Precise 5.6.4 (5.7 alpha1)

I have built this, in case anyone wants to play with it. Especially, try it out on old hardware, and with analog modem dialup.

This pup has the 3.2.48 kernel with all the analog modem drivers, announced in the previous blog post.

There are two browsers, SeaMonkey 1.1.19 and Opera 12.15. There is a popup window at first bootup that states that Opera is set as the default, however,that isn't correct, SM is.

The oldest PC that I have currently got connected up for testing has these specs:

Compaq Presario
Celeron (Coppermine) 565MHz CPU
128MB RAM, 972MB swap partition

It is a nice old computer.

In earlier testing, SM 2.17.1 was unusable.

Trying this latest pup:

Browser 1st 2nd
Opera 15 15
SeaMonkey 14 11
Gtkmoz 8 5

...these are the startup times in seconds, first startup then a restartup. Only approximate, I only counted mentally, also waited until the home web page appeared, not until it was fully loaded.

These timings are after creating a savefile, and choosing the copy the .sfs from CD to HD.

I don't know if I will persist with this two-browser idea.

The .sfs file inside the .iso is gzip'ed, which makes the .iso a bit big, at 180MB. But it should improve responsiveness in older PCs.

Get it from here:
http://bkhome.org/binaries/test/precise-5.6.4-5.7alpha1/
Us#er$na@me#: pu$pp@y Pa#ss$wor@d#: li$nu@x

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Comments

forum thread
Username: james c
Billtoo started a forum thread www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php#713103

precise-5.6.4-
Username: aarf
"http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=87355 downloading...

wget precise-5.6.4-
Username: aarf
" wget -4c --http-user=puppy --http-password=linux http://bkhome.org/binaries/test/precise-5.6.4-5.7alpha1/precise-5.6.4.iso

Precise 5.7 alpha feedback
Username: peebee
"Hi Barry Frugal install on my HP550 laptop - setup and savefile creation all OK. Broadcom wl driver is selected and used. Thanks. Agere 11c11040 variant is missing from /lib/modules.../agrmodem directory - it should compile OK for k3.2.48..... Inclusion of old Seamonkey means that essential libraries for Chromium are not present: [code]# chromium /usr/lib/chromium/chromium: /usr/lib/libnss3.so: version `NSS_3.12.6' not found (required by /usr/lib/chromium/chromium)[/code] LxPup-by-SFS - works fine. Cheers peebee

Questions on New Precise
Username: mistfire
"Im glad that next Puppy will run over 128Mb of RAM and 500+ MHz processor. However there I have something to ask about this pup Barry. 1. Does this pup will survive and run on 128Mb of RAM without swap partition? 2. Will it run on Pentium II processor with 233MHz clockspeed? (an optional question) 3. Why there is two browsers in this pup? It might contribute to larging puppy ISO filesize. I hope you must consider this questions for improvement of Puppy Linux.

Re questions
Username: BarryK
"1. Puppy will automatically create a swap file on the HD if there is no swap partition, so should work in 128M RAM. 2. Should do. 3. You need to read the deliberations over prior posts to my blog. Short answer: I'm experimenting.

Forum link
Username: BarryK
"The aforementioned forum link: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=87355

Re missing 11c11040
Username: BarryK
"peebee, [i]Agere 11c11040 variant is missing from /lib/modules.../agrmodem directory - it should compile OK for k3.2.48.....[/i] I can't remember why, there was some problem, and rerwin left it out.

Nice Work
Username: darry1966
"Hi Barry, My machine is a desktop AMD Sempron 3000+ 1G ram 40 Gig Hard drive. I have to say this Pup like your Dpup I tried out works really well for a first pre-release I am very surprised how it works on my old crate. Thank you for your time and toil spent on this and I was i admit skeptical about how it would on old hardware and I think it may well turn out to be quite successful. I say keep with it and well done. I wonder if SG mixer could be used instead of retrovol, it may use less ram and not worry about network tray maybe blinky would be an alternative??? anyway nice work.

precise-5.6.4-blackscreen
Username: broomdodger
"precise-5.6.4-blackscreen + thinkpad x30 + sony vaio pcg-r505dl + wary-5500 works on both

BBC News and QtWeb
Username: Terryphi
"Broomdodger: I was testing with the latest Flash version for Linux (11.2.202.297). Just for test purposes I have subsequently tried the earlier version 10.3.183.19 . Neither version produces streaming video at BBC News Channel Live. Conclusion: QtWeb is just not mature enough to be used as a primary browser. That is a shame because it is fast, low on resources and renders webpages well.

Tags: puppy