Woof is the substratum of all puppies built from Woof, so these notes are common to all. To see the complete history of Woof, go to my blog:
http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewCat=Woof
Since the commencement of the Woof project in November 2008 there has been rapid development, too much to list on this summary page. However, here are highlights:
Since the release of Puppy 4.3.1 (2009-10-17) up to the release of Quirky 1.0 (2010-05-05), in no particular order:
Precise Puppy 5.4
Precise Puppy is built from Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04.1+ binary DEB packages, hence has binary compatibility with Ubuntu and access to the vast Ubuntu package repository. Couple that with Puppy's tiny size, speed and ease-of-use, and this is one incredible pup!
This is the very first release of Precise Puppy. It is assigned version 5.4 to indicate it's position relative to the other puppies, such as Wary 5.3 and Slacko 5.3.3 (5.4 coming soon).
A lot of work has happened at the "Woof-level" since the release of Wary 5.3 in April 2012 -- of particular importance to Precise are the many enhancements to the Puppy Package Manager (PPM). The following are Release Notes at the "Precise-level".
Release Notes (in no particular order):
- New audio/video and snapshot apps and capability 1 2 3
- New and updated utilities and apps 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
- New analog (dialup) modem drivers 1 2 3 4 5
- System-level and management refinements 1 2 3 4
- Commercial X.org video drivers 1 2
- Internationalization improvements 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
- 3.2.29 kernel, SMP, PAE, i686 1
PAE Kernel
The 3.2.29 kernel in Precise Puppy is configured with PAE, which means that the CPU must be PAE-capable. Precise also requires a Intel i686 or later CPU. Some CPUs in the early days of the i686 architecture are none-PAE, a very small percentage of the overall number of i686+ computers currently in use.
If you happen to have one of those none-PAE CPUs, please use Wary Puppy, or monitor the Puppy Forum as it is likely the "Puppy community" will build a Precise Puppy with a none-PAE kernel (I will also announce it on my blog).
Note: "PAE" enables the kernel to support a computer with more than 4GB of RAM.
Theme
Precise 5.4 has been built with the 'stark-blueish' GTK theme, 'stark-blueish' JWM theme, 'Neon' desk icons and 'precise-futwerk-1b.jpg' wallpaper. I would like to thank vicmz for composing the Neon PET and futwerk for creating the nice wallpaper. Note, if you are curious how themes are created for Puppy, read the Themes Intro. page. Note 2, lots of themes are available for installation in the 'noarch' repository in the PPM.
PPM
I mentioned above that the Puppy Package Manager has undergone a lot of development. If you are new to Puppy and want to get a quick overview of the PPM, read the Puppy Package Manager page. That page was last updated in 2009, however the principles are still the same (I intend to update it soon). In the Woof Release Notes above, you can follow the links to find out about the myriad improvements made to the PPM. There is also an on-line Help page for the PPM. We are still refining the PPM to work flawlessly with the Ubuntu repositories -- updates on this will be posted to my blog.
Precise Puppy 5.4.1
This is a bug-fix release of 5.4. Yes, we did find some significant bugs
and shortcomings, and fixed them! There is one significant fix at the
"Woof-level", that broke shutdown and reboot when the session is saved to
the entire partition. Quite a few fixes at the "Precise-level": Some of
them are just annoying, such as ePDFview rendering wrong colours. Or,
somewhat more than just annoying, such as missing firmware that caused
some wireless drivers to fail. Precise-level Release Notes, in no
particular order:
- PDF Viewer (ePDFview) wrong colours fixed. 1
- Samba share mounting/management improved 1 2
- Wireless drivers and firmware 1 2 3
- Application/utility updates 1 2 3 4 5
- Glib/gio module-loading bug 1
New blog
Note that my blog, at http://bkhome.org/blog, has been archived, now read-only. A new blog has commenced at http://bkhome.org/blog2.
PAE kernel
For those with Pentium-M CPUs that do not support PAE (see comment
above), I did release a build of Precise 5.4 with a kernel configured
for non-PAE-capable Pentium CPUs. I will shortly do the same for 5.4.1
-- please monitor my blog for the announcement.
Theme
Note that the theming is the same as 5.4, except that the GTK theme has
been changed to 'flat grey rounded' -- due to text highlighting problems
experienced by some users with the 'stark-blueish' theme.
Precise Puppy 5.4.2
This is a bug-fix-of-a-bug-fix release! Although, there are some
significant advancements at the Woof-level, see above. At the
Precise-level:
- BaCon BASIC compiler upgraded (refer 1 2, note requires the devx sfs) 1
- Ubuntu 'dvdauthor' pkg broken, using pkg from Slacko 1
Precise Puppy 5.4.3
A few more bugs found and fixed. Minor improvements at the Woof-level, see above. At the Precise-level:
- Some needed libraries and utilities were missing. ROX-Filer, Pdvdrsab fixed 1
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Precise Puppy 5.5
The very first Precise Puppy was version 5.4, on 23 October 2012, built
from Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04.1 binary DEBs. Since then we have had
bug-fix and minor upgrades, versions 5.4.1, 5.4.2 and 5.4.3, the latter
released 17 December 2012.
Well time marches on, and Ubuntu have released their second build of
Precise Pangolin, 12.04.2. Precise Puppy 5.5 is built from 12.04.2+
DEBs, but of course it is extremely important to understand with Puppy
Linux that our use of the binary packages of another distro is only a
convenience for us, to obtain binary compatibility, hence compatibility
with that distros package repositories -- in all other respects, from
the lowest levels of the infrastructure upward, Puppy is unique.
There have been many bug-fixes and improvements at the Woof-level since
Precise 5.4.3 was released, plus many package fixes and upgrades. Enough
to warrant the number jump to 5.5. Please read the Woof release notes
above, plus "Precise-level" release notes here (in no particular order):
- "In house" package fixes and upgrades 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20
- losetup encryption fixed 1
- Package dependencies bugs fixed 1
- New: Frisbee network manager 1 2 3 4 5 6
- Mixer GUI for Pmusic 1
- Play with Ubuntu Phone Qt-XML in Precise Puppy 1
Theme
I have chosen a similar theme to the recently-released Wary and Racy
5.5. The PET packages used are 'desk_icon_theme_lagabluenight' (desktop
icons), 'gtk_theme_flatbluecontrast' (gtk), 'jwm_theme_deepbluebold'
(JWM window manager), and for the background wallpaper I used Puppy
Forum member futwerk's excellent 'precise-darkblue-logoorange.jpg' (name
changed from futwerk's original).
Upup Precise
The kernel remains at 3.2.29, although there are later in the 3.2.x
series. I decided to stay at that version for now, due to the number of
third-party kernel drivers compiled for it.
The kernel is PAE-enabled, which means that there are some early
i686-class CPUs that will not boot -- this time I have not provided a
non-PAE build of Precise Puppy -- instead, our Puppy enthusiast 'pemasu'
has been building variants of Precise Puppy with recent kernels (3.7,
3.8) and non-PAE.
Pemasu has named his pups 'Upup Precise', to distinguish from my Precise
Puppy. Please go to the Puppy Forum for announcements about Upup
Precise. Here is one of the relevant Forum threads:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=83699
...though, I recommend monitoring the 'Puppy derivatives' section of the
Forum for later announcements -- in fact you will find a lot of
interesting announcements there, just one example is gray's 'Nearly
Office Pup', based on Precise Puppy.
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Precise Puppy 5.6
it is good to read the above Release Notes for earlier Precise puppies,
to get an idea of the evolution. Relative to 5.5, this latest pup brings
some exciting new features, including a new Xorg Video Wizard (with
forced-reboot recovery mechanism), new non-PAE 3.2.44 kernel with lots
of analog modem drivers (making this an excellent pup for those still on
dialup Internet), many more applications internationalized, many
applications upgraded, lots of bug fixes, and so on! Plus, a huge number
of fixes and improvements at the infrastructure/system level (see last
batch of Woof release-notes above). In all, a great new edition of the
Precise series.
Release Notes, in no particular order:
- More apps internationalized 1 2 3 4
- Many system and small apps improved/fixed 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
- New SFSs (app combo-packs, see here) 1
- BaCon BASIC compiler upgraded (see intro page here) 1
- Big apps compiled especially for Precise Puppy 1 2
- Improved Frisbee wireless manager 1
- New 3.2.44 kernel, non-PAE, i586, SMP 1 2 3 4
- Improved support for f2fs (Flash Friendly File System) 1 2
Disregard earlier notes about PAE and non-PAE kernels. This time there
is only the one kernel, configured as non-PAE. This means that the
kernel cannot recognise if your PC has more than 4GB of RAM -- it will
still work, just won't use that extra RAM.
Precise Puppy 5.6.1
This is a bug-fix release of Precise 5.6. Various little things fixed,
nothing major. Rerwin added drivers for agrsm and hcf analog modems,
rounding out Internet dialup (the old kind) modem support to be almost
as good as Wary Puppy (our retro pup for old computers).
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Precise Puppy 5.7
Another pup in the Precise series! This pup comes in two flavours, one
for older hardware and/or those on dialup Internet, the other for those
with relatively modern hardware.
The "retro flavour" is an upgrade path for those who have used our Wary
Puppy, that targeted older PCs and analog modem dialup -- unlike most
other Linux distributions, it continues to support a wide range of
analog "winmodems". It also has two web browsers, SeaMonkey and Opera, the latter preferred for PCs with less than 256MB RAM.
The "modern flavour" only has one browser, SeaMonkey, and forgoes most of
the analog modem and true-SCSI drivers, and is the choice that will suit
most people (see below*).
You also get the benefit of a much smaller download.
As usual, there have been lots of changes since Precise version 5.6.1
was released, bug-fixes, as well as improvements at the "Woof level" and
"Precise level" -- read release notes for the former above, and the
latter below:
- The "retro flavour" has analog modem drivers for agrsm, dgcmodem,
ess, conexant hcf/hsf, Intel 536/537, lucent, pctel, smartlink, and
more. Also drivers for true-SCSI hard-drives and cd-drives. The .sfs
(squashfs) file inside the live-CD is gzipped (rather than xz'ed), which
improves speed but does make the .iso file bigger 1
- Many libraries, utilities, and applications upgraded 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
- PeasyGlue is a new application for joining images together 1
- Pidgin debuts as our multi-protocol chat client 1
- Retro flavour: Kernel 3.2.48 with many 3rd party drivers and f2fs patch 1
- Modern flavour: Kernel 3.9.11, PAE, i686
- Miscellaneous fixes and tweaks 1 2 3
*Retro versus Modern
If you still connect to the Internet by analog modem dialup, you will
need to use the Retro flavour if you have one of those winmodems (modems
designed for MS Windows). However, there is support from some winmodems
in the Modern flavour. Also, true-hardware modems will work in either
flavour. If you have an ancient true-SCSI hard drive or CD drive, you
will need the Retro flavour.
The Retro 3.2.48 kernel is configured for a minimum i486 CPU, no PAE
support (so will not recognise more than 4GB RAM), supports the old ISA
and EISA cards, and true-SCSI drives. The Modern-flavour 3.9.11 kernel requires
a i686 CPU minimum (which is the vast majority), will recognise more
than 4GB RAM, will not work with ISA/EISA.
Apart from the above considerations, a slow and/or RAM-limited PC will
perform better with the Retro. Very roughly, if your PC has a i686 (or
better) class of PC with at least 512MB RAM, choose the Modern flavour.
Theme
I put together a very interesting theme for this pup. The desktop icons
are Haikupup, the wallpaper is precise-speckledblue-futwerk.jpg (created
by futwerk), the JWM window manager theme is Bluesky (based on the
original Bluesky by Tman), GTK theme is Glass_Sky (based on the original
by Trio), and ROX-Filer is modified from the default by DejaVu Sans-11
text on the desktop, with white foreground.
Precise Puppy 5.7.1
This is a bug-fix for release for Precise 5.7. If you have 5.7 and any of these affect you, then please upgrade:
- The desktop drive icon for an external USB optical media did not appear.
- Non-US keyboard layout was not working properly (at bootup was US layout).
- Pidgin: could not login to Facebook and Gmail.
- Gnome-Mplayer: playing DVD videos needed fiddling with Preferences.
- A syntax error in /root/.Xdefaults.
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Lots of puppies...
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Spup (Slacko)
"Spup" is our generic name for puppies built with Slackware binary
packages. The foremost right now is "Slacko", currently one of our official flagship puppies.
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Upup (Precise)
"Upup" is our generic name for puppies built with Ubuntu packages. Our
latest is Precise Puppy, built from Ubuntu Precise Pangolin binary
packages. What
you get is a very small distro (the live-CD is about 150MB) yet with
just about every application you would need and the speed and
ease-of-use that Puppy is famous for. All of the advantages of Puppy,
plus binary compatibility with Ubuntu .deb packages -- Puppy's own
Puppy Package Manager will install any packages from the vast Ubuntu
repositories!
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Wary
Wary
is intended to be state-of-the-art, built with the latest Woof and
recent packages, except for some rollbacks where newer packages are
considered less than satisfactory. Currently, Wary uses Xorg 7.3, which
may be a better choice for older video hardware. Wary is built with
kernel
2.6.32.x, to suit older hardware. Also, we have a large collection of
drivers for old
analog modems (we are unable to compile many
of
these drivers with later kernels). Wary intro. page: http://bkhome.org/wary/
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So many more puppies!
It is so easy to create a custom Puppy, either by using Woof or
remastering the live-CD (there is an super-easy remaster program in the
Setup menu), and this has resulted in a huge choice of custom puppies.
The main problem is finding out just what is available. A good starting
point is the Community News page:
http://puppylinux.org/news/
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Download!
There are mirrors of Puppy, that you will find considerably faster than
the ibiblio.org host site (which is very slow). Please go to my download
page that has links to many mirrors:
http://puppylinux.com/download/
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This page (c) copyright Barry Kauler, May 2013
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