Puppy 4.2 - Trim the bloat

[zigbert]

Reduce the Puppy 4.12 iso by 1 mb
and offer a better and cleaned up Puppy.

- 73 kb:
Replace the game PicPuz (115 kb) with the excellent cardgame Seahaven (34 kb) and the othello clone - Jester (8kb).

- 12 kb:
Remove Pmirror (3kb) and its dependency - mirdir (9kb). Pmirror is a nice program, but does the same as the sync mode in Pbackup.

- 51 kb:
Remove calculators else than Calcoo. Cgtkcalc (30kb), Ycalc (21kb) and Xcalc (?).

- 17 kb:
Remove the preview images of jwm-themes. Why do we keep those????

- 6 kb:
Include only 3 jwm themes (blue, orange and gray?)

- 40 kb:
Keep only 3 gtk themes (blue, orange and gray?). The citrus-cut theme is alone 35kb.

- 250 kb:
Add several backgrounds as solid colors. Else remove all but 1 backgrounds image in good quality (100 kb) that fits default gtk/jwm theme.

- 80 kb:
Remove Ripoff (45 kb), Pcdripper (13kb) and cdparanoia (42kb). Nathans Gprip is very simple and could easily be stripped down to 20 kb (remove graphics) and does not use cdparanoia. Correct me if I'm wrong.

- 176 kb:
Keep Only 2 icon sets. The flat orange theme is 176 kb.

- 10 kb:
Remove Xclip (clipboard). Puppy has also Glipper.

- 174 kb:
Replace fotoxx-5.0.1 (213 kb) with gpicview-0.1.10 (39kb) or ghunter (39kb) which also has slideshow support. Fotoxx is something in between a image editor and image viewer. Since we have Mtpaint, I don't see any need of more image editors. What we need is fixing the print function in mtpaint.

+ 19 kb:
Include Transmission-0.6 (111kb) that is very user friendly, instead of ctorrent (85kb), Pctorrent (7kb)

- 100 kb:
Clean up all the 16x16 icons that are not in use. 100 kb is a guess.

- 22 kb:
Skip the Pmusic theme. With a good gtk-theme, the player looks just nice.


Ok, I know that my post 'Puppy 4.2 - Desktop and artwork' suggests adding bloat. Pwidgets and dependencies (conky) will add about 400kb.
I guess I'm trying to balance my input

With Pwidgets inside you also may skip frememapplet, xload and asapm.


Sigmund

[WhoDo]

Great post, Sigmund! It will save me much time in trolling through the Unleashed tree to see what to include or exclude.

I certainly intend that Pwidgets is IN, so your suggestions are very welcome!

Cheers,

[Lobster]

+ 19 kb:
Include Transmission-0.6 (111kb) that is very user friendly, instead of ctorrent (85kb), Pctorrent (7kb)

Transmission always worked for me, so that is worthwhile.
I have feeling it is rather huge but pizzasgood pebble system, as used in Macpup and developer pup is an excellent booting system.

OK this might be bizarre but having system links to some of the icons in usr/share/pixmaps and stretching them gives a bizarre but acceptable retro background . . .

[Pizzasgood]

I don't really think Pebble 1.0 is good enough for an official Puppy. For that, it should have a way to turn it off while booting, rather than having to rely on a boot option. As for size, it's a little bigger, but not too much. The thing that makes the test package I released big is that it includes an example theme that uses animation. If you removed that it would be much smaller.

Whenever I get around to writing Pebble 2.0, the goal with that will be to make it Production Quality. 1.0 was more of the proof-of-concept.

[SirDuncan]

I would like to add my vote for Transmission. In my experience it simply works better than just about anything else.

[aragon]

fotoxx => i would also vote for gpicview, but i think the wallpaper-setter has dependencies to fotoxx...

by the way: does the average puppy-user use samba-shares (as an example: i don't).

cheers
aragon

[01micko]

by the way: does the average puppy-user use samba-shares (as an example: i don't).

cheers
aragon

Possibly, I do (though not married to it! )

[Lobster]

OK this might be bizarre but having system links to some of the icons

I have tried this with several icons and it seems to work with some better than others for example
/usr/share/midi-icons/x24.png
/usr/share/backgrounds/games24.png

So we could have some striking abstract wallpapers
with very little bloat?

I am using right click to copy the links into usr/share/backgrounds
Would they need to be relative or absolute links?

[HairyWill]

by the way: does the average puppy-user use samba-shares (as an example: i don't).

I admit to a vested interest since I developed pnethood and I do access windows shares every day, there are also a number of people that rely on smbspool for network printing. Considering that windows has had smb for such a long time I think that many people might expect it to be there by default.

I would like to see experimentation in the alpha phase with removal of nmblookup and smbmount. Pnethood should work in most scenarios without these and it would help to bring in bug reports from people using cifs who had previously relied on the deprecated smb protocol.

unpacked sizes
nmblookup 552k
smbmount 700k

However removal of pnethood and all the samba files would save over 3.3Mb, it certainly should be considered.

What about psip, my guess is that at the moment it has less than 20 users and some of these are because they are experimenting with it. Maybe it deserves to stay in for another release to give it an opportunity to mature. Just including the commandline pjsua instead would probably save 200KB in all the scripts and icons that are needed to run the gui.

[ttuuxxx]

Personally I feel keep it under 100MB, I don't care if its 99.99MB thats fine with me and goes along with puppy tradition So what I suggest is fatten the bloat, until just below the red-line 100MB, really we are under the 100 mb by far and your talking about getting rid of programs many users are used to, I don't use the ones listed, but hey I like to stick up for the silent voices. Here's a question, If a persons voice is silent, does anyone hear them?lol
ttuuxxx

Ps Transmission is needed and galculator, the new one Muggins posted this week

[aragon]

it's not only the point of 100 mb or 99,9 mb (in my opinion) although for those who are using a modem... or an old pc ...

'base'-puppy should be simple and clear.

so in my opinion:
- if only a little number of people is using homebank, why should it be in the 'base'-puppy
- if only a little number of people is using fpm, ...
- if only a little number of people is using mtr-traceroute, ...
- ....

although some of them might only be at 50k, if only a few or none are using them, why include them? you will have less clutter, a clear menu and will be able to keep more of the packages up-to-date.

And for those few missing a special package, it's in the official repo, installed with a click.

another point (off-topic): we have the wizard-wizard. and then we have nearly all wizards also with an seperate menu-entry. this is one of the first things i'm changing in a remaster. Although Puppy-Menu is not as unclear as my KDE-4-Menu in OpenSuse (in my opinion this menu is unusable), i like it very simple.

ok that was all too long.

Summary: We should have an eye on every program that is in the base-puppy, if not for saving space than for saving simplicity.

cheers
aragon

[ttuuxxx]

it's not only the point of 100 mb or 99,9 mb (in my opinion) although for those who are using a modem... or an old pc ...

'base'-puppy should be simple and clear.

so in my opinion:
- if only a little number of people is using homebank, why should it be in the 'base'-puppy
- if only a little number of people is using fpm, ...
- if only a little number of people is using mtr-traceroute, ...
- ....


cheers
aragon

Ok I'll bite and go with it
Most don't use vesa drivers, maybe we should just make a package?
Umm no we cater to the older pc's.
Most users first and biggest change on their puppy pc is the browser, Firebox is first worldwide for Linux users, Then Opera, and as puppy goes then Firepup and finally Seamonkey.
So should we kill seamonkey ? Like who uses composer anyways, Most users use Kompozer or NVU. Same with emails, I never used or even set up a seamonkey email! I use Gmail,Yahoo,Hotmail and have numerous accounts, If I was to use a email client it would be Thunderbird, simple mail or claws, Seamonkey is just so dated, Ugly as sin. Then newer 2 alpha is a nice looking browser but not stable.
I was in a thread about 1yr ago and we talked about Gnumeric, almost nobody actually uses it and the small few could just download it:)
By far most users kill JWM when wanting to replace the window manager and use icewm, So if I get your way of thinking right. Then next puppy release will kill seamokey+apps, kill Gnumeric, Vesa, JWM and replace it with Firefox, Icewm and simple mail sounds like a great plane oh ya plus Galculator and kill the smaller ones
ttuuxxx

[zigbert]

OK this might be bizarre but having system links to some of the icons

Great idea!
Default icons will be troublesome for Pwidgets, but the concept could be the same.
The wallpaper in the screenshot is below 1 kb. And we save another 100 kb.

Could we live with something like this ??????



I'm not the one who want to release a barebone Puppy. I think Psip and Homebank are great. They should stay (until something better and lighter shows up), but if nmblookup (552kb) and smbmount (700kb) are not needed, then I say: "Trim the bloat! "

[MU]

Sigmund,
I think apart from the size, the new background is better, as it should match better with different resolutions.
The old one looks cool, too, but the bows look distorted or misplaced in a widescreen 1650x1050.

Mark

[aragon]

ttuuxxx, sure i see your point

some notes:
- "Browsers" I think you're right. But i think i saw some hot discussion about that, i don't want to jump into atm.
- "Most users use Kompozer or NVU". Sorry, i think that's not correct. I think, most users did not create homepages very often.
- "Gnumeric, almost nobody actually uses it..." Might be right, but maybe an alrounder needs a default spreadsheet!?!
- "By far most users kill JWM" Not that discussion please JWM is the right, light and easy thing at the moment. and with zigberts project(s) it will look great.

i don't wanted to have an other puppy as i like the one we have. but size and simplicity are main goals.

EDIT:
@zigbert: i also don't want a barebone-puppy as default!

cheers
aragon

[Pizzasgood]

IMHO, a desktop OS without a half-decent spreadsheet program is worthless. That's one of those fundamental things that really should be built in. One of the main selling points of Puppy is that it includes all that basic stuff already, and in a small space. Removing it would make Puppy just another mini-version that left out most of the functionality.

[SirDuncan]

by the way: does the average puppy-user use samba-shares (as an example: i don't).

I do, but I don't know if I count as average.

IMHO, a desktop OS without a half-decent spreadsheet program is worthless. That's one of those fundamental things that really should be built in. One of the main selling points of Puppy is that it includes all that basic stuff already, and in a small space. Removing it would make Puppy just another mini-version that left out most of the functionality.

Yes, one of Puppy's greatest strengths is that it is ready to go right from the start. When deciding what to cut, we need to be careful that we don't remove the muscle with the fat.

[aragon]

that's it of course: obtain the muscles.

if we could sort out the fat, the muscles will even work (and look ) better. but to follow pizzasgood: some fat is needed to transport the flavor!

by the way: i'm writing this in dillo2, well a little little more fat...

cheers
aragon

[Lobster]

I do, but I don't know if I count as average.

No 'averages' in Puppys
All unique.

"Puppy - When 'Average' is not enough"

[dogone]

If Puppy's mission is to be small but highly useable... and Puppy can be designed to accomodate many .sfs modules at boot... why not make Puppy more .sfs based? That done, all that's required to accomodate low-RAM systems (or Puppy users that visit them) is boot-time control of .sfs loading. That is, if you're Puppy loads 500MB of .sfs and you boot a 256MB RAM system, you can select those you wish to load for the session.

So, yes. Put Puppy in a diet and let user fatten it up with .sfs biscuits.