Puppeee 4.3X

[jemimah]

3.4 has been posted. Only the eee-431.sfs file has changed since 3.3.

New in this version:
Pwireless 2.8, now with 'nolink' mode for flaky connections
Fix for Vattery
Partial fix for card reader not detecting cards on Celeron Eees
Fix for usb drives showing up as a floppy on the desktop
Updated Retrovol
Window Tiler tray icon
Eee-Control application
Chrome and Claws replace Seamonkey
Consonance Music Manager
Pidgin replaces Ayttm

[rhadon]

@ jemimah

I found the info about icon replacement in Berry's blog here

Also MinHundHettePerro has solved this problem (I think so) here

HTH

@ dougeeebear

sda1, sda3 and sdb1 = internal memory chips
sdc1, 3, 5 = SD-card 16GB with GRUB
sdd1, 3 = USB-stick e.g. 16GB with GRUB

This are 8 partitions + 1 USB-HD with 10 partitions = 18 partitions (I have 3 USB-HDs )
Hope this helps your imagination

~ Rolf

[dougeeebear]

So far with 3.4:

On my 1000H:
ra0 is still up and down.
Nothing flaky about my connection (WEP), I am about 8 feet from my router and other Linux systems and Windows have no problem with it.
I can get a solid connection out by the road with Windows, which is about 60 feet away from the house.

---

On my 900:
Start with SD card not inserted, then insert card, icon appears on top of the rightmost drive icon.
The icon does not disappear when card is removed.

Start with card inserted, icon appears on top of the rightmost drive icon.
The icon does not disappear when card is removed.

Toggling Enable card reader in eee-control does display/remove the icon as expected, but it always comes back on top of the rightmost drive icon.

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

@rhadon... (whew)!
.

[hokal]

Great work Jemimah!

here my 1st speed test with eeepc 901

New in this version:
Pwireless 2.8 now with 'nolink' mode for flaky connections
not yet tested, but no problem with strong signal.

Fix for Vattery
not yet fixed for my 901.
I can change outline and background color of vattery icon. But content / status color is not affected / shown.
@Cimh: you have 901. Can you confirm good Vattery icon ??

Partial fix for card reader not detecting cards on Celeron Eees
I have ATOM

Fix for usb drives showing up as a floppy on the desktop
now ALL usb drives (sd and hd) and sd slot card drives show up as USB-stick!

Updated Retrovol
no problems at first sight

Window Tiler tray icon
no problems at first sight

Eee-Control application
Is there any added value for my 901 ? I could not get it working

Chrome and Claws replace Seamonkey
Chrome is fast and okay, but I have problems with the sharpness of the letters of webpages (blur).
I don't need and use Claws.

Consonance Music Manager
not yet integrated in menu bar, but looks good and works

Pidgin replaces Ayttm
Ayttm not yet replaced by Pidgin in Menu bar. Pidgin now works fine in MSN mode !!!

Part of my goal is to convince the people on the Eeeuser forum that Puppy is not just a "backup OS."

Very good point! For me it is definitively not a backup OS, since I use this even professionally. But unfortunately by now puppeee is overloaded with (little) programs I never use. Especially the FUN and Graphics (picture) programs as well as all programs I replaced by the OO packet are just a burden. I still wait for the basic puppeee version supporting all eeepc hardware as now, but adding preferable programs by myself.

BTW by teaching my wife puppy, I learned that viewnior has no print options and to print pictures I always had to import picture by picture into mtPaint or swriter, which was difficult to explain to get her away from MSWin. Is there a viewer / printer for puppy out in the www ??

[jemimah]

Nothing flaky about my connection (WEP), I am about 8 feet from my router and other Linux systems and Windows have no problem with it.

By flaky, I just mean it drops a lot. The ralink cards seem to have more trouble than the atheros ones (remember the driver is still 'experimental') but it happens on all cards. Drops are really obvious with Pwireless2 due to it using wpa_supplicant which advertises connection drops loudly. For WEP and open connections, if you connect without using wpa_supplicant, the kernel will just handle the connection without complaining every time there's a hiccup. Pwireless2 may eventually evolve to not use wpa_supplicant to manage non-wpa connections, but I'd prefer not to spend every waking moment working on it. It would be awesome if other developers would like to help on this project as there really is a dearth of simple, lightweight, network managers for Linux.

On my 900:
Start with SD card not inserted, then insert card, icon appears on top of the rightmost drive icon.
The icon does not disappear when card is removed.

Start with card inserted, icon appears on top of the rightmost drive icon.
The icon does not disappear when card is removed.

You need to click on the icon to make it go away afterwards (http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=01292). Icon placement still needs work, although it works fine on my test boxes so I don't know what's up with yours.

[jemimah]

Eee-Control application
Is there any added value for my 901 ? I could not get it working

Can you expand on this?

Ayttm not yet replaced by Pidgin in Menu bar.

Did you use your old save file? If so, you need to run 'fixmenus' and restart Jwm.

But unfortunately by now puppeee is overloaded with (little) programs I never use. Especially the FUN and Graphics (picture) programs as well as all programs I replaced by the OO packet are just a burden. I still wait for the basic puppeee version supporting all eeepc hardware as now, but adding preferable programs by myself.

I am waiting for Stardust to mature and then I will remaster that as a barebones Puppeee. If you want, you can delete programs from the menu by deleting .desktop files from /usr/share/applications. Then run 'fixmenus' and restart Jwm.

I think Fotox can print. You can get it from the repository.

[dougeeebear]

Maybe I'll try a clean install instead of an upgrade.

[dougeeebear]

Clean install on my 900 has the SD card working as you said.

I'll try it on my 1000H next to check ra0.

I guess it's pointless to do much configuration if it has to be done over every time there's a new release just because the upgrade option only partially works.
Better to wait for a final release to configure much of anything.

[jemimah]

Even I have this old Frankenstein version that I actually run for development so I can have a persistent OS without upgrading every week. It's best to find one that works good, and configure that one for actual use. Then continue to help me test the new betas until I release a stable version.

[dougeeebear]

Clean install on my 1000H still shows ra0 up and down.

No problem with the beta testing, because I really like puppeee.
I'm just venting

[jemimah]

You've got to go to the DHCP tab in Pwireless2 and check the checkbox for 'nolink'.

[prehistoric]

]Just did a clean install on the 1005HE. Looks good and the internal SD card is back on the desktop. Wireless stays up most of the time without the nolink option.

I'm still getting used to Chrome in this environment. I haven't previously treated it as my primary browser, and I'm resisting the temptation to add something familiar, in order to give it a chance. Also setting up another email account which will allow me to experiment without the risk of losing important mail if claws mail crashes, or I do something silly.

Still exploring other differences.

More after a test on the weird 900A.

Added: now posting from 900A. The SD card is now shown as a USB flash drive, not a floppy, but still appears as sda1. On this machine the default font for chrome is definitely too small. Better to set the default too large than to have it unreadable before user chooses a size. For some reason the problem is worse in the text input box on the posting page.

[cimh]

3.4 testing on my 901 frugal install

Ext4 works

Pwireless 2.8, now with 'nolink' mode for flaky connections
still ra0 up and down a lot initially then I ticked the nolink option - yes this seems to make the link differently - but it takes ages . . 30s from the desktop till it connects - I see a dchp osd then a x appears in the wifi tray icon - once you click on that connections seems to be made - a bit strange but it works!

Fix for Vattery
Fine for me - sorry Hokal

Fix for usb drives showing up as a floppy on the desktop
yes BUT dual partitioned drives only show 1 partition eg sdd - I guess it should be sdd1 and sdd2?

Updated Retrovol
Dont know

Window Tiler tray icon
I like that

Eee-Control application
Superb - tick boxes work fan control works, supress in psave is brill, havent tried overclocking - could we put this in the tray? - with fan temp on hover ideally

Chrome and Claws replace Seamonkey
great but many fonts are still tiny and changing the options affects some fonts but not all - just like prehistoric says - see picture:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lh/photo/ ... directlink

Consonance Music Manager
Pidgin replaces Ayttm
not tried

Xvesa - boots to desktop in 25s. and looks just as good as xorg, plays downloaded video fine but jerky on youtube as youd expect.

well done J its good, in fact brilliant

cimh

[dougeeebear]

You've got to go to the DHCP tab in Pwireless2 and check the checkbox for 'nolink'.

Did that and after browsing for awhile ra0 appears to be stable. Will let you know if this changes.

FWIW, I think installing Chrome was a good choice.
Now I just have to install Firefox as my main default browser.

[hokal]

hokal wrote:

Eee-Control application
Is there any added value for my 901 ? I could not get it working Confused

Can you expand on this?

Sorry I'm an idi.t. I mixed up eeecontrol with CPU frequeny scaling, which does not work with my 901.
eeecontrol: may be I do not understand. If I set CPU to powersave and tick "Fan Suppress" the fan should stop running with thresholds set higher than the actual temperature. But that does not happen. The fan keeps on running .
Problem solved after rebooting. Sorry again!
"fixmenus" was a good hint. Solved the problem.
The biggest remaining problem is the unsharp font of chrome! The size isn't that bad for me !!

[jemimah]

For the rendering fonts, you can go to Options->Under the hood and pick new ones. It's just mapping the defaults to a crappy font. I'll change that for 3.5. It seems less obvious how to change the widget fonts. I'll investigate.

Prehistoric, I think it's always going to see your slow hard drive as sdb since it's slower to respond than the usb drive. Drive letters are first come, first serve.

Cimh, I never tried partitioning a USB drive, I'll check it out. In nolink mode, you will have to tell it to connect manually, by clicking the tray icon - I'll try to make it better for the next version. I may be be able to modify Vattery and make a temperature monitor, we shall see. I find Youtube is terrible, even in Xorg, if you're in powersave mode, especially underclocked. Works great in super-performance mode though.

Hokal, can you check if the Fan script is actually starting when you switch to powersave? The command is 'ps -ef |grep fan'. If you change the thresholds, switch to performance mode, then back to powersave, and it should work.

[jemimah]

I'm poking around with the font some more. It seems the font size only changes for websites that don't specify a font. I know puppy is missing fonts that websites expect to have. I'll see if PuppyMartin figured out how to fix it in Chrome BrowserLinux.

In the meantime Control++ works well.

[cimh]

Hokal, can you check if the Fan script is actually starting when you switch to powersave? The command is 'ps -ef |grep fan'. If you change the thresholds, switch to performance mode, then back to powersave, and it should work.

It does work I know what hokal means the first time you select it the fan doesnt switch off - but if you then toggle cpu speed and back to psave it does switch off and then it remembers - so I dont think this is a problem.

cimh

[prehistoric]

...Prehistoric, I think it's always going to see your slow hard drive as sdb since it's slower to respond than the usb drive. Drive letters are first come, first serve...

Funny you should mention the USB drive. Even though it is now displayed as a USB flash drive, the hint "pmedia=usbflash" still causes the boot to fail with the "eee-431.sfs not found" message. This puzzles me, because if the USB drive comes up first it should be recognized during boot up. I can mount /dev/sda1 manually and change things on the SD card, so it is definitely there. (This is how I recovered from the failed boot after the test.) It looks like something gets lost between the kernel boot parameters and OS initialization.

[jemimah]

I didn't change the usb detection in the init script, only the script that makes the icons show up. For some reason, usb drives are showing up as 'removable', which makes the icon script think they are floppies. Now, if you ever do connect a floppy to your Eee, there's a chance it will show up as USB. It works anyway, so it's not that big of deal. It would be hard for me to fix the init script without having the broken hardware to figure out where it's failing.