dpup OS 1 Rolling

[cthisbear]

Thanks mate....I will look at these pups.

Cheers.....Chris.

[dimkr]

frugalify now simulates the effect of pfix=ram (https://github.com/dpupos/frugalify/com ... 1ac36c3ff8).

Build 90 should feel much faster than previous ones - even on my old laptop, Firefox starts ~instantly.

[recobayu]

Hi Dimkr, how to try this dpupos? I downloaded from https://github.com/dpupos/woof-CE/releases. How to install it to hard drive partition or flashdisk?
Thank you.

[dimkr]

Hi @recobayu!

To install dpup OS to a flash drive, just flash the downloaded image to it using dd (in my case, it's /dev/sdb - make sure it's the right partition before you do this!):

wget https://github.com/dpupos/woof-CE/relea ... efi.img.gz
gunzip dpupos-1-ext4-2gb-uefi.img.gz
dd if=dpupos-1-ext4-2gb-uefi.img of=/dev/sdb bs=20M
sync

Right now, if you wish to install dpup OS to a hard drive, you'll have to do this manually by creating the EFI partition, etc', but you'll have to pay special attention to the labels of partitions (see https://github.com/dpupos/woof-CE/blob/ ... ge.sh#L165). The dpup OS updater expects the partition labels dpupos_esp for the ESP and dpupos_root for the partition where dpup OS is, because that's how it knows where to put the new version.

If it's BIOS boot, you'll have to create a new extlinux.cfg with the UUID of the boot partition you created (https://github.com/dpupos/woof-CE/blob/ ... ge.sh#L143).

---

EDIT: build 96 breaks compatibility with previous builds (https://github.com/dpupos/frugalify/com ... a5872e816c). The /save directory has moved to /upper/save. This change was needed to support booting from read-only media.

[dimkr]

The last couple of builds feature the CPU microcode loading mechanism implemented by @01micko. Just like the kernel, the boot loader and the SFSs, ucode.cpio (the archive containing microcode) gets updated by pm6_update, so you get the latest security fixes from Intel.

In addition, Xwayland now runs as :0 and not :1, the icu package is now much smaller (a barebones dpup OS without nlsx is now ~10 MB smaller!), and some default applications have a useful placeholder (for example, pressing the PrtSc key now runs mtpaint -s).

On the frugalify side, frugalify now enables the "discard" mount option (automatic TRIM), pfixram gets terminated when out of memory, pfixram now runs with lower priority (so Firefox still starts quickly, if pfixram is still locking the adrv to RAM) and a bug that makes pfixram fail and exit immediately (so SFSs are not loaded to RAM) has been fixed.

On my Thinkpad X220, dpup OS feels super snappy with the latest improvements in frugalify: cold start of Firefox takes less than a second, and that's when booting from a super slow flash drive. Everything feels smooth and responsive, and the use of zstd compression for the main SFS and the adrv definitely contributes to that.

lxtask.jpg (61.68 KiB) Viewed 1487 times

[TerryH]

The above lxtask image only shows image with vertical lines. Checked in palemoon and vivaldi, also checked with https and http.

[Clarity]

Hello @dimkr Your lead:

Code: Select all

wget https://github.com/dpupos/woof-CE/relea ... efi.img.gz
gunzip dpupos-1-ext4-2gb-uefi.img.gz
dd if=dpupos-1-ext4-2gb-uefi.img of=/dev/sdX bs=20M
sync

would make a nice "complete" script (download to bootable USB unit) if allowed any user to enter/select sdX.

Thanks for all your hard work on this project and the findings you share with us!

[TerryH]

Seeing your latest post, I just attempted to run the system updater for dpupos rolling, but got no response. After clicking Menu > Setup > System updater, nothing happened. I then copied the command from the .jwmrc file 'rxvt -e pm6_updater ask', again no response displayed in terminal.

The contents of the pm6_updater.conf:

Code: Select all

# the repo to pull releases from
UPDATE_REPO=dimkr/woof-CE

# what kind of updates to get (stable/beta/dev)
RELEASE_CHANNEL=beta

I checked the releases and saw that a run was produced today, with output being rolling107. My current installation was generated on 30 June 21.

Edit: I know I could manually download and recreate the symlinks to update.

[dimkr]

@TerryH What does bash -x /usr/sbin/pm6_update say?

[TerryH]

Last night I manually updated to rolling108. I just noticed that there is now rolling109. The system updater ran successfully today.

[dimkr]

The latest builds of dpup OS (>= 116) come with the RAM Saver package (https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/2435), which reduces RAM consumption by about 10% on x86_64, at the expense of extra CPU usage in some cases. The negative side-effects should be almost unnoticeable, and browsers should work fine with extra open tabs.

[dimkr]

The next dpup OS builds will feature a Debian/Ubuntu/Arch directory layout, where /bin, /sbin, /lib, etc' are symlinks to their counterparts under /usr (https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/2445).

In addition to simplifying the directory structure and maybe slightly faster application startup, this paves the way for a better Squashfs compression ratio, using the "actions" feature in the recently released squashfs-tools 4.5 (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ploug ... README-4.5). Having all libraries in one directory means they can be easily grouped into categories of similar libraries that can be compressed together (for example, the large Mesa libraries under /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri). So far, in initial manual tests, I've been able to reduce the main SFS size from 161 MB to 160 MB, which isn't worth much, but with some tuning I think we can expect much better results. More to come soon

EDIT: here's a screenshot of build 120, showing the symlinks

Screenshot 2021-08-18 18.54.25.png (90.05 KiB) Viewed 1576 times

[TerryH]

Used System Updater to update to Rolling 122 previous was Rolling 113. I notice that the main sfs has been reduced even further to only 143 MB. All working well. Nice job.

[dimkr]

Build 123 should be a bit bigger, because of https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/2457. The kernel configuration is rebuilt based on the Debian Bullseye kernel configuration. The selection of drivers should be much bigger now, and more things that work on Debian will work on dpup OS as well.

[dimkr]

Build 128 features mostly fixes: Alt-Tab is now more consistent with other distros and OSs, the appearance of GNOME applications and Firefox is now more consistent, GTK+ 3 client-side decorations now look more like JWM window borders, Realtek card reader drivers are now built-in and the 431 and 412 themes have scalable, matching wallpapers.

[dimkr]

Build 131 adds a super basic and dangerous system installer, which creates a new partition table and doesn't support any alternative partitioning scheme. I tested the installer only on x86_64, and only with UEFI. I booted a laptop from a dpup OS flash drive, installed to a second flash drive, booted QEMU with the second flash drive as a virtual disk, then installed to a second virtual hard drive and booted QEMU from it.

EDIT: canceled build 131 and triggered build 132. The installer should work for BIOS too now: I installed from one QEMU virtual disk to another, then booted from it.

EDIT 2: forgot to mention: I've been using build 128 with the "412" theme and extra fixes that went into later builds since Sunday, on my old Thinkpad X220, and it works great. Battery life seems good, the laptop is able to suspend and resume quickly and without issues, the fan is almost always off, Firefox feels as fast as on much more powerful laptops, Bluetooth audio works reliably and RAM consumption stays below 1.5 GB even with GitHub Actions logs in one tab, and Spotify in another.

EDIT 3: installed to the internal SSD of my X220. The installer worked, and build 32 works well.

[Clarity]

On build 131
Build 131 adds a super basic and dangerous system installer, which creates a new partition table and doesn't support any alternative partitioning scheme. I tested the installer only on x86_64, and only with UEFI.

1. I booted a laptop from a dpup OS flash drive,

2. installed to a second flash drive,

3. booted QEMU with the second flash drive as a virtual disk,

4. then installed to a second virtual hard drive and

5. booted QEMU from it.

On build 132
EDIT: canceled build 131 and triggered build 132. The installer should work for BIOS too now:

1. I installed from one QEMU virtual disk to another,

2. then booted from it.

I have an interest to replicate your steps. On 131 step 3: Could you share your QEMU command-line as I want to mirror your actions? Further, in step 5, the QEMU booted from the installed virtual disk.

And, it appears that on 132 step 1, you have a 2rd virtual disk drive in the running QEMU virtual PC that you "installed" to. Is that correct?

Thanks in advance for sharing your approaches. Muchly appreciated.

[dimkr]

dd if=/dev/zero bs=50M count=40 of=drive
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -drive format=raw,file=dpupos-1-ext4-2gb-uefi.img -drive format=raw,file=drive -soundhw hda -vga cirrus -bios /usr/share/qemu/OVMF.fd

And after installation to the second drive:

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -drive format=raw,file=drive -soundhw hda -vga cirrus -bios /usr/share/qemu/OVMF.fd

[dimkr]

Build 134 replaces eudev with Debian's udev, for better hardware support and as preparation for the deprecation of eudev.

Also, /etc/ld.so.conf is now the same as in Debian, and that can potentially shorten application start times (because the loader doesn't have to search both /lib and /usr/lib for matching shared objects; pretty much all shared objects are guaranteed to be in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu).

[dimkr]

Build 137 reduces RAM consumption on x86 (clean desktop eats around 85 MB of RAM under QEMU!), the installer look nicer, an issue that prevents D-Bus from starting has been fixed, and (finally) there's automatic deletion of old releases during update (the latest 2 releases are kept).

[ljlj]

i can not download from git hu !
put iso files to archive!
make use of porteus boot(!) and
quick remaster and lz4 compress(!)
as in debiandog!
do split kernel from sfs files!
xfce version!

[dimkr]

i can not download from git hu !

Why?

put iso files to archive!

dpup OS doesn't have (and won't have) .iso releases, see the FAQ - https://dpupos.github.io/faq.html

make use of porteus boot(!) and

dpup OS has its own solution (frugalify), see the FAQ - https://dpupos.github.io/faq.html

quick remaster

dpup OS doesn't support (and won't support) remastering, see the FAQ - https://dpupos.github.io/faq.html

and lz4 compress(!)

dpup OS uses zstd, see the FAQ - https://dpupos.github.io/faq.html

do split kernel from sfs files!

The kernel is already in a separate SFS (zdrv).

xfce version!

dpup OS uses JWM and you can install Xfce yourself, see the FAQ - https://dpupos.github.io/faq.html

[dimkr]

Build 149 adds all 32-bit libraries from the x86 build to the x86_64 build, making it compatible with 32-bit applications like Steam.

It's super cool to see games working with Xwayland!

EDIT: didn't take long to find a game where the mouse doesn't work right

[dimkr]

Build 153 will feature ConnMan and connman-ui (a tray icon with a Wi-Fi network selection menu), as a heavier but more friendly replacement for SNS (on x86_64 only).

https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/2514

[BarryK]

Thanks for the info about connman. I have never tried it. I see that there is also another gtk frontend:

https://github.com/jgke/connman-gtk

I went for networkmanager in EasyOS, and network-manager-applet (also known as network-manager-gnome) with patches. Latter is a tray applet, and one of my patches enables any shell script to cause the applet menu to popup. Reason I wanted to do that, is have a "connect" icon on the desktop -- click on that, and the networkmanager tray applet menu pops up.

[dimkr]

Thanks for the info about connman. I have never tried it. I see that there is also another gtk frontend:

connman-gtk is a dead project, and it has some issues fixed in pull requests that didn't get merged. For example, --tray doesn't work unless the tray icon is enabled, and the window shows up for a split second every time it's started with --tray. Also, it uses gsettings and has extra dependencies compared to the older connman-ui.

I think connman-ui is a better choice - it's smaller and better as a tray icon.

Maybe I'll add connman-gtk in the future, as a tool to configure settings like static IP and DNS servers, but I'll patch it to remove the tray icon functionality.

EDIT: forgot to say, I got NetworkManager to work. However, I couldn't get the tray icon to run as spot, because NetworkManager uses Polkit, which doesn't work without proper session management (i.e. the XDG_* environment variables, a session ID, etc' ... basically, what pam_systemd+logind do). And it was much, much bigger and heavier than the ConnMan solution.

[spotted]

The ARM release targets the Asus C201 Chromebook, and other models or other ARM based devices might be added in the future.
@ dimlr
Can I ask how much work is involved in porting dpup-os to another ARM board. I have an odroid board that I would like to have dpup-od running on. How much time is involved in doing so, I want to get rid of that sudo jerk thats telling me I'm too much of an bogan to run as root !!

[dimkr]

@spotted It's not hard if there's at least one distro that runs on an ARM board, but it takes non-trivial amounts of work.

You'll need to get kernel-kit to build a kernel that boots on this board, then adjust woof-code/support/cros_image.sh so it produces file system images that boot on this board.

Everything else (i.e. graphics/sound/missing firmware) should be relatively easy to fix later.

[spotted]

Pm for you dimkr