ChemPup-0.1.5 ready for beta testing

I now have a ChemPup "full" version that I am happy enough to beta test. The .iso is 454MB which is kind of in the middle for a puplet based on my survey of the official puplet page, though most attempt to be smaller than 100MB. However, I decided to leave devx.sfs which adds some extra but will facilitate growth for now, and of course as mentioned previously the "full" version comes default with openoffice3.0.

Notes on making the puplet:

I had difficulty figuring out how to retain most of the aesthetic settings like desktop wallpaper and icons, and additions made to the menu. I sort of cheated and simply renamed the puppy-fun module to "Chemistry" in /etc/xdg/_root_.jwmrc and /etc/xdg/menus/jwm.menu but I left the rest of the settings pointed to puppy-fun.menu. Then I simply edited puppy-fun.menu to read name "Chemistry" I removed all categories listed and replaced with "Chemistry." Afterwards I needed only generate appropriate .desktop files for each new program added (just like with ubuntu/debian) and I was in business with all my chemistry programs added to the main menu.

During the "puppy remaster" process I then had to make sure to copy /etc/xdg over to the /tmp/etc/ folder at the appropriate time. Likewise, in order to preserve the rest of the desktop configurations, I copied any files I thought would be "config-like" from /root to /tmp/root at the appropriate time. By this procedure, I save all desktop configurations but do not jeopardize any Xorg, keyboard, video, mouse settings for the next user who will likely have a different hardware configuration.

I played around with burning a multi-session DVD or CD and although initially successful, it seems that I only can change the settings once and save to the disk which then closes the session. So now I believe I will offer ChemPup on a CD or a 2GB ext2 flashdrive and encourage CD users to save the personal file and ChemPup.sfs to a flashdrive as well. As such, I took my own 2GB flash drive, dual-partitioned into a 1GB vfat32 and 1GB ext2 to which I installed ChemPup-0.1.5. I selected mbr.bin for the master boot record step since I had done a complete reformat.

I am now working to set up www.chemtoolbox.com to be a mostly functional site that will at least a) not look hideous and b) host the ChemPup-0.1.5 .iso file as well as a few other support documents.