Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Recurring glitch not just on my system?

I've posted images of it before here:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1676&hilit=browser+ ... e&start=10

This issue is apparently the Screeny screen capture app in Xenial32.

The repositories have capture utilities for KDE that require 70 to > 110 dependencies.

Tahr and Xenial64 don't seem to have this problem.

I don't have a solution to your problem but I can identify with it. I had this for a while with one of my Puppys on a HP laptop. Problem occurred a few times but it just came right suddenly. I think it is a driver problem, could also be firmware. I have noticed on my machine that if I reboot with different Puppys (different kernels) in quick succession, I do sometimes have some screen issues. So my suggestion would be to do a proper shutdown, pull the plug and then bootup again from a cold start after a few minutes. And the Xenial 32 kernel may have something to do with it. I had a dim screen problem after bootup sometimes when using that Puppy. A kernel swap may also help. Tahr 605 32-bit kernel is very stable. I use it with all my Puppys, just works perfectly with my machine.

@JASpup :-

TBH, it's pointless relying on stuff from the repositories. Most of them, although Pup can often make use of the stuff contained within, without exception are intended for the parent, 'mainstream' distro the Puppy is based on. Which means they're designed for a multi-user scenario...and that nearly always means that permissions are wrong, or ownerships, or they want PulseAudio, or expect systemd.....urrgh.

You cannot come to Puppy and expect it to work flawlessly, seamlessly, and perfectly with software that was never intended to run in Puppy's unique manner.

Far better to make use of some of the multitude of .pet packages & SFS's with which our community abounds. They're invariably built to make allowance for, and to work with, Puppy's various 'quirks'. Pup's something of an individual use-case; it's very rare for mainstream packages to work off the bat, and community-built packages almost always perform better.

And screenshot tools are something we are NOT short of. I've lost track of the number of times I've tried Screeny in various Pups, with precisely the same results as you. I uninstall, shrug, and move on and try summat else. You're not starved for choice, I'll tell you that much..!

Mike.

JASpup wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 5:20 am

Recurring glitch not just on my system?
faster.png

I've posted images of it before here:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1676&hilit=browser+ ... e&start=10

This issue is apparently the Screeny screen capture app in Xenial32.

The repositories have capture utilities for KDE that require 70 to > 110 dependencies.

Tahr and Xenial64 don't seem to have this problem.

I had the same issue with screeny in EasyOS back in October 2019, reported in the Murga Puppy forum. It wasn't fixed then. It may have even been dropped from EasyOS. Probably won't be fixed now either.

I use Screeny frequently as it is a standard application with Precise which I use on a daily basis (with the Tahr kernel). Unfortumately I can't recall the scenario when I had this issue. At one stage I did a lot of swopping kernels (both new and old) between older and newer Puppys to see how it works. I'm guessing that this is the time when I encountered this behaviour.

Try using this update version of screeny
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=76204

This program has replaced screeny in most newer Puppies.

Take A Shot

amethyst wrote: Mon Mar 01, 2021 5:42 am

I use Screeny frequently as it is a standard application with Precise which I use on a daily basis (with the Tahr kernel). Unfortumately I can't recall the scenario when I had this issue. At one stage I did a lot of swopping kernels (both new and old) between older and newer Puppys to see how it works. I'm guessing that this is the time when I encountered this behaviour.

@amethyst :-

I agree.

In those Pups where it does work fine, I never bothered with anything else. Especially its function where screenies were pre-cropped to fit the old forum's pages. Very useful.

However, I found that as Puppies got newer & newer, Screeny failed to behave itself in a larger & larger proportion of them. Hence, why I cast my net further afield. Almost without exception, I've standardised on TAS.....which bigpup mentions above. It just works.

Screeny's one of those odd apps which, if run from terminal, doesn't report anything, y'know?.....even when it's not behaving itself. So you don't know what to look/check for, or put right.

Here in Xenial 7.5, ATM it's performing as expected. (Touch wood...)

Mike.

mikewalsh wrote: Mon Mar 01, 2021 1:57 am

TBH, it's pointless relying on stuff from the repositories. Most of them, although Pup can often make use of the stuff contained within, without exception are intended for the parent, 'mainstream' distro the Puppy is based on. Which means they're designed for a multi-user scenario...and that nearly always means that permissions are wrong, or ownerships, or they want PulseAudio, or expect systemd.....urrgh.

You cannot come to Puppy and expect it to work flawlessly, seamlessly, and perfectly with software that was never intended to run in Puppy's unique manner.

Far better to make use of some of the multitude of .pet packages & SFS's with which our community abounds. They're invariably built to make allowance for, and to work with, Puppy's various 'quirks'.

Aside from the fact that I'm actually quite a fan of pulseaudio, and even systemd (just don't want it taking over as only init option), I rather agree with you Mike. Well, you are a bit biased on this topic, but still I do think Puppy is at its best when relying on forum-produced sfs addons and pets rather than relying on an upstream repo that is built for a special package manager and system configuration (and most specially systemd for Debian/Ubuntu-based systems). I'd go further than that and say that Puppy would be at its best as an even more cut down distro with every main additional app specially tailored and provided as a Puppy-portable sfs or similar. Fine to use upstream for underlying system code, but forget it for bigger apps such as browsers and audio/visual apps. But nice to also have Pkg included of course since there has never been a Puppy package manager that is so capable for those occasions when users do wish to use an app from upstream repo.

An alternative for Ubuntu, or other Debian-based system, is to use dpkg_apt_multiuserPAM addon I have recently been providing also as an addon sfs (though again there are issues avoiding systemd polluting Puppy's non-systemd operation). Of course I'm slightly biased suggesting that option; I say 'slightly' because I just provide it to Puppy because I can easily produce that addon as a byproduct of creating WeeDogLinux WDLGO systems, which is what I myself am obviously more interested; basically I'm happy to provide that option for anyone using Puppy that (probably rarely) wants access to official upstream dpkg_apt package manager, which has the advantage of pretty much perfect dependency resolution - so useful, perhaps, even from the point of view of finding what dependencies may be missing otherwise, which may(?) help for any tricky issues such as this one raised for Screeny utility.

wiak

Lots going on in this thread.

@bigpup I will try your suggestions (in Tahr at the moment).

@amethyst appreciate the commiseration. The new recourse will be booting based on the need for a screenshot, iow, boot something other than Xenial32 for screenshots if it's not an os-specific need. Isn't that what we do for everything else?

We wrestle to make things work. As a user I like to focus on the idea of reasonable possibility.

I just logged into my xenial-xfce4 install, the one by battleshooter. I think this is the version you are using. It has another screenshot application, xfce4-screenshooter. It's in the Graphic Menu as Screenshot.

So, I experienced this suddenly yesterday with Precise. This was after a system crash where I had to switch off the machine without going through the normal shutdown procedure. Afterwards I rebooted and worked with Bionic. Then later rebooted again with Precise and the Screeny problem was gone. So none the wiser, remains a mystery.

TerryH wrote: Thu Mar 04, 2021 2:49 am

I just logged into my xenial-xfce4 install, the one by battleshooter. I think this is the version you are using. It has another screenshot application, xfce4-screenshooter. It's in the Graphic Menu as Screenshot.

It is the 64 version I use, but this is Mainline Xenial32, the only version where I have this problem.

amethyst wrote: Thu Mar 04, 2021 4:25 am

So, I experienced this suddenly yesterday with Precise. This was after a system crash where I had to switch off the machine without going through the normal shutdown procedure. Afterwards I rebooted and worked with Bionic. Then later rebooted again with Precise and the Screeny problem was gone. So none the wiser, remains a mystery.

Yes, I experience those mysteriously resolved hiccups too.

Right now it's running Frisbee to get eth0 to automatically activate, when Frisbee is basically for wi-fi (Barry's tool works for Ethernet).

I don't change anything but run it.

Something in Frisbee kicks in Ethernet, starts that search and the alerts.

If Precise is 5.7 that was the first Puppy I booted, tickled but then didn't know how to make it useful.

I was pushed back into Puppy by Windows Hell then Mint Frustration, needed to make it work.

I've only booted Bionic Ubuntu by accident. Xenial still suits my needs. I'm sure I'll be on Bionic eventually.

JASpup wrote: Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:09 am

amethyst wrote: Thu Mar 04, 2021 4:25 am

So, I experienced this suddenly yesterday with Precise. This was after a system crash where I had to switch off the machine without going through the normal shutdown procedure. Afterwards I rebooted and worked with Bionic. Then later rebooted again with Precise and the Screeny problem was gone. So none the wiser, remains a mystery.

Yes, I experience those mysteriously resolved hiccups too.

Right now it's running Frisbee to get eth0 to automatically activate, when Frisbee is basically for wi-fi (Barry's tool works for Ethernet).

I don't change anything but run it.

Something in Frisbee kicks in Ethernet, starts that search and the alerts.

If Precise is 5.7 that was the first Puppy I booted, tickled but then didn't know how to make it useful.

I was pushed back into Puppy by Windows Hell then Mint Frustration, needed to make it work.

I've only booted Bionic Ubuntu by accident. Xenial still suits my needs. I'm sure I'll be on Bionic eventually.

Hello
fast question ...
Have you used the option that mtpaint has to take screenshots?

I have installed screenny, tas, but lately I have been using this method, I share this .desktop file, copy it to / usr / share / applications and it is all you do not need to do more than click on it and the screenshot will automatically open in mtpaint
I hope this info be usefull

Cheers!!

mtpaint -s only useful for full desktop snapshot as far as I know.

PipzDex wrote: Sun Mar 07, 2021 11:38 am

Hello
fast question ...
Have you used the option that mtpaint has to take screenshots?

That works in Xenial32. Nice alternative.

amethyst wrote: Sun Mar 07, 2021 12:32 pm

mtpaint -s only useful for full desktop snapshot as far as I know.

Yes, but that's a lot easier than dealing with a distorted monochrome image.

amethyst wrote: Sun Mar 07, 2021 12:32 pm

mtpaint -s only useful for full desktop snapshot as far as I know.

It is (and personally I always use commandline scrot, or scrotx as used by a/v recorder wex), however when you think about what mtpaint can do in addition there is an easy workaround:

1. capture full desktop (that always comes at resolution of screen anyway)

2. crop the area you are interested in (still in mtpaint).

3. We often need to scale to 600px horizontal using mtpaint or similar anyway to best fit forum image attachment needs.

The amount of manual work involved above is pretty much the same as using scrot since just need to define the area to crop via cross-hairs.

Above could be at least partly scripted.

This topic has two un-solution solutions, point being there appears something wrong with screeny that is not worth fighting, problem known, as it's been replaced with Take a Shot! which works in 32 Xenial.

The other solution is mtpaint's screen shot.

Having been around the block more times than the Good-Humor Man, there are SEVERAL ways to SS a cat.

@JASpup :-

One other here you could try. It was built/compiled/packaged by vovchik, I believe, well over a decade ago - originally around the time of Lucid/Wary (Puppy 4? Puppy 3?? - I don't go that far back!), etc, yet it runs as sweet as a nut in Xenialpup.

ScreenGrab-0.9

Worth a look, perhaps. There's also a Hotshots package - one of Geoffrey's, I believe - that'll work fine, too; this has a built-in editor, and all sorts of other goodies. Both of these need Qt4.

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... -2.1.1.pet

Screeny is hardly worth getting your keks in a twist over - it's not like we're short of screen-capture tools here in Puppyland - but I understand where you're coming from; it's part of your continung quest to try and make the rest of us realize that Puppies need to be installable by total noobs and have absolutely everything work correctly & properly OOTB.....along with having ALL possible options available AND usable.

We do try, y'know..!

Mike.

mikewalsh wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 1:08 am

@JASpup :-

Worth a look, perhaps. There's also a Hotshots package - one of Geoffrey's, I believe - that'll work fine, too; this has a built-in editor, and all sorts of other goodies. Both of these need Qt4.

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... -2.1.1.pet

Thanks for the tip re Hotshots. Just gave it a try in Tahr 606 and certainly looks interesting although it does not seem to want to save without specific user intervention.

The freehand region feature is a beaut.

Unless you're a SUPREME uber-dweeb, IM setup via Hotkeys is hands down the most efficient way to grab screenshots.

ThruHammer wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 10:44 pm

Unless you're a SUPREME uber-dweeb, IM setup via Hotkeys is hands down the most efficient way to grab screenshots.

Thru! You surprise me....

To my way of thinking, in order to use ImageMagick from the command-line, you've GOTTA be an uber-dweeb in any case....

(I never COULD get the hang of it. It's nearly as bad as trying to run ffmpeg the same.....hell; nah. I'm not going there..!!)

Mike.

Makes sense to make this the alt-screenshots topic.

Interestingly both screeny and tas are just scripts.

The screeny failure isn't consistent. I booted live Mainline Xenial and it worked again. Yet since it's happened on multiple occasions and others corroborate, there are a mysterious set of circumstances which produce distorted screen shots.

Take a shot is a good, basic, small aplication. The region option (although not as sophisticated) is handy.