Some interesting points raised here, though I still do - and always have - questioned why people worry so much about the Distrowatch rankings!
@bigpup :-
bigpup wrote: ↑Sat Nov 06, 2021 8:08 am
People want the operating systems, to all work the same way, so they do not have to learn, a different way, to do things.
Cynical, perhaps, but totally true. 99% of people alive today not only don't see the need for, they don't want to have to learn new ways of doing anything. Learning something new involves expending effort.....
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@Grey :-
Grey wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:55 am
Use a "highly polished" system... it's so boring
Who else is able to remember, then remember what kind of romance there was once - six months to think about how to set up the menu (or whatever you have there) and then what pleasure came. Although it happens to me even now
Heh. You're like me, mate. I'm the sort who derives immense satisfaction from figuring out ways to make stuff work the way I want it to in Puppy. Users of mainstream distros not only take such things for granted, indeed they appear to see it as their God-given right to expect to do everything with absolutely no effort required on their part....
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@benali72 :-
benali72 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 6:15 pm
Puppy's user interface is antiquated. We need an XFCE or LXQt Puppy on the master downloads page, where the casual user will see it listed.
Hm. Another XFCE fan. You and @JASpup both.
You would obviously like to see Puppy directly compete on a level playing field with some of the 'big boys'. Fair comment.....though I sometimes wonder what the true 'cost' of all this 'polish' equates to. And it IS a fact that your entire argument throughout this thread has concentrated exclusively around the DE and general appearance. I agree first impressions count, but I'm not so sure I agree with this... And why those two DEs specifically?
Myself, I experimented with ALL the DEs during my 'distro-hopping' days.....and rapidly came to the conclusion that I didn't really like ANY of them, because you're too 'tied' to somebody else's 'vision' of how things should work. JWM/ROX takes a lot of getting used-to, initially, but I find it 'grows' on you, and is almost infinitely customizable, once understood; I've got so used to the combination of JWM & the ROX-pinboard, that I honestly cannot see myself using anything else ever again. But that's just me.
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@dimkr :-
dimkr wrote: ↑Sat Nov 06, 2021 7:56 am
I think Puppy needs to re-focus, because the "old" vs "new" dichotomy is becoming irrelevant. Instead of emphasizing small size and resource consumption at all costs, I think the focus should change to responsiveness, better out-of-the-box usability and lower resource consumption compared to other distros with similar functionality.
(Couldn't agree more, actually.)
PCs haven't changed that much in the last decade. Many computers from 10 years ago already had respectable amounts of RAM (>= 4 GB), and sometimes it's OK not to use a super lightweight but inadequate application instead of the mainstream application in the category. Most 2010 computers can run the latest Firefox/Chrome with PulseAudio and Blueman just fine. And Puppy's network wizards can be replaced with a heavier but friendlier solution like ConnMan or NetworkManager, which works much better, because most Puppy users have enough RAM for that. And the huge VA-API drivers, that make Puppy bigger, greatly reduce CPU consumption because they allow browsers to use the GPU to decode video. Is it worth it? Probably yes, because extra storage is cheap and easy to add, and most people can afford a small increase in Puppy's size, while the CPU is pretty much impossible to upgrade, and CPU consumption/battery life is much lower in other distros because they do have these drivers. Sometimes, smaller is slower, and bigger is faster.
dimkr (or iguleder, call him what you will) is, as always, spot on the money. He's always had a way of cutting through the general forum waffle & crap and getting straight to the meat of the matter.
With regard to hardware abilities, well; the number of community members still attempting to use ancient (2007 or older) hardware has dramatically decreased in the 7 or 8 years I've been a part of this community. More & more often, folks are mentioning having 8 GB, or 16 GB RAM as standard, usually coupled with far more capable CPUs, frequently SSDs, and as often as not dedicated GPUs, too. Puppy's original 'raison d'être' is nowhere near as relevant as it once was. Such hardware still exists, of course, though is more than catered for by the sheer number of older Puppies/Puplets/re-masters/respins Ally already has available over at archive.org.
I have to agree about the VAAPI drivers. I've found, since packaging the 'Ungoogled-Chromium-portable' package, that CPU usage drops quite a ways if you have the
Code: Select all
--enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder
...'--switch' enabled in the launch wrapper script. ('Marmaduke', the guy who produces these builds I use for the portable has, amongst several other nifty features, compiled the VAAPI use ability directly into his Chromium 'binary'.....so if you have a discrete GPU - or indeed a halfway decent on-die GPU - it IS noticeable. Because my Nvidia card can now take over the video decoding, when watching YT or NetFlix the CPU is cranking over considerably slower.....and the GPU temps are definitely a few degrees higher than 'normal'. I have no problem with this; why have a dedicated GPU if it's not going to earn its keep?)
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Food for thought, most definitely. JASpup's reply to @Clarity 's observation about cloud usage/time spent online was probably correct - it's always about money, when it boils down to it - but Clarity's definitely got a point. I myself spend more time than ever online, and have many 'desktop apps' set up to start from their own Menu entries which are essentially 'webapps' running as dedicated separate windows from an already-running browser instance. And from time spent on multiple other fora, I'm definitely not the only one....
I'm probably like most other Puppians. Initially, I ended up here, via recommendations, because I had elderly hardware that I wasn't ready to throw out, yet which was having real problems with Windoze.....and mainstream distros were just a bit TOO 'heavy' for comfort. And upon obtaining some decent, up-to-date, reasonably powerful hardware, I've stuck with Puppy.....because for me, she does everything I could ask of her, and I know her as well as I need to for day-to-day running. I'm not wedded to any specific software, have no specific requirements to do things in an official, 'approved' manner, and am thus free to experiment and, for want of a better word, simply 'play'.
Let's not get bogged-down in the usual asides, off-topic commenting & usual distractions which have always been a hallmark of this otherwise wonderful community of ours. If we really & truly want to drag Puppy very firmly into the present, I think it's high time we had a full-on, community-wide debate about this.
Who else agrees with me on this? Am I the only one who thinks such is long overdue?
Mike.