Presto Puppy?

[Max Uglee]

I think the point everyone seems to be missing is the boot speed.

I realize the boot speed is not going to be the best. I was more excited by the idea of being able to Easily install Puppy inside of windows. I am sure the 15 second boot time cited by the Presto people was probably done on new hardware. You could probably boot Puppy in 5 seconds if you stripe a few Intel SSD's and use an smp-enabled Puppy (not really sure how easy that would be to get goin, I'm just sayin'). Puppy's strength is it's speed once it has booted, especially on old hardware. I bet using the same machine and pfix=noram puppy would boot nearly as fast as Presto.

Getting Puppy to boot on a Windows machine is not terribly difficult.

It is way beyond someone that has not used Linux.

Puppy Linux Mission Statement:

* Puppy will easily install to USB, Zip or hard drive media
* Booting from CD, Puppy will load totally into RAM so that the CD drive is then free for other purposes
* Puppy will be extremely friendly for Linux newbies
* Puppy will boot up and run extraordinarily fast
* Puppy will have all the applications needed for daily use
* Puppy will just work, no hassles
* Puppy will breathe new life into old PCs

There are plenty of walk-throughs but what happens when something goes wrong and you can't even boot into XP? You would have to understand both the Windows bootloader and Grub 4 Dos to fix anything.

All I am saying is I think that a tool like this where everything can be done from a basic windows installer (no editing config files, or manually moving stuff around) and always just work would draw a lot of windows users. Ubuntu has done it, so could Puppy.

[MU]

Puppy has it since 2005 already
Current version:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=16041

I have tried 4.12 for Puppy XP installer.

Works fine.

Maybe I should charge 10 Euro for it.
Then more people would talk about it
Apart from the fact I could need the money...

Mark

[Max Uglee]

PostPosted: Today, at 20:39 Post subject:
Puppy has it since 2005 already Very Happy
Current version:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=16041

Quote:
I have tried 4.12 for Puppy XP installer.

Works fine.


Maybe I should charge 10 Euro for it.
Then more people would talk about it Laughing
Apart from the fact I could need the money... Rolling Eyes

Mark

Mu if you make an uninstaller I think that people would be less scared to try it. It would be awesome if Puppy 5 had a rock solid version that included an uninstaller. Especially if it ends up being Jaunty based, considering Ubuntu already has this feature w/WUBI.

An autorun.inf that brings up a pretty gui menu that will make windows users comfortable with options like:

Boot Puppy From CD (ensure that your BIOS is set to boot from
CD-ROM first)

Install Puppy
>Inside Windows
>To a Flash Drive
>Full Install

Uninstall Puppy

About Puppy

Like Puppy, How About Donating?


Put a screenshot of that on distrowatch when 5 comes out and I think it would draw more users in.

Maybe I should just shut up about it and learn to program. You guys are the ones that make things happen. Thank you for all the freshness you've already contributed MU.

[floborg]

An autorun.inf that brings up a pretty gui menu that will make windows users comfortable with options like:

Boot Puppy From CD (ensure that your BIOS is set to boot from
CD-ROM first)

Install Puppy
>Inside Windows
>To a Flash Drive
>Full Install

Uninstall Puppy

About Puppy

Like Puppy, How About Donating?

Hot tip: autorun for inserted CDs and USB drives is becoming a thing of the past. I don't think Vista supports it currently, and Windows 7 will not. Many managed XP workstations are having it disabled. Not to say that the Windows exe with the Wubi-like menu isn't a bad idea. Perhaps we could make an official "newbie" release that has this stuff, at the cost of a couple of extra MBs.

[superchook]

I was able to experiment on a Windows box today and was able to confirm that the following procedure enables the installation of a "4" series puppy on a computer running Windows XP with an ntfs filesystem.

The method is more or less as described on the Lin 'N Win project page

http://www.icpug.org.uk/national/linnwi ... innwin.htm

First you will have to download the files grldr and menu.lst and put them directly in the top level of the filesystem. That is they should be placed in C:\ and not in a folder.

Next create a folder called Puppy in the top level that is to say C:\Puppy
Now copy the following files from the Puppy CD into this folder.
vmlinuz
initrd.gz
logo.16
pup_420turbo.sfs
(I was using the turbopup42-alpha3a.iso CD) If you were using, for example, the puppies-4.2-k2.6.25.16-seamonkey-v2.iso that last file would have been
pup_420.sfs

When you do the "drag and drop" to copy the files Windows may change the filenames to upper case and truncate them to eight characters so right click on each file and "rename" them back to their original names.

Now edit the file C:\menu.lst using notepad to read

title Puppy
kernel (hd0,0)/Puppy/vmlinuz PMEDIA=idehd psubdir=Puppy
initrd (hd0,0)/Puppy/initrd.gz
boot

Note this assumes that the "C drive" is on the first primary partition which is most likely except in the case of some laptops. Also if you have a SATA hard drive instead of an IDE drive replace "idehd" with "satahd"
Save your changes and exit from Notepad.

Finally you have to edit C:\boot.ini
* From the "Start Menu" select "Control Panel"
* Open "System"
*Select the "Advanced" tab
* You will see three buttons all labeled "Settings"
Click the "Settings" button for "Startup and Recovery"
* Ensure the option "Time to display list of operating systems" is ticked and select a time (say 5)
* Click the "Edit" button
* Add the following line to the list in the [operating systems] section. This line is usually the last line in the file. Type the line EXACTLY, including quotes, and press Enter at the end.

c:\grldr="Puppy"

Save your changes and exit the Notepad window.
* Click the "OK" button on the "Startup and Recovery" window.
* Click the "OK" button on the "System Properties" window.
* Close the "Control Panel" window.

When next you reboot the computer you will be presented with a two line menu after the POST is completed. If you do nothing the computer will start booting XP after 5 seconds. If you want to boot Puppy use the down arrow to highlight the "Puppy" entry. On your first boot you will be presented with all the usual questions but on shutdown you will be asked if you wish to create a save file. Make sure that you save to \Puppy

That's all Folks!

[Max Uglee]

I successfully set up Boxpup 4.1.3 with MU's installer. I did have to manually extract the files from the iso though. It would say that it extracted them and just created an empty folder. I tried it 4 or 5 times. It did set up the grub stuff with no probs.

[jumico]

As someone mentioned unetbootin will easily install puppy from windows and can uninstall as well.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

[hartiberlin]

As someone mentioned unetbootin will easily install puppy from windows and can uninstall as well.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

But if you install to USB stick you have to change
in the syslinux.cfg the
lines where it says:

=cd

to

=usb

after the installation.
Otherwise the boot from the USB stick does not work.

Regards, Stefan.

[hartiberlin]

I was able to experiment on a Windows box today and was able to confirm that the following procedure enables the installation of a "4" series puppy on a computer running Windows XP with an ntfs filesystem.

The method is more or less as described on the Lin 'N Win project page

http://www.icpug.org.uk/national/linnwi ... innwin.htm

First you will have to download the files grldr and menu.lst and put them directly in the top level of the filesystem. That is they should be placed in C:\ and not in a folder.

Next create a folder called Puppy in the top level that is to say C:\Puppy
Now copy the following files from the Puppy CD into this folder.
vmlinuz
initrd.gz
logo.16
pup_420turbo.sfs
(I was using the turbopup42-alpha3a.iso CD) If you were using, for example, the puppies-4.2-k2.6.25.16-seamonkey-v2.iso that last file would have been
pup_420.sfs

When you do the "drag and drop" to copy the files Windows may change the filenames to upper case and truncate them to eight characters so right click on each file and "rename" them back to their original names.

Now edit the file C:\menu.lst using notepad to read

title Puppy
kernel (hd0,0)/Puppy/vmlinuz PMEDIA=idehd psubdir=Puppy
initrd (hd0,0)/Puppy/initrd.gz
boot

Note this assumes that the "C drive" is on the first primary partition which is most likely except in the case of some laptops. Also if you have a SATA hard drive instead of an IDE drive replace "idehd" with "satahd"
Save your changes and exit from Notepad.

Finally you have to edit C:\boot.ini
* From the "Start Menu" select "Control Panel"
* Open "System"
*Select the "Advanced" tab
* You will see three buttons all labeled "Settings"
Click the "Settings" button for "Startup and Recovery"
* Ensure the option "Time to display list of operating systems" is ticked and select a time (say 5)
* Click the "Edit" button
* Add the following line to the list in the [operating systems] section. This line is usually the last line in the file. Type the line EXACTLY, including quotes, and press Enter at the end.

c:\grldr="Puppy"

Save your changes and exit the Notepad window.
* Click the "OK" button on the "Startup and Recovery" window.
* Click the "OK" button on the "System Properties" window.
* Close the "Control Panel" window.

When next you reboot the computer you will be presented with a two line menu after the POST is completed. If you do nothing the computer will start booting XP after 5 seconds. If you want to boot Puppy use the down arrow to highlight the "Puppy" entry. On your first boot you will be presented with all the usual questions but on shutdown you will be asked if you wish to create a save file. Make sure that you save to \Puppy

That's all Folks!

I am also using this method to install different Puplets besides the WindowsXP on my test machine.
(older Laptop with P3 733 Mhz and 384 MBytes RAM
and only 20 GB harddisk with FAT32)

So how do we get the same speed as Xandros Presto to
boot so quickly ?

I would like to have a very small puplet with just firefox 3.0.10 with the newest Adobe Flash which supports Youtube fullscreen and a nice multimedia player like Kaffeine or VideoLan to play my HD MOV files from my
HD camcorder and listen to some internet
radio stations)
(The HD MOV files would be done on a faster PC)

So how do we get a Puplet that can boot this fast
and has all this basic functionality like Presto.

Also XBMC.org Mediacenter would be very nice to
have in this puplet, as it is just THE BEST MEDIACENTER
software in my opinion.

Many thanks in advance.

Regards, Stefan.

[Max Uglee]

Also XBMC.org Mediacenter would be very nice to
have in this puplet, as it is just THE BEST MEDIACENTER
software in my opinion.

Many thanks in advance.

Regards, Stefan.

I've been looking into XBMC lately as well. It has that breathing life into old hardware thing goin on like Puppy. It's amazing what they have done with it. A puplet with just XBMC would be great on an old PC that has video out to use as a media center.

[hartiberlin]

Also XBMC.org Mediacenter would be very nice to
have in this puplet, as it is just THE BEST MEDIACENTER
software in my opinion.

Many thanks in advance.

Regards, Stefan.

I've been looking into XBMC lately as well. It has that breathing life into old hardware thing goin on like Puppy. It's amazing what they have done with it. A puplet with just XBMC would be great on an old PC that has video out to use as a media center.

I totally agree,
but the problem with their LiveCD is,
that it is based on Ubuntu 9.04 and still has many bugs.

It is not easy at all for a Linux Noob to get it to work
and I would like to see XBMC done in a Pupplet
so I can install it beside WindowsXP in a Frugal installation.

In this moment I am using for my XBMC a dedicated
P4 3Ghz with 1 MB RAM and 40 GB Harddisk
with MicroXP/Sata edition and the Windows XP Version
of XBOX MEDIA CENTER.

It works also very nicely and boots up
pretty fast and I can still use FireFox 3.0.10
with the latest Flash plugin...

But if we would have a Pupplet with just
XBMC and Firefox 3.0.10 and Adobe Flash
and if it will boot as fast as Xandros Presto,
that would be the perfect Pupplet for me.

Regards, Stefan.

[Max Uglee]

@ hartiberlin

I have not tried the live CD but I have had my share of problems with Ubuntu 9.04. There are also versions of XBMC for Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10.

http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=33327

I'm wondering how hard it would be to build a .pup that would install one of these into a woof build using an earlier Ubuntu. The alpha of 9.10 looks pretty impressive also from what I have seen in benchmarks.

Have you ever tried #!(Crunch Bang) Linux?

http://crunchbanglinux.org/

It is an Ubuntu derivative that uses Openbox. The last version I tried was 8.10.02 and it was very "Puppyish."(except it does not boot into ram ). It was very stable and ran nice on an old PIII 600 Mhz PC. It may be a good platform for XBMC. I say this because in #! you have synaptic so all you would have to do is add those XBMC repos and you'd be all set. FF3 also runs very well in the *buntus. Flash doesn't work very well in any Linux distro so you can't expect too much there. I am not trying to say that Puppy could not do this. I am only saying that for now, until a good, solid woof build is out, this may be a good alternative.

[hartiberlin]

Yes,please try it and post your pupplets or
ISO files.



Sorry, I am too busy with other things right now to try it.

Many thanks in advance.

Regards, Stefan.

[Max Uglee]

Check this out

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=309953

[capoverde]

Personally, if I were a Windows add..., er, user, I'd prefer to test something that doesn't touch at my system at all (since it already "rots" on its own, as Max Uglee says): that is, a Live-CD.

True, the general belief is that Live-CDs are slow and unstable, but when one decides to test a new car he usually doesn't go for a race: it's a familiarizing experience. With just three or four CLEAR dialogs Puppy sets everybody in the Puppy driver's seat in less than two minutes and that's usually a very pleasant surprise (my first Linux install, prior to any Live-CD, took about one hour and a half...).

Thus IMHO the Puppy-in-Win$ installer is more likely to be the second step towards a Puppy-only box: quite a good idea anyway.

However, having a Win$ partition with Puppy inside means it'll be always mounted when running Puppy (correct me if I'm wrong) -- I'd not feel fully comfortable advising anyone to choose this approach, knowing that he/she'll be able to unwittingly make their Win$ system unusable in a second: Puppy and Linux wouldn't be loved much then, even if they're not the culprits...

When one knows what it means to mount a partition and has to do it by himself, he's generally more careful about his doings.

[Max Uglee]

However, having a Win$ partition with Puppy inside means it'll be always mounted when running Puppy (correct me if I'm wrong) -- I'd not feel fully comfortable advising anyone to choose this approach, knowing that he/she'll be able to unwittingly make their Win$ system unusable in a second: Puppy and Linux wouldn't be loved much then, even if they're not the culprits...

When one knows what it means to mount a partition and has to do it by himself, he's generally more careful about his doings.

Good point, I am not sure if it would be mounted automatically either. Either way there should be warnings/disclaimers throughout the setup and if possible somewhere in Puppy itself when you access that drive. That would probably something that would need to be hard coded into ROX though. At the very least there should be a basic explanation of what messing with your C: drive can do to your system.

[Max Uglee]

Earlier on in this thread we discussed XBMC. I came across a derivative of XBMC called Boxee. It has all the same features and many more. It features all types of video streams like youtube, hulu, discovery channel, adult swim, and hundreds more. Like XBMC you can also stream all of your videos, music and pics over your network. It also has a built in bit torrent program. Anyone interested in a media center type of setup should check it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxee



If I had money I would pay someone to make a .pet The only way I found that you can install it now is through an Ubuntu repo so it may take some reverse engineering?

[Aitch]

If I had money I would pay someone to make a .pet The only way I found that you can install it now is through an Ubuntu repo so it may take some reverse engineering?

speak to ttuuxxx

he loves a challenge & he's damn good at it!

Aitch

[Max Uglee]

speak to ttuuxxx

he loves a challenge & he's damn good at it!

Aitch

Thank you Aitch. What would be the right way to speak with him? A PM? New thread? I'm sorry I am new here and just would like to make sure I am doing things right.

[Aitch]

Hmm, PM I suppose, .....if he doesn't find this

I only seem to mention his name, & he knows,

.... it's as if he smells it

I tend to be a bit bold....worst way, you can only get a no

Aitch