The top reason the files listed below aren't included in a single very large download is because I (Apollia) was concerned that
Dropbox or my web host might not like me to use up a ton of
bandwidth providing over 1 GB of files, most of which people could just as well download elsewhere.
However, on Dropbox, I do host some big, separate files, either because I put them together myself, slightly edited them myself (such as to remove annoying pop-up messages), or because I just can't find them online anywhere else anymore. (For example, the ISO of Lucid Puppy 5.2.8 version 004, and the old VirtualBox 4.1.8 stuff I probably got from somewhere on the Puppy Linux Discussion Forum in early 2012.)
Fortunately, you don't have to download these tons of files manually. (Though you could if you really wanted to.)
I wrote some scripts to download everything mostly automatically, and those scripts are all included in the official tarball.
Probably the best way to run the downloader scripts is by running the "Download Software for Lupu5284 Setup Kit" blueprint script. ("Blueprint" is my term for a script which launches many other setup kit scripts to build whatever customized system you desire.) To make that blueprint easy to find and run, I put a symlink to that blueprint at the root level of the official tarball.
Also, the downloader scripts can optionally be run individually in whatever order you want. The downloader scripts are in each Puppy distro's Woodland in the Apollia's Puppy Setup Kit/Downloader Scripts folder.
The files in Apollia's Puppy Setup Kit dwell in a variety of folders which I call realms. They all have nature-inspired names ("Waterfall", "Spring", "Fjord", "Weir", "Hot Spring"), and on my computer, the realms are all in a folder simply titled "Meadow".
The realm folders contain folders named after Puppy distros. For example, "Lupu5284" (short for Lucid Puppy 5.2.8 version 004) or "LH64_602_B2" (short for Lighthouse 64 Puppy 6.02 Beta 2) - and also the folders "Any_Pup", "Any_32_bit_Pup", and "Any_64_bit_Pup", which contain files which should work in multiple Puppy distros.
I use the wonderful distributing version control system software Mercurial* to help me manage all the script files in the Woodland.
Sometimes, especially if I'm doing something which is likely to be complicated and which might break my stable scripts, I clone my Woodland repository and work on it in a temporary Meadow with a more descriptive name, like "Meadow-Autodownloader Blueprint". (Hence, the "Switch Meadow and Blueprint" scripts - to make it as fast and easy as possible to switch between the stable version and newer or experimental versions.)
Mercurial also makes it much easier to merge changes I made on computers besides my main computer.
I included a Mercurial ".hg" folder in the tarball, but, I didn't include the full history. At one point I made the mistake of putting the entire Meadow in a single repository, which resulted in a very bloated, harder to back up repository because of the big files in the Fjord and Waterfall. I tried to shrink it down again to managing only the Woodland folder, but I couldn't figure out how to preserve all the old history of just the Woodland folder. Also, besides that, I don't think the full history would be very useful.
So, the Mercurial history starts with Release 1.
I apologize if any folders besides the Weir folder contain non-libre components that I'm not yet aware of.
The Weir folder also has most of my icon collection (except the icons I can't include because of their even more restrictive licenses).
| Puppy Setup Kit Package Name | Parent Folders | Software File | Info Pages | Place to get it | Comments
|
|---|
| Any_32_bit_Pup | TrueCrypt | truecrypt-7.1-linux-x86.tar.gz |
Wikipedia - TrueCrypt
| Download
Browse
| In late May 2014, there was some quite odd news about TrueCrypt apparently being discontinued. The official TrueCrypt website - TrueCrypt.org - is pretty much useless now, since all the useful information and downloads it used to have are now gone.
Instead, there is a peculiar recommendation of a closed-source, proprietary encryption program - BitLocker - and a relatively useless and (I assume) probably untrustworthy download, TrueCrypt 7.2, which is a crippled version of TrueCrypt which can only unencrypt files, but not encrypt them.
TrueCrypt is open source - or at least, the original, hopefully(!) more trustworthy versions are; I don't know if TrueCrypt 7.2's source code is available or not. However, I've read that because of TrueCrypt's unusual license, TrueCrypt might not actually be fully libre software. So, that's why TrueCrypt is in the Weir folder of my Puppy Setup Kit, instead of the Waterfall folder.
I've been using TrueCrypt 7.1 in Linux since at least 2012 or maybe even 2011, and I probably downloaded my copy in either 2011 or 2012. (I never upgraded because I typically hate upgrading when something is working perfectly fine for me already.)
I compared the SHA512 checksum of my copy and a SHA512 checksum of a copy of "truecrypt-7.1-linux-x86.tar.gz" from https://github.com/DrWhax/truecrypt-archive which I downloaded on 9/22/2014 at about 3:01 AM, and the SHA512 checksums are both the same.
What does this mean? It means my copy downloaded in 2011 or 2012 is hopefully exactly the same as the one in that GitHub repository, meaning the file in that GitHub repository hopefully hasn't been tampered with.
But, I don't even know for sure whether even the original TrueCrypt is truly trustworthy or not, so please only use TrueCrypt at your own risk. I'm sure it's entirely possible that some undiscovered intentional or unintentional backdoors or glitches might exist in TrueCrypt.
I'm definitely no security expert nor privacy expert, so if you want or need an expert opinion, please look elsewhere. But, I would be skeptical of security advice from anyone who recommends closed source software or hardware, and denies that there's any problem with using closed source software or hardware.
In my opinion, it's best to avoid closed source, non-libre software and hardware as much as possible. (Often easier said than done, alas.) Or, if you use them at all, use them only for relatively unimportant things, and always be wary of them, because they might have many security issues, privacy issues, or other problems or glitches, which might be unintentional, intentional, or even malicious.
|
|
| Any_32_bit_Pup | Web Browsers/Plugins/Flash/v11.2.202.406 | install_flash_player_11_linux.i386.tar.gz |
Adobe Flash Player
Wikipedia - Adobe Flash Player
|
Download
Browse
| Though free (as in price), the Flash player is non-libre software.
|
|
| Lupu5284 | Web Browsers/Chromium/v18.0.996.0 | Chromium-18-Lucid.pet | Chromium.org
Wikipedia - Chromium
| Download
Browse
| The problem with Chromium is that it has the non-libre Flash player plugin built into it.
|
Spring files usually get copied into the RAM disk, which makes it so they usually just get discarded at shutdown. I keep persistent settings in the Hot Spring.
Last modified: Sept. 30, 2014
This page uploaded to web: Sept. 30, 2014
