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 Wary Puppy
I have today announced the release of Wary Puppy 0.9. This
is another experimental release in my "Wary" series of Puppy Linux,
that will be version 5.0 when finally officially released.
Why?
There are two main reasons for this project:
1 Old hardware support
It has been argued that the Puppy 4.x series is the high-point of Puppy
development, one reason being that it runs well on a very wide range of
hardware. I want to move to a new software base (new libraries,
compiler, drivers, applications) yet retain that hardware support.
2 Long term support
Just as the 4.x series is still in use, even though I originally
compiled the base packages from source in November 2007, I would like
to position Wary as the next long-term supported Puppy. Unlike most
major distros that tend to be at the bleeding edge, Wary 5.x will stay
as it is for the next 2 - 3 years with only bug fixes, incremental
improvements and application upgrades when needed.
What is "different" about Wary?
I compiled Wary from source in T2, and chose a very odd combination of
old and new packages. The previous Wary (<=0.7) was compiled with
Xorg 7.3+, using X.org package versions about the same as used in
Debian Lenny. However, I found even this was a step too far for some
video hardware. So, I went back to the exact same X.org packages as
used in Puppy 4.x, the original 7.3 versions, with xorg-server 1.3.0.0
(Lenny uses 1.4.2).
So, very old X.org, old Mesa, pixman, etc., yet very recent GTK
(2.20.1) and most other base packages and libraries are recent. The
compiler gcc and C library glibc are fairly recent (4.3.4 and 2.10.1)
but not bleeding-edge.
The latest versions of many applications, such as SeaMonkey, Abiword,
Gnumeric, and I do intend that many applications will be upgraded in
future releases of Wary. Also the very latest media players and drivers
-- video/audio, scanners, printers.
In fact, I one of the goals for Wary is that media playing will be "the best", handling just about every media format.
Minimal daemons, so that Wary runs light on old hardware. Wary does not
have Dbus! Technosaurus is doing some excellent work that can be
applied to some of the daemons in Wary to run lighter, and this will be
one of the on-going areas of Wary development.
But, X.org 7.3 means recent video hardware won't work?
Yes, or rather, perhaps. One area that we can investigate is to upgrade
X.org drivers, find the latest versions that will work with the
xorg-server 1.3.0.0. The latest Intel driver for example (package
xf86-video-intel) does not work with this server.
If Wary hits the "big time", we might even be able to persuade some
X.org driver developers to release updated drivers that work with
xorg-server 1.3.0.0.
I do expect that Wary will run fine on PCs a couple of years old.
Wary also retains the Xvesa video driver, which is a fallback that
should work on just about everything, including the most recent
computers. Xvesa is an abandoned project -- the X.org developers
stopped supporting it after X.org 7.3 and then dropped it entirely.
Also, the generic X.org 'vesa' driver should work on very recent hardware.
An interesting point: we have been disappointed that Mplayer
(video/audio media player) displays only black windows when video is
set to 16-bit color depth. We have this problem with all recent
puppies, and it is a show-stopper, yet, surprise surprise, Mplayer runs
fine in Wary at both 16-bit and 24-bit color depths. So yes, some
applications are also happier with the older X.org. Note, Wary is built with the very latest ffmpeg and mplayer.
Which kernel?
This is a problem area of course, as sometimes an older kernel works on certain older hardware, and a newer kernel doesn't.
Also, we have some drivers, in particular for analog dialup modems, that we cannot compile with recent kernels.
However, apart from the problem of analog soft-modem drivers, I have
been testing the 2.6.35.7 kernel on a variety of old hardware and it
works nicely.
So, I see no problem with the "main" wary release to be built with a
recent kernel, and the first official release, to be version 5.0, will
have the 2.6.35.7 kernel.
But, I plan to have a secondary build for those who need the extra
modem drivers and SCSI support, built with the 2.6.30.5 kernel -- the
exact same kernel as used in Puppy 4.3.1. This also has the advantage
that there are a large number of 3rd-party drivers that have been
compiled for this kernel by Puppy developers/enthusiasts and these can
be used as-is in Wary. Most of these have been announced on the Puppy
Forum.
Who will coordinate Wary?
This is my baby and I will continue to coordinate it and bring out new
releases. Basically, I have identified this niche area, support for
older hardware, where I can "keep my hand in" as a Puppy coordinator.
There will of course be leading-edge, some may say "bleeding edge"
puppies based on recent code bases. Our primary leading-edge Puppy is
Lucid 5.1.x, which is based in binary packages from Ubuntu, Lucid Lynx
release.
The leading-edge puppies will not be coordinated by me, I "only"
provide the Woof Puppy-builder. These puppies may have all kinds of
innovations, including what is referred to as "bling".
Note, my intention is to keep Wary fairly spartan, minimal "bling".
Find out more
To find out about releases and development of Wary, please monitor my blog:
http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewCat=Wary
Regards,
Barry Kauler
October 2010
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