New forum for Fatdog
Fatdog has, for years, since its inception, always been piggybacking on Puppy Linux forum. Firstly because of its obvious roots; also because we simply didn't have enough man power to run and police an independent forum ourselves.As the previous blog entry indicates, however, John de Murga, the owner of the Puppy Linux forum, sadly passed away, and the original Puppy Linux forum went down (for a time).
Behind the scenes people are frantically working to bring it up, but there are also efforts to setup a replacement forums, including one by rockedge.
By now, both efforts have been fruitful: the old forum has been resurrected and the rockedge forum has flourished with old and new members (re-)joining it.
The stewards of Puppy Linux has decided that the old forum will continue in read-only mode as archives, while rockedge forum will take over as the new Puppy Linux forum.
Rockedge has graciously offered a section of the forum specifically for Fatdog, for which we are very grateful.
After some internal discussions, we have decided to take the offer and continue the tradition of piggybacking on Puppy Linux forum. All of Fatdog team members have now re-joined there as well.
For your reference:
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The new forum address: https://forum.puppylinux.com (Fatdog posts will be in the Fatdog section)
The old (archived) forum (in case you need to review/check old postings for older version of Fatdogs): http://oldforum.puppylinux.com (Fatdog posts are in the Puppy Projects section)
We'll see you there in the new forum!
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Goodbye to a friend - John de Murga
John de Murga (aka John Murga) was the owner of the official Puppy Linux forum, formerly located in http://murga-linux.com/puppy/index.phpIf you use Fatdog64, you will know that we hosted our support threads on the same forum.
But my involvement with the Puppy Linux forum dates back well before then. I started browsing the forum when I was still a Windows user back in 2006; and joined in 2007 when I was converted into Puppy Linux user - and had been a regular on the forum ever since. Until the forum went down in early July 2020.
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But in all my years being John's forum, I don't really know John Murga. Not personally. Never met him. Never spoke with him. Not even knowing how he looked like - well, not until a few days before I wrote this. Not through my fault though, I only know bits and pieces that he himself chose to share, for he himself claimed to be 'the man of mystery'.
He and his work, however, left an indelible mark on my life. It was such a simple work. Setting up an online forum. What was so difficult about it? Get a web-hosting site. Click a button, and you've got a forum and up running. Easy. Everyone can do it, right?
No. Not every one can do what John did.
The forum he set up was the forum where I spent lots of my past life on. Where I got help when I started and when I stumbled. Where I, eventually, helped others as I became proficient enough. Where I, unexpectedly, met and became friends with people in the real world.
All of these because he had the tenacity to keep the forum going for 15+ years; and let the forum to govern itself instead of strict policing found in many others. He even had the magnanimity to allow people to post links of competing projects and forums. This was one of the factors why so many people stayed on and the forum grew to become the melting pot of folks from all walks of life, sharing the same interest - Puppy Linux, and Linux in general.
So it was great shock and sadness that I learn of his passing recently in May 2020. I was even more stunned to know that he had left a young family - a daughter and twins who were born shortly after his passing. I have young children myself, I could not even begin to contemplate how it must have felt, to be left so soon, and so suddenly.
Nevertheless, I would like offer a prayer of hope for whom that John's family, that John had left a legacy that not many people could manage to do: to change the life of thousands, if not then ten thousands. John had left many friends that he himself probably didn't know. I was one of them, one among the thousands. For us, he is a hero. In every sense of the word.
Goodbye, John, and all blessings in your next journey.
You will be missed, but not forgotten.
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Eulogy from 01micko, the current steward of Puppy Linux
Eulogy from Barry Kauler, the creator of Puppy Linux
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How to create Nvidia driver SFS for Fatdog and Puppy
If you need to use Nvidia driver (instead of the open-source nouveau driver), I've written the steps to prepare the driver SFS yourself.I wrote this article because Nvidia driver is sensitive to kernel changes; each kernel changes requires a rebuild of the driver. And we usually don't provide nvidia driver for beta releases.
Also, there are variations of the nvidia driver (long term, short term, legacy, etc) supporting different cards. Creating a driver for each variation, and re-creating them every time the kernel change, takes a lot of time.
So I've published the way for you to do that yourself. The steps enable you to create the SFS yourself, or, if you can't be bothered about the SFS, it will install the driver directly for you.
As a bonus, it should work on recent Puppy Linux too.
The instruction is here.
Note: this article is an update of the original instructions I wrote here (which is XenialPup64 specific).
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Woof-CE Next Generation
Woof-CE is the Community Edition (CE) of Woof build system. Woof build system (currently at version 2, so often called as Woof2) is the meta-distribution of Puppy Linux. It enables one to build a fully customised Puppy Linux distribution from many parent distros.I have been working on the next generation of Woof build system. It initially started as a tool running on top of Woof2 infrastructure (original blog post here and here; the original branch holding the code is called "deb-build" on my github Woof-CE fork) - and now I have modified them to *replace* the Woof2 infrastructure and completely run on its own.
Front-ends have been added, so deb-build is now only one of many (future) builders to build Puppy Linux from different parent distros (deb-build builds from Debian-like distros, like Debian, Ubuntu, and possibly even Mint - I haven't tried that, though).
The main premise of the new build system is that puppy adapts to the parent distro, rather than the other way around. Doing this means the original parent distro is kept as close to its original design (including the use of its original package management system) and thus making more of the parent distro packages usable in Puppy derived from it - because as far as I can see, that is the reason for having Puppy as a derivative anyway (if you're not interested in using parent distro packages, then may as well build Puppy from scratch where you control everything and can optimise everything).
The links section of this blog points you to the most recent and experimental version of this build system ("woof-next-james" branch on my github fork of Woof-CE - this branch supersedes the original "deb-build" branch posted in my earlier blog posts). As they mature they will be posted to the official Woof-CE repository under the same name; and finally the most stable code would be merged to "woof-next" branch of Woof-CE (note that "woof-next" is an integration branch and contains changes and contributions from others too)
"woof-next" currently builds an ISO capable of booting to Xorg. There are some little modifications I have not yet ported from deb-build, but they will be soon.
In the experimental branch, you will find builder for building Slackware-based puppy too. The builder works but the resulting ISO will not boot because of it is missing puppy-specific packages that are not available from standard Slackware repository (e.g. busybox, mingetty, etc).
Note that this woof-next is still in its early phase. It lacks both the diversity (not many distros supported as parents yet) and versatility (it will only build x86 puppies, x86_64 being experimental and arm is completely unsupported yet) compared to the Woof2 build system. In time, I hope to address all of these.
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Puppy Linux build script - released
And here is the script: here.The announcement is here: here.
The script is now close to 400 lines, but it has added the ability to use multiple repositories, and it now register packages properly enough for apt to work with it. Xorg is now working, one can boot to desktop with jwm and rox-filer. Not bad for such a small script, I reckon
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Puppy Linux build script
Last evening, I took a stab at building Puppy Linux using Ubuntu base. I could have used Woof-CE's scripts directly, but it didn't work smoothly for me. I had a choice of debugging it - but I thought, it was more fun to write my own build script, I mean, how difficult could it be?Well, it turned out, not too bad. In a couple of hours that evening, I managed to write a script, less than 300 lines, which pulls out Ubuntu packages off its repository, does dependency checking, install the packages with proper dpkg records and build myself a nice Puppy - command line only. I took Puppy base (rootfs-skeleton and initrd-tree0) from Woof-CE, the rest was done by my script. I announced that to the forum and it was generally well-received.
I will probably polish it a little bit (perhaps to the point that I can get Xorg running) before releasing the code (in my github fork of Woof-CE). Watch this space.
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Puppy Linux lives!
In case you haven't heard it, Puppy Linux Slacko 5.7 has been released !This release is special in so many ways.
Firstly, it represents the FIRST ever official Puppy release from Woof-CE, the community-maintained version of Woof (the Puppy-builder, the meta-distribution of Puppy Linux).
Secondly, it represents the FIRST ever official Puppy Linux release after Barry Kauler (the original author of Puppy Linux) stepped down back in September last year.
More than everything else, this release is a statement of reassurance to the world that Puppy Linux will continue to live and grow strong under the new stewardship and community contributions.
It will continue to move with the times and adapts to new future. Already, a 64-bit thoroughbred Puppy Linux is in the works (Slacko64). The mailing list is rife with contributed ideas on how to bring Puppy to boot on UEFI machines.
Congrats and greets to the team: 01micko (Puppy Slacko), mavrothal (Woof-CE gatekeeper) and many other contributors (zigbert et al).
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Barry Kauler is back
Barry Kauler, the original author of PuppyLinux (here and here) - from which Fatdog64 originally came from, is back.This patriarch of the Puppy community has been missing for over two months after he announced his retirement from Puppy Linux back in late September. News from him became few and far between; and there have been understandable confusions and worries among his followers in the Murga Linux forum.
But now he's back, and he's still doing Linux, among other things. It's no longer Puppy Linux admittedly, but is a quirky variant called - obviously enough - Quirky Linux (or Quirky Puppy, etc). Old habits (or hobby) dies hard :)
Whatever it is, it is a heart warming that he's still with us and is still doing Linux development of one sort or another. Let's hope that his stay is a long one.
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How to run Slacko Puppy side-by-side with Fatdog64
Somebody asked me recently whether it is possible to run Slacko Puppy side-by-side (or along side) Fatdog - that is, without the need for dual-booting etc.It is possible.
In my original response I provided the outline steps of how to do so, but now I thought others may be interested too - so I decided to write an article about it. The article is here.
Enjoy.
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