Old puppy not installed on RAM completely?

[rvqx]

I want to install Puppy on my 48 MB laptop. I heard old versions does not load the complete Puppy into RAM. The oldest version i found is 2.02. Does it install itself into RAM completely and do i need an older version?

[Bruce B]

If you don't have enough RAM, Puppy will take note of that, and not attempt the impossible.

If for some reason, you want the whole OS loaded into 48mb of ram, Puppy will and could not do this.

[rvqx]

So, what would you advice, if i want to install puppy on its own partition on a 48 MB machine; what version and what partition-type (ext2 or ext3) ?

[Bruce B]

I don't think version matters, particularly.

With a low ram situation, you'll want to make a Full Install.

To boot the GUI takes about 28 to 32mb

You can drop some extras and bring it down to about 18 to 20mb, thus leaving you with about 28mb for running applications.

You will run into major slowdown with the big full featured browsers.

You will also need a swap partition or file. You will probably need it before the install as running X plus Gparted (the partition program) will likely require more than the 48 mb you have installed.

DSL would have a smaller memory requirement out of the box.

Also I just did some testing in this topic How to speed Puppy up on a very old machine?

I recommend reading it. The bottom line is you can get a fairly respectable operation with a low ram machine, but you have extra work to do and some compromises to make.

Ideally, you could install ram at least to 128mb and hopefully more.