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Linux Operating System
Puppy Linux
IceWM Window Manager
Tcl/Tk: "WISH" Programming Language
Gnocl: Tcl/GTK+ Extension Package
Getting Started with Puppy Linux:
Adding Programs and Enhancements:
Pa Penguin's Packages: Programs
Pa Penguin's Packages:
Themes, Schemes, & Fonts
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Wagonmaster and Chief Iceman: David "Pa" McClamrock
Username pa, domain pa-mcclamrock.com, put @ in between and you'll get my e-mail address, but perhaps spammers won't.
On the Puppy Linux Discussion Forum, I'm known as pa_mcclamrock.
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Adding Programs and Enhancements for Puppy Linux
Puppy Packages
Puppy comes with quite a few useful programs and other packages, but there are a lot more it doesn't come with. How do you get them if you want them?
In Puppy 5.0 (or greater, when there is an even greater version), you can install some programs with Quickpet (click the desktop icon if there is one, or use the Setup --> Setup Puppy --> Quickpet Install Popular Programs menu item). Just make sure you're connected to the Internet and click a button for a program you want; it will automatically be downloaded, and then you'll be asked to confirm the installation.
The first program you'll want to install is a Web browser. In fact, if you try to use the "More Programs" menu in Quickpet when you don't have a "default browser" installed yet, you won't get the program you want; you'll get Quickpet's Browser Installer instead. That's because the "More Programs" menu items don't actually direct you to download sites for the programs; they direct you to threads in the Puppy Forum that, in turn, will direct you to download sites--and of course you need a browser to get to the Puppy Forum.
Even if you have a version of Puppy earlier than 5.0, you can click the "Install" desktop icon, which will open the Puppy Package Manager (PPM). (You won't see any "Ubuntu" packages with the earlier version, though; those are new with Puppy 5.0, and they come from one of the most massive and most widely used Linux distributions, Ubuntu. Here's a bit of good advice: if you're installing programs to a pupsave/lupusave file, make really sure it's big enough before you go hog-wild with Ubuntu programs!)
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Then you can click the name of a package and, if you're connected to the Internet, you can follow some really simple prompts to download and install it. All the Puppy ".PET" packages you've installed will be in the "Installed packages" list at the bottom of the window; if you click one, you'll be asked if you want to uninstall it.
But even PPM doesn't show all the packages that are available. You can get a bigger selection by going directly to the official Puppy repository at ibiblio.org and opening one of the "pet_packages" directories, e.g., pet_packages-4 for Puppy 4.x packages. To install a package without saving it on your computer, left-click the package link and follow the simple prompts. To save it, right-click it and select the menu item for saving a file or "link target." Once you've saved it, you can install it just by clicking the package icon in ROX-Filer and following the prompts, or selecting it, clicking the "Petget" button in WISH File Rusher, and following the same prompts.
But even the official Puppy repository doesn't have all the available packages. There are many packages that have never been included in any official Puppy distribution, plus updated versions of packages that have. You can look for these at Dokupuppy, or in the Additional Software section of the Puppy Forum--or even in Puppy users' web pages, like my pages right here (see Pa Penguin's Packages: Programs and Pa Penguin's Packages: Themes, Schemes, & Fonts). When you've got a .PET package, just do as I said above: click the package icon in ROX-Filer, or select the package and click the "Petget" button in WISH File Rusher.
Here are some screenshots and Puppy .PET package download links for programs I like--either ones that aren't included in the standard Puppy distribution, or non-standard versions of ones that are. (Puppy 5.0 lets you download later versions of Firefox and GIMP than the ones shown here, but these are a lot smaller and maybe better for older computers. Also, I actually like GIMP 2.4 better than GIMP 2.6, which you can get with Puppy 5.0.)
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Still not satisfied? You can even use some programs that haven't been packaged for Puppy. See the section about Non-Puppy Packages for details.
Desktop Icons
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Backup
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Play audio
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Finance
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FTP
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Burn CD/DVD
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Setup
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Find
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What if you've installed a program, and you want a desktop icon to go with it? The procedure for putting an icon on the desktop and getting it to run a program is moderately simple, though slightly bizarre.
Step one is to identify the icon you want to use. If you want one of the icons shown above, just right-click it and select "Save image as" or the equivalent; then save it, preferably to a directory full of icons. A good bet is /usr/local/lib/X11/pixmaps, also known (by way of a symbolic link) as /root/puppy-reference/midi-icons.
Step two is to drag the icon from a ROX-Filer window to the desktop. Easy, right? Um . . . yes, if you know the name of the icon you want.
What's this weirdness? It's how "icons for icons" look in ROX-Filer: they all look the same, and all equally strange. Fortunately, that doesn't matter a lot, for two reasons. First, you can easily see what the real icon looks like by clicking the ugly fake one. Second--it doesn't matter which one you drag to the desktop!
Why doesn't it matter? Because you have to re-select the icon you want in any event; don't ask me why. That's step four. But first, step three:
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Right-click the icon you dropped on the desktop, no matter what it looks like. From the pop-up menu that will open up, select "Edit item." This will give you a little box that looks like the one on the left.
Under "Clicking the icon opens," enter the complete directory path and name of the program you want to invoke. If you don't know it, you can (1) visually scan the contents of a directory where executable programs often go, like /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin; (2) if that doesn't work, look at /root/.packages to see the package file list for your program. (The /root/.packages directory is a "hidden" directory, with a dot in front of its name; check the "Show hidden files" box in WISH File Rusher, or the "eye" icon in ROX-Filer, to see it.) With any luck, the program's directory will have a "bin" (short for "binary") in the name; for example, in /root/.packages/supernotepad-2009.2.files, you'll see "/usr/local/bin/supernotepad." If you put that on the "Clicking the icon opens" line or run
/usr/local/bin/supernotepad & from the command line, and you have WISH Supernotepad installed, you'll see that, sure enough, /usr/local/bin/supernotepad is the complete path and name of the executable (which will promptly open up).
"Arguments to pass (for executables)," to oversimplify a bit, is geek-speak for files or locations you want the program to open. For example, if you want your default browser to open the Puppy Linux Discussion Forum when you click an icon, you'll put usr/local/bin/defaultbrowser under "Clicking the icon opens," and http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/ under "Arguments to Pass." Finally, you'll probably want some text displayed under the icon, so enter it on the line for it.
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Click OK, and you'll be ready for step four: getting the icon to look right. From the right-click pop-up menu, select File [text displayed] --> Set icon. Have your ROX-Filer window open to the directory with your icon in it. A little box will open up, with a message that tells you to drag an icon into it. Do that, and voilą: if all has gone well, you'll have a desktop icon that looks and acts just as you want it to.
Non-Puppy Packages
In the immortal words of Linus Torvalds, "it's stupid to use inferior software for ideological reasons." Some free-software zealots don't approve of great software like SoftMaker Office (see TextMaker 2010 screenshot, right), VueScan (below right), or even Skype (bottom right), merely because you don't get to look at the source code. Me, I like SoftMaker Office and VueScan so much that I'll even pay money for them, unlike any other software for Linux. (Well, I won't pay any more money for VueScan, because I got the Professional Edition which gives you free upgrades forever, but I did pay some once upon a time.) As for Skype, it doesn't even cost any money, and you can use it to make free video (or merely audio) phone calls all over the world to anyone else who has Skype, as long as you've got a webcam, microphone, and speakers to go with your computer. (The people shown in the screenshot are my mom, in upstate New York, and my boy Joe, in Indiana.)
But the companies that produce SoftMaker Office, VueScan, and Skype, as well as the purveyors of many other good programs, don't yet release them in Puppy packages. What to do? No problem, especially if you've got WISH File Rusher. Leaving aside details like paying, accepting agreements, entering serial numbers, and the like--which the providers of these programs will be more than happy to let you know about, if applicable--here's what to do.
1. Get the program in the form of a "tarball" (.tgz or tar.gz archive) that can be used on any Linux distribution. SoftMakerOffice, VueScan, Skype, and many other programs are available in this form. Make sure it's a binary tarball (as these are), in which any needed compiling has already been done. Don't get a "source tarball," containing uncompiled source code, unless (1) you've got an interpreter that will run the source code, or (2) you'd like a possibly painful introduction to the wonders and miseries of compiling programs from source code.
2. Move the tarball to an empty directory. It should be empty because, while some tarballs will neatly stuff their contents into a subdirectory of the one the tarball is in when you "untar" them, others will rudely strew the contents all over the same directory. That's not so bad if the tarball is the only other thing in the directory, but it can be really bad if the contents extracted from the tarball get mixed in with many other files in the same directory. (Does this sound like the voice of experience? Ugh. You're right, it is.)
3. Untar the tarball (i.e., extract the contents). With WISH File Rusher, just select it and click "Untar."
4. Move the directory with the contents in it to the location you choose. I use non-Puppy directories under /mnt on my comparatively mammoth Linux-formatted hard drive, but you can use a Puppy directory under /usr/local or some such thing if you've got enough room in your pupsave file.
5. If the program is Skype, create a symbolic link called /usr/share/skype to the directory with the Skype contents in it. (With WISH File Rusher, just select the directory, click "S-Link As," and enter skype in the entry box for the link name.) If you need any more help, check out [How to] Install Skype on Puppy, on the Puppy Forum.
6. Set up a convenient way to run the program. This can be a desktop icon (see above), a listing in WISH Command Center, or whatever else will work.
That's all there is to it--well, unless the program you install has "dependencies," other pieces of software it needs, that aren't installed on your computer. If it does, you may (or may not) be in for a rough ride. Let's just smile and not talk about that for now. If the time comes to frown and talk about it, you can bring it up on the Puppy Forum, where nobody will even see you frowning, much less hear you screaming.
