logo Quirky Tahr 6.0.3

Bugfix version 6.0.3 released February 9, 2014
Quirky 6.0 was released in December 2013, followed by many improvements. The latest release of Quirky is 6.1.4, whereas Quirk Tahr is debuting at 6.0. Read all about Quirky here:
Quirky 6.x

Quirky Tahr builds on the same ideas, except is constructed with binary DEB packages from the Ubuntu Trusty Tahr repository.

This offers the enormous advantage of compatibility with the large Ubuntu repository, and the Quirky Package Manager can download any package from it.

Yet, this is a quirky Linux, quite unique. Instead of Trusty Tahr, you have Quirky Tahr, and the difference has to be experienced!

As usual, please monitor my blog for further announcements, including links to where you can provide feedback and discuss Quirky with others:
http://bkhome.org/news/

For more details about Quirky Tahr, and how it is "the same yet different" from Quirky, read on...

Quirky versus Quirky Tahr

The Quirky 6.x series is based on ideas that are itemised in the Quirky 6.x Release Notes. Quirky Tahr is built with the same "Quirky build system", with the same infrastructure and basic ideas, with some differences.

Quirky is a fork of Puppy Linux, focused for "full installation" only, as opposed to Puppy's multiple modes of installation. Having this focus, Quirky is optimised to run as a full installation in the simplest possible manner, that is, extreme ease-of-use, with tools for upgrading and recovery that are aimed to prevent your installation from ever becoming broken or compromised.

Where Quirky Tahr differs from Quirky is use of the Ubuntu Trusty Tahr binary DEB packages when putting it together. This does not make Quirky Tahr a clone of Ubuntu -- please, never think that! -- it is just that by using the Ubuntu packages, binary compatibility is achieved with the Ubuntu Trust Tahr package repository, and the Quirky Package Manager is able to install packages from that repo.

It also means that some of the "retro" features of Quirky are gone. Quirky was built with packages compiled from source in T2, with minimal dependencies, and some rather odd choices, such as use of GTK 2.20.1 rather than 2.24.x (latest in the 2.x series). Quirky is very small, a build with light-weight browser weighs in at about 100MB (download file), whereas Quirky Tahr is around 150MB.

That's the difference mostly, with Quirky Tahr, built from Ubuntu DEBs, the packages have many more dependencies, and of course they also must be included in the build. If you want to know just what Ubuntu packages have been used in this build, see here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/x86/tahr-6.0.3/woof-installed-packages

With Quirky Tahr, I also made the decision to make it more "complete" than Quirky. For example, Quirky only has the 'modesetting' and 'vesa' unaccelerated Xorg drivers, whereas Quirky Tahr has most of the hardware-accelerated drivers. I even included all the DRI drivers. This of course adds to the fatness, but it will ensure that video rendering is fast as possible.

I usually build my quirkies (and earlier on, my puppies), with SeaMonkey, mostly because it is in integrated suite, and I regularly use the Composer component (WYSIWYG web-page editor). However, I was unable to compile SeaMonkey for Quirky Tahr, and found the official 2.23 binary to be somewhat unstable. Hence, Quirky Tahr 6.0 was built with QupZilla (a very nice Qt-based webkit-based web browser), Sylpheed (GTK2-based mail and news client) and qutIM (Qt-based multiprotocol chat client).

If you want SeaMonkey, the official binary is available as a PET package. Download this, then just click on it to install (28.4MB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/x86/packages/pet_packages-tahr/seamonkey-2.23-x86.pet

Update: Tahr 6.0.2 (and later) is built with SeaMonkey 2.23. QupZilla is not included. It was found, on balance, that SeaMonkey is more stable, plus renders more sites correctly. And of course, we get the SeaMonkey suite of Composer, Addressbook, Chatzilla and Mail&News -- though, 6.0.3 has retained Sylpheed and qutIM.
Update: Tahr 6.0.2 (and later) does not have the Adobe Flash player, as SeaMonkey supports HTML5 video, and can play videos at youtube.com. However, if you need the Adobe Flash player, see GetFlash in the Internet menu.

A note about choice of applications. It is perhaps a personal thing, but I don't like GTK3, hence in Quirky Tahr there are only GTK2-based and Qt-based apps. I made a policy decision to use GTK2 apps and never to move up to GTK3. The "next step" is to move more to using Qt-based apps, and this is already happening. Note however, there is nothing to stop you from installing GTK3-based apps from the Ubuntu repo, using the Quirky Package Manager.

While in personal-bias-mode, I should also mention another deviation from prior habit. I have always built my quirkies and puppies with ffmpeg and mplayer (audio/video player), but have found these to be increasingly troublesome, mplayer in particular. Quirky Tahr does have ffmpeg, or rather the forked project 'libav', but not mplayer. Instead, Quirky Tahr has the VLC multimedia player.
Update: Tahr 6.0.3 does not have FFConvert (an audio/video file format converter) as it requires ffmpeg, whereas the Ubuntu repo only has libav, a fork of ffmpeg that is not entirely compatible with ffmpeg. Unfortunate, they should consider going back to ffmpeg.
Update: Tahr 6.0.3 has dropped Pmusic (audio file player) in favour of Aqualung. Pmusic does not work properly in Quirky Tahr, probably the ffmpeg-libav problem again.

Using Quirky Tahr

Many people will of course want to compile applications, and this is made very easy (as with all quirkies and puppies), with a "one-stop-shop", a single PET package. Just download this, then click to install (96.7MB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/x86/packages/pet_packages-tahr/devx-6.0.3-tahr.pet

Quirky features quite phenomenal recovery features. If you do install the 'devx' PET, it is a massive installation and does over-write some existing files. If, later, you were to uninstall the 'devx' PET, those files aren't just deleted, which would break the installation, there is a recovery back to the previous files (or later-installed files are kept). The Quirky Package Manager handles this recovery automatically.

Quite separate, there is the "system snapshot" feature, which enables you to take a snapshot of the (almost) entire partition. A scenario where this would be useful is where you have compiled (and installed) a heap of packages from source, then just want to get rid of them, purge them from the partition. After installing the 'devx' PET, take a system snapshot -- later on, you can recover, roll your installation back to that snapshot -- see the Snapshot Manager in the Filesystem menu.

Update: Tahr 6.0.2 and later feature /file top-level folder, in which you can keep any files that you wish. It is outside the snapshot scope, meaning that everything in /file will be left unchanged. Taking a snapshot will ignore /file, as will recovery from an earlier snapshot. Ditto, /file is outside all Service Packs, and is not part of any version upgrade.
/file is the place to keep all personal files and data, even "portable apps".


For developers who want the kernel source, it is available as a PET here (25.4MB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/x86/packages/pet_packages-quirky6/linux_kernel-3.12.6-nopae-aufs-squashfsbuiltin-i486-quirky6.pet

A note about users and login. Quirky is intended as a "single user" system, and you login as the administrator (automatically, without password), and optionally run Internet applications as user "spot". Don't jump to any preconceived notions about the merit or otherwise of this -- install Quirky then run the Login and Security Manager (in the System menu), and click the "Help" button -- this explains the reasoning behind administrator, spot (and fido) very clearly.

Miscellania

Quirky Tahr is released as-is. I don't claim that it is a bug-free product, and you use it with this understanding. In other words, there is a complete disclaimer of all responsibility and you use Quirky Tahr entirely at your own risk.

If you want to chat with other users of Quirky and Quirky Tahr, please go to the Puppy Forum, here:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=90784&start=510

Don't report bugs direct to me, unless you have a fix. There are expected to be bug fixes and upgrades. Monitor my blog for news about these:
http://bkhome.org/news/?viewCat=Quirky


Regards,
Barry Kauler
February 2014