New Wary/Racy website

[tuxtoo]

Having been on a lengthy hiatus from Puppy and having been given an ancient 2005 Sony Vaio, 1.73ghz, 80gb HDD and 2gb maxed out RAM, I thought this would be a perfect Puppy Project. I have always preferred the true Puppies. versions 1 to 5, and I chose to install Racy-5.5 on this laptop. What's more I find that Watchdog has made up-to-date Palemoon Browser that runs perfectly on Racy-5.5.

I enjoyed using Puppy again so much that it inspired me to ask the question about a possible Wary/Racy Website here. The replies I got were all the encouragement I needed to get started on the website. I must give a shout out here to Mike Walsh for not only his encouragement, but his work behind the scenes in making a great list of packages available to me.

So here is the link to the website: https://racypup.netlify.com/


Tuxtoo

[mistfire]

Reviving Racy and Wary? I think you must update their package manager and its core apps.

[tuxtoo]

Reviving Racy and Wary? I think you must update their package manager and its core apps.

You will find updated core apps. The updated package manager on this page https://racypup.netlify.com/system.html

Sorry you are disappointed.

[Mike Walsh]

Morning, all.

When tuxtoo first broached the idea of a website for these two elderly, yet well-loved Puppies - the culmination of the old T2 build process - my initial reaction was 'Yes; definitely. Long overdue....'

I've been using Racy 5.5 regularly for well over 3 years now, and I continue to be surprised by how thoroughly usable it is as a 'daily driver'. Okay, when you run as many Pups as I do, it's perhaps hard to choose a 'favourite'. The simple fact of the matter is, I love 'em all, in their various guises; they've all got their own characters, that's for sure.

Yes, it's nice to be able to run the newest Puppies, I'll not deny that. Yet with the sheer number of different Pups available out there, it's a cinch to find something that'll work with pretty much any hardware, no matter what its limitations are. There's absolutely no reason why those of us with elderly hardware should have to be left out in the cold.

Just be sympathetic to it, and try to choose a Pup/Puplet that's within its capabilities to handle. It's probably because of the age of my own hardware why I prefer mainly 5-series Pups, and some 6-series.....though radky's DPup 'Stretch' is an exception to this rule, due to how light it runs. Even ye anciente Dell lappie will run it on a P4 & a gig-and-a-half of RAM. The big old Compaq, despite being 64-bit, and dual-core into the bargain, still needs to be treated with a certain amount of compassion; this is extremely early 64-bit tech, from the dawn of the 64-bit consumer revolution.....around 15 years old now, so quite basic for a 64-bit CPU. No virtualization, or SSE4.1s/SSE4.2s, etc; this baby tops out at SSE3s.....and that's your lot (although AMD's use of the very first on-board memory controller with these first-gen Athlon 64s made a huge difference to how responsive they are.)

I still prefer 32-bit Pups, 'cos they just fly on this hardware. 'Nuff said.

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

Tuxtoo has the skills with website stuff, and I've always been a fiend for tracking down software that'll work with all the different incarnations of our favourite canine. Even with Racy, there's a lot of it; I think Stuart was quite surprised by just how much stuff he needed to test out, before adding it to the site..! And battleshooter's glibc upgrade, originally put together to enable folks running Racy & Carolina to use the latest Chrome/Chromium some years ago, has extended these capabilities even further, without needing to go overboard with other core components.

I think my biggest surprise was finding an AppImage of the KDE Project's 'Digikam' photo-viewer/organizer that fired straight up and just worked in Racy. We all know KDE stuff wants everything, including the Out house sink.....and then some, before it'll condescend to run. Which goes to show that this particular AppImage has been constructed properly.....though, curiously, despite running in pretty much all my Pups, it won't in either Tahr or Xenial, yet is seemingly quite happy again in Bionic..! Most odd.

My motto with Puppy software has always been 'Choice in all things'; I don't care if we DO have 50 ways of carrying out the same task, not everybody has the same requirements, or will wish to go about any given task in exactly the same way.

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

@mistfire:- I guess the best explanation of what's been presented here is that it's not so much a case of 'reviving' Wary/Racy, as it is of 're-visiting' them.....and simply making new users, and old, aware that these two veterans are still eminently suitable for 'age-related' hardware.

Mavrothal's 'PPM v2.0 'upgrade' package was one of the first things I suggested, since I've always found the original PPMs rather cramped, and a bit confusing. I know you've done further work with it, and sc0ttman has come up with the CLI 'take' on the matter, but I felt it was probably best to stick with what most of us are used to.

And that's one of Puppy's biggest strengths, I feel; consistency.

Anyway; along with tuxtoo, I hope everybody will find some of the content useful. So, enjoy; Stu has excelled himself with the site, and it's a model of clarity into the bargain.

Nice one, mate.

[EDIT:-] If anyone has any further items they'd like to contribute, which they know work with these two Pups, and feel they should be added to the listing, don't hesitate to let either Stuart or myself know, please. All contributions gratefully received!


Mike.

[tuxtoo]

Kind words indeed Mike, for which I am grateful. Undoubtedly, the website would not be as good as it is without your contribution, cheers mate, you're a star.

Tuxtoo

[Mike Walsh]

Whole point of working together as a community. mate. Between us all, we can often come up with better projects than many of us could accomplish on our own; after all, everybody has different strengths & weaknesses.

This way is better, I feel. We help each other out, don't we?


Mike.

[tuxtoo]

Exactly, couldn't have put it better myself.

[nitehawk]

Having been on a lengthy hiatus from Puppy and having been given an ancient 2005 Sony Vaio, 1.73ghz, 80gb HDD and 2gb maxed out RAM, I thought this would be a perfect Puppy Project. I have always preferred the true Puppies. versions 1 to 5
Tuxtoo

I am delighted to hear this! I have several old computers and laptops. I inherited two massive "gaming" computers that run windows, MX Linux, Bionic Puppy, etc. etc. etc.
But I don't use them very much at all (they use waaaaay too much power)!

But several really old laptops and a Dell (2004) clamshell can only run older Puppy Linux, or a very small Debian distro.

Racy just seems to work very well on the older stuff,...

[ndujoe1]

May I request a list of those puppy versions that were based on the T2 Build? Thanks.

[tuxtoo]

May I request a list of those puppy versions that were based on the T2 Build? Thanks.

Puppy Linux Search engine is your friend here, and here is one of the results that may help you as a starting point. http://puppylinux.com/family-tree.html

[nic007]

I have VLC 2.0 for Racy. I can upload it if interested.

[tuxtoo]

I have VLC 2.0 for Racy. I can upload it if interested.

nic007 - Glad to have it, just let me know where I can get it.

Cheers,

[nic007]

I have VLC 2.0 for Racy. I can upload it if interested.

nic007 - Glad to have it, just let me know where I can get it.

Cheers,

Here you go: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lk7ZS ... O7aiOWtrZL

[tuxtoo]

I have VLC 2.0 for Racy. I can upload it if interested.

nic007 - Glad to have it, just let me know where I can get it.

Cheers,

Here you go: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lk7ZS ... O7aiOWtrZL

Thanks nic007, got it.

[bigpup]

Maybe I am not seeing it.

Because a lot of the download links in the Puppy forum, for Wary/Racy, are no good anymore.
Maybe put a good one on this web site

Wary
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/wary-5.5/

Racy
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/racy-5.5/

May also want to give a link to this:
Wary pet packages
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-wary5/

[tuxtoo]

Maybe I am not seeing it.

Because a lot of the download links in the Puppy forum, for Wary/Racy, are no good anymore.
Maybe put a good one on this web site

Wary
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/wary-5.5/

Racy
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/racy-5.5/

May also want to give a link to this:
Wary pet packages
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-wary5/

Thanks for the suggestion bigpup. Added the links in the first paragraph on the home page. Cheers

[oui]

pls add also the url of the wikka-wikki here in the centered head of this forum!

[nic007]

Don't know if this is the right place but I'm going to make a few points with regards to running Racy. This is specifically aimed at those users who need to run an older Puppy like Racy because of hardware constraints and not those who run it as some novelty or some old time fun project:
1. Racy is one distribution where upgrading the kernel does make a lot of sense and a huge difference. I highly recommend using the Tahr 6.0.5 kernel instead. This will implement adrv and ydrv functionality and of course update the driver base, etc. The beauty of this, is that it fits like a hand in a glove without making a huge difference in size, neither does it bog down the system in any way (or make it harder for already constraint hardware). The original Racy kernel, re-packed as a zdrv, is about 18MB in size (packed at max XZ compression) whereas the Tahr kernel is 23MB.
2. I do not recommend the massive glibc upgrade to accomodate newer software as this will inevitably put a heavier load on already constraint hardware. For the general Puppy user, this is unnecessary. But of course you will want to use a new internet browser and thankfully watchdog has done marvelous work to make new browsers work with Racy by way of including only the necessary upgrades to make it work.
3. You can also make some other improvements without re-inventing the wheel. For instance replacing the old libavcodec library (the library which hosts your audio and video codecs for multimedia) with a new set. Just give your new library the same name as the old one.

In conclusion, this is how I run my Racy 5.5: The original base sfs stripped of its kernel and old browser, repacked with max xz compression = 65MB. Using the Tahr 6.0.5 kernel packed as zdrv = 23 MB. And then I use a new browser like Palemoon as sfs-addon and a few other sfs-addons like VLC, etc. Perfect little system for me.

[belham2]

Don't know if this is the right place but I'm going to make a few points with regards to running Racy. This is specifically aimed at those users who need to run an older Puppy like Racy because of hardware constraints and not those who run it as some novelty or some old time fun project:
1. Racy is one distribution where upgrading the kernel does make a lot of sense and a huge difference. I highly recommend using the Tahr 6.0.5 kernel instead. This will implement adrv and ydrv functionality and of course update the driver base, etc. The beauty of this, is that it fits like a hand in a glove without making a huge difference in size, neither does it bog down the system in any way (or make it harder for already constraint hardware). The original Racy kernel, re-packed as a zdrv, is about 18MB in size (packed at max XZ compression) whereas the Tahr kernel is 23MB.
2. I do not recommend the massive glibc upgrade to accomodate newer software as this will inevitably put a heavier load on already constraint hardware. For the general Puppy user, this is unnecessary. But of course you will want to use a new internet browser and thankfully watchdog has done marvelous work to make new browsers work with Racy by way of including only the necessary upgrades to make it work.
3. You can also make some other improvements without re-inventing the wheel. For instance replacing the old libavcodec library (the library which hosts your audio and video codecs for multimedia) with a new set. Just give your new library the same name as the old one.

In conclusion, this is how I run my Racy 5.5: The original base sfs stripped of its kernel and old browser, repacked with max xz compression = 65MB. Using the Tahr 6.0.5 kernel packed as zdrv = 23 MB. And then I use a new browser like Palemoon as sfs-addon and a few other sfs-addons like VLC, etc. Perfect little system for me.

Hi Nic007,

Do you happen to know,in Racy 5.5 (or any Precise), can any browser run Netflix? Or are there just too many issues (dependencies, drivers, etc) for the latest browsers (that can run Netflix) to work in Racy?

[nic007]

Sorry, don't know.