Creating RevPup has been quite the experience. I have learned more about Puppy and Linux in general than I would have otherwise. If you really want to learn Puppy, then this is the way to go.
RevPup ended up being 75megs in size, with a lot of apps. Being this small, a person could add more apps and the size would still be very manageable.
The only "bug", if you will, was a problem with xorg and Nviddia graphics cards. This was a problem with iPup and not the remaster. Xversa didn't work with the Xfce desktop. So if you have a older video card, like I do, then Xorg would not be a problem. After being told about this bug, I did another remaster and used the ice windowmanager which solved the problem. But I personally still prefer Xfce as a desktop environment.
Would I ever create another Puplet for myself? Absolutely . This to me is a very worthwhile, but an addictive hobby. Who knows, maybe I will even post it on this blog.
Thanks to all those who have read this blog and I hope that maybe you even learned something along the way or was inspired to try your hand at creating your very own Puplet.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
What's Inside
Now that the Desktop is complete, it's time to fatten-up this Puppy with some applications. First up is MTpaint so that I can edit images such as screenshots. Next is xmms 1.2.10 base with the Media Tower skin added. Then I added acrobat reader 5.0 which works great. Time for my first remaster using Dougal's enchanced remaster script. Everything went well, so I thought. Then I deleted my pup-save file and booted up the 'puter. The remaster worked ok but I realized that acrobat reader was huge and not the size app that i wanted in RevPup. The only way to get rid of it was to start the process from scratch. The moral of the story; DON'T delete your save file until you are really sure that the remaster contains what you want in it.
So starting all over again went very quickly and I installed everything as before except with Xpdf, which is very small, in place of acrobat reader and it works quite well with pdf files. Xarchive 0.2.8.6 was next up and is invaluable in opening zipped files. Gkrellm 2.1.28 was added next to keep track of what the machine is doing and it works very well with Xfce. The last thing to do, before my next remaster, was to edit the menu and add a couple of icons to it. Again 2.1.5CE was the source used. This remaster went well and the pup-save file stayed intact until I was certain that everything was to my liking.
Some eyecandy seemed to be in order. Xfce-look.org was the source and inspiration for the three wallpapers and the six extra themes that are included in the distro. Now the user has a good variety to choose from to make RevPup uniquely their own.
After using Google Docs for a while I decided that it was not feature rich enough; so I added the Textmaker wordprocessor and Planmaker Spreadsheet. They are much nicer and are fully compatiable with Microsoft Office files and only added about 6mb. more. Also I left MUT in RevPup and am using that instead of adding Pmount. Did another remaster and everything looks and works just great.
All that is left to do is to tweak it slightly,add one more wallpaper, and do one last remaster. Then RevPup Final will be created.
The next installment will be my thoughts on this journey and the Final iso size.
So starting all over again went very quickly and I installed everything as before except with Xpdf, which is very small, in place of acrobat reader and it works quite well with pdf files. Xarchive 0.2.8.6 was next up and is invaluable in opening zipped files. Gkrellm 2.1.28 was added next to keep track of what the machine is doing and it works very well with Xfce. The last thing to do, before my next remaster, was to edit the menu and add a couple of icons to it. Again 2.1.5CE was the source used. This remaster went well and the pup-save file stayed intact until I was certain that everything was to my liking.
Some eyecandy seemed to be in order. Xfce-look.org was the source and inspiration for the three wallpapers and the six extra themes that are included in the distro. Now the user has a good variety to choose from to make RevPup uniquely their own.
After using Google Docs for a while I decided that it was not feature rich enough; so I added the Textmaker wordprocessor and Planmaker Spreadsheet. They are much nicer and are fully compatiable with Microsoft Office files and only added about 6mb. more. Also I left MUT in RevPup and am using that instead of adding Pmount. Did another remaster and everything looks and works just great.
All that is left to do is to tweak it slightly,add one more wallpaper, and do one last remaster. Then RevPup Final will be created.
The next installment will be my thoughts on this journey and the Final iso size.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The Desktop
Now that I have pretty much decided on which way RevPup is going, it's time to decide either on a window manager or a desktop environment. Ice is a window manager while xfce is a complete environment. So far I have been doing two builds at once. One with icewm and the other with xfce. Icewm, for me at least, is much more difficult to configure the way that I want it than xfce.
So I went with xfce 4.2.3.2 full.pup. It installed very easily and was very straightforward to configure. First after installation, I went to the menu editor and hid each entry that was not in Revpup by simply checking the hide box. That way if I later decide to install any of those missing apps all I have to do is go in and uncheck the box so that it appears in the menu. When I was finished the menu was exactly the same as what was actually installed in the system.
Now for some eye-candy. Xfce-look.org is a great place to go to make xfce your own. Found a great looking wallpaper to download. Then I brought up the settings window and clicked on "desktop" and changed the wallpaper. Next I downloaded several themes and installed them in /user/share/themes. Went back to the settings window and under "user interface" the newly installed themes were waiting to be tested. After trying all of them I settled on three. Went back to the /user /share/themes folder, right clicked on the unwanted ones and deleted them. Next the panel needed to be larger. Settings window again was very handy. Went to "panel" and made it somewhat larger. The panel icons needed to be nicer, so I used 2.15 CE and saved some better looking icons to a thumb drive. Went back to RevPup and put them in the /user/share/midi-icons folder. Right clicked on the panel and replace all of the default icons and moved the settings and power-off buttons to the left side of the panel. This gave the panel a more of a uniform look.
So now I wanted to share my creation, so I started up mtpaint screen-capture. To my surprise nothing happened. After some searching, I discovered that even though it was in the ipup core, the scripts were missing. Again 2.15 CE was my source for the scripts. After copying them to the proper folders, I thought that I was all set. The menu editor needed a command and I had no idea what it was. After visiting the Puppy Forum I had the command and put it in the menu editor. Now when I clicked on the mtpaint screen-capture it actually worked.
Earlier today I posted a couple of screen shots of the RevPup desktop on the Puppy Forum. Check it out and see what you think.
Now that the desktop is all done it's time to install all of the apps that I want into RevPup which is where the next installment will take us.
So I went with xfce 4.2.3.2 full.pup. It installed very easily and was very straightforward to configure. First after installation, I went to the menu editor and hid each entry that was not in Revpup by simply checking the hide box. That way if I later decide to install any of those missing apps all I have to do is go in and uncheck the box so that it appears in the menu. When I was finished the menu was exactly the same as what was actually installed in the system.
Now for some eye-candy. Xfce-look.org is a great place to go to make xfce your own. Found a great looking wallpaper to download. Then I brought up the settings window and clicked on "desktop" and changed the wallpaper. Next I downloaded several themes and installed them in /user/share/themes. Went back to the settings window and under "user interface" the newly installed themes were waiting to be tested. After trying all of them I settled on three. Went back to the /user /share/themes folder, right clicked on the unwanted ones and deleted them. Next the panel needed to be larger. Settings window again was very handy. Went to "panel" and made it somewhat larger. The panel icons needed to be nicer, so I used 2.15 CE and saved some better looking icons to a thumb drive. Went back to RevPup and put them in the /user/share/midi-icons folder. Right clicked on the panel and replace all of the default icons and moved the settings and power-off buttons to the left side of the panel. This gave the panel a more of a uniform look.
So now I wanted to share my creation, so I started up mtpaint screen-capture. To my surprise nothing happened. After some searching, I discovered that even though it was in the ipup core, the scripts were missing. Again 2.15 CE was my source for the scripts. After copying them to the proper folders, I thought that I was all set. The menu editor needed a command and I had no idea what it was. After visiting the Puppy Forum I had the command and put it in the menu editor. Now when I clicked on the mtpaint screen-capture it actually worked.
Earlier today I posted a couple of screen shots of the RevPup desktop on the Puppy Forum. Check it out and see what you think.
Now that the desktop is all done it's time to install all of the apps that I want into RevPup which is where the next installment will take us.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Here's The Plan
This is what I see for RevPup as an operating system. Definately want to keep it on the small side but still have what I want or need for apps. Also I want it to run on older hardware. This is why I chose ipup 0.1 as a base; weighing in at only 60 megs. and has the basic resources that I need to build upon. When it's all complete I hope to have it below 90 megs, but absolutly not over 100 megs., so it will be able to load totally into a machine with 256 megs of ram.
The desktop environment will probably be xfce 4.2.3.2 base which is only about 1.2 megs. The reason for this is that it is much easier for me to configure than the ice window manager, even though it is the popular choice of a lot of the Forum members. I also plan on doing at least one nice theme,maybe two, for this via xfce-look.org and some imagination.
For applications I will use some or all of the following: xarchive 0.2.8.6, xmms base 1.2.10, xmms skins, gkrealm 2.1.28( if it plays nice with xfce), acrobat reader 5.0, the newer Pmount in place of Mut to give better disk information, and mtpaint. Also if there is still room, using the 90 meg cap, some xcfe plugins & docs and a few more apps that I may need.
The following will not be in RevPup: dail-up software; as I use broadband cable internet, an office suite; have a Google docs account that I use, DVD player; don't watch movies on a computer, an extra email client; do my emails through the browser, CD ripper software; already have an Mp3 collection, and partioning software; I'll use 2.1.5 CE for that.
These are my tentative plans for RevPup. The build machine, which I recently aquired, is a PIII 700mzh CPU with 500megs of ram, a CDrom and 2 front USB 1.0 ports. I am running ipup 0.1 as a live CD while using a 1 gig thumbdrive with my build apps on it and a 512 meg thumbdrive totally used for the pup_save file. When I have some of the apps installed, I will then remaster the CD and create RevPup. If everything is to my liking, then I will delete the tumbdrive and start the process all over agian until RevPup is complete.
Well, thats the plan for RevPup. Hopefully everything will work out the way that I planned. Any comments will be welcomed.
The next installment will be the Desktop environment. lj51.
The desktop environment will probably be xfce 4.2.3.2 base which is only about 1.2 megs. The reason for this is that it is much easier for me to configure than the ice window manager, even though it is the popular choice of a lot of the Forum members. I also plan on doing at least one nice theme,maybe two, for this via xfce-look.org and some imagination.
For applications I will use some or all of the following: xarchive 0.2.8.6, xmms base 1.2.10, xmms skins, gkrealm 2.1.28( if it plays nice with xfce), acrobat reader 5.0, the newer Pmount in place of Mut to give better disk information, and mtpaint. Also if there is still room, using the 90 meg cap, some xcfe plugins & docs and a few more apps that I may need.
The following will not be in RevPup: dail-up software; as I use broadband cable internet, an office suite; have a Google docs account that I use, DVD player; don't watch movies on a computer, an extra email client; do my emails through the browser, CD ripper software; already have an Mp3 collection, and partioning software; I'll use 2.1.5 CE for that.
These are my tentative plans for RevPup. The build machine, which I recently aquired, is a PIII 700mzh CPU with 500megs of ram, a CDrom and 2 front USB 1.0 ports. I am running ipup 0.1 as a live CD while using a 1 gig thumbdrive with my build apps on it and a 512 meg thumbdrive totally used for the pup_save file. When I have some of the apps installed, I will then remaster the CD and create RevPup. If everything is to my liking, then I will delete the tumbdrive and start the process all over agian until RevPup is complete.
Well, thats the plan for RevPup. Hopefully everything will work out the way that I planned. Any comments will be welcomed.
The next installment will be the Desktop environment. lj51.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Introduction
RevPup is a derivative of Puppy Linux, which is the awesome creation of Barry Kauler. The base for this Puplet is ipup 0.1 which is the fine work of Todd Richardson. I am merely using the work of these individuals as a starting point for RevPup.
The purpose of this blog is to share my experiences in putting together this Puplet, so that those who are new, or not so new, to Linux may hopefully get some benefit from this. It may even inspire someone else to try their hand at putting together an operating system for themselves, to fit their individual needs. Please note that I am by no means any sort of expert in this area, I'm just sharing a hobby with the reader.
As I progress on this endevour, I will post the experiences as well as the results. RevPup is for my personal use for now. If the result is promising then I may offer it to the Puppy Community, if it is as good as I want it to be.
In the next installment I will discuss what my criteria for the operating system will be and how I plan on getting there.
The purpose of this blog is to share my experiences in putting together this Puplet, so that those who are new, or not so new, to Linux may hopefully get some benefit from this. It may even inspire someone else to try their hand at putting together an operating system for themselves, to fit their individual needs. Please note that I am by no means any sort of expert in this area, I'm just sharing a hobby with the reader.
As I progress on this endevour, I will post the experiences as well as the results. RevPup is for my personal use for now. If the result is promising then I may offer it to the Puppy Community, if it is as good as I want it to be.
In the next installment I will discuss what my criteria for the operating system will be and how I plan on getting there.
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