Hi David,
Just providing another reason to have the files you download go directly to your hard-drive.
As you are running a Frugal Tahrpup, I'll refer to what happens under it. In other Puppies, only the names would change.
If you Left-click the icon on a Tahrpup's OOTB Desktop at the top left corner with the name "Home" or "Files" a window will open to /root. It is something like the "Documents and Settings" folder under Windows. In Frugal Puppies, however, every time you boot up the contents of this folder are newly created in RAM by copying some files/folders --in Linux a folder is just a specialized file-- from vmlinuz, puppy_tahr_6.0.5.sfs, zdrv_tahr_6.0.5.sfs and your tahrsave-xxx.sfs, and creating links (inodes) to the rest of the contents of those files.
The important point is that they whatever is in /root is in RAM, reducing the amount of RAM you have for productive work.
If you download a file into /root/Desktop or /root/Downloads, that file also occupies RAM. Say, for example, you decided to try out Geoffrey's 228.6 Mb graphic suite adrive,
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 257#937257. It will remain in RAM until you move it, or perform a Save
and reboot. Exclusive of other things occupying RAM, you've reduced your usable RAM from 1 Gb to 771.4 Mbs. If you don't move it, after a Save and Reboot, at least some RAM will be used to point to it now in your SaveFile. And if you don't move it and shutdown/reboot without Saving, the file you downloaded is gone because RAM is cleared on shutdown/reboot.
The better way to imitate what you were doing under Windows is to create a Downloads folder on /mnt/home*. Left-Click the desktop-drive icon of your Home Partition/Drive. It will have an 'x' at its top-right corner immediately on bootup. This will open a window to the contents of your Home Partition. Right-Click an empty space, select New>Directory from the popup Menu, and give it a name, such as Downloads.
You can drag this folder to your desktop which will create a symbolic link (short-cut) to it. Then configure your Web-browser to use that folder for its downloads.
As you are using Palemoon, click Edit on its Taskbar, then Preferences, then General, then the radio-button next to the phrase "Save Files to" and then browse to /mnt/home/Downloads. My preference after setting a default download folder is to then check the button "Always Ask...".
Although you could create a Downloads folder --or whatever you want to call it-- on any drive/partition, by default only /mnt/home is mounted automatically on bootup. You can, however, configure Tahrpup to automatically mount other partitions using Menu>Filesystem>pmount. See bigpup's post:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 543#976543
Although Puppies can have access to any drive/partition, to do so such drive/partition has to be mounted. When they are mounted a link to them is created at /mnt (and I think something is also written to /etc). Puppies will then automatically follow the link to the actual drive/partition. Unfortunately, Puppies are not smart enough to know by themselves when a drive/partition isn't mounted. That makes it possible to execute instructions by which a Puppy will write directly
in /mnt or in a "folder" in /mnt --for example /mnt/sda2-- representing a short-cut to a drive/partition which hasn't been, is is no longer, mounted. When that happens, Puppy is no longer able to create the link to the actual drive/partition, and you can no longer access that drive/partition until the file improperly written is deleted.
In short, if you configure your Puppy to automatically use other than its Home Partition, remember to have such other partition automatically mounted.
mikesLr
* It is my understanding that
that is pretty much what Windows actually does: that is the folders "in" Documents and Settings" are actually just short-cuts to locations on the physical partition on which Windows resides (C: drive). Windows does not maintain the strict distinction between RAM and Storage that Puppies maintain. Consequently, it constantly writes to Storage, slowing down its execution of every operation.