I agree with everything said here. And I am down 100% with the Official Puppy Page idea, which would obviously need not only to be written, but maintained to a high degree. I really don't think it would be that hard to do. A simple page, with all the ducks... uh... I mean to say, Puppies in a row, and with the latest and best download/site/mirror for each one, making them as user friendly as possible. Likely, most of the writing them up is all done already. They're just spread around and it looks a lot like confusion and chaos. It would be only a matter of copying and pasting the text and links and making it all look pretty, then publishing the page. Can't say for certain, but that's what it looks like to me.BarryK wrote:Yes, my comment was spur-of-the-moment.ozcjp wrote:Don't knock the puplets, they are saying something important.Bindee wrote: Do you see that as a good or bad thing?
Someone else said a similar thing just recently about a project that things seem to be moving away from the user friendliness of the original puppy idea.
Along with the stated goals of puppy ( http://puppylinux.com/about.htm ) there is another goal that is not always recognised, but has been well and truly met, namely, to create a framework for rapidly building special-purpose systems. The "puplets" ( or "non-puppies, if you prefer ) are just public examples of what I suspect are a vast array of systems, each tailored to a specific task, be it intrusion testing of networks, backing up on the fly, cold booting, you name it. Most of them will never see the light of day, but they all depend on the simplicity and stability that BK created. ( Barry, take a bow please...)
As a simple example; your friend's M$ machine has some sort of hernia and refuses to play. You take you trusty puppy CD, boot it up, and recover all those priceless photos from My Pictures, earning undying gratitude in the process.
A more complex version: install an embedded toolchain onto a running puppy, get all the paths right so that everything works, then re-master th puppy. You have just saved yourself hours of work for the next time you need to work on the code in that embedded device. I could go on, but some of the examples would probably get me into trouble for disclosing proprietory information. So don't knock the puplets, they are pointers to something much bigger.
And yes, I believe this is the right forum to discuss the matter. This is for feedback on the quirky system, probably read by BK himself. And it may just be that with what he is doing with quirky he is taking puppy to another level entirely, and if in the process our inane chatter inspires him in any way at all to keep at it, well, so much the better.
I think it is healthy to have a lot of diversity and individuals being given freedom to create.
Actually, what prompted my comment was the post from someone who was confused about where to download Quirky.
It is easy for someone to come along to the forum for the first time, and think that Quirky is a release of Puppy.
Ditto for some of the other derivatives that use this forum.
I wonder if there is any way to clarify this, without kicking all the derivatives out?
A separate section for the "official" Puppy releases? -- like, a big dividing line, one side is the official pups, the other side anything goes.
...I dunno, just thinking "out loud".
Just to clarify, this is John Murga's forum, not managed by me in any way.
There is a thread recently started, asking who is John Murga -- I just saw the title, haven't read it.
Way back in the first couple of Puppy-years, I ran Puppy forums, but I found it difficult to do, as well as be a developer. John offered to do it, and said that he was prepared to stick it out for the long haul -- which he has, both hosting and managing the forum, though he is very hands-off as he has a busy job.
The problem with all the creative minds and their efforts is that things get spread all over the place and it's hard to tell what's what sometimes. They're busy creating stuff, not worrying about what Web pages look like. If so desired, another list could be kept for those Pup forks and derivatives which are headed in a solid direction, and which are noteworthy. The individual creators of the various forks and derivatives should do as great a job as they possibly can in writing up their own creation and presenting it.
I, too, mistook Quirky for another Pup. And I have been correcting my bad grammar wherever I might find it.
I like the forum just the way it is. It's bulletin-boardish style is typical of the creative mind and highly useful. Some threads live a long time, and that is as it should be, and some threads just die--and that is as it should be! I suppose the only thing I don't like about it is that I can't run as many searches as I want, whenever I want. Barring that, the simpler the better.
