Fossa64-Mid - Discontinued

[ozsouth]

Note 19Feb24

I have discovered a javascript bug, especially when used with Firefox. It was in v3 & v4 (at least). This does not occur with Fossa64-Less, so rather than chasing it down, I'm closing this project. If anyone still interested, files are here (use at own risk):
https://archive.org/download/puppy_linux_-fossapup64

[greengeek]

Iso created with pcompress (as were last few I made). Should boot cd as legacy. Use at own risk.

Booted nicely from CD for me (as your last few releases have done also).

Tried a few things that I would normally use when testing/repairing laptops etc and seems all good:

- ffmpeg worked well to rotate and also crop an mp4 video.

- Opera portable started up quickly without needing any other deps.
(and casting from Opera to chromecast worked fine)

Other portable browsers (including PocketBrowser Appimage) ran fine

Used Abiword to make a pdf.

- XnView Appimage works.

- Also tried an Appimage of the latest Librecad and seems perfect.
( https://github.com/LibreCAD/LibreCAD/releases).

Looking like a nicely rounded test bed. I will definitely be using this to help migrate my older installs from 32bit to 64bit.

Well done Oz!

(Only issue seen so far is when I open MtPaint it says "Cannot open file". Not sure what file it is looking for though as I am only starting it from menu ready to make a new drawing...)

[ozsouth]

@greengeek - re- mtpaint - thought I'd fixed that - need to edit /usr/share/applications/mtpaint.desktop & in the exec line get rid of %U, then run fixmenus & restart X. Is harmless, but irritating. Only 2 downloads, so I'll fix it & reupload. You & 1 other 'early adopter' have that buggy version. Sorry about that. Will teach me to use better version control on my pc.
LATER: v2 released - fixes above issue - see 1st post.

[greengeek]

Thanks for your info about Midori in the F95Bas thread.
I have made myself a Midori pet that works in F95Mid without any other dependencies. Looks to be working well so far.
Link here if anyone wants to try:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/zrymraqt ... 1.pet/file
(63MB)

sfs here:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/501443dn ... 5.sfs/file
md5 is https://www.mediafire.com/file/ffucz9o9 ... 5.txt/file

I made the sfs because I know some people prefer sfs to pets. However I am not confident about how to add correct menu entries within an sfs. After loading the sfs I had to manually start Midori from /opt. Seems to work fine when started with --no-sandbox but there must be a better way to add a menu entry into the sfs.

(Pets work best for my usage because I don't use a savefile so anything loaded into the filesystem is cleared out at shutdown - and I like the browser profile to disappear so that there is no chance of malware)

NOTE : I also made a pet of a later version of Midori available here:
viewtopic.php?p=104778#p104778

[greengeek]

Fossa64Mid uses the "setblt" utility as a means of adjusting backlight value.

I made a slider (using syntax I borrowed from MochiMoppel years ago) to control setblt:

setblt_slider.png (37.02 KiB) Viewed 2918 times

Place the script anywhere you want. Remove the fake .gz suffix and make the script executable.

To run the slider just click the script. To terminate it just click the white space background in the rox window

F95_setblt_slider.gz

Remove the fake .gz suffix

(715 Bytes) Downloaded 60 times

[greengeek]

In addition to the setblt slider I wanted the ability to adjust individual colours for gamma, xgamma, backlight, brightness and also resets so I have a whole bunch of screen finetuning scripts that I have packaged into a pet.

These are very much hardware dependent so some may work on other machines and some may not.

(I just alter the scripts as required to suit whatever syntax a machine will need)

The pet loads a directory called "AdjScreen" into /root - so if the files are not useful just remove the directory. Nothing is installed elsewhere - just run each of the scripts by clicking as required.

You can have a bit of fun with your desktop effects by pushing the colour sliders to the extreme - just be aware it may temporarily change your perception and your eyes may take a few moments to readjust to normal colour. No harm done and it can be useful on old screens where the backlight tubes may have yellowed or where you wish to adjust the amount of blue light etc, or if you just need extra ways to push the brightness a little higher.

F95ScreenAdj_gg-0.0.pet

(4.38 KiB) Downloaded 57 times

[greengeek]

I have been comparing browsers in an effort to discover which browser uses less RAM in normal use. Most of them seem to progressively eat up RAM and eventually cause the machine to drown and choke. (Think this is a standard Ubuntu/browser problem rather than a FossaMid problem - there are lots of online posts about unresolved mmap file chokes and htop/free variances with Firefox and Chrome derivatives).

But the "Pocket Browser" seems the best so far in my experiments.

For testing purposes here is the .pet I am using for comparisons:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/d28rqqq1 ... 2.pet/file

Start the browser from Menu/Internet.

You don't have to answer the Welcome Splash Questionaires if you dont want to - you can just close them if you like.

(Downloaded files go straight into /root. Doesn't ask and doesn't put them in /root/downloads or /spot/downloads. Bit rude but never mind...)

(I will be posting an iso of F95Mid with PocketBrowser as the default adrv - I really like this trimmed down version of Fossa 9.5)

PocketBrowser.jpg (18.02 KiB) Viewed 2855 times

[amethyst]

It makes a difference when you restrict your browser cache in my view. Both in terms of resources and possible problems encountered whilst browsing. I haven't had a lockup yet since using Brave browser and I do lots of streaming on this old laptop. I have to say that my machine also runs cooler with Fossa Basic than with Bionic 32 actually. I've noticed previously that one tends to run into all sorts of problems when the cache gets too large (with numerous different browsers). My browser cache is fixed at 50MB.

[greengeek]

It makes a difference when you restrict your browser cache in my view.

Keen to know how to do this please.
Having real trouble with 64bit browsers growing their RAM footprint up into the 2GB range even when sitting idle (after having viewed a YT video). Fatal on my smaller machines...
Tried clearing caches and other tricks but no solution so far...

[amethyst]

It makes a difference when you restrict your browser cache in my view.

Keen to know how to do this please.
Having real trouble with 64bit browsers growing their RAM footprint up into the 2GB range even when sitting idle (after having viewed a YT video). Fatal on my smaller machines...
Tried clearing caches and other tricks but no solution so far...

For chromium based browsers: viewtopic.php?t=9343

[ozsouth]

@greengeek - pic attached shows about:config cache tweaks I made in firefox-esr (bold items changed). Might be useful. Turns off disk cache & has 128mb memory cache (displays as 128000kb). Seems to run faster. As I have 8gb ram, I set 256mb (128 was just a test, but I wouldn't go lower than that).

cache_tweaks_bolded.jpg (55.91 KiB) Viewed 2831 times

[greengeek]

Just doing a bit of testing with the inbuilt ffmpeg to see how capable it is (without any further additions - just what is already installed in Mid) and have got something working that I have not managed to achieve before on other pups:

Sometimes I want to record from my usb webcam but also display the video feed in real time while it is recording.

The following syntax allows this:

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -framerate 25 -video_size 640x480 -i /dev/video0 output.mkv -f mpegts - | mplayer -cache 1024 - 

Notes:
- For some strange reason the first minute of realtime display is missing - but the mplayer display kicks in during the second minute of recording (be patient!). Sync is not too bad.
- You can display/record an external usb webcam (rather than the builtin one) by changing /dev/video0 to /dev/video1
- The recorded image is much better clarity than the realtime feed.

With this syntax I can watch what is going on in my driveway at the same time as knowing it is also recorded in the background.

Just a bit of fun but could have some future usefulness.

[mikewalsh]

@greengeek :-

Hm. This is one of the things I was attempting to get MultiCam to do, wasn't it?

Give this a try, Ian. It's a snippet I dug up on StackOverflow, which uses the "tee" muxer command to create concurrent multiple streams. One of those streams goes to your output file - your recording - while the other, apparently, gets piped to ffplay.

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -i /dev/video0 -map 0 -c:v libx264 -f tee "output.mkv|[f=nut]pipe:" | ffplay pipe:

There's a delay of a couple of seconds between recording and display, due - it seems - to the way that "tee" is working here.......but nothing like the minute's delay you say you're getting. (That might be due to that -cache switch?)

See what you think. It works for me in Tahrpup64, using one of John van Sickle's statically-compiled ffmpeg binaries, along with mplayer and its companion mencoder. No audio, I'm afraid, though I'm looking into this.....you wouldn't need it for monitoring the driveway, would you?

Let us know if it works for you, please.

Mike.

[ozsouth]

@mikewalsh - ffplay isn't in this version. I stopped counting at 24mb extra libs. However, executable can be installed, but needs mpv .pet too (has the libs). It tested ok in Fossa64-Less, adding those 2. ffplay & mpv .pets are linked here: viewtopic.php?p=94956#p94956

[wiak]

There's a delay of a couple of seconds between recording and display, due - it seems - to the way that "tee" is working here.......but nothing like the minute's delay you say you're getting. (That might be due to that -cache switch?)

Yes, I've played with piping like that to mplayer years ago (during pavrecord work I think) and remember the useless delay/buffer effect - never did find any option to get round it in practice (I also remember trying with cache changes, but nope - didn't seem to be a way to reduce stream buffer behaviour, none I could find anyway). And ffplay was indeed much less problematic - clearly not buffering so crazily as mplayer - so likely a bit more jumpy but without so much initial delay.

[mikewalsh]

@ozsouth :-

Fair dos, Dave. I'd forgotten you'd been pruning these quite a bit. It was just a suggestion, like, because it was something I'd been wanting to get MultiCam to do (amongst other things).

@wiak :-

Hallo, Will. Yeah, I think I can understand where you were coming from back in those days. I'll have a play around with MultiCam for a couple of weeks or so, then it gets put to one side for a bit. Then something like this gets brought up, and I remember MultiCam, and start getting all enthusiastic and researching stuff again. It'll get some more modifying, and a bit more polish, and I play with it for another couple of weeks.....and then it goes on the back burner again. I suspect many folks who build things from scratch like this perhaps go through much the same pattern of events. I can't be the only one!

Maybe it'll work for Ian, maybe it won't. We'll see....

Mike.

[ozsouth]

No worries, Mike. Wonder if mpv will suffice (my mplayer doesn't have mencoder)?
I fixed a small bug in it. Had no controls for audio played via ROX-Filer (no easy way to stop audio) -
defaultaudioplayer needed exec line: exec mpv --force-window yes "$@"
(my 'fixed' mpv .pet in 1st post has this fix).

[greengeek]

Give this a try,

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -i /dev/video0 -map 0 -c:v libx264 -f tee "output.mkv|[f=nut]pipe:" | ffplay pipe:

Let us know if it works for you, please.

No unfortunately it doesnt work for me but I think Ozsouth's comment about ffplay not installed answers why it won't work.
However - I was interested to try the same syntax using mplayer but also without success as follows:

Code: Select all

root# ffmpeg -f v4l2 -i /dev/video0 -map 0 -c:v libx264 -f tee "output.mkv|[f=nut]pipe:" | mplayer pipe:
ffmpeg version 3.4.2 Copyright (c) 2000-2018 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 7.3.0 (GCC)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib64 --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-pthreads --enable-small --enable-postproc --enable-libvorbis --enable-gpl --enable-shared --enable-nonfree --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --disable-debug --enable-bzlib --enable-zlib --enable-libspeex --enable-version3 --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-libxcb --enable-libtheora --enable-libxvid --enable-swscale --enable-libvpx
  libavutil      55. 78.100 / 55. 78.100
  libavcodec     57.107.100 / 57.107.100
  libavformat    57. 83.100 / 57. 83.100
  libavdevice    57. 10.100 / 57. 10.100
  libavfilter     6.107.100 /  6.107.100
  libswscale      4.  8.100 /  4.  8.100
  libswresample   2.  9.100 /  2.  9.100
  libpostproc    54.  7.100 / 54.  7.100
MPlayer 1.4-9.1.0 (C) 2000-2019 MPlayer Team

Playing pipe:.
File not found: 'pipe:'
Failed to open pipe:.

Exiting... (End of file)
Input #0, video4linux2,v4l2, from '/dev/video0':
  Duration: N/A, start: 9068.321167, bitrate: 147456 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: rawvideo (YUY2 / 0x32595559), yuyv422, 640x480, 147456 kb/s, 30 fps, 30 tbr, 1000k tbn, 1000k tbc
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (rawvideo (native) -> h264 (libx264))
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
[libx264 @ 0x23b35e0] using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 SSE4.2
[libx264 @ 0x23b35e0] profile High 4:2:2, level 3.0, 4:2:2 8-bit
root#

Not sure why substituting mplayer instead of ffplay doesn't work. Must be some trick to getting the syntax right. (It's just piping a stream to a player is it not?)
EDIT : Tried a slightly different syntax and it does work but with 5 seconds lag in the display:

Code: Select all

root# ffmpeg -f v4l2 -i /dev/video0 -map 0 -c:v libx264 -f tee "output.mkv|[f=nut]pipe:" | mplayer pipe -

However - my preference is to avoid adding any additional software - given that it seems to work fine using mplayer and the mpegts format that are already inbuilt with F95Mid with this syntax:

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -framerate 25 -video_size 640x480 -i /dev/video0 output.mkv -f mpegts - | mplayer -cache 1024 - 

There's a delay of a couple of seconds between recording and display, due - it seems - to the way that "tee" is working here.......but nothing like the minute's delay you say you're getting. (That might be due to that -cache switch?)

The delay is insignificant in the sense that only the first minute (or less) is missing from the realtime display. The actual recording commences as soon as the script is run and I don't mind waiting one minute for a display that appears to be in sync thereafter.
It does not seem to be the cache switch that causes the delay - I have tried different cache variables but it still works the same. It even works the same if the cache switch is left out.

(I have tried formats other than "mpegts" and they have various unacceptable issues. Why does mpegts work? Hmmm, dunno. Unfortunately my brain is not big enough to grasp the relationship between ffmpeg encoders, decoders, codecs, formats and containers so i will have to keep experimenting to see what it turns up)

[greengeek]

Actually this is worth a try. Seems great (and needs no extra software beyond what is already in F95Mid ootb):

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f v4l2 \
    -framerate 30 \
    -video_size 640x480 \
    -input_format mjpeg \
    -i /dev/video0 \
    -f alsa \
    -i hw:0,0 \
    -c:a pcm_s16le \
    -c:v mjpeg \
    -b:v 64000k \
    output99.mkv \
    -map 0:v \
    -vf "format=yuv420p" \
    -f xv display

EDIT : If your usb webcam does not support mjpeg stream then you may have to change the "input_format" argument to something like yuyv422 etc
Check your webcam's available stream formats using this command:

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -list_formats all -i /dev/video0

[greengeek]

Previous syntax gave stream issues on some machines with webcams lacking mjpeg compressed streams - so the following syntax should improve reliability across different usb webcam models.
Also leaves out any attempt to grab audio so hopefully this will give less errors.

Keen for others to try on other hardware models using FossaMid and/or other pups.

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f v4l2 \
    -framerate 30 \
    -video_size 640x480 \
    -input_format yuyv422 \
    -i /dev/video0 \
    -c:v mjpeg \
    -b:v 64000k \
    output77.mkv \
    -map 0:v \
    -vf "format=yuv420p" \
    -f xv display

[greengeek]

I decided to make a trial gtkdialog gui to allow easy testing of the syntax above for simultaneous display and recording from usb webcam:

https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 144#p97144

Works for me with F95Mid - planning to test on a range of machines and maybe other pups.

[greengeek]

I have been wanting to "De-Google" an android phone and it seems that the needed software is "adb" and "fastboot".

ADB is "Android debug Bridge" that talks to the Android phone in a similar way to MTP software (but greater functionality) and "Fastboot" is the software that interfaces the Android phone when it is in "fastboot" mode (for loading extra boot/run software etc).

I wanted to use F95 Mid so that I could have confidence that there was no extra unneeded software getting in the way.

I used the PPM to download adb and fastboot debs but then discovered that the fastboot debs lacked a link for the 7z zip utility.
(May not be the case in F95 or F96CE - not sure)

So I made pets for "adb" and "fastboot" that worked in F95Mid.

I plan to make another thread describing how I De-Googled my Pixel 4a phone and installed LineageOS using F95Mid and these two pets.

F95Mid adb pet:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/lxzs7yku ... 0.pet/file

F95Mid fastboot pet:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/rj09n736 ... 1.pet/file

Really loving the phone with LineageOS. Feels like running Puppy on a laptop - total control.
.

Screenshot_degoogled.png (170.85 KiB) Viewed 1995 times

[greengeek]

HerrBert asked questions in another thread regarding methods to create and read QR codes - so I have tested the "QtQr" utility on F95Mid generic and created a pet and an sfs for it.

QtQr allows the user to do the following:
- Create QR codes of various different forms (eg text, sms, url, email, wifi network etc etc)
- Decode a QR code from a file
- Scan a QR code through your webcam (either internal or external cam)

Seems to work really well.

Notes:
- If you use the sfs version I think you need to move it from Spot to root before loading it.
- Because F95Mid generic is pretty lean these versions contain more libs and QT stuff than would be needed on more fleshed out Pups - so just use these versions on F95Mid. I will make other lighter versions for F96 etc.
- Uses Qt and Python so take care if you have already installed other utilities that use Qt and/or Python in case of duplication or overwriting libs. Best test without save file first.

Links:
(approx 15MB each)
Pet:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/ips685hc ... 2.pet/file
sfs:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/ofljhwo8 ... 2.sfs/file

.

Previous versions (sorry - my .desktop files were not properly formed in these versions...)
https://www.mediafire.com/file/j06wempv ... 1.pet/file
https://www.mediafire.com/file/z0pves8o ... 1.sfs/file
.
Screenshot:

qtqr_gui.png (36.57 KiB) Viewed 1835 times

[bigpup]

In the boot directory in the ISO.

The efi.img file is missing.

I wonder if this is why there was issues with this install:
viewtopic.php?p=101937#p101937

[ozsouth]

@bigpup - could possibly amend iso, but it was designed to run as legacy from CD, but could be manually installed. This satisfies those with old pcs & experienced users with newer ones. New users with new pcs generally want the latest & for them I would suggest F96CE or newer. By 'recommended for all users' I meant all current users, & despite over 100 downloads, this is the first query on efi install.

[ozsouth]

NEW VERSION V3 - See first post. Added efi.img (apparently needed for newer pcs) & updated firefox-esr to v115.4.0. 11mb increase (269mb), but still under 2/3 size of original fossapup9.5.

Note: I also made a delta from v2 to v3 (69mb). Burnt resultant iso to CD - booted fine on my pc.
See: https://archive.org/download/puppy_linu ... .iso.delta

[greengeek]

Just been ripping CDs and used PPM to download Asunder - which worked fine to create wavs but could not convert to mp3 as it was not happy with missing "lame" ("not in path") so I wondered if anyone has ripped CDs to mp3 and if so what is your method please?
Cheers!

[ozsouth]

@greengeek - the perils of cutdowns. Adding files & testing would be the only way to go. After getting frustrated by things that won't run, I am about to post another fossapup option, an updated version. 437mb. Might suit some.

[greengeek]

Ok, here is an Asunder CD ripper pet for F95 Mid.
(Includes the lame lib)

Will still give an error message re lack of "Ogg" support but can just ignore that if you don't use Ogg files

I have included a config file that is set to do the following:
(These can all be changed within preferences if you don't like them)

- Will create new directory for the ripped files in /root
- Will get artist & track name from the gnudb database if your internet connection is active.
- Will eject CD when finished
- Will make m3u playlist
- Default is rip as mp3 only (tick "wav" in preferences if also want ripped as wav)
- Will use variable bitrate
- Fast ripping (no error correction) (Change this if CD is scratched)

Originally I did not think I could attach a 285kB pet here so here is the online link:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/r8smhj0g ... 1.pet/file

But apparently the forum now supports 512kB attachments (thanks @rockedge ! ) so the pet and sfs are attached:
NOTE : - the sfs first version fails on the conversion to mp3.
(I dont know why this is happening as it fails to log any errors in /var/log. Will try to find out what is happening, and would appreciate any tips why the sfs seems unable to access the lame lib or whatever is causing the mp3 encode fail)

Pet works fine.

[greengeek]

Recently needed to join a couple of images together so I downloaded Peasyglue from the old forum but it would not run as the netpbm image conversion stuff was missing so here is a pet that includes Peasyglue 2.2 along with the extra deps needed on F95Mid:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/vipa5fok ... 0.pet/file
(approx 1MB download)
.
I have not undertaken an exhaustive test so there may be functionality missing but works fine for the image joining that I did.