How to remember settings?

[Artie]

I have a cd with your iso on it and a USB HDD with an EXT3 formatted partition called /dev/sda3. I want to install programs and have them come up automatically from the USB HDD partition next time I load the CD. How do I do that? I tried reading the Getting Started page but couldn't understand anything. Einstein is dead, but Stephen Hawking might possibly understand your Getting Started page... 

Artie

[roberts]

Cliff Notes version of Getting Started:

Boot your TinyCore CD with the additional boot codes of tce=sda3 restore=sda3
Then use the appbrowser to download your selected applications.
They will be written to /mnt/sda3/tce
Upon shutdown your /home/tc will be written to /mnt/sda3/mydata.tgz
The next time you boot you don't need to specify tce=  or restore= boot options.
If your USB drive is slow you may also need to add waitusb=5 as an additional boot option.

[Artie]

Loaded cd, wrote "tce=sda3 restore=sda3", enter, got "Could not find kernel image: tce=sda3"

Artie

[Jason W]

the boot code would be

tinycore tce=sda3 restore=sda3

That should work.

JW

[Artie]

Thanks. Been experimenting. Only way I can reboot with programs saved is if I write "tinycore restore=sda3 waitusb=5" every single time I reboot. Installed Opera and it worked. By the way, you should update your Opera...

Artie

[roberts]

The answer would be to copy the two files bzImage and tinycore.gz into another partition and point grub to it, That way you add/edit the needed boot options via grub. TC can live peacefully with other grub installed distributions.

[Artie]

I don't have grub, just two partitions with two pup_save files from Puppy Linux which I boot from cd. Some weird problems have also cropped up, like Opera and Minefield don't scroll properly with a standard ps/2 mouse. It's very jerky and when I scroll the wheel down the page goes up... too late at night to try to solve that. Will get back on the forum if I decide to give it another try. Thanks for help.

Artie

[tobiaus]

I tried reading the Getting Started page but couldn't understand anything. Einstein is dead, but Stephen Hawking might possibly understand your Getting Started page... 

in the future, someone is going to have to write a "getting started with tc for dummies" page. it's very good in that it includes all the information needed, but i'll be looking forward to reading the "dummies" version as much as anyone. i tried to read the entire thing, but since i don't trust the restore options of most distros anyway, of habit i pretty much do it my own way if at all. not a great option for most people, unless they like "cloud." cloud is very tc, i like it, but i would never want it if it was the only option.

[Artie]

I like the concept and I'll probably give it a try later, but I'll wait until it has matured a bit more and gotten understandable. I managed to save Firefox and Opera but when I tried to scroll in both it was borked. Wish the developers could copy the way Puppy does it.

Artie

[tobiaus]

Wish the developers could copy the way Puppy does it.

if you were more specific i might agree, although i hope tc strives to be more consistent and to say the least, smaller than puppy. sometimes that means not matching another distro, (including dsl... although if they're going to match a distro per feature, i'd rather see it dsl-like.)

[curaga]

There's no desire to copy any distro fully. Grabbing the best of everything is the spirit of open source though. Artie, could you describe the "Puppy way" more specifically?

[tobiaus]

Grabbing the best of everything is the spirit of open source though.

i don't think it's ever been said better than that.

[Artie]

I actually mean the way Puppy is greeting its users and tries to make the Puppy experience a friendly one. Impossible to explain. Just get a Puppy 4.1.2 iso disk and boot the disk. First read your getting started page. Then compare with the following example from when Puppy first asks you to config your mouse:

Please choose mouse type...
ps/2 (little 8mm round green plug, or laptop builtin touchpad)
etc

When you have configured the rest and have the desktop, just shutdown and Puppy will explain thoroughly and understandably in English what's going on and asks you nicely and politely if you want to save your settings and if so where. Next time you boot the disk, Puppy automagically remembers all your settings without you having to remember four different modes of operation and home=hdXY and /mnt/hdXY/tchome and PPR/TCZ etc etc. Puppy just makes a pup_save file. Pretty self-explanatory. Pup=Puppy save=save. Save Puppy.

I would have loved to help you test out TCL but not when I have to learn cryptic commands and four different modes of operation when the alternative is pushing a button that says pretty self-explanatory "SAVE TO FILE".

Sorry if I sound harsh, overly critical or condescending. I was just looking so forward to trying out a new exciting small distro even much smaller and possibly simpler than Puppy and was so disappointed when it turned out so complicated.

Artie

[tobiaus]

i know exactly what you mean now. one of the best features about puppy was the simplification and friendliness of things like that. it should be possible (and maybe even desirable) to make tc more like that in the future, and i think suggestions for making things like that more friendly are a good contribution if thought out well.

as long as keeping things good under the hood is the first priority, it should be easy to implement friendlier messages and setups, but there are other times when it's nice to have no-bs for the experienced user also. xsetup.sh is not as "busy" as the setup in puppy last time i saw it, but it's reasonably friendly. 

because puppy uses scripts, it's easy to have people that don't know any "real coding" make dialogs friendlier without having someone do it for them.. tc seems pretty intent to avoid most of those scripts in favor of c apps, but this doesn't apply to the startup. it does mean that people that prefer everything in gui form may use another distro that spends more megabytes on a core that uses gui for everything. so focusing on that as much as puppy does may be targeting an audience that would prefer to use something else for other, similar reasons.

it still might be worth making the startup a little more friendly in the future. it may depend on different things, how you make tinycore more friendly may differ from how you make puppy more friendly, since you're trying to provide friendly access to two quite different things. where a text menu is not too intimidating, i'd like to make the text as friendly as possible without annoying experienced users. at its best that's an art as much as a science. new features usually take more than one attempt before they are sufficiently friendly, even in puppy.

[Artie]

Good luck with your efforts. And remember to rename your Getting Started page to Hyper-Advanced...  I'll be back when I can start up and save and restore my settings as easily as in Puppy.

Artie