Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Is this correct. Later 32-bit Ubuntu Puppys need some Debian components?

Yes.

It's possible to build 32 bit with the very latest packages using Void Linux which fully supports 32 bit systems still

Ubuntu 32 bit support is getting thin and lots of it is Debian at it's roots so getting libraries that will work is possible by borrowing.

rockedge wrote: ↑Sat Jan 28, 2023 9:28 am

Yes.

It's possible to build 32 bit with the very latest packages using Void Linux which fully supports 32 bit systems still

Ubuntu 32 bit support is getting thin and lots of it is Debian at it's roots so getting libraries that will work is possible by borrowing.

Debian 32-bit also support 32-bit fully (this lasts to 2025 at least, I think). How long is Void going to support 32-bit? Does not really make sense to advance with the 32-bit Ubuntu line, does it?

That's right Debian does fully support 32 bit hence the borrowing from it. Void Linux apparently plans also continuing support long term.

I think you're right about continuing to make 32 bit Ubuntu's. It is most likely a dead end

Happy to discontinue UPupxx+D if nobody wants it..........
However....
There have been 849 downloads from 65 countries of JJ+8 alone:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/zestyp ... s/timeline

and 433 from 43 countries of KK+1:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/zestyp ... s/timeline

so there is some interest..........

Hi,

On my old pc (AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3600+ (2 cores) with 4 GB RAM) 32 bit operating systems make the difference - thank you @peebee.

I use jammypup32 +D daily ...

peace

It does make sense to continue 32bit Ubuntu-binary-compatible Puppys as long as feasible primarily for the same reason some prefer 'ubuntu-puppys' to 'slacko-puppys'. From a 'common user-viewpoint' it's better not having to start with a 'bare-bones' system. Ubuntu does add some niceties which --I take it-- are no-arch and so can be built-into even a 32-bit OS.

@mikeslr (and others)

As you know, Mike, around computers I'm a Luddite.

I use uPupBB32 (or sometimes 'Friendly-Puppy'). At the moment I'm posting this from my 'work' Linux-box which is:

# uname -a
Linux cobaka 4.9.163-lxpup-32-pae #1 SMP Thu Mar 14 15:41:19 GMT 2019 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux
#

but my CPU is:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500 CPU @ 3.30GHz
Socket Designation: Socket 1155, by Manufacturer: Intel
Min/Max Speed: 1600/3700 MHz
Current Speed of Core 0:1832 MHz, 1:1734 MHz, 2:1829 MHz, 3:1799 MHz
Core Count: 4, 64-bit capable.

I have a number of older laptops (some run P4s from 2005). That's my involvement with Puppy and that's one reason I stick with 32-bit Puppys.
After that I put Puppy Linux on PCs owned by friends - and it's convenient for me to deal with a single OS not the various Puppy kennels 'out there'.

A story. Last night I spoke with a friend, Jane. "How is your PC running?" "It's great! It's so fast."
The point here is that Jane's previous computer ran Windows; she was very discouraged with it.
Nothing worked. I found an old PC in my garage. Covered in dust, sitting unused. Dragged it out; cleaned off the dust.
Re-formatted the HDD and (need I say more?). It was a 64-bit machine but I installed Friendly Puppy. Yes - 32 bit OS on a 64 bit machine.
There are dozens of 32-bit PCs 'out there' that are perfectly functional. Another story: Visited a friend recently. Abel. 90-something. Great guy!
Abel's wife, Gwen told me her (old) computer got so slow she took it to the local technician. "This thing is broken!", he said.
He sold her a new lap-top. The truth is Gwen's desktop was just fine. It only needed to meet 'The Puppy'.

OK. Maybe I should be installing the 64-bit Bionic Pup.
There are so many perfectly good desktops going to trash I'm considering putting a notice on the local community notice board advising about Puppy Linux.

Собака

PS. A big 'thanks' to @peebee .

The take-away from the prior posts on this thread is that at least for the next few years there will be 32-bit Puppys as both debian and void continue to support them.

The catch is that publishers of web-browsers are discontinuing support. Chromium (test-bed for Google-Chrome) has stopped = No Chromium, Google-Chrome, Brave, Iron, nor any other Chromium-Clone. Palemoon, forked from firefox, has management problems and 'access denied -- upgrade to a recent browser' is increasingly encountered. firefox and seamonkey are still available but for how long?

The work-around may be, as bigpup pointed out in replying to your other thread, to use a 64-bit kernel and 64-bit compatibility SFS. [Either peebee's or mine. There's little practical difference. I built mine from peebee's as a preliminary exploration in the hope of obtaining sufficient knowledge to build a universal 32-bit compatibility SFS; which failed ]. But the downside of running a 64-bit web-browser this way from a 32-bit OS is its RAM requirements. IIRC, just starting Brave used over 700 Mbs. That's far more than running Brave under a 64-bit System. [Running 32-bit applications under a 64-bit system with a 32-bit compatibility sfs makes almost no additional RAM demands].

It really only makes sense if you rarely need to access the internet. Especially as in general a 64-bit OS's RAM demands on boot-up are about 100 Mbs +/- more than a 32-bit OS And the 2nd Web-tab you open will obliterate any advantage a 32bit web-browser system offered. The RAM demands of 64-bit applications are only a little more than their 32-bit equivalents; but those demands are cumulative. [A big plus for SFSes and the ability to load and unload on the fly].

Which 64-bit Puppy? Try several, and among those Friendly Fossa. Each has advantages and disadvantages. My problem with the latest woofed Puppys is their default* employment of conman and pulse-audio. Conman is most efficient in establishing an internet connection. But AFAICT, it can't be used with a wifi-extender where you have to provide a password to what it sees as an open network. And as its GUI doesn't allow you to 'show passwords', making a scribner's error while typing a 16 character bit of gibberish leaves you wondering what went wrong.
Pulse-audio which IMHO isn't ready for 'prime-time'. Perhaps pulse-audio provides the ability to make minute adjustments otherwise not available and thus is a boon to audio-files. But as a mere user my experience is that several web-browsers that can render sound in Bionic64, Fossapup64-9.5 --employing alsa, retrovol and multiple-card-wizard-- can't be configured to do so with pulse-audio. And while 'the old system' might take some doing to configure, once done it thereafter worked for every sound-producing application. That's not the case with pulse-audio.

But the foregoing problems may be just me or unique to my computer. The plus side of the new Puppys is that they run much more efficiently, I think employing less computer resources.

As I wrote, try several. I specifically mentioned Friendly Fossa because wizard has rebuilt it to be newbie friendly. Fossapup64, itself, doesn't have the problems I just mentioned and if its resource demands are more than those of Bionicpup64 the difference is minimal.

-=-=-=-=-
F96-CE includes an internet connection switcher I haven't yet tried. IIRC, to use it requires a re-boot.

one wrote: ↑Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:17 am

Hi,

On my old pc (AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3600+ (2 cores) with 4 GB RAM) 32 bit operating systems make the difference - thank you @peebee.

I use jammypup32 +D daily ...

peace

^^^ +1 !!

This I will agree with whole-heartedly. The old Compaq desktop MAY have had an Athlon64 X2 3800+ CPU, but this was very early, first-gen 64-bit processing power. As such, I always found the 32-bit Puppies to be far superior in terms of responsiveness and speed of operation.....after all, the ONLY processing addition over, say, the Pentium 4s was the inclusion of the SSE3 instruction set. A good addition, 'tis true, but it didn't make THAT big a difference in terms of what it was capable of.

TBH, the one REAL major advance the X2 possessed over the later 64-bit P4s was the on-die memory controller; Intel were at that time still doing everything via the front-side bus and the northbridge/southbridge combo.

------------------------------

@mikeslr :-

Pulse-audio which IMHO isn't ready for 'prime-time'. Perhaps pulse-audio provides the ability to make minute adjustments otherwise not available and thus is a boon to audio-files. But as a mere user my experience is that several web-browsers that can render sound in Bionic64, Fossapup64-9.5 --employing alsa, retrovol and multiple-card-wizard-- can't be configured to do so with pulse-audio. And while 'the old system' might take some doing to configure, once done it thereafter worked for every sound-producing application. That's not the case with pulse-audio.

Mike, you're not the only one that completely fails to see the "attraction" of PulseAudio. I'll doubtless get castigated for saying so, but yes; while ALSA may be 'fiddly' to set-up initially, once it IS set-up correctly it unfailingly works as it should in everything. I've never agreed with the mentality that thinks you should have to "set up" your audio for every individual application. WHY?? What a LOAD of 'faffing-about'......just to satisfy the whims of the RedHat devs, who essentially 'dictate' the direction for the whole Linux eco-system.

Lennart Poettering really DOES need his arse kicking. HARD.

(I've got broad shoulders. I can take the criticism..!!)

T'other Mike.

My experience is different, I always prefer a 64-bit Puppy. In my experience, old computers that can't do GPU accelerated decoding of video and don't have any CPU required for faster encryption or hashing, do these heavy math operations faster when they operate on 64-bit and not 32-bit numbers. Performance is much better than 32-bit x86, while the higher RAM consumption is very close. Also, you get better security (thanks to security features in x86_64), better stability (because the kernel hardly receives QA or real-world testing on x86; some modern applications have bugs that affect only 32-bit architectures) and wider availability of software (for example, Chrome is 64-bit only).

(There are special cases, tough, like some x86_64 capable CPUs with very low amounts of L1 cache, which fill that cache quickly when 32-bit numbers and pointers are doubled in size. Most computers with such CPUs are netbooks and other ultra budget computers that shipped with 32-bit OSs, and their repair value is low. A 10+ year old Thinkpad can be a great daily driver with Puppy, but a 10+ year old netbook can't run any modern browser comfortably.)

About Pulse-Audio: Not as bad as I recalled. Radky has done a really good job of taming it. I've just booted up the latest F-96 and followed radky's instructions. On my desktop --for whatever reason-- the default Playback is C-Media USB Audio Device which never produces sound. It has to be changed to Built in Audio Analog Stereo. Once changed for one-browser sound is produced under all other Web-browsers with notable exceptions. That change may also be effective for DeadBeef, MPV, Avidemux and MikeWalsh's Openshot-qt portable. [Not sure, I may have previously configured Pulse-Audio for the first 3; but I don't recall configuring Pulse-Audio for Openshot.]. Configurations can be Saved and will survive a reboot which is why I'm uncertain about applications other than web-browsers.

However, the following web-browsers do not offer a setting for 'Built in Audio Analog Stereo': Slimjet and Iron [maybe some others]. If I unset the correct configuration while trying to get those to generate sound the 'unsetting' is immediate and global. Even opening a Web-browser which previously worked doesn't offer the option to again select Built in Audio Analog Stereo. My only recourse was to Reboot without Saving --and I can only do that because my puppies are all configured to run under PupMode 13 -- No Automatic Save.

From the foregoing, therefore, I would suggest that the problems with Pulse-Audio isn't its technology but rather the absence of a user-understandable component such as Multiple Sound Card Wizard, and a more user-friendly and effective GUI.