Puppy architecture roundup ? More fat but still tiny ?
Submitted by atang1 on Thu, 06/05/2008 - 02:23.
Puppy architecture is changing, but not comprehensive yet? Here is a summary.
Almost instant on with toolbars and taskbars in window manager(framebuffer theme to be created); before setting resolution, color, keyboard and mouse in theme panel.
Borrow memory from USB flash card for swap to make up 256 mb of dram or 512mb of 1 gb; if you use livecd. This will help memory deficient computers to use Puppy. Memory size used is shown in taskbar tray.
Control panel to change bios(in shadowed memory) manually or automatically by gui utility to control acpi and pnp settings. Use 2.5.x kernel acpi module in the gui(gacpimon)?
All USB devices are drivers and firmware controlled by ueventd stored in drams.
Platform choice of i386 or 686 depending on version number of Puppy. Several Puppy had to be maintained separately. Distinguishing tiny Puppy(slitaz) from Fat Puppy(dingo).
This overall approach well defined, will make Puppy more of a standard than a fork of other distro.
Understanding USB by wiki ? Then Linux wiki on usb devices ?
By 2008, USB 2.0 is well established. Ehci overcame Ohci and Uhci devices. USB has 127 ports in 5 level tree structure, and can use upto 32 pipes of data. It seemed simple but complex in details.
In Linux(USB commands are emulated from scsi), kernel 2.4.x has USB installed in /dev. Kernel 2.6.x has USB drivers in /usr. Most distros delayed 1 second coldplug booting USB using /dev drivers. Then kernel 2.6.x can handle each event of hotplug. Hotplug simplified USB usage so that you do not have to use all 127 ports of USB devices and can run at the highest transmission speed of 480 mbps singly.
Because, kernel 2.6.x uses udev /usr drivers on hoptplug event. Ambiguous devices can have drivers do loading of the firmware list of dependency files(driver commands can also test firmware compatibility). If you load the firmware(with PNP number) from the kernel, then the USB firmware is not verified by the drivers(PNP number matched) installed by hotplug(Ohci, Uhci, Ehci). There are also some USB hardware that can convert ata hdd to USB bus, most have the wrong firmware for the hdd you owned.
In the end, you have to search for wiki on many USB devices to see how your distro can handle all the USB devices made over all the years before 2008?
Footnote:
Some USB pen drive has the same format as floppy, New pendrive has the format of hdd(not 14 but 16 or 32, even LBA). So, some computers have newer bios, that the kernel detects the newer USB limitations(not backward compatible to old floppy format pendrives). Laptops abandoned floppy long time ago.
Puppy Rox filer vs. Konquorer fm vs Windows explorer ? Net ?
Desktops lovers are heart broken with KDE 4.x and Gnome 2.x for their recent developments that abandoned backward compatibility same as Fedora trend. The die is cast or the rice is cooked.
The concept of using icon for file managers is very attractive for developers and it is easy to accomplish. It included all the data storage devices as icons to be clicked to launch any apps. Windows explorer was a huge gui file manager; but it can not access workgroup data storage units on the net.
So, Puppy Rox-filer icons also stopped at your own desktop data storage icons. It may be just as easy to have an icon on the net for all your cloud computing. Office live, Ulteo, or ajaxwindows.com have server hdds. If you need browser to do it right; Dillo or Konqueror had the forsight many years ago. Konquorer won hands down, if KDE developers even saw the opportunities on the net; a cloud computing gui net file manager, which it isn't?