Squeezed Arm Puppy

Version 5.95, 29 June 2012
This pup is codenamed "sap", meaning "Squeezed Arm Puppy" and is built specifically to run on the Raspberry Pi. Version 5.95 is the first alpha-quality build that I am uploading for others to test. It is very important to understand that this is alpha-quality, meaning that it has some bugs.

Puppy Linux enthusiasts know that their pup is remarkably small, and this new port is no exception. It is built from Debian Squeeze armel binary .deb packages (plus many that I compiled) and the download SD-card image is only 85.4MB -- compressed of course, the image expands to fit a 4GB card.

In that tiny size you get "the works", including a comprehensive suite of configurations apps, Chromium web browser, Abiword word processor, Gnumeric spreadsheet editor, mtPaint image editor, InkscapeLite vector drawing editor, Osmo personal organizer, Ayttm multi-protocol chat client, Notecase notes organiser, Gnome-mplayer media player, Sylpheed email client, and so on -- checkout the menu, you will be amazed!

There will likely be more uploads of "sap" in the coming weeks, as bugs are fixed. To follow what is happening, please monitor my blog:

http://bkhome.org/blog/

Release notes

  1. Gtkdialog
    Puppy Linux has many utilities and applications written in ash/bash shell scripts, using 'gtkdialog' for the GUIs. Unfortunately, gtkdialog (version 0.8.0) renders the widgets in a window in "reverse order" on the arm architecture -- see my blog for a report on this, with photos: http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=02809. This is a big one that needs fixing. I did send an email to the gtkdialog maintainer awhile back. Please help!
  2. Printing?
    I have not tried it. This pup has everything, cups, ghostscript, foomatic-filters, all of the gutenprint drivers. But does it actually work? If there are any problems, this may be one for a CUPs guru to tackle.
  3. Sane scanning?
    Again, untested. This pup has Xsane GUI and hundreds of sane drivers.
  4. Digital camera?
    Again, untested. This pup has libghoto2 and my very own PupCamera app. It is supposed to auto-detect when you plug in a digital camera to usb port.
  5. Dialup Internet
    For the older analog-modem and modern broadband dialup, we have 'wvdial' and our GUI PupDial. However, I compiled a very old version of wvdial, 1.41, partly due to it's very small size, but I don't know if it will work with modern usb modem devices. For someone interested in this area, and with C++ coding ability, this old wvdial may be a good project to update, as it is vastly smaller than the later wvdials that require wvstreams.
  6. Menu entries
    Some packages have menu entries in inappropriate locations, for example Gnome-mplayer is found in the 'Utility' menu. I will fix this.
  7. Keyboard
    My keyboard works, however it is somewhat broken. The arrow and del keys do not work. An Xorg wizard is needed to fix this! More help needed!
  8. devx
    Puppy can be transformed into a complete compile environment by the installation of just one file, that we refer to by the generic name of "devx". In this case it is 'devx_sap6_5.95.sfs'. Normally, the Bootmanager can be used to install and uninstall SFS files, however due to the manner in which Puppy is installed on the SD card, it is necessary to click on the devx file to open it, then copy all the files into "/" -- see instructions at http://puppylinux.com/hard-puppy.htm. Note that as well as C/C++ support, the devx has Vala, Genie and BaCon compilers, see http://bkhome.org/genie and http://bkhome.org/bacon -- BaCon is enhanced BASIC and is our recommended language for all newbies who want to be able to create fast and small compiled apps. Note, there is also an IDE for BaCon, and a GUI RAD under development, but not yet included in the devx.
  9. config.txt
    The first partition on the SD card has this file, with "hdmi_force_hotplug=1" in it. This overrides autodetection of the monitor, and if you are not using a hdmi monitor then you will want to comment-out this line.
  10. Retrovol
    We have an audio mixer applet in the tray, but it crashes at startup. Any other tray mixer that works? Um, sound is broken, no wonder Retrovol crashes.
...enough issues to keep us going for awhile!

Sources repo

I try to keep all sources available in my sources repo:
http://bkhome.org/sources
Us#er#na#me#: pu#pp#y Pa#ss#wo#rd: li#nu#x

Further notes

  1. For a quick check of all packages in this pup, look at file /root/.packages/woof-installed-packages
  2. Puppy has the PET package system. Package files have the extension .pet. If you compile an application and would like to create a PET package, see: http://puppylinux.com/development/createpet.htm

Feedback

if you fix anything, please post at my blog. If you want to send a file, my email address is STARTbkaulerATgmailDOTcomEND (obfuscated). Please do not post any bug reports to me, or any general queries, my workload is up to the eyeballs.

Regards,
Barry Kauler
29 June 2012