Wary (and Racy) 5.5 released

This has been a long time coming! The last official release of Wary was version 5.3 on the 5th of April 2012. Here is some announcement blurb:

Wary, our edition of Puppy for older computers, has now reached version 5.5 (along with Racy, that we think of as "Wary on steroids", intended for not-so-old hardware).

Most of the system libraries and some major apps have not been upgraded since 5.3, but a lot of smaller apps and utilities have, notably those created "in house" by our very enthusiastic developers.

What really has progressed significantly since 5.3 is the Woof infrastructure, bringing a plethora of bug fixes and enhancements. These improvements have made it imperative to release a new Wary (and Racy).

Note that Wary 5.5 has the same old 2.6.32.59 kernel (configured for uniprocessor i486 CPU), as we have a heap of 3rd-party analog (dialup) modem drivers compiled for it, plus others. Note also, most of those modem drivers are included in the live-CD .iso file -- which is partly why Wary is so great for "retro" uses such as analog dialup and old hardware.
Racy 5.5 has the 3.0.66 Linux kernel (latest in the 3.0.x series), configured without PAE support (so only accesses first 4GB of RAM), and for a i686 CPU. It has SMP (multi-core) support.

The full announcement and detailed release notes:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/wary-5.5/release-Wary-5.5.htm

Download Wary (live-CD is 139.7MB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/wary-5.5/

Download Racy (live-CD is 124.4MB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/racy-5.5/

Acknowledgements
I won't list the names of the guys who helped develop and test, in case I accidentally leave anyone out. But, the release notes contain links that identify all concerned.
I would like to mention though, because I don't think he is acknowledged anywhere else, the wallpapers for both Wary and Racy are created by Forum member 'futwerk', who has created a brilliant range of wallpapers for all of our Puppy variants.

Some extra release notes:

1. Theme
Wary and Racy 5.5 both have the LagaBlueNight theme for the desk icons, DeepBlueBold JWM (window manager) theme, and FlatBlueContrast GTK theme. Wary has "wary-empty-darkblue" wallpaper, Racy has "racy-empty-blue" wallpaper (these are not futwerk's original names).

2. KMS
Wary does not use KMS. Racy has KMS turned on by default for the 'i915' and 'nouveau' kernel modules, and off for the 'radeon' kernel module.
This KMS thing is a problem if you want to use an alternative Xorg driver, that does not work with KMS. For example, for nVidia video cards, Racy has the alternative 'nv' Xorg driver, there is also a PET package of the commercial nVidia kernel/Xorg drivers (see System category in the Puppy Package Manager) -- but there may be a hassle switching over from the 'nouveau' kernel/Xorg drivers (especially if the latter gives you a black screen!).

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Comments

Wary and Racy alternate downloads
Username: BarryK
This is the Puppy download page, with links to mirrors of ibiblio.org: http://puppylinux.com/download/ If you live in Europe, this mirror is particularly fast: http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/quirky/

Wary and Racy 5.5 Forum feedback
Username: BarryK
"I have started a thread in the Puppy Forum, for ongoing feedback, bug reports, and fixes for Wary and Racy 5.5: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=84748

Kernel sources
Username: BarryK
"The question was asked on the Forum where to find the kernel source. I'll answer here, as this blog announcement is likely to be the first thing that newcomers will read. I have a sources repository for Puppy, including kernels. The patched source is provided as an SFS file (click the "install" button on the Puppy desktop to find out more about SFS). Wary 5.5 has the 2.6.32.59 kernel. Here are all sources, patches, compile scripts: http://bkhome.org/sources/kernel-2.6.32.59/ ...oops, I just realised it isn't there, uploading it now. However, the SFS is here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/sfs/kernel_src-2.6.32.59-patched.sfs Racy 5.5 has the 3.0.66 kernel: http://bkhome.org/sources/kernel-3.0.66/ These are slightly obfuscated: us#er#na#me#: pu#pp#y pa#ss#wo#rd#: li#nu#x Note, also, if you click the 'install' button on the desktop, there is a button to install SFS files, and the kernel source SFS files can be obtained that way. In fact, this is the way most people will get them.

f2fs
Username: broomdodger
"Barry Is f2fs available for racy5.5? Bill

Re f2fs
Username: BarryK
"No, that needs the 3.8 kernel. Quirky has the 3.8 kernel and other f2fs support.

racy tray battery ok wary no
Username: broomdodger
"racy tray battery ok wary no ASUS 701 Eee PC, 900 MHz, 4 GB SSD, 512 MB RAM Recently given to me. It was sitting in a garage for a few years. Battery charges fully, giving good runtime, about 2.5 hours. racy5.5 manual frugal wary5.5 manual frugal racy tray shows the battery charging, as well as hardinfo. racy tray follows the charge light on the ASUS. wary tray on the other hand, shows no charge, and hardinfo agrees, even though the ASUS charge light shows charging. So... racy monitors battery ok, but wary battery monitor does not work. Both racy and wary play ted.com videos. Compiled Sylpheed 340beta2 and vim 7.3.843, work great. Seamonkey browses well. Bill

Service Pack for Wary/Racy 5.5
Username: BarryK
"Yes, a Service Pack is now available, look here: http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201303/service-pack-for-waryracy-55.html ...fixes some bugs!

Tags: puppy