Highlights

• Improve radio detection by allowing several urls for each radio stations in the index file. This is backward compatible with the old format.
• A new dead simple podcast frontend is included by default. The heavily improved podcast managing introduced in pMusic 5.2 deserves its own gui. The good old PPG (Puppy Podcast Grabber) is now old enough to retire.
• Search inside lyrics.
• Play tracks other places than in the playqueue. pMusic is still a playqueue-oriented player. This is a function meant to check out tracks before adding them to the queue rather than an alternative play-source.
• Multiple playqueues for even more flexible usage. This feature is optional, and turned on in the 'Playqueue' menu.
• New export window - An attempt to clean up the complex export functionality, and to standardize the pMusic dialogs.
• At last, the basic Visualization engine is included. Atm, the visualization filters are simple, but this might change in the future as ffmpeg-3 allows much more fun. pMusic 5.4 is still depending on ffmpeg 1.2.

No comments posted yet.

I plan to run the poll for 30 days, and although it's too early to tell, it seems that my guess is not too far off; and the reasons behind the popularity too.

What triggered me to do the poll is the suggestion from a few members of the community that Puppy implement a new bootloader. A suggestion is welcome, and new shiny thing that can do better is always exciting; but then we need data about what the user really needs. There is no need to supply a electric chainsaw if you need to trim some bush in your garden. Sure it can do the job too, but isn't a garden scissors a better tool?

Of course, it is also to inquire about what the users think about the new big wave that is coming (actually already came) - UEFI. Interestingly, so far I don't have anyone bringing up the topic yet (the puppy steward's post didn't count), as is either it doesn't matter, or it doesn't bother them.

Anyway, we'll see. I'll probably start discussion on that thread soon. 30 days seem to be abit too long.

Nowadays, releases seem to be few and far between. Is this slowing down caused by lack of resources, lack of developers interest, or simply, lack of developers?

Actually, the answer is "none of the above". When Barry was at helm, Puppy was in its growing phase. A lot of ideas were tried and dropped, new tools were added (and later dropped), etc. It was also in flux. Nowadays, Puppy is more mature and less tinkering is needed, so you don't see releases that often.

Another reason is, there were complaints when releases were made too often. A personal Puppy installation took time and effort to customise, and to start over again after just 3 or 4 weeks was too much for many.

To balance all this, the implicit agreement is that Puppy releases are now made once every 6 months, give or take.

And lastly - there are actually point releases (or bug fix releases). You probably are not aware of them because they are not announced in Barry's blog; or they are not announced as a separate thread in the forum - they are posted in the same thread that announced the original release, but those posts quickly get drowned by other forum traffic.

And that's what this blog is supposed to do - the author of the Puppy can announce his or her own release here, with links back to the forum for discussion. In a way, this blog is to play the same role that Barry's blog played in the past (now that his blog covers a wider range of topics).

Posted on 22 May 2016, 00:38 by darkcity
"Point releases"
It might be worth posting a blog entry for each point release.

Posted on 26 Mar 2016, 11:36 by 01micko
"We're honoured"
Thanks Barry

Sure would have been a tough invitation to pass up, eh?

Seriously, thanks for accepting!

Cheers!
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