Fatdog/Fatdog64/FatdogArm: Fifteen years and beyond
12 April 2008 - present

Released without much fanfare in 2008, Fatdog has grown from a humble beginning to a mature and grown 64bit Linux distro, continuously carrying and holding to the Puppy Linux spirit and principle from where it came.

Fatdog was originally created by longtime Puppy user and contributor, Kirk. Among other things that he is known for, Kirk contributed the initial implementation of encrypted savefile (here, here, and here) which is still in-use by all variants of Puppy Linux today.

This document was originally written for Fatdog's 5 year anniversary on 12 April 2013, summarising Fatdog's long history, from its very beginning to the latest release at that time. It has since been updated to record more recent events as Fatdog marches on.

Enjoy.

The very first Fatdog

The very first ever of Fatdog was released on 12 April 2008 (or 11 April, depending on your timezone :) ). It was released as an SFS, a standard package extension format used by Puppy Linux. The SFS came with additional software for use with the (then) recently released Puppy Dingo (Puppy Linux 4.0).

The size of the SFS was 207MB.

From the announcement:

Here's your chance to turn your little Dingo puppy into a FATDOG. All of these packages where compiled in T2 or Puppy Dingo (except Java).

Announcement

The second Fatdog release, the first release as a full operating system

Titled Fatdog 110, it was released on 14 Feb 2009. It was an almost plain remaster of Puppy 4.1.2 (="puplet") with additional packages, as well as an SMP kernel, enabling full utilisation of dual-core systems. (Standard Puppy didn't use SMP kernel until much later, and although there were other puplets with SMP kernels prior to Fatdog's release, they were more heavily customised. This Fatdog release was simply a kernel + a bunch of extra packages + openbox/lxpanel instead of JWM, keeping Puppy Linux' spirit of simplicity).

It also set the tone for Fatdog's future tradition of running network applications (the web browser in this release, more and more in the later releases) as unprivileged user "spot", the usage of openbox/lxpanel combination (instead of JWM), as well as inclusion of the kernel headers (later the full kernel source) in the devx (="development tools") SFS package. The ISO size was around 124MB (as compared to Puppy 4.1.2 of around ~94MB).

The announcement simply said, Here's a puplet based on 4.1.2.

Announcement

Screenshot of the very first Fatdog. The flying seagull would become a familiar face of Fatdog for the next 3 years, until Fatdog64 600 release.

Fatdog 111: 22 Feb 2009

This was the bugfix release for 110 with updates for kernel and others.

From this moment on until Fatdog moved to ibiblio.org, Fatdog was kindly hosted by forum member Caneri, in http://puppylinux.asia (now defunct).

Announcement

Fatdog 112: 12 April 2009

This was an update for 111, with updates for kernel and others as well as bug fixes.

Announcement

Fatdog2 alpha2 T2 build with Woof alpha9: 23 Jun 2009

Up until 112, Fatdog was essentially a remaster of Puppy with updated and additional software. This release was different - this Fatdog was built from using Woof, the Puppy distro builder (which was still in alpha stage at that time), with all-new packages built from scratch using T2 SDE build system. To signify this fact, it was now called as "Fatdog2" - the second generation Fatdog.

Woof is meant as a tool to build puppies from different distros (including a distro built from packages compiled from scratch). Today all official puppies are built from Woof: Slacko (from Slackware), Wary, Quirky, Racy (all from T2), Lupu (from Ubuntu Lucid Puppy), as well as many other unofficial variants: Upup (Ubuntu "pup"), Spup (Slackware "pup"), Dpup (Debian "pup"), Apup (Arch "pup") and others. Woof contains a set of puppy scripts as well instructions to mesh these scripts into other distro's packages, generating a Puppy Linux distribution. It is basically the "essence" of Puppy Linux.

This release marked Fatdog as a Woof-based puplet, a "tpup" if you will (T2-based "pup"). All its packages were compiled from scratch either using T2 SDE or manually, making Fatdog one of the few "independent puplets" which didn't depend on any upstream distribution.

Announcement

Fatdog2 Alpha 3: 29 Jun 2009

After the first experiment of Alpha 2, Alpha 3 quickly follows. It was basically a cut-down version of Alpha 2 (woof still being alpha quality at the time, a lot of work was needed to post-process its output to trim the size down), reducing the size of the ISO by removing unneeded files, as well as software updates and bug fixes.

Announcement

Fatdog2 beta1 (or Alpha 4): 26 Jul 2009

Using the latest software isn't always greatest. Alpha 2 and 3 used the very latest Xorg at that time (version 7.4) and it turned out to be unstable for many systems. This version downgraded the version of Xorg used to 7.3, but it had updates for other software and other bug fixes. It is officially designated as beta1.

Announcement

Fatdog2 32bit beta2: 8 Aug 2009

Shortly after beta1, beta2 was released with the usual updates and bug fixes. This was the last of the 32-bit Fatdog (all Fatdog releases up to this one were 32-bit). 32-bit Fatdog2 never came far enough into a final release - as the focus moved to 64-bit systems, due to performance reasons, see below - although this release was definitely usable.

This release had JWM as the default window manager although kirk later provided openbox/lxpanel package for it as well.

Announcement

Fatdog2 64bit alpha 1: 8 Aug 2009

Released on the same day of Fatdog2 beta2, is the first ever release of 64-bit Fatdog, claiming the title of the first 64-bit first puplet. Built from scratch using the same T2 SDE as 32-bit Fatdog2 (except that they were compiled for 64-bit AMD64 / Intel x86_64 architecture), all the software featured in this version were all 64-bit (except the initrd - which came from Woof and was 32-bit).

It was also built from Woof, but only using Woof's scripts since Woof does not support 64bit. From this point Fatdog was a fork from Woof. Woof updates would continue to be ported in sporadically. At this point Kirk lost interest in the the 32bit build, after finding that the 64bit build was 20% faster for CPU intensive applications. The speed difference was mostly due to the 32bit version needing to be built for Pentium, thought to be lowest common denominator.        

Announcement

Fatdog64 alpha 2: 5 Mar 2010

There were a long hiatus between alpha 1 and alpha 2. In addition to the name change from "Fatdog2 64-bit" to what is now more well known as "Fatdog64", this version used a complete rebuilt of all the packages, rather than a continuation of alpha 1. As the announcement said, This is a complete rebuild with the T2 trunk as of a few weeks ago. My wife got a new laptop, real nice, CoreI5, 4GB of DDR3, Blu-Ray drive $499, but with crappy intel graphics. Anyway, the Xorg 7.3 that was in alpha1 is too old and doesn't support this new Intel graphics chip, so I just rebuilt everything with T2. Probably should have called it something different since it's a new base.

This was the first release of a series which was to become known as Fatdog64-500.

Announcement

Fatdog64 alpha 3: 10 Mar 2010

Alpha 3 quickly followed alpha2 with updates and bug fixes ...

Announcement

Fatdog64 alpha 4: 14 Mar 2010

... which was then quickly superseded by alpha 4. Alpha 4 shared the same announcement as alpha 3 above.

Fatdog64 beta 1: 27 Mar 2010

Bug fixes and software updates. This release marked a few important events in Fatdog history:

Announcement

Fatdog64 beta2: 14 Apr 2010

Software updates and bug fixes.

Announcement

Fatdog64 beta3: 24 Apr 2010

Software updates and bug fixes.

Announcement

Fatdog64-500 rc3: 4 Jun 2010

This is the first public release which took the name of Fatdog64 500, to align with the fact that Puppies built from Woof were the 5th generation, i.e. Puppy 5.x as opposed to Puppy 4.x which was pre-Woof. It had updates and bug fixes over beta3 release. rc1 and rc2 were not released for public.

Announcement

Fatdog64-500 final: 5 Jul 2010

This is the first stable release of 64-bit Fatdog, after being intensely worked on in the previous four (4) months and was in the cooker for almost a year. It was uniquely Puppy in all its 64-bit glory.

Announcement

Fatdog64-510 rc4: 8 Nov 2010

A test release for what was to become Fatdog64 510, as an update for 500 series.

Announcement

Fatdog64-510 final: 7 Dec 2010

Software updates and bug fixes over 500.

Announcement

Fatdog64-511: 24 Dec 2010

A collection of bug fixes and patches were merged with the base 510 and released as 511.

Announcement

Fatdog64-520 beta1: 21 Jun 2011

The first test release of what to become Fatdog 520. An interesting feature here is Fatdog's adoption of the xz compression for SFS, making it relatively smaller than previous releases (which used gzip compression). I would believe that this was also the first in among other variants of Puppy Linux.

Announcement

Fatdog64-520 beta2: 24 Jun 2011

Another test release. It was mainly to test out the Radeon and Mesa changes.

This release replaced Firefox, which had been used as the default web browser for Fatdog, with Seamonkey (the same browser used in other variants of Puppy Linux), for two reasons:

Announcement

Fatdog64-520 beta3: 1 Jul 2011

Software update and bug fixes.

Announcement

Fatdog64-520 beta4: 13 Jul 2011

Software update and bug fixes. One notable feature was the inclusion of Sven, the multimedia keyboard daemon. This means multimedia keys such as volume control keys would work out of the box for most systems.

Announcement

Fatdog64-520 beta5: 23 Jul 2011

Downgrade the kernel from 3.0rc7 in beta4 to 2.6.39.3 (the latest 2.6-series) when 3.0 proved to be unstable (due to CIFS kernel bugs). This release made "ondemand" CPU scaling as the default.

Announcement

Fatdog64-520 beta6: 29 Jul 2011

Downgrade kernel to 2.6.38.8 when it was found that 2D graphics acceleration didn't work in 2.6.39.3.

Announcement

Fatdog64-520 beta7: 7 Aug 2011

Xorg compiled with udev - enabling full auto-configuration of the graphical desktop without any startup wizard required (ie, no xorg.conf is required by default), although the wizard (xorgwizard) was still available under the name of xorgwizard-old. Keyboards, mice and wacom devices were automatically detected upon being plugged. This was the first among Puppy Linux variants.

It also came with an audio equaliser which can be used for all applications that uses ALSA as audio output.

Announcement

Fatdog64-520 rc: 14 Aug 2011

Software update and bug fixes.

Announcement

Fatdog64-520 final: 4 Sep 2011

Final release for 520, contains a lot of bug fixes and software updates over 511, incorporating all the changes mentioned in beta and rc releases above.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64-521: 12 Oct 2011

A collection of bug fixes and patches were merged with the base 520 and released as 521. This also marked the final release of the 500 series, the "Woof" fork Fatdog, as the next version of Fatdog diverged and had little to do with Woof.

This version was used as the base for LightHouse64 puplet.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64-600 alpha2: 18 May 2012

This release marked the first release of the 600 series, after being worked on intensely in the previous four (4) months. It brough many new and innovative features, one of which is the new GUI for Samba-based file-sharing, replacing the old NFS-based introduced two years earlier. This enabled Fatdog users to share information seamlessly not only among themselves, but also with Windows and Mac users. The tool was eventually adopted by mainline Puppy Linux and is now available as standard package (if not standard feature, in some puplets) for all Woof-built Puppies.

This however also marked the beginning of Fatdog64 being completely separate from Puppy/Woof. The initrd was completely replaced with a full 64-bit initrd, and the base packages were re-built from a new T2 SDE base. Most of the familiar gtkdialog GUIs and wizards were replaced with gtk-server variants. Fatdog ISO became an "isohybrid" which means it can be burn to a CD or "dd-ed" to a USB flash drive directly - no installation needed. Pet packages now use xz compression by default while still supporting the old gzip compression.

This release also marked the beginning of a new, open development model where all of Fatdog were managed by a public SCM (source code management) system, which means that everyone can download Fatdog along with all of its build tools, and then build a customised version of Fatdog themselves. Fatdog repositories were kindly hosted by chiselapp.com.

This is the first release that made use of the now-familiar Fatdog64 logo, created by AFG Sinaulan ("afgs" in the Puppy Linux forum) 2 years earlier, as its desktop background.

Announcement

Fatdog64-600 beta1: 14 Jun 2012

In addition to the usual bug fixes and updates, this release features an important new feature: Fatdog gained true multi-user capability (this capability was already there in alpha2 but it was buggy and incomplete, so it wasn't advertised).

Announcement

Fatdog64-600 beta2: 25 Jun 2012

Software update and bug fixes.

Announcement

Fatdog64-600 rc: 1 Jul 2012

Software update and bug fixes. Fatdog gained a built-in graphical login manager (using SLIM, previously available as an external package); as well as ability to launch multiple desktops for multiple users - on the same computer, at once.

Announcement

Fatdog64-600 final: 6 Jul 2012

After 6 months of development and 2 months of public testing, the first stable version of 600 series was announced, the culmination of all the features found in the test release, but only ...

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64-601: 21 July 2012

... to be followed quickly by a bugfix release to amend the most annoying bugs (oops!). 601 was announced in the same thread as the original 600 announcement.

Release Notes

Fatdog64-610: 29 Nov 2012

Software update and bug fixes.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64-611: 15 Dec 2012

Bugfix release of 610.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64-UEFI-test: 31 Dec 2012

Fatdog ended the year 2012 (the year the apocalypse was postponed, phew!) with a special test release that supported booting from UEFI and SecureBoot systems. This was a version of 611 with an EFI-enabled kernel and UEFI boot loader. It was released mainly to test the robustness of this new boot loader as well as Fatdog's performance under these new systems.

Note: Fatdog's UEFI boot loader was based on rEFInd and grub2-efi, and is actually generic enough to be usable for use with variants of Puppy Linux too.

Announcement

Fatdog64-620 beta1: 15 Feb 2013

620-beta1 marks the next release of the 600 series with full UEFI / Secure Boot support, as well as the usual bug fixes and software updates. This release features, among others, ability to load savefile from LVM and mdadm RAID devices, as well as the more secure encrypted savefile using LUKS instead of the old cryptoloop.

Fatdog repositories are now located in ibiblio.org too.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64-620 beta2: 2 Mar 2013

Bug fixes and software update from beta1.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64-620 beta3: 8 April 2013

In addition to the usual bug fixes and software updates, beta3 incorporated out of the box bluetooth support for audio streaming, bluetooth HID devices (mice and keyboards), as well as bluetooth modems.

This release broke the tradition of kernel source being included in devx. Due to the logistic issues with the SCM system used, the kernel sources was now separated into its own SFS file. This is more typical of standard Puppy Linux release model.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64-620 final: 17 April 2013

The final version of 620 release concluded the three beta releases, rolling up the features previously tested there, as well as bringing UEFI (with Secure Boot) support. New major features were: the ability to save sessions to a "save directory" (as opposed to "savefile"), and support for User Mode Linux (UML) sandbox, as well as other features tested in beta: LUKS, bluetooth support, LVM/mdadm support at boot time, and many others.

This version commemorated Fatdog's five year anniversary.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64-621 final: 9 May 2013

This was the bugfix release for Fatdog64 620. It also featured a new (end-user invisible) shutdown code using pivot_root which in theory should work better; as well as bug fix for writing large-files to bluray.

Announcement Release Notes

A new Fatdog family - The beginning of FatdogArm: 21 July 2013

This day marked the the beginning of a new platform support for Fatdog. The last platform swich for Fatdog happened 8 Aug 2009 with the release of Fatdog2 64-bit (switchin from 32-bit to 64-bit). On this day, the porting of Fatdog to ARM platform began. It was a process that was transparent where every step of the process was documented.

Announcement Fatdog64 to Fatdog64 porting process

FatdogArm Alpha: 25 Aug 2013

About a month after started, the porting was finished. This was the first public release of FatdogArm. It was based on LFS 7.1, heavily modified for ARM platform (LFS 7.1 officially only supported x86 and x86_64 platform). This first release supported Mele A1000 (Allwinner A10 SoC) - its build platform.

FatdogArm is a full-fledged Fatdog operating system. It operates on the same principle, have the same features (almost identical featureset except those that can't pratically be supported on ARM platform). It used aufs layered filesystem and supports SFS, in fact its primary installation method was "frugal install" - the same as Fatdog64's. People who are familar with Fatdog64 would be right at home with FatdogArm.

FatdogArm brought new ground to distribution method: the usual method for distributing OS for general purpose OS on ARM platform was by using a tarball containing image files (i.e., filesystems image created for direct "dd" to SD card). This is not optimal because:

FatdogArm was instead distributed in two file sets: the first one is FatdogArm base SFS, common to all; the other one is the "kernel package" containing platform-specific components (bootloader, kernel and initrd). FatdogArm can be installed to SD-card of any size by creating a partition on the SD-card, and "dd"-ing only the bootloader, and copying the rest of the files just need to be copied into the partition.

Announcement Release Notes

FatdogArm Alpha2: 12 Sep 2013

This is mainly a bugfix release for the original alpha.

Announcement Release Notes

FatdogArm Alpha3: 2 Oct 2013

This release added support for OLPC XO-4. This release also added new feature in distribution - in addition to the usual kernel-package+SFS method, FatdogArm was also distributed with a "meta-distribution" package, to make it easy for others to build a custom FatdogArm image.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 630 RC1: 16 Oct 2013

This was mostly an update to 621 release, with many packages are updated. Some new features include LXC-based sandbox, as well as the ability to run multiple sandboxes at the same time.

Announcement Release Notes

FatdogArm Alpha4: 1 Nov 2013

This release added support for Cubieboard2 (Allwinner A20 SoC).

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 630 RC2: 24 Dec 2013

This Christmas release of Fatdog64 was mainly for software update. Notably, GIMP was updated to version 2.8.x series, and introduction of razor-qt panel replacing the venerable lxpanel.

Announcement Release Notes

FatdogArm Alpha4 for Odroid: 1 Jan 2014

This release added support for Odroid U2/U3 (Samsung Exynos 4420 SoC).

Announcement

Fatdog64 630 Final: 11 Feb 2014

Rolling the changes since RC1 and RC2, this release came with more updated packages and a new "network-setup" replacing the venerable Network Wizard.

Announcement Release Notes

FatdogArm Beta1: 10 Mar 2014

The beta1 of FatdogArm marked the update of the base platform from LFS 7.1 to LFS 7.4. Big visible changes it the support of OLPC XO-1.75. This wasn't possible before because earlier builds of FatdogArm were configured to use VFPv3 and NEON, which XO-1.75 didn't have. Beta builds of FatdogArm were now configured for VFPv3-d16. This was the same configuration as Debian armhf platform.

The official supported platforms for beta1 were Mele (Allwinnder A10), Cubieboard (Allwinner A20), Odroid U2/U3 (Samsung Exynos 4420), OLPC XO-4 (Marvell PXA2128) and OLPC XO-1.75 (Marvell Armada 610).

Unlike FatdogArm Alpha which was a "ported" build, FatdogArm Beta1 was a native build: It was built "natively" on FatdogArm Alpha4 (except the kernel which was still cross-compiled). Another big invisible changes was that FatdogArm Beta was now built using fully automated build-system - something like T2, buildroot, or equivalent. This build system was later improved and used as the base of the build system for Fatdog64 700 - it was a case where an offshot project (FatdogArm) finally contributed back and actually defined the original upstream project (Fatdog64).

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 631 Final: 12 May 2014 - the end of a hardy series

This release marked the end of Fatdog64 600 series.

This was the last, and final release of Fatdog64 600 series. It was a software-update release, and was mainly released as a tie-in before the first public release of next Fatdog64 series (the 700 series) which had been in concurrent development but was not expected to be released for some time.

This released marked the timespan of Fatdog64 600 series to be two years - from the first alpha2 until 631.

Announcement Release Notes

In addition to the standard release, a special version was also released, optimised for Acer Chromebook C720. It was intended as a drop-in replacement for ChromeOS that came with that machine (Announcement).

Fatdog64 700 alpha1: 31 July 2014 - the beginning of a new series

This was the first public release of the Fatdog64 700 series.

Fatdog64 700 series was a new series, a major upgrade of Fatdog64 where all the base packages are upgraded. It comes with the latest and greatest of writing (at the time of release): glibc (2.19), gcc 4.8.2, and others. It is based on LFS 7.5. It dispensed with the PET package format and adopt Slackware package management tools with XZ-compressed tarball (TXZ) as its package format.

The biggest change in the 700 series is the adoption of FatdogArm automated build system. The new build system a fully automated system similar to T2. Having its own build system means that Fatdog has finally reach self-sufficiency and self-hosting - future Fatdog builds can be built on Fatdog itself.

Functionality-wise, this release was not much different from Fatdog64 631 (the last of the 600 series) but this new base packages would pave the way for future enhancements which required contemporary base packages.



Announcement

Fatdog64 700 beta1: 14 Sep 2014

This release was mostly bugfix release with some package updates.

Announcement Release Notes

FatdogArm beta2: 1 Oct 2014

This was a platform update release, with bugfixes and functional updates imported from Fatdog64 700.

It introduced support for Cubox-i (based on Freescale i.MX6 Dual and Quad). Also, Odroid U2/U3 got a new kernel (and a new Mali driver, as released by upstream kernel maintainer (hardkernel)).

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 700 beta2: 26 Oct 2014

This was a full-rebuild of Fatdog using gcc-4.8.3 and the latest (non-git) version of fontconfig. Git versions of fontconfig after 2.11 (used in beta1) changed ABI and resulted broken apps (notable ones being opera and chrome). It also came with other package updates and bug-fixes.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 700 rc: 12 Feb 2015

This release was mostly bug fixes and package updates. Major change is the inclusion of many internationalised scripts done by forum member L18L.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 700 Final: 22 Feb 2015

The first final release of Fatdog64 700 series. Mostly bug-fixes from 700rc, with a kernel update. Released after over 6 months of public testing.

Announcement Release Notes

FatdogArm Beta3: 14 April 2015

The third beta release of FatdogArm beta series. Bug-fixes, package updates, updated scripts from its big brother Fatdog64 700, and platform update: Google Nexus7 2012 is now supported.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 701 Final: 22 April 2015

Maintenance update for Fatdog64 700.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 702 rc: 21 Jan 2016

This release was mostly bug fixes and package updates. Major change is the inclusion of many internationalised scripts done by forum member L18L.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 702 Final: 7 Feb 2016

Maintenance update for Fatdog64 700. Contained updated packages and all updates and bugfixes since 701 release.

Along with 702 release, Fatdog64 ISO builder is made available. This is a build-system that produce build a custom Fatdog64 ISO; if given the same package list as the an official ISO release, it will build an ISO which is functionally identical to the official released ISO.

With this release, Fatdog64 finally joins FatdogArm in being released as "meta-distribution" - the ability to produce multiple custom distributions from a single source.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 ISO Builder: 14 Feb 2016

This is a tool to build custom Fatdog64 ISO from scratch, by downloading packages from Fatdog64 repo and assembling it one by one to build an ISO, based on a given package list. This tool announced at the release of Fatodg64 702 and is finally released today.

Announcement

FatdogArm Beta4: 16 April 2016

The fourth beta release of FatdogArm beta series. Mainly bug fixes and platform update: Raspberry Pi2 and Odroid-XU3/Odroid-XU4 are now supported.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 710 alpha1: 16 April 2016

Rebuilt from scratch, this is a major upgrade to the 700 series that sees many of its packages upgraded. Since 710 development stretched for a very long period of time (it was started as soon as 700 went final), its package updates varies between BLFS 7.6 and 7.8. Despite the ugprades, it aims for compatibility with packages originally built for 700 (though some breakage is unavoidable due to library updates).

The major infrastructure changes in 710 is that Fatdog64 is now not only multilib-ready, but is multilib-equipped. "Multilib" (=multi-libraries) refers to the ability to run both 64-bit and 32-bit programs. Previous versions were multilib-ready - Fatdog64 can use 32-bit libraries from compatible distro to run 32-bit applications (Puppy Wary was the chosen distro for Fatdog64 500 series, and Puppy Slacko was chosen for Fatdog 600/700 series). This release is multilib-equipped - Fatdog64 now features native 32-bit libraries; they are built together and updated together with the rest of the 64-bit system. The main/major test of 32-bit compatibility is the ability to build WINE: 710 passes this test and now features native WINE package too.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 710 Beta: 29 August 2016

This is the second release from the 710 branch. It mainly features package updates, bug fixes, and usability enhancements. Among other notable things, it now features jun7's fork of ROX-Filer, a new archiver (engrampa) replacing the venerable xarchiver, ability to load additional SFS-es directly from boot command line, and support for savedir on FAT using posixovl. Many Fatdog's built-in applications are also enhanced, such as screencaster, among others.

This milestone is also important as this is where Fatdog team grew "fatter" - forum member "SFR" from the Puppy Linux forum joined kirk and jamesbond, and contributed greatly in this release. In addition, forum member "step" from the same forum also made major contributions in this release.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 710 Beta2: 21 October 2016

This second beta release would have been a standard package updates and bug fixes release, were it not for one big change: the full Libreoffice suite is now included in the basesfs, replacing the venerable abiword and gnumeric. Abiword has been an Achilles pain because it sort of works, and sort of doesn't. Gnumeric has been a sturdy workhorse but Fatdog cannot use newer versions because it has moved on to GTK3 and Fatdog doesn't include GTK3 by default. Libreoffice solves both problem nicely - it is a relatively stable and proven, with good compatibility.

The inclusion of Libreoffice ballons up Fatdog64 size from about 300M (beta1) to 350M (this one), but this is a very worthy investment since the full suite is included (not only Writer and Calc). This, however, does not slow down Fatdog or with bloats its memory usage: it is still possible to run Fatdog with only 44MB of RAM in CLI mode.

As in the previous release, many changes and features in this release were greatly contributed by "SFR" and "step".

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 710 Final: 4 December 2016

Ten months in the making, this marks the first release of the 710 branch. Please read all the above entries for 710 alphas and betas to get a glimpse of what are the new features in this release compared to 702.

Difference from beta2 release is minimal, it's mainly package updates and the usual bug fixes.

The ISO size in this release grows again to 360M (from 350M in beta2) - this is due to the usual growth of newer packages (Seamonkey etc); but also because bug fixing related to mesa and LLVM. Mesa now uses LLVM properly to avoid corner cases which can causes application crash. The choice was either to have this proper fix which increase the size; or a workaround with reduced performance (and perhaps additional buggy corner cases). The team decided that having a proper fix is more important.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 720 Beta: 1 December 2017

It took almost a year between last release and this one. This was because, among many other reasons, the last release was so stable and sturdy - it hardly required any fixes except for bit-rot. It also reflected the busy-ness of everyday life of the people behind Fatdog. Nevertheless, in those period, changes and improvements kept flowing; some of the changes went up as package updates in Fatdog's repository; some showed up in Fatdog's contributed packages, and some were just posted in Fatdog 710's support thread.

This release is basically a culmination of those fixes and improvements done over the period of a year. It continues to improve on the previous 710 release. Properly it could have been called 711, but there were too many improvements that justified the version number bump. Many corner cases in Fatdog-specific scripts were fixed and improved.

Two big changes were in this release. First, the "spot" home directory was relocated from /root/spot to /home/spot. While the infrastructure has long been prepared for this move (as early as Fatdog 600), the decision to do this wasn't done lightly as it could potentially bring a lot of inconvenience; but it must be done to provide better security.

The second change was the improved and promotion of WpaGui to be Fatdog's main network manager. Original WpaGui could only manage wireless and DHCP address; in this release a Fatdog-patched version was improved to support management of both wired network interfaces (eth) as well as support for static IP address.

This release is also important for one thing. Somewhere between 710 final and this release, in early 2017, Fatdog team grew even more fatter again. Forum member "step" from the Puppy Linux forum. who had contributed greatly during the previous three releases; agreed to join the team.

This release was again greatly contributed by the "SFR" and "step".

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 720 Final: 20 December 2017

This release rolls up fixes for bugs and issues found during the beta release. Apart from minor upgrade (Linux kernel, mesa, openssl), it is virtually identical with the 720 beta (minus the bugs). One major feature here which didn't exist in beta, is that the ISO now comes with two initrds - one, the usual standard huge initrd, and one smallish initd (called initrd-nano.xz); which is meant to address the problems for people who have been having slow boot times when using the standard initrd.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 721 Final: 11 January 2018 - the end of a sturdy series

This release marked the end of Fatdog64 700 series.

This was the last, and final release of Fatdog64 700 series. It was a special release to address two things: some missing firmware on 720 Final release, as well as to address the Spectre/Meltdown CPU bug (which necessitates kernel update). In addition, this release added support for hibernation (aka suspend-to-disk), as well as microcode update at boot-time, among other bug fixes.

This release marked the timespan of Fatdog64 700 series to be about three and a half years - from the first alpha until 721. This is the longest-running series so far.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 800 Alpha: 15 November 2018 - a new beginning

Fatdog64 800 Alpha is the first release of the 800 series.

Six months in the making, it is Fatdog's answer to the modern world. It comes with a thoroughly updated base (Linux 4.19.1, gcc 7.3.0, glibc 2.27, among other things), loosely based from Linux From Scratch (LFS) 8.2, Cross LFS (CLFS) 2017.07, Beyond LFS (BLFS) SVN (8.2, 8.3 and beyond). Just like it's predecessor, Fatdog64 800 is a traditional multi-lib operating system, supporting 64-bit architecture with full support for 32-bit applications including wine.

Despite the total updates under the hood, on the outside Fatdog64 remains the familiar operating system it is - no change has been made to the UI unless it absolutely has to. In a way, it is totally brand new. In another way, it is a logical and comfortable continuation of Fatdog64 721.

The size has grown from ~380MB in the last 721 release to ~430MB; this is mainly due to growth of new packages (bigger kernel, more drivers, more firmware, glibc, bigger mesa (OpenGL 3D) drivers, etc). It also because some additional libraries (e.g. libicu, additional media codecs) are now needed (for libreoffice, ffmpeg); and additional software (avidemux, etc).

Apart many other changes, this release also marks the launch of the heavily revamped "Samba Browser", (re-)written by step. The browser has a nicer and more functional UI, more options, and hopefully supports and be more compatible with shared drives from various devices and operating systems.

Although this is an alpha release (by virtue of being the first release of the series), the Fatdog team continues with their "eat-own-dog-food" principle and this release is not an exception. The release was used in day-to-day operation for about two months before it is released to the general public, squashing many critical and annoying bugs and regressions during the way; with builds released and distributed almost daily internally.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 800 Beta: 20 December 2018

This is the second release of the 800 series, and basically just contains bug fixes found during the alpha period.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 800 RC: 13 February 2019

This is the third release of the 800 series, and basically just contains bug fixes found during beta period (and alpha period that the team could not fix before releasing beta); as well as usual maintenance updates (updated kernel, video drivers, libreoffice, etc).

Forum member dr.Dan (from Puppy Linux Forum) contributed documentation updates; and forum member jake29 (also from the same forum) helped to do extensive testing.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 800 Final: 28 February 2019

Fatdog64 800 Final is the first final release of the 800 series. Basically it is the same 800RC with updated kernel and minor fixes and regressions found during 800RC.

This is the first release that finally replaces the aging 700/710 series (which ends with 721). It took 9 months in the cooking from initial conception until its release, and underwent two months of internal testing and about 2 months of public testing through its alpha, beta, and RC release.

During this whole period from pre-alpha to release, an avid Fatdog user smokey01 (from Puppy Linux forum) also helped to perform test and contributed ideas; one that got included in the release is the excellent Back Seat Driver (which is also available for other Puppies).

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 801 Final: 3 May 2019

Fatdog64 801 Final is the second release of the 800 series. It is a bug fix release plus some collection of minor feature updates.

Forum member dr.Dan (from Puppy Linux Forum) again contributed documentation updates.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 802 Final: 21 May 2019

Fatdog64 802 Final is the a maintenance release aimed to mitigate Intel ZombieLoad/DMS CPU flaw. It comes with a hardened kernel 4.19.44 and updated Intel microcode 20190504a.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 810 Beta: 9 December 2019

Fatdog64 810 Beta is a maintenance release. It updates some of the built-in software packages, as well as the usual bug fixes. One new rather unremarkable new feature in this release is its ability to search and use existing Linux swap partitions (use the "autoswap" boot parameter).

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 810 Final: 2 January 2020

Fatdog64 810 Beta is a maintenance release. It updates some of the built-in software packages, as well as the usual bug fixes.
This was basically a bugfixed version of the 810 Beta. It was supposed to be a Christmas 2019 release but all the team got busy, and some last minute bug were found and needed fixing.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 811 Final: 10 September 2020

Fatdog64 811 Beta is a maintenance release. It updates some of the built-in software packages, as well as the usual bug fixes, and small usability enhancements.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 812 RC: 16 October 2021

After a year of internal updates, Fatdog64 812 RC is released. Like 811 release, this is also a maintenance release. We aimed to release it before the one-year anniversary of 811 release, but regressions we found in updated software pushed the date until we could resolve them.

The update comes with the usual updates (kernel / microcode, graphic drivers, 3D drivers, office software (word processor, spreadsheet)) as well as the usual bug fixes. It also comes with some additional features: support for the new and emerging WEBP image format, a new desktop wallpaper and slideshow player (which also support WEBP), and ability to transparently mount/unmount LUKS partition (or images) from the ROX desktop; and, last but not least, is a new on-screen keyboard.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 812 Final: 9 November 2021

Fatdog64 812 final release follows the RC. It is almost identical to the RC release except that we fixed several bugs reported. In addition, it also added a simple bluetooth manager GUI - something that had been sorely missing since 800 release (that saw us bumped the version to bluez 5.x which was incompatible with the previous bluetooth manager that we used). It also spotted a simple ALSA sound Server that enables users to switch audio outputs transparently without having to restart audio applications.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 813 Final: 7 October 2022

This release marked the end of Fatdog64 800 series.

This is the last, and final release of Fatdog64 800 series. It is a special release driven by the fact that the Secure Boot shim that it used were blacklisted, along with many other shims due to security concerns (which has nothing to do with Fatdog); so in this release we use an updated shim.  There is no new major features in this other than the usual bug fixes and incremental improvements that we have collected since the last 812 release.

This release marked the timespan of Fatdog64 800 series to be almost four years - from the first alpha until 813. This is the longest-running series so far, beating the 700 series by half a year.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 814 Final: 4 July 2023

Fatdog64 813 was marked and intended as the end and final of Fatdog64 800 series, but behind the scenes small changes and tweaks were made as it was still being used internally. As Fatdog64 900 came along, it was decided that these tweaks should be published as otherwise it would have gone into waste. Hence the motivation for this release.

Fatdog64 814 was released simultaneously with Fatdog64 900 Alpha, for those people who want to stay with the 800 series a bit longer (while waiting for 900 to mature). Not much visible changes in it, mainly bug fixing, changes done in preparation for forward-compatibility with the next series, and other small tweaks, but it was there for those who needed/wanted it.

It has been a long four and a half years, and the curtain was now closed for good.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 900 Alpha: 4 July 2023 - The Next Series

Fatdog64 900 Alpha was the first release of the 900 series.

The Fatdog team contemplated to start a new series as early as Jan 2022, as the 800 series was getting very long in its tooth. Work was started, based on LFS 11.0, but it did not continue beyond the build of the new compiler. It was picked up again in November 2022 but LFS 11.0 was too old by then, so the compiler was upgraded to LFS 11.2 - but then the work fizzed out again. What finally became the 900 series was started in late March 2023 with yet another upgrade to LFS 11.3 base (steaming hot from LFS release date), and was completed in a marathon during April 2023 (about the fastest development time of a new Fatdog64 series in recent history), and it immediately went to internal testing since.

Apart from the new compiler and glibc (gcc 12.2.0 and glibc 2.37), all other base packages were updated as of a typical major series release, such as Xorg, Mesa, and others. On top of that, GTK3 was now built into the base. along with GTK2 for older applications and Qt5 which had been Fatdog's primary UI toolkit. Many old GTK2 applications were updated to their GTK3 counterpart, offering new features. A new theme was applied (Adwaita) to both GTK2 and GTK3 so that all GTK applications looked similar regardless of their toolkit. Even Qt5 Adwaita theme was included for consistency, if needed. To complete the fresh new look, Fatdog64 featured the first new desktop background in the last nine years (since Fatdog64 700).

 

Despite all these new changes, Fatdog64 continued the tradition that "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". Its internal architecture remained the same. Existing users and power users would feel right at home with the new series. Fatdog64 stayed to be the lightweight, easy to customise operating system that got out of your way, yet, still complete enough to be used out of the box for every day usage by its choice of bundled applications, which was meant to address most common needs.

To address the modern needs, Fatdog had unavoidably grown fatter. The Fatdog 814 Final (which was released simultaneously with 900 Alpha) weighed at ~503MB, while 900 Alpha was ~620MB. New libraries were bigger, new applications were bigger, and new functionalities also took more space. When faced with the choice to cut down functionalities or let the size grow bigger, functionalities won most of the time (this too was one of Fatdog's philosophy when it came to dieting). The reality was, when Fatdog64 was started, machines with 2GB RAM were rare; today, even entry-level machines came with 8GB RAM.

Though this was an alpha release, it felt quite stable as the Fatdog team continued with their "eat-own-dog-food" principle. Because the first step to fix bugs was to know what the bugs were. And because to know where the bugs were, there was no better way than to use it themselves. Long before this release saw the light of day, many critical, annoying bugs and regressions had been squashed as the team released and distributed internal builds almost daily for their testing. Nevertheless, for people who prefer more conservative release, the team released Fatdog64 814 simultaneously. Fatdog64 814 was absolutely, and finally, the last release of the 800 series.

This release also marked the first time that the venerable creator of Fatdog, Kirk, was not able to be involved due to other commitments. Nevertheless, he continued to be part of the Fatdog Team.

Announcement Release Notes 

Fatdog64 900 Beta: 4 August 2023

This is the second release of the 900 series, and basically just contains bug fixes found during the alpha period, as well as package updates to mitigate security advisories noted by LFS team.

Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 900 Final: 12 September 2023

Fatdog64 900 Final is the first final release of the 900 series (not counting the public alphas and betas). It was basically the same as 900 Beta with further software updates to address some security issues, as well as bugfixes from problem identified during beta phase.

This release took about 6 months to get here, from the initial work until this release. The initial LFS upgrade works was completed within one month but it took another 5 months of both internal (2 months) and public testing (3 months) to ensure the quality of the release.

With this release, the 900 series finally took off.


Announcement Release Notes

Fatdog64 901 Final: 10 October 2023

This is a special release to address the glibc bug CVE 2023-4911.

Announcement Release Notes




Last updated 10 Oct 2023 - the Fatdog team (kirk, jamesbond, SFR (JakeSFR), step)