Target computer: 1, preferably, 2 Gbs of RAM, on a computer manufactured between the years +/- 2010 and 2014 [Edit. But see P.P.S regarding Pentium M Thinkpad T42 in my post about 5 down] . With more RAM or a better than average CPU, satisfactory performance on even older computers is possible. Obviously, with higher specs, satisfactory performance on post 2014 is to be expected. But there are plenty of Puppies for those computers.

For me, mostly curiosity and a slight need. The slight need is a six year old netbook with 2 Gbs of RAM and a middle-grade CPU. Nothing which musher0's xenialPup-7.0.6 32-bits with kernel 4.1, http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=971619#971619 couldn't handle well. Indeed, the computer is sufficiently powerful to run any 64 bit Puppy if it had to, albeit with some loss of responsiveness. But why drive a truck when a sport car is available?

Musher0 created the above Xenialpup after discovering that Xenialpup, using the 4.1.30 kernel, rather than the “stock” 4.9.xx. kernel ran much quicker on “lower-spec” computers. Then s243a posted that Xenialpup appeared to require slightly greater resources than Tahrpup to run the equivalent applications. And the Meltdown and Spectre bugs were discovered. Tahrpup's 'stock' kernel is 3.14 which –unlike the 4.1 kernel-- for linux.org was well beyond its End of Life, and not scheduled for patching against them.

Full disclosure. The 4.1.30 kernel used in this Tahrpup has not been patched and may not be the same as that used in musher0's xenialpup. It was downloaded from ally's archive.org, and –as far as I can tell-- may have been compiled by wildman. Hopefully someone will publish a 'patched and puppyfied' 4.1.30 or 3.20 kernel. I have little confidence in any kernel I compile –my first foray into compiling-- as accomplishing anything beyond inadvertently making bricks. However, other than being patched against Meltdown and Spectres, how an operating system will run under one variation of the 4.1 kernel than a different version of that kernel is unlikely to be significant*. And I wanted to see how well Tahrpup operated. If anything, IMHO, Tahrpup ran better under it than under the 3.14 kernel. But, your experience may differ. And remember, NEWER KERNELS MAY NOT INCLUDE THE DRIVERS FOR YOUR OLDER PERIPHERALS.

[* Unlikely, but possible. I am unaware of reports of problems with the .30 (or later) build to the 4.1 kernel. But there were several reports of problems with the prior 4.1.11 build. It is to expected that incremental changes will include solutions to discovered problems. But any change also includes the potential for introducing new problems].

Being satisfied with the effect of the kernel change, I then checked whether applications I can run under xenialpup would work. With a couple of exceptions, they did. None of the exceptions were web-browsers or those I often run. So I fleshed it out with the light-weight openbox + lxpanel by vicmz I prefer to jwm, and a light-weight dual-pane file-manager I sometimes use.

666philb had recently updated security and some of the applications. But I wondered if since 666philb's update new versions of Puppy's 'standards' were available. These standards are the applications radky, rcrsn51, and zigbert publish without fanfare that enable Puppies to accomplish tasks that on other operating systems require applications demanding much more resources. Systematically working my way down the menu, then checking if a newer version existed, I found that radky, rcrsn51 and zigbert have been busy. But I also found a couple applications by others which were newer:
rufwoof's galculator 2.14; Oscartalk's geany 1.31; and watchdog's pupadblocker. Having only sufficient knowledge to do damage, I neither reviewed printing, nor changed anything in the Network SubMenu except where an application's author's post suggested the app was 'no-arch'.

Quirks: I didn't find the Tashbar widget for wifi under openbox aesthetically pleasing. So added netmon_wce by 01micko. As far as I can tell, it doesn't work until a SaveFile/Folder is created and its desktop file symlinked to /root/Startup. Don't do that if you prefer JWM, which already has a similar widget.

As a result of the rox upgrade, when copying/moving files, rox, finding a file with the identical name in the destination folder, will always ask for confirmation of an overwrite. It does not apply the 'automatic if newer' concept. I suggest first selecting and deleting all such files you expect to replace.

For the curious: Shinobar's Remaster Express easily remastered 666philb's original Tahrpup 6.0.6. As Remaster Express was published before uefi came on the scene, the resulting ISO was mounted, its filed copied to a folder, and missing uefi files, found in the original ISO, also copied there. Dir2iso generated the final product.

Future Support: Don't expect any beyond changing kernel if and when a kernel fixed against Meltdown and Spectres become available.

Keeping it light while fleshing it out: As they require little RAM when not opened, use portable applications such as portable-wine and portable-gimp, SFSes, AppImages and applications which can be run from folders. As the necessary qt frame-work (needed for some of the following) is included, these applications run on my system: Blender 2.79, cool-reader, foxitreader, fredx181's firefox 58, Masterpdfeditor 3.6.00, peazip 3.3, and SuperFlexible File Synchronizer 5.71. And remember, if you're accessing websites, such as this Forum, which are not “graphic intensive”, IMHO Opera 12.16 still runs lighter than pretty much anything else.

As always, use at your own risk.

mikesLrLast edited by mikeslr on Tue 13 Feb 2018, 18:59; edited 2 times in total

Thanks for this. I've a 2011 Atom HP mini Netbook, 2GB maxed out RAM, and have been using x-tahr 2.0 (with latest Palemoon 27.7.2) on it. Everything runs great, except I've been lazy and keep telling myself to update all the existing other programs & stuff. Well, laziness kept winning out. But now you've went and did it all---mucho gracias.

Will get it downloaded tonight and/or tomorrow and give some feedback. The tahr 6.0 stuff, as I've said on here before, is still the battleship of the entire Puppy Army (in my opinion). it is rock-solid, not one problem ever appears (on any of my machines, for that matter) & just runs like crazy despite what I throw at it and/or do to it.

Hi Mike,
lot of thanks for your time spent in this Tahr-6.0.6
Get a try now on a rather older PC than the ones mentioned in your first post (see shot below attached); and for the reason that one of my favourite apps segfaults on later ubuntu/debian-flavoured distros than Tahr...
best regards
Charlie

Let us know how well it runs. I was guessing about requirements, but think RAM is the most important and your computer has sufficient. You've reminded me that I still have a computer with lower specs I could have tested it on: a Thinkpad T42 (circa 2004) with 1.5 Gb RAM. My cat knocked it off a table. It survived but the motherboard is slightly warped. Sound is shot. So it sits on a shelf. It has a Pentium M CPU. I'll have to dust it off and find out if it can handle an OS 10 years and a kernel 14 years its junior.

mikesLr

P.S. Having finished my 1st cup of coffee while responding, I broke off to have breakfast. Like belham2, I don't usually update functional software (except Web-browsers), But this was different. I learned early on from an uncle who sold used cars that a cheap paint job and a good wax job can distract a potential customer away from a lot of mechanical flaws. I only wish American voters realized that the counter strategy is to kick the tires, look under the hood and insist on a test drive. And that regardless of what political color a candidate has painted himself as.

P.P.S. On the Thinkpad mentioned above, after adding forcepae to kernel line -- e.g.

it booted to desktop and, surprisingly, ran responsively. PupsysInfo showed only 83 Mbs of RAM actually being used immediately after bootup. But Tahrpup does not have the drivers needed for the Thinkpad's builtin wifi. The Thinkpad only has two USB-ports, one needed for the mouse, and with sound broken I won't explore its potential further. Sidenote, the last OS I had run on it was Carolina Vanguard.

As I mentioned in the first post, i rather like vimcz' openbox with Lxpanel. I was running this puppy using it when I decided to change the icon them. After installing one I liked I looked on the menu for a way to switch into it. There wasn't one. After some hunting, I figured out that /usr/share/application/icon_switcher.desktop contains this argument:

NoDisplay=true

perfectly proper if your using JWM window manager as radky's superb JWMDesk has a section which handles icon switching --why clog the Menu with unnecessary entries? But openbox doesn't. So, if using openbox, either change the line to read "NoDisplay=false" or delete it.

As the necessary qt frame-work (needed for some of the following) is included... Tahrpup and Xenialpup included Qt should run all Qt apps. Peebee has removed QT and included FFmpeg for Artfulpup. .. Why not to include both of them ?
Tahrpup 6.0.6 with the 4.1.30 Kernel & updated apps : download added to Makagiga, my Qt Todolist.

IIRC, 666philb had already included ffmpeg in the Tahrpup 6.0.6 I used as the base for remastering and I checked for its presence before updating ffconvert. At any rate, the ffmpeg is present. It can be found at /usr/bin/ffmpeg.

I installed my own Tahr 606 around 3-4 months ago; a long-overdue 'upgrade' for the aging 605, which I'd had ever since first release as Tahrpup 6.0 CE in November '14, and updated through the Service Packs to 605 status.

Came across this thread last night. I'd been wanting to do a kernel update, but, as always, wasn't sure which one to go for. I thought if k4.1.30 works for y'all in Tahrpup, it'll do for me, too. So I grabbed the 4.1.30 'huge-kernel' from Ally's archives at archive.org, and performed the necessary 'micro-surgery' this morning.....and am pleased to report total success.

(I performed a back-up immediately before trying this out, but it proved unnecessary. Now I need to re-do it with the new kernel.... (*hee, hee...*))

Of course, once you've done this a couple of times (especially in these newer Pups) it becomes a walk in the park. But I'm still grateful for jrb's thread on doing kernel swaps, I must admit.....and Ally archiving 'generic' kernel packages helps a lot.

And I must agree with Master Belham about Tahrpup in general. It was my first, 'proper' Puppy that just worked on the old Dell lappie, OOTB. And, like him, it's always survived absolutely everything I've ever thrown at it...

One query, mate....if you can? I've tracked down the kernel-sources for this one.....but do I use the existing devx, or do I need to use Xenial's? (I'm running the earlier 7.0.8.1 'beta'; still works fine, though.)

Hardware's all working as it should, so.....job's a 'good'un'. Thanks for the inspiration!

One query, mate....if you can? I've tracked down the kernel-sources for this one.....but do I use the existing devx, or do I need to use Xenial's?

Mike.

You know, Mike, yesterday I stumbled upon the answer to that while searching for something else. But as that wasn't the information I was looking for, I didn't make a note of it, and it's already become fuzzy.

Best guess. You use the kernel-sources consistent with the kernel. IIRC, point variations aren't significant, e.g. the kernel source for 4.1.0 or 4.1.15 could be used with 4.1.30 if necessary. But if you used the huge-4.1.30-xenial_PAE.tar.bz2 from ally's archive, you'll also find kernel_sources-4.1.30-xenial_PAE.sfs there. http://archive.org/download/Puppy_Linux_Kernels

I am looking for an update from my Lucid 5.2.8.7, but I have read that some later puppies cannot be run as live multisession CD/DVD.
What is the situation in that regard, with this Tahrpup?_________________True freedom is a live Puppy on a multisession CD/DVD.

Sorry tallboy, I don't have the foggiest idea of whether it can, or has any problems when, run as a multi-session CD/DVD. I've never run any Puppy that way, but could find no complaints by anyone regarding any Tahrpup's ability to do so.

In remastering Tahrpup 6.0.6 I did not use that kernel. If this Tahrpup 6.0.6 with the 4.1.30 Kernel does not include the drivers required by your system, I recommend that you change kernels to the above. Doing that is an easy process. There are plenty of posts which explain how, and a pet if you don't care to do so manually. I've never had a issue with any application in a SaveFile in doing a Kernel-switch.

I'm not inclined to publish a revision of this Puppy with a different 4.1.30 Kernel unless it includes fixes for meltdown and spectre. If anything, depending on how well they work on older hardware, I'd be interested in rebuilding using either the 3.16 or 4.4 kernels for reasons that should be obvious from this post. https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html. As 8Geee has reported, "It seems that the 4-series kernels have dropped support for the ath5k/9k and the ath ethernet", my preference would be to use the 3.16 kernel since the objective of this Puppy is to provide an operating system for "older" computers.

"As 8Geee has reported, "It seems that the 4-series kernels have dropped support for the ath5k/9k and the ath ethernet", my preference would be to use the 3.16 kernel since the objective of this Puppy is to provide an operating system for "older" computers."

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