Precise Light by JRB

[darry19662018]

Updated Precise Puppy 5.7.1 for old Machines by JRB.

https://archive.org/download/Puppy_Linu ... -mk2.4.iso

[m-cuda]

I tried to create a bootable USB using Rufus 3.9p. It did not work. The loader displayed the following error:

Code: Select all

Could not find kernel image: vesamenu.c32

In the file isolinux.cfg I found the line:

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ui vesamenu.c32

I replaced the isolinux.cfg file with another isolinux.cfg file from a working bootable Puppy USB.

This worked.

However, I am wondering if did something wrong or is there a better way?

Incidentally, I also used the earlier Puppy Precise Light and found this version much better in particular Firefox now works out of the box - in the earlier version Firefox had no sound and I spent hours (maybe days?) before I learned about apulse. The ncurses version is better than in other distributions - the F? keys now work in alsamixer. My main OS is Bionic Pup but for 32 bit 1GB machines this is the OS I will use.

[mikewalsh]

Incidentally, I also used the earlier Puppy Precise Light and found this version much better in particular Firefox now works out of the box - in the earlier version Firefox had no sound and I spent hours (maybe days?) before I learned about apulse. The ncurses version is better than in other distributions - the F? keys now work in alsamixer. My main OS is Bionic Pup but for 32 bit 1GB machines this is the OS I will use.

Yah; that's "fair comment". Many of us now recognise that for a certain vintage/era of computers, you really do have to go a long way to beat Precise. It's pretty much the go-to Pup for these boxes.

I will make a suggestion, though. Give radky's DPup 'Stretch' 7.5 a look; you may be pleasantly surprised at just how well it will run with low resources on hand.....and Roger has really 'fine-tuned' this one to a tee.

Mike.

[m-cuda]

Thanks Mike for the heads-up. Finally got around to trying Dpup Stretch 7.5 with the 4.1.48 kernel. Indeed, Stretch did surprise me with its better performance compared to Precise Light 5.7.2. However, to be fair the comparison is not quite fair. Stretch and Precise Light both run from the same model USB flash drive but Stretch found and used the Linux swap partition on the built in hard drive whereas Precise Light does not. Using the swap partition Stretch with Palemoon plays YouTube videos quite well. It does drop some frames especially at the start but for most of the video playback is quite smooth. Precise Light with Firefox stutters continuously and will lock up on some videos. Again, this may not be fair as Palemoon may be better optimized for small memory.

[TerryH]

...Stretch found and used the Linux swap partition on the built in hard drive whereas Precise Light does not.

Have you tried turning swap on on the Precise installation.

In a terminal:

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swapon /dev/sdxn

Where xn is the alpha & numeric characters for the swap partition.

[m-cuda]

Thanks TerryH. I did not know about the swapon command. I will try that and also try Palemoon in Precise Light to get a fairer test. Incidentally, I did not do anything in Stretch to make it use the swap partition (which was actually created for a different hard disk install of the original Puppy Precise) but Stretch seemed to find and use it automatically. This a 10+ year old ASUS netbook with only 1GB of memory and I surmise the lack of swap maybe killing Precise Light. BionicPup64 on a 4GB Dell is my daily driver and only use the ASUS when I get bored but for curiosity's sake I want to find out which is better Precise Light or Stretch so I will make some further tests.

ADDENDUM
My apologies to Precise Light. I tried to duplicate the session where YouTube video playback using Firefox on Precise Light stutters. I found that Precise Light also automatically finds and uses a Linux swap partition available on the internal drive. (I have 3 machines and around a dozen flash drives with various Puppies. The old HP no longer has internal drive, the Dell has the original Windows installed on its internal drive. Only the ASUS has an internal drive with a Linux swap partition. I must have mistaken a session on the HP or Dell for the session I mentioned.) I installed Palemoon on Precise Light. Subjectively, YouTube video playback seems comparable to Dpup Stretch. Regarding just YouTube video playback only I find Palemoon better than Firefox - Palemoon is quite smooth whereas Firefox visibly stutters (and even locks up sometimes). However, the GUI is much more sluggish in Palemoon compared to Firefox.

A LATER ADDENDUM
After using "Precise Light" and "Dpup Stretch" for some hours each I find them subjectively mostly comparable. However, "Dpup Stretch" has a major advantage as it has a working video player whereas I was not able to find a video player for "Precise Light" that was compatible with Firefox ESR. I installed both "VLC Media Player" and "Gnome MPlayer" and in each case Firefox stopped playing audio after the installation. Regarding poor performance while browsing, swap space was not the problem. htop shows at least one and sometimes both cpu cores pegged at 100% with minimal use of swap space. My feeling is vintage hardware does not have the cpu cycles to handle modern web pages.

[sindi]

The precord version written for Precise linux has something wrong with line 78. Is there a working audio recorder other than arecord, which I could not figure out? (It records 15 sec of a silent wav)? I finally installed a small voice recorder on a cell phone as a stopgap measure.

[stuvxz]

I have been using precise-light-5.7.2-mk2.4 as my OS and it has been possible to do video-calls to my parents via firefox and facebook. I am unable to tweak puppy so all I did was install Precise Light and then run the browser installer and everything worked just fine, built-in camera, mic, everuthing was running smoothly. Up to firefox_76.0.1_32. Today I made the mistake of replacing that version of FF with the newest version, again with the PortaBrowseInstall-i386-0.4.pet and FF is not running anymore. I tried to go back to FF 76.0.1 but something is not working anymore. I see FF up for a second and them it crashes. This is the only PC I have. It's a Asus EEE pc 1001p with an Atom cpu and 1Gb RAM. I have tried many other Puppies always trying to adapt to increasing RAM consumption by browsers and heavy pages like facebook. I don't care about facebook except for the fact that it's the only thing my parents are familiar with for video-calls. This precise light was just the perfect system for my needs. Do you think you could help me reverting back to the mk2.4 + FF76 I had before? Thanks.

[mikeslr]

Hi stuvxz,

Hopefully someone with experience using both precise-light-5.7.2 and PortaBrowseInstall-i386-0.4. will respond. I’m not. It may be that your precise will work with the new firefox if you install something required by the new firefox. But generalizing your question to “How to obtain a working version of an older-firefox?” -- a question others may have-- I've provided an answer here, viewtopic.php?p=8330#p8330

[jrb]

See next post for update

Quote (stuvxz):
Today I made the mistake of replacing that version of FF with the newest version, again with the PortaBrowseInstall-i386-0.4.pet and FF is not running anymore"

Hi stuvxz, I'm glad Precise Light has worked well for you, at least to this point. Here's the thing. I just booted precise-light-5.7.2-mk2.4 with no savefile (just like a 1st boot) and used Portable Browser Installer to install FireFox 82.0. Then I went to Youtube.com and tested a sample video. Sound worked everything is good. I suggest you try booting without savefile and reinstall FireFox. I don't know what kind of install you have but if nothing else boot into another puppy and rename precisesave-XXX to 0precisesave-XXX and then boot into Precise Light.

Good Luck, I'll check later to see if it worked for you.

[jrb]

Doh! I rebooted and saved and the Internet Menu entry "Firefox-portable" doesn't work. If you can remember what drive you installed to look there for the folder "firefox_82.0_32" or similar. Go inside and click on "ff". That should start Firefox for you. The easiest fix is to drag "ff" to the desktop and start it from there. Try it with your present savefile. It should work.

[mikewalsh]

@jrb :-

Hallo, you old so-and-so! I thought we'd 'lost' you in the transition, mate...

Nice to see you're still alive & kicking. I shall expect plenty of input from you now....

Welcome back.

(Just to let you know, 64-bit Quirky April 'lite' has for months now been my 'go-to' Pup of choice as a 'daily driver'. Mind you, I shall still expect an update as to just exactly what you removed vis-a-vis the Mesa/OpenGL stuff. There's an awful lot of apps that would otherwise run were it not for this stuff missing..!)


Mike.

[jrb]

@jrb :-

Hallo, you old so-and-so! I thought we'd 'lost' you in the transition, mate...

Nice to see you're still alive & kicking. I shall expect plenty of input from you now....

Welcome back.

(Just to let you know, 64-bit Quirky April 'lite' has for months now been my 'go-to' Pup of choice as a 'daily driver'. Mind you, I shall still expect an update as to just exactly what you removed vis-a-vis the Mesa/OpenGL stuff. There's an awful lot of apps that would otherwise run were it not for this stuff missing..!)


Mike.

I had lots going on this summer, growing veggies, raising chickens and grandchildren, hiking, biking, that kind of stuff. I was a bit shocked and dismayed at John Murga's passing but since Puppy was already on the back burner I just let it slide. But winter is here, -12C yesterday and today, so sitting in front of a toasty computer feels pretty good. Glad to see you and the diehards have kept things going so well.

Happy to hear you're enjoying Quirky7 Light. The 32bit version is my main operating system now. I have Quirky8 Light (Pyro) running prettty well now but it needs a bit more refinement and testing before release. It's also a bit larger than Quirky7 (Which ain't broke, so why fix it?).

I made a reply about Mesa in the Quirky Light thread. Hopefully we can get the problem sorted out.

Cheers and thanks for the warm welcome, J

[stuvxz]

many thanks for your reply JRB, the videocall with facebook is working again with an old Firefox 52 esr pet package, the video image is perfect but the sound is lagging to the point it gets useless. komisch for with the old setup (precise-light + FF76) everything was running smoothly. so far this is the only pupplet which allows for videocalls out of the box sort of speaking with this old netbook I have. thanks

[6502coder]

Just an FYI for those of you running Precise Light on really old and weak hardware and seeking a usable browser. For a while now I've been using Pale Moon to watch YouTube vids on my 2003 Compaq laptop (1.3 GHz Celeron, 1 GB RAM) but the last couple of PM updates (28.15 and 28.16) have finally slid over the line from "barely usable" to "not usable." Also PM 28.16 is the last of the official 32-bit Linux builds of PM. So I went in search of an alternative.

I installed the latest SeaMonkey (2.53.5.1) and found that works quite well on YouTube, better in fact than Pale Moon ever did. The only complaint I have is that there is an absolute dearth of add-ons for SM 2.53--not even one decent ad-blocker.

BTW I did not install SeaMonkey via the Portable Browser Installer. Instead I grabbed the tarball directly from the SeaMonkey web site and used mikeslr's PETs from here:

viewtopic.php?p=3944#p3944

[666philb]

Just an FYI for those of you running Precise Light on really old and weak hardware and seeking a usable browser. For a while now I've been using Pale Moon to watch YouTube vids on my 2003 Compaq laptop (1.3 GHz Celeron, 1 GB RAM) but the last couple of PM updates (28.15 and 28.16) have finally slid over the line from "barely usable" to "not usable." Also PM 28.16 is the last of the official 32-bit Linux builds of PM. So I went in search of an alternative.

I installed the latest SeaMonkey (2.53.5.1) and found that works quite well on YouTube, better in fact than Pale Moon ever did. The only complaint I have is that there is an absolute dearth of add-ons for SM 2.53--not even one decent ad-blocker.

BTW I did not install SeaMonkey via the Portable Browser Installer. Instead I grabbed the tarball directly from the SeaMonkey web site and used mikeslr's PETs from here:

viewtopic.php?p=3944#p3944

hi @6502coder
ublock do a firefox legacy version that works in seamonkey https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock-for-f ... y/releases
and here's an addon that gives access to hundreds firefox's legacy addons https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/releases

[8Geee]

Made 1st attempt of running Precise-572.2.4... Intel Atom N270 / 2Gb mem / ethernet (Ye Old ASUS EEE 900a)
Installed FF78.5esr to ~ and put the "distribution" folder in it... no updates

OMG... security nightmare
openssl 1.0.1 (AtomicPup 2020 = 1.0.2p) tttuuxx's version is 1.1.1b
wget 1.13x (AtomicPup 1.19.5)
curl 7.22 (AtomicPup 7.65)

Anyways, being a LiveCD went to Youtube and sound works.
Disconnected / no save.

The kernel used is a good non-PAE / arch.
I'll take a shot at this for AtomicPup-Precise... lotsa slacko security to try and the inevitable 400+ lines of browser repairs.
Plus tweaking geany and Leafpad, fonts, icons, wallpapers for netbooks (600x1024), etc.

But not today or near future, Mom of Age 96 1/2 in Nurse Home has tested positive, I have mega-paperwork to do, and triple-check if the worst happens.

Regards
8Geee

[rockedge]

@8Geee

Will be thinking of you and your mom and I'm crossing my fingers. Hang in there.

[mikewalsh]

@8Geee :-

@8Geee

Will be thinking of you and your mom and I'm crossing my fingers. Hang in there.

As do we all, I'm sure. Hold your breath, mate...............Mom just might get over it. You can't tell. A pensioner here in the UK has just celebrated her 105th birthday, mere weeks after recovering from COVID..!

Fingers crossed.

Mike.

[8Geee]

I got around to making a precursory AtomicPup version. As a stand-alone on my PC (Atom N270 32 bit) it runs well. FF 78.9esr installed and lightly configured. Puppy files as posted above not updated- using what came in the box.

Now about a remaster, to get an iso for this pup started... completely borked REMASTER scripting, NO ISO made in sda1 as promised, and a uefi version hinted at, very naughty. I tried this with BOTH an ISO and CD as start-point... niet. Pressing YES at the end does not generate the ISO (in fact the orange screen that usually appears 'blips', it usually logs for a few seconds) The usual delete/copy files with a dot in front of the name. Fix reletive linking to absolute links due to the TMP folder being in a different place Theres a few of these in the ROX folder in config. And if you add anything to root it will generally HAVE to be copied to TMP ROOT. Theres no absolute link to OPT or VAR, these arre necessary if putting the browser in OPT, and maintaining Printer abilities beyond a remaster for the VAR link. In Slacko 5.7 there is also a USR link. I've left out these last two for now.

So MY copy works well stored in MY machine, but an ISO backup would be really nice. Perhaps a 64-bit file or dozen got mixed into the 'older' mix, and uefi should be an option on REMASTER. I see theres an option for xz or gz compression, the latter runs much faster. The puppylivebuildcd file that is placed in sda1 is still extant, and shows a sfs size of abt 258Mb using gz compression. All files in the directory appear OK including z-drive.

Ouch what a nitemare 6 hrs, no ISO
passing on the pain hoping for a few fixes
8Geee

[8Geee]

An update...

I did an X-diff on the remaster script in precise5.7.2 vs. the remaster script in Slacko5.7 (as AtomicPup2020)

The ISO burn begins at Precise5.7.2 at line 727, which compares to Line 804 of the Slacko5.7 version. The DELTA is significant, and Precise5.7.2 points to efi dot img. The verbosity of SLacko5.7 makes it work.

BTW, in Precise5.7.2 I renamed the remaster script with a 3 at end, and put the Slacko5.7 version as the "2". Redbox Your Puppy is too old. And I fixed issue files to the kernel used 3.14.56. NoGo.

***EDIT: 2nd Update *** Note the following lines from xerrs log... if NOT uefi this needs fixing. Atom N270 CPU not uefi.

/usr/bin/isohybrid
isohybrid -u /mnt/sda1/custom-puppy-uefi.iso
/usr/bin/isohybrid: cannot open -u: No such file or directory

8Geee

[8Geee]

Loaded FF78.9esr and the sound works at youtube. Guess I'm stuck with a private copy.

[8Geee]

With thanks to perdido, I found this work-around that works just fine. One has to enter the full path for the source files.

Issue/bug/feature closed
8Geee

[8Geee]

Keeping this on CD for now. Tried QuickPup21.03... dead as Jacob and Bob Marley. 32bit-land is a jail.

JMHO
8Geee

[8Geee]

With the issue/bug/feature closed.... this DOES work a treat. Internal security not too good, but installing FF78.9esr more than makes up for it. Gdmap is reporting about 675Mb with browser and addons installed. Gparted shows 333Mb including partition space out of a 1Gb partition, so about 305Mb OS. htop with browser open 375Mb / 18% CPU. I'm using just a 256Mb save with plenty of room.

Regards
8Geee

[perdido]

Its a very useful operating system. The save folders upgrade combined with the ROX right-click utilities gives precise-lite the same feel as a later model 32-bit puppy. It can run a current mozilla-based web browser and depending on the version you choose it can be locked down hard.

I have a custom version on an old dell laptop, it uses the latest pale moon 29.1.1 as browser and seamonkey 2.49.5 as the email (have that set up hardened with ublock & noscript to safely follow the email links in seamonkey browser), Fred's dogradio, WPS, XFE, with a few other things borrowed from precise 5.7.1

One bug I found in the final 5.7.2-mk2.4 version is that the .iso boots fine from CD but if I install & boot from HDD it does not see my CD/DVD drives, probably has something to do with the later WoofCE used, similar to the remaster issue. Not an issue for me.

[8Geee]

With some bugfixes applied to the Remaster script, and some broken links in root fixed.AtomicPreciseXXI is now released. There are some hoops to jump through if remastering, as the script is still broken a bit. But, it works OK. Looks and feels like AtomicPup, but is intended for all 32-bit non-uefi audiences. Firefox is 78.9esr with youtube sound. Thus, no MPlayer installed. Also, no fomaticxxx by rcrsn-51 just yet, and there WILL be an update, as Firefox78.10 has found a 32-bit security bug. I have to say the browser is very locked down without much security changes. Just the familiar uBlock, ClearURL, and CSSexfil as the add-ons. For a better on-line experience AtomicPupxxi66 is a better choice, but intended for netbook users with the i915 video. AtomicPup2020 is fairly well worn out but still surfs quite well, just no more shopping due to web-page scripting, not security.

Why is it here? Its based entirely on PreciseLight-5.7.2-mk2.4. With many thanks to perdido, this can exist: the remaster script included DOES NOT generate an ISO for the non-uefi CPU's like the Atom N270 !

The text-file has sha256sum and remaster general process... but a lot of .file stuff has to be removed from /tmp/root then copied from /root. Its a Slacko5.7 thing. Moving tmp not such a great idea as relative links needed to be made absolute. Ubuntu stopped supporting 32-bit recenttly and removed their repo's. So basically, you can remove the ubuntu repo's from this distro/spin. Slackware should be allowed, but the original focus was/is ubuntu.

No, I'm not trying to take over, just offering help. These patches/bugfixes help.

Good Luck and regards
8Geee

[stuvxz]

Hello! Just wanted to drop by and show my appreciation for this wonderful little OS. I am still using it as my sole OS and everything is running smoothly. So far so good. Many thanks. By the way, I have tested (yet again) pretty much everything that's out there from TinyCore to MX, but also tweaked versions of XP, Vista, Lubuntu, Antix, Debian, Slackware, Porteus, Slitaz, etc., and many many puplets - and I have to tell that this Precise Light version of yours has been the most reliable and useful with the hardware I have. Thanks.

[stuvxz]

Hello! Recently updating the package manager stopped working. For instance, before I could easily install gnumeric or any other package but now it does not work anymore. Could you point me out an workaround for this issue? Thanks.

[6502coder]

This may be relevant:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=119152