least mention it.

(And it doesn't do this under other Pups. Xenial, Bionic, various Slackos, etc, all play these smaller sites fine. It's JUST Tahrpup. It's that bloody 'avconv' again, I'm convinced of it!)

Mike.

mikewalsh wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 11:53 am

@amethyst :-

Uh-huh. Okay; I see.

I was just mulling this over. In all honesty, I can't see how it's possible to make the Tahrpup base SFS much smaller. I do use Packit, most of the time.....and with tar.xz - which I now use in preference to tar.gz, for its smaller size - I tend to crank the compression up to max anyway.

From what I can see of it, looking at various Puppies- I guess your Racy SFS is quite heavily edited, from what you've said in recent months - even with the original Racy 5.5 base SFS, it's still only around half the size of the Tahrpup one to start with. And I tend to be cautious; unless I really know what I'm doing, I tend to leave well alone.....I daren't remove too much for fear that I'll make the thing unusable, so......yeah.

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

I've noticed summat with Firefox 110-portable this morning. While YouTube plays absolutely fine, some video players on smaller sites will either crash the browser when you try to run them, or else they sit there 'spinning' for ever with nothing happening. My guess is that this is probably due to YT using HTML5 - which is a hassle-free, mature technology in modern browsers now - whereas those others are probably relying on AV codecs/containers & stuff within the OS to actually function. Doesn't bother me, 'cos I watch precious few videos apart from on YT itself.....but I felt I ought to at least mention it.

(And it doesn't do this under other Pups. Xenial, Bionic, various Slackos, etc, all play these smaller sites fine. It's JUST Tahrpup. It's that bloody 'avconv' again, I'm convinced of it!)

Mike.

I removed the old browser, the old Glibc, the builtin kernel and the flash player libraries from the original Racy base sfs (I think that was all). My Racy is compressed to max xz compression, so you have to multiply by about 3,5 for the uncompressed size. In fact, if one wants to compare apples with apples one should always look at the uncompressed size no matter what compression algorythm used.

@amethyst :-

Huh. Yes, this is the one trap we have ALL of us fell into at one time or another.

We've become very fond - in this community - of quoting small ISO sizes, small package sizes, etc. Everyone tends to 'gloss over' (or conveniently 'overlook') the fact that in the installed (as you say, uncompressed) condition, most of these items DO become a LOT bigger. 3-3.5x is around the ball-park figure I've always worked on.

I doubt we'll ever change!

Mike.

mikewalsh wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 5:46 pm @amethyst :-

Huh. Yes, this is the one trap we have ALL of us fell into at one time or another.

We've become very fond - in this community - of quoting small ISO sizes, small package sizes, etc. Everyone tends to 'gloss over' (or conveniently 'overlook') the fact that in the installed (as you say, uncompressed) condition, most of these items DO become a LOT bigger. 3-3.5x is around the ball-park figure I've always worked on.

I doubt we'll ever change!

Mike.

The version I use takes up about 1200 mb of space after opening, it may be a bit difficult, but thanks to all of you, I am trying to download 500 mb if I can.

@mikewalsh
@amethyst

Very interesting that ff110 will run in tahr6.0.6.
So I downloaded ff110 tarball extracted the firefox directory clicked on firefox and it works.
Not mikes portable version, just the extracted tarball, even though tahr6.0.6 has gtk3.10.8. Now it is the standard tahr6.0.6 not the version with kernal 4.1.30 which suffers from boot failure on my hardware. So then I booted up tahr6.0.5 but no joy with ff110. There are some differences in the library files between the two. tahr6.0.6 having better gtk3 implementation.
So as my updated precise is gtk3.10.8 i thought I woulg give it a go.
Posting this from a 2gb p4 laptop running precise updated. FF110 running in safe mode. The advantage of running the extracted tarball is that the ff directory is small enough not to gobble up the personal storage.
My previous post about experimental test of ff102esr required another series of updates before it would run.
So it may be possible now to chase down the missing library files to make ff110 run as intended.
Further tseting to do to get me out of this rabbit hole.
Thanks for everybodies input.

waxman

waxman wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 8:37 pm

@mikewalsh
@amethyst

Very interesting that ff110 will run in tahr6.0.6.
So I downloaded ff110 tarball extracted the firefox directory clicked on firefox and it works.
Not mikes portable version, just the extracted tarball, even though tahr6.0.6 has gtk3.10.8. Now it is the standard tahr6.0.6 not the version with kernal 4.1.30 which suffers from boot failure on my hardware. So then I booted up tahr6.0.5 but no joy with ff110. There are some differences in the library files between the two. tahr6.0.6 having better gtk3 implementation.
So as my updated precise is gtk3.10.8 i thought I woulg give it a go.
Posting this from a 2gb p4 laptop running precise updated. FF110 running in safe mode. The advantage of running the extracted tarball is that the ff directory is small enough not to gobble up the personal storage.
My previous post about experimental test of ff102esr required another series of updates before it would run.
So it may be possible now to chase down the missing library files to make ff110 run as intended.
Further tseting to do to get me out of this rabbit hole.
Thanks for everybodies input.

waxman

It seems a newer version of gtk3 is required. Where can I download the gtk3.10.8 package?

@amethyst

Just to clarify ff110 works perfectly well on tahr6.0.6 so far. But as firefox needs a minimum of gtk 3.14 to even load I am surprised it runs at all in tahr6.0.6 or my precise updated which are both gtk 3.10.8. This leads me to think that the gtk3 version is not as critical as some of the associated files. So booting in tahr6.0.6 there must be another file that is the trigger not gtk3. That is the file i want to find to put into [precise.
The update of precise to gtk 3.10.8 to run ff91esr was a series of files added to the previous update to run ff87. then remastered the iso.

regards

waxman

waxman wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 9:01 pm

@amethyst

Just to clarify ff110 works perfectly well on tahr6.0.6 so far. But as firefox needs a minimum of gtk 3.14 to even load I am surprised it runs at all in tahr6.0.6 or my precise updated which are both gtk 3.10.8. This leads me to think that the gtk3 version is not as critical as some of the associated files. So booting in tahr6.0.6 there must be another file that is the trigger not gtk3. That is the file i want to find to put into [precise.
The update of precise to gtk 3.10.8 to run ff91esr was a series of files added to the previous update to run ff87. then remastered the iso.

regards

waxman

Try ro run Firefox from terminal with Precise. It will show all the errors (dependencies needed and so on).

@amethyst

That is how I ran ff110 in safe mode from the termin al. The error messages are non specific. ff110 is the start of a new series. ff100 series will not boot at all on my updated precise even in safe mode. Note also that ff100 series freezes laptop using tahr6.0.6.

Much earlier post in this thread listed files to move precise on from running ff79 to ff87.

So to run ff81esr I added the following.

1- libgtk-3-0_3.10.8-0ubuntu1.6_i386.deb

2- libgtk-3-bin_3.10.8-0ubuntu1.6_i386.deb

3- libgtk-3-common_3.10.8-0ubuntu1.6_all.deb

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gtk+3.0/

4- libwayland-client0_1.4.0-1ubuntu1.1_i386.deb

5- libwayland-cursor0_1.4.0-1ubuntu1_i386.deb

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/w/wayland/

6- libcairo2_1.14.6-1_i386.deb

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/c/cairo/

7- libegl1-mesa_11.2.0-1ubuntu2_i386.deb

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/m/mesa/

8- libxkbcommon0_0.4.1-0ubuntu1_i386.deb

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/m ... xkbcommon/

Note that the wayland files I used were version 1.3 from launchpad. I do not know if those are still available.

still more tinkering to do.

regards

waxman

oops to run 91esr not 81esr typo.

The great thing about Linux is the possibility of customization.

As you said in other posts, it is the best version for very old devices with 512 mb or less ram.
''archive.org/details/Puppy_Linux_Precise''

As in arch linux, in the terminal, in the lscpu list, in the properties opposite where it says Flags:
to save space so that it can run completely in ram without the need for a fixed space.
In the PupKview menu, /lib/modules/ (Loaded Kernel Modules) zdrv sfs can be packaged for each device, right?

This may not make a difference for devices with 512 mb or less because swap is required, but it may work better for devices with 2 gb ram or more.
Is there a Cubic-like Graphical interface that can do this instead of manually deleting the largest sfs with other modules/drivers and applications that the device does not use?

--------------------------------------------------------
Just Firefox itself takes up 250-300 mb
+
A 110 mb Precise iso version takes up 410 mb in ram
=
750 mb
--------------------------------------------------------
2 gb ram ÷ 750 mb sfs load + 1250 mb space is enough
--------------------------------------------------------

I'm not an expert on remasters, I'm a beginner. regards

sucuklu yumurta wrote: ↑Sat May 20, 2023 3:34 am

The great thing about Linux is the possibility of customization.

As you said in other posts, it is the best version for very old devices with 512 mb or less ram.
''archive.org/details/Puppy_Linux_Precise''

As in arch linux, in the terminal, in the lscpu list, in the properties opposite where it says Flags:
to save space so that it can run completely in ram without the need for a fixed space.
In the PupKview menu, /lib/modules/ (Loaded Kernel Modules) zdrv sfs can be packaged for each device, right?

This may not make a difference for devices with 512 mb or less because swap is required, but it may work better for devices with 2 gb ram or more.
Is there a Cubic-like Graphical interface that can do this instead of manually deleting the largest sfs with other modules/drivers and applications that the device does not use?

--------------------------------------------------------
Just Firefox itself takes up 250-300 mb
+
A 110 mb Precise iso version takes up 410 mb in ram
=
750 mb
--------------------------------------------------------
2 gb ram ÷ 750 mb sfs load + 1250 mb space is enough
--------------------------------------------------------

I'm not an expert on remasters, I'm a beginner. regards

This may be of interest to you: viewtopic.php?p=67697#p67697

@amethyst , @mikewalsh , @rockedge

Not sure if this is the correct place for this but here goes.
I think we all use different combinations of hardware and puppy versions..
I am trying to keep 32 bit going as best I can.
I find xenial very problematic so i do not use it.
Bionic has issues 8.0+10 being the best for me but still has issues.
I have not tried bionicNG yet but on the to do list.
I have 3 laptops and 3 desktops I could use, so I like to have a puppy that will work on any of them.

So my current go to puppy is tahr6.0.6 and when in the mood my updated precise.

To pick up some earlier posts in this thread I run FF110 in precise in safe mode and in tahr ff110 which runs without safe mode.
Just for fun I ran ff110 in safe mode in tahr6.0.6.
Interestingly the terminal output for Tahr and precise is identical .
So there must be something else in precise that means ff110 will not load without safe mode.

So my precise is getting a little chunky and I do need to strip it out but have not had the time.
I have managed to update precise to Glibc2.3.
Will run Steve Pussers dotdeb extracted. I use peazip and xarchive to pull out the contents of the dotdeb.
However Steve Pussers dotdeb will not install which precise has refused to do for me since pm27.

Tahr6.0.6 is my go to puppy due to lack of time to check anything else and test anything else.
So I have updated tahr to Glibc2,3 which enables Steve Pussers palemoon dotdeb to install and run.
Uextract is better in that it will now directly extract a dotdeb. Appears pretty solid at the moment.

The difference between Precise and Tahr.
PM34.0.1 runs in both puppies.
In tahr PM crashes if you try to play any youtube video. Running on Dell D630 with 3gb ram.
In precise Pm runs just fine and plays youtube videos. Running on Dell C640 with 2Gb ram.
And the aforementioned firefox differences.

Testing continues as time permits.

regards to all