Puppy's future is still not secure

[imnotrich]

imnotrich said

A suggestion I've made before in other threads is that there be a mechanism for updating the list of downloads available in Puppy Package Manager. As more software/pets become available, they can be listed in the PPM. Otherwise users can spend countless hours and days trolling the forums, and if/when they find a pet it may or may not work with their version or worse, the attempt to download and install that pet will break something else.

It could be as simple as having Puppy Package Manager point to a url that is updated regularly.

I love my Puppy. Just wish additional software was easier to find.

...perhaps make sort of updated PSI (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=10960 ) for any puplet/official to find it more simply...

Yes, something like that. Carrying this idea forward, there should be some way to discern at a glance that the pet or pup is intended for version series 1,2,3 or 4 (maybe the file extension?)

That will help reduce screwed up installs.

[drongo]

I can't speak for any of the developers of Puppy as I don't know any of them except through their software offerings and forum behaviour.

But my guess is that Barry, Pizzasgood and all the others would be tinkering with software/coding whether I was using it or not. I'm just grateful that they show us what they are capable of and that it is useful to me and that I don't have to pay them for it.

I don't see why that should make me feel entitled to tell them which browser/window manager/mediaplayer they should include. Sure, I can make suggestions and, if I back them up with sound technical reasons, they may occasionally take notice.

I don't let several thousand anonymous internet users tell me what I should do with my free time, why should they? Where did this sense of entitlement come from? Many posts on this forum sound like two-year-olds demanding ice-cream.

I don't really care if billionnaires become richer. I don't care where puppy is on Distrowatch's popularity poll (even Ladislav says it's just a bit of fun.)

Puppy will probably fracture into a number of projects. I hope one or more of them thrive. Puppy began as a tinkerer's distro. It still is to some extent, albeit one that is easy to use.

It supports dial-up modems. It supports low RAM machines that virtually nothing else will run on.

It didn't cost you anything. There are dozens of other alternatives available (well hundreds but many of them are very similar.)

Whining, complaining and bitching are really childish ways of trying to steer a free software project. Reporting bugs and making suggestions are useful.

Puppy has a niche. this niche may get bigger or smaller over time. It's not Ubuntu, SuSE or Red Hat. You can pay those guys real money for support, see how responsive they are to unreasonable demands or requests.

I don't own Puppy, I use it.

I am really grateful for all of the work developers and testers put in - nearly all of which benefits me without me having to lift a finger or contribute any time or money. How ungrateful would I have to be to turn around and complain about a free gift?

More power to your elbow Pizzasgood. Puppy devs put up with far too much abuse for no good reason that I can see.

Refuse to buy ice-cram for ugly, ill-mannered children. Do not reward bad behaviour. I don't want to restrict Puppy to a clique, but I'd like to restrict it to a group of people with decent manners.

Two chances of that, fat and slim.

[shariebeth]

Offering "gifts" does not entitle one to bad manners either.

Sure Barry and the devs would code with or without users. But once you put that on the public stage, it's not just about the dev anymore. Why present it, why make websites, why make forums, if you aren't looking for adolation or input? With that comes the interaction, and users aren't dev toys only here to give "appropriately positive homage". As one dev mentioned, the interaction is done for their fun and use. However, it should be fun for the user too.

At the current time, I am a "regular user". I did not take the Puppy gift and run. I hung around, offering MY gifts of continued learning and knowledge and passing that along to help others whenever I could. So I'm not a coder yet. Does that make me a lesser citizen? Not worthy of opinons on what might be a useful thing for a public distro to have?

Remember, opinions WERE asked for. Things like "I'm thinking of doing xyz...what do YOU all think?" were posted!!! How awful of everyone to comply and respond. Such ill mannered people.

You know what? I play piano in my free time. I do NOT make a website and forums and a blog, and get interviewed and say "hey, what should I play and by the way, does it sound good?" So guess what, nobody tells me they don't like classical or the Rolling Stones and I should play jazz even though I don't like jazz.

Offering a gift does not mean you can wrap it in bad manners and still call it good.

[drongo]

Maybe bugman will buy you an ice-cream.

[shariebeth]

Maybe bugman will buy you an ice-cream.

Oh you have cut me to the quick.

[rcrsn51]

May I make one more comment? In spite of the many statements to the contrary, I have rarely seen a member of this community actually demand something of a developer. However, the dev may have interpreted the comments or suggestions as being demanding.

As shariebeth has suggested, knowing how to deal with this kind of human interaction comes with the role of being a developer. When an artist decides to display his work in public, he must accept the public reaction that it may generate.

Some devs are better than others at doing this.

[jemimah]

Offering a gift does not mean you can wrap it in bad manners and still call it good.

The usefulness of a gift has nothing to do with the manners of the giver.
In geek culture however, blunt, straight to the point honesty is not considered bad manners. Efficient communication is a sign of respect for listener's time.

Why present it, why make websites, why make forums, if you aren't looking for adolation or input?

It's entirely possible we're looking for new friends or trying to get some help from other geeks. Not all input is equally useful, and some input is downright destructive and depressing.

What's especially distressing is when people try to heap additional responsibility on us that we have not volunteered for. It's like if you donate a few cans to the food pantry and the next day 500 beggars show up at your door attempting to make you feel guilty for not feeding them too. Maybe you try to make everyone happy at first, but you soon run out of personal resources.

[bugman]

I do NOT make a website and forums and a blog, and get interviewed and say "hey, what should I play and by the way, does it sound good?"

[wondering where the scared smiley is]

[Pizzasgood]

Opinions and criticisms are good things. We want those very much.

Does that mean we have to implement them? No. Do we have to put up with listening to the same thing over and over? No. Do we have to follow the majority who obviously want feature X? No. (Unless we sign on for a project where we agree to bow to majority opinion, in which case going back on our word without good reason is quite dishonorable.)



Regarding newbies: I have nothing at all against newbies. As shariebeth mentioned, I was a newbie once too, more or less, and do remember it. I am still a newbie in many areas and still spend considerable amounts of my time trying to learn whatever new concept I need to know.

My point isn't that newbies should be spurned. My point is that just because they're new and things are hard doesn't mean they have any power to tell people what to do. They are important, but not the most important. Fun is the most important.

What you have to ask yourself is this: Do you want a difficult product, or no product? Because nobody is going to spend hundreds of hours of their sparse free time on a project unless it is something they enjoy.

Most of the people doing large Puppy projects do consider making them simple to be important. I'm not worried about that. What I'm talking about is single Puppy versus multiple forks. The single Puppy would be simpler for newbies to figure out, but less enjoyable for those involved. They would have more fun with several smaller forks so that they can work on something closer to their own vision. Puppy as we know it was Barry's vision, not theirs.



Also, I want to toss out a viewpoint that non-devs may not have thought about: From the user's eyes, it seems that they are getting maybe a couple hundred dollars worth of free goodness when they get Linux. But let's look at it from the developer's eyes. Software is generally sold for much less individually than what was paid to the developers (since by selling many copies the net profit is (hopefully) higher). Take WhoDo, for example. If he had been being paid proper hourly rates for the work he did on Puppy 4.2.x, he would have made at least several thousand dollars. But he gave that away for free, and people complained that it was too pretty!

Barry's time must be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars by now.

Maybe that explains why developers sometimes seem cranky.



Regarding the "gift" analogy: Personally I don't think of what I do as a gift aimed at the people who get it. I am selfish. I don't code for other people, I code for myself. But then I think, "well, maybe other people could use something like this as well", so I upload it in case they need it - as opposed to trying to sell it. Then sometimes they suggest improvements. If it seems simple enough, I might do it to help them out because I'm mostly a nice guy. Other times, it sounds like an idea that would help me out, so then I feel even more inclined to do it.



Also, please not that I am no longer a Puppy developer. I am a generic Linux developer, and also the CheesyRamHog developer. Nothing against Puppy (I love Puppy!), but as an obsessive DIYer, I can no longer tolerate using it, so I'm making my own Linux from scratch. (It won't compete with Puppy. It fills a different niche: whereas Puppy targets new users, CRH targets me. I am the entire target audience ) When I get done with that I might contribute more to Puppy, but that's off in the future.

[hillside]

So, Pizzasgood, do you think you might make that CheesyRamHog available some day? It has the kind of name a person could really fall in love with. Everything's better with a little cheese ya know.

I can't guarantee I'd like it, but I promise I'd certainly not complain about it.

[Lobster]

Take WhoDo, for example. If he had been being paid proper hourly rates for the work he did on Puppy 4.2.x, he would have made at least several thousand dollars. But he gave that away for free, and people complained that it was too pretty!

4.2 was great - stable and fun
I created a free presentation about then . . .
http://tmxxine.com/free/

. . . some complained . . .
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=45112

Look forward to pizzasgood's new Linux
already running . . . Tuesday, March 23, 2010
http://www.browserloadofcoolness.com/index.php

[ttuuxxx]

Barry's time must be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars by now.

Maybe that explains why developers sometimes seem cranky.

.

I don't know about Barry, but I've made $126 in donations in 3yrs of supporting puppy, hmmmm math time
average day working on puppy 14hrs min times 7 day, time 52 weeks, times 3 years. 15288hrs donated probably more $0.08/hr wow way worse than 3rd world countries, At that rate it would take 40yrs of donations to make one monthly mortgage payment on my house. lol I guess I do it for the love Linux and sticking it to MS!
ttuuxxx

[Trobin]

No doubt, but anyone who wants to criticize Pizzasgood can go work tier 1 tech support for a while and see how diplomatic you feel afterwards

One of the reasons I appreciate something that works well out of the box over bleeding edge state of the art stuff is that I did work tier 1 tech support for a time.

Also, I wasn’t criticizing Pizzagood’s work, I was criticizing the attitude that says let the newbies fend for themselves. For years I’ve been fed the line about how difficult Linux is and how its only used by geeks in their basements. It may not be true but statements like the one Pizzagood made just drive home the stereotype.

If someone gives you a free handmade gift, do you complain to their face that it's not the one you wanted?

Kind of depends on what it is. Someone knits you a pair of socks they can be reasonably sure that you know how to wear them. But if someone gives me a gift that introduces me to a whole new way of doing things and says it’s not his job to help me get comfortable with way of doing things then yeah he’s gonna get a few complaints.

[Pizzasgood]

@hillside: Yeah, that's the plan. It's a very long-term project though. And keep in mind it is a source-based distro and will likely require significant effort and knowledge to set up compared to Puppy. If anything it's more of a prototype/research project than a product for other people to use...




@Trobin: There are different types of gifts. If I single you out and hand you a gift, that is one thing. But if something is left on a table for anybody to take or leave as they will, that is quite another.


I think you are missing my point though. It isn't about Puppy becoming difficult. It is the situation that will become difficult, not the product. Temporarily, anyway, until the fragments take root and make up the lost ground.

[KF6SNJ]

I think you are missing my point though. It isn't about Puppy becoming difficult. It is the situation that will become difficult, not the product. Temporarily, anyway, until the fragments take root and make up the lost ground.

You are probably right. Some of those fragments may even lead to new ideas for Puppy that nobody has yet to consider. I can't say what those ideas may be, but I am hopefully it will prove interesting and make Puppy even better. It may take some time, but if we pull together as a community, it will.

[toowoombalinux]

G'day,
Just having a brief look at forum posts and development topics there are two distinct developmental camps. Both are fantastic!
They're what I call the Bleeding-edge developers and the Bleeding-heart developers. But its all Puppy.

Let's face it, there are people who are only interested in old-tech and are not that interested in new tech - and of course the opposite is true as well. This is ok!
But both these dichotomous natures can live together under one banner. this community is proof that it can - despite on-going whines and moans.

I hope we can continue in this direction as it covers most people's needs and will assure our continuation as a relevant distro even without Barry K at the helm.

Cheers
Martin

[yorkiesnorkie]

Who really cares where it is in distrowatch. I didn't pick Puppy Linux based on its "Distrowatch Rating" or "perceived popularity". I use it for what it can do on my old pcs. Puppy's future isn't uncertain at all if you take a very long view. One of the great things about it is you can re-master it to suit yourself, borrow apps from other distros, tinker and play with it all you like, etc,. I don't want it to be Ubuntu, or Micro Bloat, or whatever the mainstream will turn it into. Puppy is unique and should run its own race. This is just making mountains out of molehills.

y.