Wary Puppy 5.1.4 released

This is a bugfix and minor upgrade of Wary 5.1.3. Wary is an edition of Puppy Linux that supports older hardware, including analog modems for those on dialup, and old video hardware.

The full announcement and release notes are here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/wary-5.1.4/release-Wary-5.1.4.htm

Some extra notes:

1. Theme
The Wary 5.1.x series has had the same theme throughout and 5.1.4 is no exception. I do plan an interesting new theme for 5.2.

2. Kernel
5.1.4 has an SMP-enabled kernel that has a configuration change that fixes a nasty kernel crash and other mysterious behaviour. I have also compiled a uniprocessor-only kernel but not built 5.1.4 with it -- apparently there is still some old hardware that won't boot with a SMP kernel, so if you have such hardware there is a build of Wary 5.1.3.4 with the uniprocessor kernel: http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/test/wary-5.1.3.4/wary-5.1.3.4-uni.iso
-- I am interested in knowing of anyone with hardware that requires such a kernel.

The Wary 5.1.4 live-CD (120.5MB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/wary-5.1.4/wary-5.1.4.iso

'devx' SFS file for complete compiling support (120.1MB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/wary-5.1.4/devx_wary_5.1.4.sfs

Delta files to upgrade from 5.1.3:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/wary-5.1.4/delta_files

Forum thread for discussion:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=67572&start=315

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Comments

I do plan an interesting new theme for 5.2.
Username: Sage
Guy-on-a-bike enters Sydney Harbour?! "..there is a build of Wary 5.1.3.4 with the uniprocessor kernel.." - one report tells it uses less mem. Not able to test really old kit this week, but uni- only for Wary sounds a great idea. Tell the go-faster kiddies with too much dosh to push off. World+dog has got to learn to stop pandering to capitalist pigs. Far too much perfectly satisfactory HW washing around the globe already.

Bad deal
Username: Sage
"... see failures recorded in Forum. I tested with 'modern' 64bit uniprocessor kit and nV d/l s, as requested. Strongly advise dumping SMP for Wary. Siren voices of the over-endowed will, predictably, say differently. So, depends on whether you want to encourage the vast RoW still running PII/III, AMD Athlon/Duron or the spoilt brats on one continent - your choice.

SMP is necessary
Username: Terryphi
"Sage: Never considered myself well-endowed but I do have a 2 year old dual-core PC which I intend to keep alive for as long as I can. The philosophical question is what exactly is an old PC? Not all of us are curators of a PC museum. BK has provided a uni version for those who need it and I hope he continues to do so.

SMP is necessary - oh no it isn't!
Username: Sage
"Multicores are yet another marketing strategy. I don't do lemmingology. Neither a curator am I. Take a look at DWW today - there's a guy worried about loss of CMOV for his K6-III in the i586 kernel. I deal in realities. There are continents where the possession of a 64bit board could be a decade away. Greedy capitalists distort the picture, distort life, the universe and everything. Westerners have enough computing power to navigate around the known extremities of space-time based on an extrapolation from Apollo. Overwhelming use of PCs is for browsing, emailing, photoviewing and letter writing. Gamers can now get a PS/3 for £199. Even film pirating is a minority sport as you can borrow a DVD from your mates or watch iPlayer. In some respects SliTaz is overkill and Puppy is the lap of luxury."29 Aug 2011, 21:01"02449'Still no tapping"Sage"More seriously, still cannot get tapping to function on a TravelMate 2410 using the touchpad settings, whatever delays/speeds are set (saved&re-X, of course)."29 Aug 2011, 23:00"02449'comments on RAM use in WARY"GCMartin"Two good points of view. [b]History[/b] When Barry began this venture in 2002 the world looked very different than what it is today. 10 short years and a lifetime of code has occurred, just from Barry. [b]Effort[/b] As Pemasu has pointed out on several occasion, there is a "LOT" of work to distro production. And to be able to address all of these platform is unwieldy. Trying to read between the lines, Barry's plate is so full that he may be making a conscious decision of what can and can't be done with the only 24hour/day clock he provides. [b]Understanding[/b] So, maybe we should try to look at things in terms of what is being offered. I just tested the latest 5.1.4 on a P3 384RAM to see if I could pinpoint a problem. I run a SWAP disk and looking at the reports, and viewing desktop behavior, I'm NOT seeing a negative impact. Even though this a test platform, it intends to take a look at if I run a SMP kernel on a UNI PC, is the Linux SMP kernel smart enough to provide equivalent performance. The fact that a system was built to include SMP does not mean that there is inherit negative impact. And, if there is not observed negative impact, the SMP distro does offer the builder an OS which will scale depending on what platform it operates on. So, in essence, the best of both of these concerns are addressed; namely RAM usage and CPU(s) usage. I think Barry may have observed this same thing...I think. This is not to indicate favoritism, as it is to indicate observation that has data to back it up. Barry does do one thing I think we can agree on: He does indicate that he'd like to hear from those who have a need to run this distro and are experiencing problems. In doing so, does this assist those in need? [b]Sage[/b], [u]I'm on your side[/u]. [b]TerryPhi[/b], [u]I'm on your side[/u]. For everyone else, I offer that we look at the data. Hope this helps all of us.

using a kernel built for 2
Username: GCMartin
"For comparison purposes, ANYONE, who wants, can find 5.1.3.4 available for [b]BOTH SMP [u]AND[/u] UNI PCs[/b]. We can then base the information we share by the data we can present and the applications we can point to. I think they are still available, hope this helps

USB and kernel
Username: rodin.s
"Well, this new kernel is different. (Maybe uni-kernel does the same but now I'm using 514). If I start PC with no USB-devices plugged in then while hotplugging it hangs up. But when one USB-device is inserted in switched off computer then I could hotplug another device with no hang up. When I do [code]lsmod | grep usb[/code] with no usb-devices in Wary, I got nothing. I tried the same on Slacko and I got: usb_storage, usb_core, usbhid. I tried to modprobe this modules in Wary but couldn't. Module not found. Strange. Everything works, but there are no USB-modules.

No usb modules
Username: BarryK
"rodin.s, The kernels used in recent Wary's have USB drivers builtin, ditto for HID (input drivers). That's why nothing with lsmod. I reported this recently on my blog. It looks like it gives a bit more bootup speed. It also simplifies some of the code in the initrd.

Inbuilt USB and HID
Username: BarryK
"Here are posts where I reported USB and HID drivers now built-in to kernel: http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201107/linux-26393-compiled.html http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201108/263243-kernel.html

Pfind broken
Username: BarryK
"Oh, that is annoying. Pfind has been reliable for quite a long time, I didn't expect this. I clicked the button in the "Search in" frame, to choose a directory, but after clicking OK, it was not selected. Only the default, /root, was selected. This is a bug in Pfilesearch, but is it a bug in the new gtkdialog? I hope not. Wary has gtkdialog rev. 224.

USB and kernel
Username: broomdodger
"rodin.s wrote: lsmod | grep usb Try this instead: dmesg | grep usb -Bill

Bow wow
Username: Sage
"Please can we have 'woof woof' at every boot up, including FULL installs? Thank you.

Tags: wary