On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 1:52 AM, Isaac Dunham <ibid.ag@???> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 11:24:03PM -0400, Apollia wrote:
>>
>> Regarding desktops - perhaps Puppy Linux might be a good place to look for
>> some inspiration? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_Linux
>>
>> So small, light, fast, and relatively easy to use, even for total Linux
>> newbies.
>
> Ah yes, Puppy Linux.
> I've used that a lot.
>
> (Most of) the standard ingredients are an apt-get away; it's usually
> jwm, rxvt-unicode, mhwaveedit, geany, abiword, gnumeric, ...
>
> Partly it's looking for lightweight applications, partly it's avoiding
> duplicates (though there are a few of those!), and partly it's the window
> manager and related details.
>
> In a standard Puppy, there is no Python; I'm not sure if Perl is stock,
> either.

I think Perl is usually there, but usually with a lot of missing modules.

Not sure there's any other development stuff besides Perl and Bash by
default, but even those alone are nice to have, and sufficient to make
my Puppy Linux Setup Kit useable without requiring people to first
mount the "DevX" SFS file of development tools for their Puppy to get
a more complete edition of Perl, etc.

[...]

>> And most Puppy Linuxes I've tried make it very easy to get on the internet,
>> something I recall usually being difficult to do back in 2011 when I was a
>> Windows XP user trying various Linux live discs.
>
> Last I knew, there were at least 3 network managers that were puppy-specific
> (Simple Network Scanner, Frisbee, PeasyWifi...and maybe clinet from pupngo
> counts also).
> All the standard ones are written in shellscript + gtkdialog.
>
> Even though there's an icon for the terminal right on the desktop, the
> Puppy Linux developers work on the assumption that you should never *need*
> to open it to get things working.

Yes, I love that assumption, even though I've learned to love having a
terminal. :-)

I think in the long run, whatever Linux best implements the design
philosophy of making things easy and intuitive even for non-technical
people to use might be the one with the best chance of someday
becoming more popular than MacOS and maybe even Windows.

And, since Devuan appears to have an even stronger dedication to the
principles of free (as in freedom), libre software than Debian does
(at the moment), I think I would be quite happy to see Devuan become
the first Linux to achieve that goal.

Hence, my suggestions. :-)

(Would also be nice to see Puppy achieve that goal - but, for various
reasons, I think Devuan's chances might be better. For one thing,
Devuan actually has funding. And, Puppy has some flaws - like the
"running as root" issue someone mentioned in another reply - and
Devuan will probably avoid flaws like that.)

[...]

>> I've also increasingly been considering trying to build my own Linux from
>> scratch, probably using this website as a guide:
>> http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
>
> If you want a short build, look at Bootstrap Linux or ELFS:
> https://github.com/pikhq/bootstrap-linux
> http://kanj.github.io/elfs/book/
> (and clfs-embedded is simple too, but it's harder to get.)
>
> As a rule of thumb, before you try building a Linux system from scratch
> you should make sure you can configure a kernel that works for your
> hardware. Spoiler: "make localmodconfig" and "make localyesconfig"
> are your friends.

Thank you very much!! :-)

Thanks also for your explanations of Puppy and Linux concepts, those
helped make things clearer for me.

[...]

>> Anyway, I haven't yet heard of anyone else using a similar approach to the
>> way I run Linux - always booting my system from scratch with a default
>> Puppy Linux frugal installation with no Pupsave file, and then running my
>> Puppy Linux Setup Kit to install all of my customizations and preferred
>> software, and never saving anything to a Pupsave file, nor saving anything
>> to a multisession live CD or DVD of Puppy.
>
> I haven't looked at what you do/what they did, but this sounds vaguely like
> what Tinycore Linux does.

Cool, I'll try TinyCore Linux eventually. :-) Thanks for pointing it out. :-)

>
> Thanks,
> Isaac Dunham
> a/k/a "ibidem" on the Puppy Linux forums

I'm Apollia most everywhere, including the Puppy Linux forums (where I
actually have scarcely posted at all yet).

Best wishes,
Apollia