Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Background:
I am making a bootable usb for a friend in a highly censored area. The distro needs to be compatible with older computers, safe, and light. Hence I started trying out different puppy linux distros a month ago. Now after a lot of the problems I was able to (clumsily) figure out eventually, I am constantly having trouble with either WINE or this particular software - freegate8.00p (fg800p.exe). I am aware I can use tor browser but this is one of the proxy server softwares tested to pretty reliably run in their area so it will be great if I could get it to work.

What I already tried:
I tried different puppy distros (both 64 and 32 bit) and different WINE versions (from .pet, build from winehq, from debian source, AppImage, conty.sh, and wine-portables)(yes I pretty much read all the WINE posts from this forum and tried all the fixes people suggested). None has worked so far with fg. I also tried different combination of WINE and fg on other full linux distros that (is said to) resemble some puppys, and I was able to get them to work on Ubuntu20.04 (but not fossapup64), Debian12 (but not bookwormpup32), and Debian 11 (but not vanilladpup32). I understand that it might be normal that some things will run in a full linux distro but not its puppy counterpart (?). Is it a library problem? I can't just copy over those files from other linux distros to do a patch work (that sounds desperate but I am), correct?

Current situation:
After "fixing" a lot of the complaints from WINE, I learned that a 32-bit distro gives the least amount of complaints, and it's easier for me to (not) handle dependencies with apt install than say pkg from fossapup (and I don't have to worry about the 32-bit compatibility). So right now I am focused on vanilladpup32-9.3. I was able to install WINE, which tested to work with firefox.exe.

Problem:
Now when I tried to wine freegate800p.exe, the welcome/user terms page opened up fine, but no response after that. Normally there will be a window to ask you if you want to choose some blacklist/whitelist or use proxy for all websites, then the main page that shows it's trying to connect to a server. While there was no response, when I ps -e I could see fg running. I tried to just set the browser to connect to the internet via the proxy port, but I will get "the proxy server is refusing connection", which basically means it's not working. There is also not any message in the terminal, no fixme, no errors.

Any suggestions will be much appreciated. If you don't mind testing it feel free to google and download it (cuz attaching a .exe is probably a little sketchy... and apparently not allowed). This is where I downloaded my copy: https://freegate-release.github.io/website/
And I am happy to try other puppy distro as long as I can get fg to work. Thank you!

If you want wine, try a 64-bit dpup and

dpkg --add-architecture i386
apt update
apt install wine wine32

You'll get a much newer wine that's way more likely to work well.

I'm not sure... I certaintly wouldn't trust the following wikipedia page...

"According to the wikipedia page on Freegate, which admittedly may have been written by freegate programmer(s):

DIT was founded in 2001 to provide email delivery services to China for US government agencies and NGOs. In 2002, DIT started to provide anti-censorship services under the framework of DynaWeb, and like UltraSurf, DynaWeb became a top contender of the GFW-penetration effort.[3]

Freegate was created by Falun Gong practitioners[7] and has been financed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a US governmental agency.[8][9][10][11][12] Freegate also receives funding from Human Rights in China,[9] which is also one of its clients[13] and which receives some funding from the American non-profit organization the National Endowment for Democracy.[14] According to a US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, the US government gave funding of $685,000 to Freegate in 2005.[15]"

RATHER, even if freegate might(???) have some positive purpose, the following looks worrying to me:

https://www.enigmasoftware.com/malware- ... 6-22-2020/

pointing to here: https://www.enigmasoftware.com/dongtaiwangcom-removal/

OR, if you want much more detail about the danger see page 30 about freegate and DTI in document about circumvention of freedom tools - not exactly reassuring to me...:

https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/ ... _tools.pdf

Which also says about freegate:

Although the company states that since January 2009
the tool is only available for Chinese and Iranian users, it
was possible during the technical testing to bypass this
geographic restriction.

dimkr wrote: ↑Sat Sep 21, 2024 6:54 am

If you want wine, try a 64-bit dpup and

Code: Select all

dpkg --add-architecture i386
apt update
apt install wine wine32

You'll get a much newer wine that's way more likely to work well.

Thank you for your suggestion! I have tried dpup10.0.61, however it didn’t work. I also wondered if it’s because the WINE version being old, however the same versions did work on Debian11/Ubuntu20.04. The .exe I’m trying to run is 32-bit program, and I’m not sure if that’s why the 64-bit distris gave more complaints.

I appreciate you spending the effort to look into it and relaying the message! Yes this software is developed by members of a highly persecuted spiritual group (falun dafa) in China, mainly to provide the practioners access to their own experience sharing forum. Fyi they practice truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, and yet the cn government decided to launch the persecution because any other faith is persecuted in China (unless their faith agrees to conform to communism first and foremost).

Along the persecution there is a huge amount of governmental propoganda effort to attack the software (and trying to break through the censorship is automatically “illegal” anyways). I understand that on a program development level its lack of transparency is frowned upon. I honestly don’t know if they have the resources to follow the best practices in software development…Yet out of shared interest this is one of the few reliable tools for this group to securely access the internet without having to worry about the potential that the service provider will sell their data to the Chinese government, which can/often did lead to forced unemployment, detention, torture, forced organ harvesting (https://www.reuters.com/article/world/c ... KCN1TI235/), etc.

So yeah, I can see why fg might not be attractive to average users but helpful for this group of people.

wiak wrote: ↑Sat Sep 21, 2024 1:00 pm

I'm not sure... I certaintly wouldn't trust the following wikipedia page...

"According to the wikipedia page on Freegate, which admittedly may have been written by freegate programmer(s):

DIT was founded in 2001 to provide email delivery services to China for US government agencies and NGOs. In 2002, DIT started to provide anti-censorship services under the framework of DynaWeb, and like UltraSurf, DynaWeb became a top contender of the GFW-penetration effort.[3]

Freegate was created by Falun Gong practitioners[7] and has been financed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a US governmental agency.[8][9][10][11][12] Freegate also receives funding from Human Rights in China,[9] which is also one of its clients[13] and which receives some funding from the American non-profit organization the National Endowment for Democracy.[14] According to a US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, the US government gave funding of $685,000 to Freegate in 2005.[15]"

RATHER, even if freegate might(???) have some positive purpose, the following looks worrying to me:

https://www.enigmasoftware.com/malware- ... 6-22-2020/

pointing to here: https://www.enigmasoftware.com/dongtaiwangcom-removal/

OR, if you want much more detail about the danger see page 30 about freegate and DTI in document about circumvention of freedom tools - not exactly reassuring to me...:

https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/ ... _tools.pdf

Which also says about freegate:

Although the company states that since January 2009
the tool is only available for Chinese and Iranian users, it
was possible during the technical testing to bypass this
geographic restriction.