taersh wrote: Fri Aug 14, 2020 11:45 am
Hm, I don't get the point...
...why wasting time on short term distros anyway?
For older 32bit hardware, there should be enough Puppies already available.
New Puppies getting bigger and bigger, so they won't even fit into the available RAM of older 32bit computers...
Fossa Focal is not a short-term distro.
The problem with older Puppies is that at some point one of the essential activities of computing, having access to websites, will be a challenge if not impossible.
I still boot into my modified Slacko 5.7. It hasn't been able to run a useful Chromium based browser for years; since Chrome 48. Like opera 12.16, you can run Chrome 48: but fewer and fewer Website will grant it access. To run mozilla based browsers required installing gtk3.
But the real stumbling block to maintaining old Puppies is openssl. Openssl is dependent on glibc, and every couple of iterations of openssl the creators upgrade which version of glibc is acceptable. Unlike gtk's, an operating system can only have one version of glibc. Watchdog showed how an acceptable version of glibc can be built into the web-browser, palemoon, with instructions (Import) that it only look within its own folder for glibc. However, I suspect that employing the technique approaches the difficulty of creating operating systems. Moreover, there appears to be a limit on how useful that technique is. No one has published a chromium using it [nor for that matter with builtin nss libs]. And, IIRC, the technique could not be used with palemoon beyond version 27.
Web-browsers are not the only applications dependent on openssl. I understand it to be the protocol used to connect any client software (wget, file-sharing, etc) with any web-based server.
With Google's claimed heightened concern for security (can firefox be far behind?) there will come a point when only the 'newest' web-browsers will be allowed access to the majority of websites.
[There are millions of Websites, but only a couple dozen (hundred?) Web-hosts. To access a website, you have to navigate the software of the web-host. Web-hosts have a commercial interest in excluding access by client software potentially carrying malware. With greater insight into economic reality than my President or his republican supporters, companies running websites appreciate that money does not flow into or thru dead web-servers].
It is true each new version of a major distros has included not only web-browsers which demand more RAM, but other RAM-hogging applications. Following the major distros in that way isn't required.
There's a project for someone: A Puppy capable of running the latest web-browser, but otherwise using applications based on gtk1.
At any rate, its not even just a question of what is practical. I believe it has something to do with the Human Spirit; or even the Nature of Life, itself. The twice given commandment "Be fruitful" is better translated as "Be creative". There is no more alternative to complying with that than to the physical commandment "Two masses will attract each other". We are driven to be creative. As a highly evolved, communicative social species, we each can try to find that individual outlet for the creative impulse where each of our unique training, experience, and interest can best be applied in our own social context. But none of us knows how beneficial any of our endeavors may be.
Seven years ago, 01micko woofed Slacko 5.6 from Slackware binaries. I doubt whether at that time he had any idea that it would still be useful today; or be the progenitor of ScPup64.
hadn't thought of that one!
] It's just a variation of what Linux Mint has been doing for years: combining (what they consider) the best of Ubuntu and debian.