Announcement and release notes for Fossapup64 9.5

Fossapup64 is built from a "Puppy builder" system named Woof-CE (woof-CE at GitHub), which can build a Puppy Linux distribution from the binary packages of any other distro. There are many "puppies" built with Woof, including Bionicpup Xenialpup TahrPup, Precise*, Wary*, Racy*, and Slacko.
Each "Puppy distro" built by Woof-CE is a distinctive distribution in its own right, with unique features. You choose a puppy based on your particular needs, be it specific hardware, software, or access to and compatibility with the package repositories of a particular major distro.

Since November 2013 Puppies are built with woof-CE. There are no release notes for woof-CE at this stage however anyone is free to browse the commits and offer code in the form of a "pull request".
The following is left here for historical purposes and still has much relevance.

Woof-CE commit log

You can view the full commit log of woof-CE "Testing" branch at the following link: Testing Branch.

The most significant recent changes in woof-CE include:


Fossapup64 Puppy 9.5 - released September 2020

The Puppylinux Team is proud to release Puppylinux 9.5, aka, Fossapup64 9.5!

This is the fourth official release of an Ubuntu based 64 bit Puppy!

Fossapup64 Puppy, is built from Ubuntu Focal Fossa DEB (64 bit) packages, hence has binary compatibility with Ubuntu and access to the Ubuntu Focal Fossa repositories. .

Puppylinux is small, runs in ram, is lightning fast, very versatile and good fun! Has everything a novice will need while allowing full control to the experienced user.

Features include:

A video showcasing some of what puppy can do can be seen Here


Minimum System Requirements: 64bit core2duo cpu & 2gb ram

Puppylinux boots from cd, usb, sdcard or network access. A Hard Drive is not required!
It can be installed frugally on the HD, USB or a writable CD/DVD, but also as a conventional “full install”

Fossapup64 is a true community edition 'CE', with contributions from many within the Puppylinux community.

Please visit the Fossapup64 forum page for help & information Here


Previous Woof-CE Releases

Bionicpup64 Puppy 8.0 - released February 2019

The Puppylinux Team is proud to release Puppylinux 8.0, aka, Bionicpup64 8.0!

This is the third official release of an Ubuntu based 64 bit Puppy!

Bionicpup64 Puppy, is built from Ubuntu Bionic Beaver DEB (64 bit) packages, hence has binary compatibility with Ubuntu and access to the Ubuntu Bionic Beaver repositories. .

Puppylinux is small, runs in ram, is lightning fast, very versatile and good fun! Has everything a novice will need while allowing full control to the experienced user.

Features include:

A video showcasing some of what it can do can be seen Here


Minimum System Requirements: 64bit core2duo cpu & 2gb ram

Puppylinux boots from cd, usb, sdcard or network access. A Hard Drive is not required!
It can be installed frugally on the HD, USB or a writable CD/DVD, but also as a conventional “full install”

Bionicpup64 is a true community edition 'CE', with contributions from many within the Puppylinux community.

Please visit the Bionicpup64 forum page for help & information Here

Xenialpup64 7.5 - released November 2017

The Puppylinux Team is proud to release Puppylinux 7.5, aka, Xenialpup64 7.5!

Xenialpup64 is built from 64bit Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus packages, has binary compatibility with Ubuntu 16.04 and access to the Ubuntu package repositories.
Puppylinux is small, runs in ram, is lightning fast, very versatile and good fun! Has everything a novice will need while allowing full control to the experienced user.

Features include:

Slacko Puppy 6.3.2 - released June 2016

Slacko Puppy 6.3.2

23rd June 2016

The next stable release of Slacko Puppy Linux is out!

Slacko Puppy is built from Slackware-14.1 binary TXZ packages, hence has binary compatibility with Slackware and access to the Slackware and Salix repositories. More comprehensive release notes and documentation of known issues are available.

Features include:


As mentioned above, Slacko 6.3.2 is shipped with kernel 3.14.55 but 3.18.22 and 4.1.11 are available from the repository and easily changed using the change_kernels script. Find more information at the Slacko download page including a brief guide to which version is right for you.

Slacko 6.3.0 - released November 2015

16th November, 2015

The next stable release of Slacko Puppy Linux is out!

Slacko Puppy is built from Slackware-14.1 binary TXZ packages, hence has binary compatibility with Slackware and access to the Slackware and Salix repositories. More comprehensive release notes and documentation of known issues are available.

Features include:


Tahr Pup 6.0.0 - released October 2014

Tahrpup 6.0 CE

9th March, 2014

Tahrpup is out!

Tahrpup is built from Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr packages, has binary compatibility with Ubuntu 14.04 and access to the Ubuntu package repositories.

Tahrpup is built from the woof-CE build system, forked from Barry Kauler's Woof late last year after he announced his reirement from Puppy development.

It is built from the latest testing branch and incorporates all the latest woof-CE features, and is released as a choice or PAE and noPAE isos, with the option to switch kernels.

These include:


Please visit the Tahrpup forum page for more information Here


Slacko Pup 5.7.0 - released March 2014

Slacko Puppy 5.7

9th March, 2014

A new release of Slacko Puppy Linux is out!

Slacko Puppy is built from Slackware-14.0 binary TXZ packages, hence has binary compatibility with Slackware and access to the Slackware, Salix and Slacky package repositories. More comprehensive release notes and documentation of known issues are available.

Slacko 5.7 is the first Puppy built from the woof-CE build system, forked from Barry Kauler's Woof late last year after he announced his reirement from Puppy development.

It is the natural progression of Slacko 5.6 with the added features introduced to woof-CE.

These include:


As mentioned above, Slacko 5.7 is available with a choice of LTS kernels; 3.4.82 and 3.10.32. Find more information at the Slacko download page including a brief guide to which kernel is right for you.


Legacy woof releases

Woof release notes

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:
At the date of release of Quirky 1.1 (2010-05-15):
At the release of Quirky 1.2 (2010-06-05):
At the date of release of Quirky 1.3 (2010-09-22):
At the date of release of Quirky 1.4 (2010-11-27):
At the date of release of Wary 5.0 (2010-12-29):
At the date of release of Wary 5.1 (2011-02-19):
At the date of release of Wary 5.1.1 (2011-02-25):
At the release date of Wary 5.1.2 (2011-05-25):
At the release date of Wary 5.1.3 (2011-08-15):
At the release date of Wary 5.1.4 (2011-08-29):
At the release date of Wary 5.2 (2011-10-15):
At the release date of Wary 5.2.2 (2011-11-17):
At the release date of Wary 5.3 (2012-4-7):
At the release date of Precise 5.4 (2012-10-23):
At the release date of Precise 5.4.1 (2012-11-10):
At the release date of Precise 5.4.2 (2012-11-30):
At the release of Precise 5.4.3 (2012-12-18):
At the release date of Wary and Racy 5.5 (2013-03-03):
At the release date of Precise 5.6 (2013-05-21)
At the release date of Precise 5.7 (2013-07-29):

Please note that some puppies that are not built from the latest version of Woof, or remasters of an earlier release of Puppy, may not have all of the above features.

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):

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:
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:

Precise Puppy 5.4.3

A few more bugs found and fixed. Minor improvements at the Woof-level, see above. At the Precise-level:

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):
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.

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:
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).

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:
*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:


Lots of puppies...

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.

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!

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/ 

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/

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/

This page (c) copyright Barry Kauler, May 2013