Puppy Slacko 5.5 XL

[musher0]

@ koulaxizis

Many thanks for your Slacko-5.5_XL! There had indeed been a need for a Puppy as complete as this for a long time.

Continue your good work!

musher0

[koulaxizis]

Many thanks for your Slacko-5.5_XL! There had indeed been a need for a Puppy as complete as this for a long time.

Continue your good work!

musher0

Happy to offer anything back to the community!

[greengeek]

Hi Koulaxizis, this looks like a really nice puppy. I plan to install it and give it more of a thrash over the next few weeks. I do have some comments based on my testing from the liveCD, but these are not criticisms, just notes about things that would bring it even closer to perfection in my eyes...

1) The only thing that REALLY annoyed me was that there was a "reminder" screen that appeared a few minutes after opening the browser to tell me "Thanks for installing DuckDuckGo"... I found this very intrusive and it really annoyed me. (not your fault!)

2) Geany is missing from the document menu and is in the utility menu instead. I would be inclined to put it back into document.

3) My preference is to have 3 desktops available not just 2 and I prefer them to be visible towards the left of the taskbar, close to the main menu. (just force of habit...).

4) The Firefox font is tall and thin in some places but not others. For example, on the DuckDuckGo search page you can see that the "search anonymously, find instantly" text below the search bar seems vertically stretched and any text entered into the search bar is also stretched, whereas text entered into the url bar does not. I should probably know how to sort this out quickly by myself but I don't

5) It seems incredibly slow to start LibreOffice from LiveCD. Havent tried installed version yet. The CPU load goes to max for a very long time while loading LibreOffice. I suspect this is mostly due to the way the CD I/O is operating on my system, so I'm hoping the installed version doesn't exhibit this. (I think this is the one redeeming feature of Abiword - snappy startup. However the benefits of Libre outweigh this in most cases)

6) Not much you can do about this one - but I have an issue with the name Slacko. I have had feedback from physically and/or psychiatrically challenged users who find the name offensive and so I have had to resort to installing other less capable puppies to satisfy those users. Some people just don't want to see the name Slacko up on screen, and given their circumstances I can see why. It's a shame because this is probably the most competent puppy right at the moment. EDIT : If I knew how to do it I would remove every instance of the name "Slacko" and replace it with XLpup (absolutely no disrespect intended to 01micko as Slacko has been my daily driver for a very long time now...)

Anyway - great job! This is a nice offering.

[oldyeller]

Hi koulaxizis,

This looks and sounds really great I am downloading now, it will take me about 2hrs for it to complete

Give feed back sometime tomorrow.


Cheers

[koulaxizis]

Hi koulaxizis,

This looks and sounds really great I am downloading now, it will take me about 2hrs for it to complete

Give feed back sometime tomorrow.


Cheers

I'm looking forward for your feedback!

Hi Koulaxizis, this looks like a really nice puppy. I plan to install it and give it more of a thrash over the next few weeks. I do have some comments based on my testing from the liveCD, but these are not criticisms, just notes about things that would bring it even closer to perfection in my eyes...

1) The only thing that REALLY annoyed me was that there was a "reminder" screen that appeared a few minutes after opening the browser to tell me "Thanks for installing DuckDuckGo"... I found this very intrusive and it really annoyed me. (not your fault!)

2) Geany is missing from the document menu and is in the utility menu instead. I would be inclined to put it back into document.

3) My preference is to have 3 desktops available not just 2 and I prefer them to be visible towards the left of the taskbar, close to the main menu. (just force of habit...).

4) The Firefox font is tall and thin in some places but not others. For example, on the DuckDuckGo search page you can see that the "search anonymously, find instantly" text below the search bar seems vertically stretched and any text entered into the search bar is also stretched, whereas text entered into the url bar does not. I should probably know how to sort this out quickly by myself but I don't

5) It seems incredibly slow to start LibreOffice from LiveCD. Havent tried installed version yet. The CPU load goes to max for a very long time while loading LibreOffice. I suspect this is mostly due to the way the CD I/O is operating on my system, so I'm hoping the installed version doesn't exhibit this. (I think this is the one redeeming feature of Abiword - snappy startup. However the benefits of Libre outweigh this in most cases)

6) Not much you can do about this one - but I have an issue with the name Slacko. I have had feedback from physically and/or psychiatrically challenged users who find the name offensive and so I have had to resort to installing other less capable puppies to satisfy those users. Some people just don't want to see the name Slacko up on screen, and given their circumstances I can see why. It's a shame because this is probably the most competent puppy right at the moment. EDIT : If I knew how to do it I would remove every instance of the name "Slacko" and replace it with XLpup (absolutely no disrespect intended to 01micko as Slacko has been my daily driver for a very long time now...)

Anyway - great job! This is a nice offering.

Hey, thanks for testing the iso and for helping me out to make it better! I'll try to comment on all subjects!

1) During the last test of the distro, this message didn't appeared (nor on the previous tests). However, when i did a full install (after i had already uploaded and shared the iso), this message appeared on first firefox run! And yes, it was very annoying!

2) That's a correct point! There are two cases: Or it was like this on the original Puppy Slacko, or i made this by mistake! :p

3) Well, this is purely subjective, a matter of habit and preference. I suppose that everyone knows (or can easily find out) how to add or remove desktops.

4) I am not sure that i understand / see the problem (see screenshot)... Seems OK to me (note that i'm viewing it on a netbook)

5) Though Libre Office is a powerful office suite, it's irritatingly slow on startup (once again, note that i'm working on a netbook).

6) I didn't change the name because 01Micko and the community did all the hard work, i just choose some programs and customized the look, nothing important! I was in dillema even for adding "XL" on the distro! However, you can remove all Slacko wallpapers from /usr/share/backgrounds and change all distro specs from /etc/DISTRO_SPECS - be VERY carefull!!

I hope i covered you fully! Thanks again for your time, it's really great to see that we have an active and always helpfull community!

[Ray MK]

Hi koulaxizis

Nice puppy – all seems very good and working well OOTB.
Skype would have been nice – very popular. An sfs must be somewhere.

Running a manual frugal from an ntfs partition on the E732 laptop.
Using an external LCD monitor (laptop screen cracked) and booting via grub4dos from an Sdcard.

video-info-glx 1.5.1 Sat 17 Aug 2013 on Slacko Puppy XL 5.5 Linux 3.2.33-4g i686
2.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 18)
oem: Intel(R)Ironlake Mobile Graphics Chipset Accelerated VGA BIOS
product: Intel(R)Ironlake Mobile Graphics Controller Hardware Version 0.0

X Server: Xorg Driver: intel
X.Org version: 1.12.3
dimensions: 1440x900 pixels (380x238 millimeters)
depth of root window: 24 planes

direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.4
OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ironlake Mobile x86/MMX/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.4

Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 370 @ 2.40GHz
Core 0: @933 1: @933 2: @933 3: @933 MHz

...the above also recorded at '/tmp/root/video-info-glx'.


Overall – super puppy – many thanks and best regards - Ray


+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|S|l|a|c|k|o|X|L|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

# skype
bash: skype: command not found
# uname -a
Linux puppypc13674 3.2.33-4g #1 SMP Fri Nov 2 20:42:54 EST 2012 i686 Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 370 @ 2.40GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 1804992 764644 1040348 0 190284
-/+ buffers: 574360 1230632
Swap: 0 0 0
# uptime
12:50:18 up 1 day, 14:18, load average: 0.43, 0.37, 0.44
#

[koulaxizis]

Hi koulaxizis

Nice puppy – all seems very good and working well OOTB.
Skype would have been nice – very popular. An sfs must be somewhere.

Running a manual frugal from an ntfs partition on the E732 laptop.
Using an external LCD monitor (laptop screen cracked) and booting via grub4dos from an Sdcard.

video-info-glx 1.5.1 Sat 17 Aug 2013 on Slacko Puppy XL 5.5 Linux 3.2.33-4g i686
2.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 18)
oem: Intel(R)Ironlake Mobile Graphics Chipset Accelerated VGA BIOS
product: Intel(R)Ironlake Mobile Graphics Controller Hardware Version 0.0

X Server: Xorg Driver: intel
X.Org version: 1.12.3
dimensions: 1440x900 pixels (380x238 millimeters)
depth of root window: 24 planes

direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.4
OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ironlake Mobile x86/MMX/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.4

Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 370 @ 2.40GHz
Core 0: @933 1: @933 2: @933 3: @933 MHz

...the above also recorded at '/tmp/root/video-info-glx'.


Overall – super puppy – many thanks and best regards - Ray


+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|S|l|a|c|k|o|X|L|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

# skype
bash: skype: command not found
# uname -a
Linux puppypc13674 3.2.33-4g #1 SMP Fri Nov 2 20:42:54 EST 2012 i686 Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 370 @ 2.40GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 1804992 764644 1040348 0 190284
-/+ buffers: 574360 1230632
Swap: 0 0 0
# uptime
12:50:18 up 1 day, 14:18, load average: 0.43, 0.37, 0.44
#

Thank you very much for this detailed report mate!

I'd swear that i installed Skype!! Seems like i wanted to but i forgot it! Probably i was too excited during the remaster!

[oldyeller]

Hi koulaxizis,

I really like what you have done, great job

If you want people to be able to edit the obmenu you will need did to remove obmenu-refresh from /usr/bin for there changes to be permanent. Or you can make a couple of scripts to move it to another location and than to put it back if people what to use it for the puppy menu.


Cheers

[koulaxizis]

Hi koulaxizis,

I really like what you have done, great job

If you want people to be able to edit the obmenu you will need did to remove obmenu-refresh from /usr/bin for there changes to be permanent. Or you can make a couple of scripts to move it to another location and than to put it back if people what to use it for the puppy menu.


Cheers

Thanks for testing the distro and for the advice!
Obmenu was a last moment addition, so i didn't test it enough!

[greengeek]

Hi Koulaxizis, I did a frugal install to my Toshiba laptop (2GHz, 512MB) and it is (of course) much faster than it was from CD. Good useability from LibreOffice - I typed up some documents and pdfs and was very happy.

I did have some other issues during my testing so I thought I would mention them in case others have similar problems and might be able to suggest possible causes I could look at. Here is what I found:

1) Sometimes if I click an audio file it opens in Pmusic as normal but plays twice at the same time (giving a sort of echo effect). There is only one instance of pmusic visible, but two identical audio streams playing at once.

2) When I play an mpg it works fine, but when I terminate it by clicking the cross at top right (ie close window button) it stops playing and immediately returns to the beginning and plays again. The second time I click the close window button it closes immediately. I don't get this effect with an mp4 or avi

3) Sometimes when I have a window open displaying the contents of a usb drive I see the cpu run indefinitely at 100%. This only stops when I close the window.

4) I have a directory which contains some .jpg files and a .svg file. If I click the first jpg it opens viewnior and I can then step through the jpgs ok, but as soon as viewnior tries to open the svg it drives the cpu to 100% for a long time then viewnior fails and closes itself. If I just click the svg by itself it opens fine with Inkscape Lite so the file itself is fine. Maybe viewnior should not be trying to open svg files? Maybe there is a window manager problem that is struggling to handle svgs???

Anyone else seen things like this before?

[Colonel Panic]

Thanks for this one! I'm posting from it now, it's a good replacement for the old Puppy Slacko FAT which was showing its age on my machine (Seamonkey kept crashing on it).

Cheers,

CP .

[koulaxizis]

Hi Koulaxizis, I did a frugal install to my Toshiba laptop (2GHz, 512MB) and it is (of course) much faster than it was from CD. Good useability from LibreOffice - I typed up some documents and pdfs and was very happy.

I did have some other issues during my testing so I thought I would mention them in case others have similar problems and might be able to suggest possible causes I could look at. Here is what I found:

1) Sometimes if I click an audio file it opens in Pmusic as normal but plays twice at the same time (giving a sort of echo effect). There is only one instance of pmusic visible, but two identical audio streams playing at once.

2) When I play an mpg it works fine, but when I terminate it by clicking the cross at top right (ie close window button) it stops playing and immediately returns to the beginning and plays again. The second time I click the close window button it closes immediately. I don't get this effect with an mp4 or avi

3) Sometimes when I have a window open displaying the contents of a usb drive I see the cpu run indefinitely at 100%. This only stops when I close the window.

4) I have a directory which contains some .jpg files and a .svg file. If I click the first jpg it opens viewnior and I can then step through the jpgs ok, but as soon as viewnior tries to open the svg it drives the cpu to 100% for a long time then viewnior fails and closes itself. If I just click the svg by itself it opens fine with Inkscape Lite so the file itself is fine. Maybe viewnior should not be trying to open svg files? Maybe there is a window manager problem that is struggling to handle svgs???

Anyone else seen things like this before?

Hello greengeek, sorry for the late response!

I have the same problem with pmusic. I'm not a fan of pmusic however, it's kinda slow on my netbook. I usually remove it and play all my audio files with gnome-mplayer.

I haven't met any problem with mpg files, everything worked fine on every test, maybe someone else can help you with that!

About the third matter, i have noticed that happens (to me)only in case of loading too many files and especially thumbnails.

I also tried to view all kind of pictures with viewnior, step between them etc and i had no problem. Once again, someone else will have to report if had the same problem and see if we can find the problem's root and therefor a solution.

I'm grateful for reporting these issues and helping me improve the distro. Thanks!!

Thanks for this one! I'm posting from it now, it's a good replacement for the old Puppy Slacko FAT which was showing its age on my machine (Seamonkey kept crashing on it).

Cheers,

CP .

Glad you liked it my friend! I intended to release this one and stop but seems like a lot of people found it useful, so i'm thinking about work more on it and release another version in the future. However, i will have to talk with 01micko first and ask for his license to let me keep remastering his project, it's important to me to be clear with everyone before continue.

[vicmz]

I intended to release this one and stop but seems like a lot of people found it useful, so i'm thinking about work more on it and release another version in the future.

I think you should. First, because it's fun. Second, because you can improve it for yourself, your friends and forum users interested. You don't need to spend all of your time, all of us have lives offline so we can understand. Slacko XL is based on a Puppy that is translatable by langpacks, so you'll have more users than you think.

By the way, for OpenboxPlus I need some help learning how to set the pinstall to change themes, if anyone can tell me some commands to switch icons, gtk and wallpaper, as well as turning the pinboard empty (no desk icons), please post in the OpenboxPlus thread.

[HBlaine]

Just downloaded the .ISO last night, burned to CD, and did a test boot on my Thinkpad T410s, i5, 2.4 ghz. Runs fine. Just set up and did a frugal install to a 16 GB USB thumb drive, and have it booted up on T410s. Everything detected/setup out of the box. Wireless setup was effortless (as usual with Puppy). The only thing I had to configure was activating "tap" on the touchpad, which took a whole (gasp!) 30 seconds.

Looks like an excellent job here. I'm going to look forward using it!

Thanks so much for all the great work!

[koulaxizis]

Just downloaded the .ISO last night, burned to CD, and did a test boot on my Thinkpad T410s, i5, 2.4 ghz. Runs fine. Just set up and did a frugal install to a 16 GB USB thumb drive, and have it booted up on T410s. Everything detected/setup out of the box. Wireless setup was effortless (as usual with Puppy). The only thing I had to configure was activating "tap" on the touchpad, which took a whole (gasp!) 30 seconds.

Looks like an excellent job here. I'm going to look forward using it!

Thanks so much for all the great work!

Happy to hear that you are pleased mate!! If you have any problems to report or any ideas / proposals for future releases, i'll be glad to hear from you!!

[eztuxer]

Works real smooth on AAO Acer Aspire One netbook with 1.5 GB ram @ 1.6 GHz, and Fujistsu Siemens. 4 GB ram @ 3 GHZ
Good job.
Installed VLC & Skype.

[koulaxizis]

Works real smooth on AAO Acer Aspire One netbook with 1.5 GB ram @ 1.6 GHz, and Fujistsu Siemens. 4 GB ram @ 3 GHZ
Good job.
Installed VLC & Skype.

Thank you brother!

Skype was on my list but seems like i made some mistake (or simply forgot it) and was left out of the final iso.

I'm so pleased with gnome-mplayer that i can't use vlc at all!

Are you working on a fresh Pupitup lately? It would be nice to see a version based on a later Puppy!

[eztuxer]

VLC has some recording "editing" functions very handy to save clips from the file it reads.
You can pause recording during advertising windows to get an ad free video/audio file.
You need to set the advanced controls ON in the view tab.
Also reads ALL codecs I run accross.

How nice to have a loaded puplet that needs just a bit of customization to fit my needs without having to install all myself (Lazyness rimes with happiness).

I love Puppy for it's small size and speed, but I end up needing quite a bit of software and I always favor a clean new install to any upgrade, so a 600 + MB .iso is fine since I run some not too old computers (3-5 years) anyway.

Thanks for your efforts.

[eztuxer]

Built in mic on netbook not working, neither does the mic headset.
The speakers and headphones are woking OK.

DESCRIPTION: Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller
VENDOR: 8086 DEVICE: 27d8
KERNEL MODULE: snd_hda_intel

Everything is UP on Alsa mixer and retrovol.

Any clues ?

[eztuxer]

It is all working fine now.
Changed the soundcard in Skype from "default" to "HDA intel ACL268"
It somehow fixed it in MHWave too.
Internal and external mics OK.