Which Puppy for Steam on a BIOS-only computer?

[Domarius]

Hi guys, could someone recommend me a version of Puppy Linux that would be good for running Steam and playing games, on an old-ish motherboard? It can only boot BIOS, and I noticed all the downloads of Puppy Linux on the main page have "uefi" in the filename. Are there BIOS versions of those?

For what it's worth, here's the motherboard info
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... 965ss.html

More info
It's just for having a PC for gaming in the living room under the TV. Up until recently it had SteamOS which was fine, but for some reason, one of our games (Towerfall) started crashing on SteamOS, even after a re-install, but works fine on other Linux distros (tested on Manjaro, and Ubuntu) so something they updated doesn't like SteamOS.

And because I also want to start running RetroArch on it as well, I figured I'd ditch SteamOS and try some normal Linux desktop distros.

• LAKKA was awesome on another PC I tried, but it only comes in UEFI boot I think, and so it won't boot on this machine, not even off the live USB. Also no Steam games.
• Manjaro looked like it worked, but near the end of the install, it failed with some kind of error "Could not set machine ID" and never booted.
• Sparky Linux Game Over Edition booted off the live USB, installed sucessfully, but refused to boot, in a way that makes me think it's trying to boot UEFI.
• Ubuntu Game Pack worked, but oh man it takes so long to boot, and comes pre-configured with a gamepad controlled mouse feature that messes with Steam Big Picture's interface by making it think we are moving the joystick and the mouse at the same time.

It's after dealing with the bloated Ubuntu distro that I started thinking, surely there's just a slimmed down version of Linux that will run Steam, and boot in BIOS, and then I remembered Puppy Linux, which does exactly that, to breath life into older machines. So I came here and saw all the main downloads are for UEFI, and when I look at the download page I'm swamped with versions and I thought I'd just ask and see what you guys think.

Thanks in advance.

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, Domarius.

Methinks you're gonna have issues with this one. Maybe, maybe not.....I don't know, exactly.

You have to realise that the vast majority of consumer PCs in the marketplace have been UEFI-equipped for years; this is why modern Pups from the last few years all have the 'auto' UEFI stuff. I myself have had to adjust the way I do things in recent weeks, after my 16-yr old Compaq tower finally 'croaked', and I treated myself to my first ever brand-new hardware.

The old was BIOS-only; the new, UEFI-only. However, I was running versions of the very newest Bionic Puppies (32- and 64-bit) on the old one, and they ran fine. The UEFI stuff, so far as I'm aware, merely makes it possible to run on UEFI-hardware after you've reset a UEFI machine to 'legacy' mode, and switched off all the built-in FastBoot/SecureBoot crap they're infested with nowadays.

The one thing I can't do with this new PC is to run older Puppies on it; they all refuse to boot, because they're looking for something called 'Vesa BIOS extensions'.....and, of course, being UEFI-equipped, it doesn't have a BIOS, does it? (*Grrr....*)

I think you should be able to run Steam OK. I'm not a 'gamer', personally, but I keep up with developments here on the Forum, and I know there's been plenty of threads about Steam in recent years, so.....you could be in luck for this 'project'.

Hang in there; others will be along soon, probably with more relevant advice than I can offer. Have a look in the 'Games' sub-forum while you're waiting; might be summat relevant in there, too.


Mike.

[enrique]

Trying regular ISO on a UEFI ONLY machine would not work. But the opposite, trying UEFI ISO Installation on a Bios ONLY machine is real possible. And with very high success rate.

The exception is trying an old Puppy on a New PC. And even that you have a good chance that upgrading the kernel will do the trick.

My point. You always have a chance of failing. But It does not hurt to try. Ignore the game issue. That's for latter. 1rst start looking for one Puppy that will make your PC run. Once you install that frugal on a folder. You can now start adding more puppies on different Puppys Directories. At this point UEFI would have no importance. As you would download ANY ISO. Then manually extract its contains and Copy& Paste the SFS to your new PC folder.

Go ahead and try and let us know.

[Domarius]

You guys are right, I just needed to try one and it works. I got the impression from the FAQ that I needed to choose a BIOS or UEFI version.

Puppy Bionic 64bit installed and runs no problems. But now I can't work out how to get Steam running, mainly because I don't know how to find the executable! Using the Puppy Package Manager I searched for "steam" and got two results "steam_installer (version...)" and "steam_devices (version...)" and I installed these both... and now what? I tried typing "steam" at the terminal, no such command. I tried typing "steam" and pressing TAB to autocomplete but it just beeps at me... so yeah I just don't know how to find the executable for a package I just installed in Linux.

BTW Mike, "Vesa BIOS Extension" refers to a very old video card standard from the MS-DOS days, nothing to do with the BIOS on your motherboard! That's a term I haven't heard in decades... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions

[bigpup]

Look at your other topic for the answer to running Steam.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=118300

[linuxcbon]

Try bionicpup64, steam works OK there.
See this : http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=117364
It boots on my non-uefi PC , from a USB stick.

[ndujoe1]

yes bionicpup64 runs steam on my computer as well

[Domarius]

Thanks guys, sorry for the dual thread, was torn whether or not to break out the issue into a new thread since the thread title is way off what the problem actually is, now that I know better. Will continue in the other thread.