Other Distros
- Colonel Panic
- Posts: 2171
- Joined: Sat 16 Sep 2006, 11:09
Just installed WattOS 6, a Ubuntu variant designed for older computers.
I'm impressed for the most part as it looks good and does everything I really need, but unfortunately some of the packages are broken (a common problem with ubuntu-based distros once the version of Ubuntu they're based on gets superseded) so I can't get midnight commander or conky working.
For that reason it's unlikely to be a long term keeper but WattOS 7 will be out Feb or March with any luck. It deserves to succeed if it helps to keep a lot of old machines out of landfill (as does Puppy of course).
BTW, I'm playing Focus's 1974 album "Hamburger Concerto" on Youtube as I type this - great music.
I'm impressed for the most part as it looks good and does everything I really need, but unfortunately some of the packages are broken (a common problem with ubuntu-based distros once the version of Ubuntu they're based on gets superseded) so I can't get midnight commander or conky working.
For that reason it's unlikely to be a long term keeper but WattOS 7 will be out Feb or March with any luck. It deserves to succeed if it helps to keep a lot of old machines out of landfill (as does Puppy of course).
BTW, I'm playing Focus's 1974 album "Hamburger Concerto" on Youtube as I type this - great music.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.
Heh, WattOS. WattOS is at least partially responsible for introducing me to Puppy. I know I've told this tale before, but I like to tell it, so you folks get to hear a repeat
"A long time ago, on another forum, far, far away" (sorry, George, couldn't resist...) I was turning a thin client into a PC. I needed a lightweight OS because the thin client was older and the hardware specs deplorable at best. (Even brand-new thin clients are generally extraordinarily weak, compared to even most of the stuff that runs Puppy. It's by design -- they do as much as they have to, and not one bit more.) I knew Windows wasn't going to cut it, and I didn't see Ubuntu or any of its variants being nearly light enough. I'd only had experience with that one distro, but I knew there were TONS more.
So I did some asking, and some looking, and I found WattOS and a lot of people recommending this thing called Puppy Linux. I never heard of either one, and the forum had never heard of WattOS (IIRC it was brand new at the time).
I decided to give WattOS a chance first. (To this day, I've no idea why!) So I posted on WattOS' forums, "hey, I need to run a distro off a CF card on a thin client with mondo low specs, can WattOS do that?" Well, OK, the post was a lot more detailed, but that's the essence of it. A week went by and no reply -- so I posted again, spelling out for them in quite thorough detail exactly how much they had to learn about tech support and all that. I'd honestly like to think they've learned (I suspect they have, if they're up to version 6!), but I've never been back to find out.
...to make a long story, well, a little less long (!) ... I put up a post here on this very forum [EDIT: this thread right here] asking if Puppy could do what I want. Boom! Answer within an hour, and if I remember correctly, it was within a half-hour. Either way, it was along the lines of "heck yeah, we can do that!"...
...and the rest, as they say, was history.
Just curious, Colonel... how fast is WattOS compared to, say, Puplite5 or Akita? (A very slightly modified Puplite5 is what went on that thin client!) I imagine, being an Ubuntu derivative, WattOS winds up carrying at least a good percentage of the same bloat... and therefore is far more slow and pudgy than it needs to be.
"A long time ago, on another forum, far, far away" (sorry, George, couldn't resist...) I was turning a thin client into a PC. I needed a lightweight OS because the thin client was older and the hardware specs deplorable at best. (Even brand-new thin clients are generally extraordinarily weak, compared to even most of the stuff that runs Puppy. It's by design -- they do as much as they have to, and not one bit more.) I knew Windows wasn't going to cut it, and I didn't see Ubuntu or any of its variants being nearly light enough. I'd only had experience with that one distro, but I knew there were TONS more.
So I did some asking, and some looking, and I found WattOS and a lot of people recommending this thing called Puppy Linux. I never heard of either one, and the forum had never heard of WattOS (IIRC it was brand new at the time).
I decided to give WattOS a chance first. (To this day, I've no idea why!) So I posted on WattOS' forums, "hey, I need to run a distro off a CF card on a thin client with mondo low specs, can WattOS do that?" Well, OK, the post was a lot more detailed, but that's the essence of it. A week went by and no reply -- so I posted again, spelling out for them in quite thorough detail exactly how much they had to learn about tech support and all that. I'd honestly like to think they've learned (I suspect they have, if they're up to version 6!), but I've never been back to find out.
...to make a long story, well, a little less long (!) ... I put up a post here on this very forum [EDIT: this thread right here] asking if Puppy could do what I want. Boom! Answer within an hour, and if I remember correctly, it was within a half-hour. Either way, it was along the lines of "heck yeah, we can do that!"...
...and the rest, as they say, was history.
Just curious, Colonel... how fast is WattOS compared to, say, Puplite5 or Akita? (A very slightly modified Puplite5 is what went on that thin client!) I imagine, being an Ubuntu derivative, WattOS winds up carrying at least a good percentage of the same bloat... and therefore is far more slow and pudgy than it needs to be.
- Colonel Panic
- Posts: 2171
- Joined: Sat 16 Sep 2006, 11:09
Hi starhawk,starhawk wrote:Heh, WattOS. WattOS is at least partially responsible for introducing me to Puppy. I know I've told this tale before, but I like to tell it, so you folks get to hear a repeat
"A long time ago, on another forum, far, far away" (sorry, George, couldn't resist...) I was turning a thin client into a PC. I needed a lightweight OS because the thin client was older and the hardware specs deplorable at best. (Even brand-new thin clients are generally extraordinarily weak, compared to even most of the stuff that runs Puppy. It's by design -- they do as much as they have to, and not one bit more.) I knew Windows wasn't going to cut it, and I didn't see Ubuntu or any of its variants being nearly light enough. I'd only had experience with that one distro, but I knew there were TONS more.
So I did some asking, and some looking, and I found WattOS and a lot of people recommending this thing called Puppy Linux. I never heard of either one, and the forum had never heard of WattOS (IIRC it was brand new at the time).
I decided to give WattOS a chance first. (To this day, I've no idea why!) So I posted on WattOS' forums, "hey, I need to run a distro off a CF card on a thin client with mondo low specs, can WattOS do that?" Well, OK, the post was a lot more detailed, but that's the essence of it. A week went by and no reply -- so I posted again, spelling out for them in quite thorough detail exactly how much they had to learn about tech support and all that. I'd honestly like to think they've learned (I suspect they have, if they're up to version 6!), but I've never been back to find out.
...to make a long story, well, a little less long (!) ... I put up a post here on this very forum [EDIT: this thread right here] asking if Puppy could do what I want. Boom! Answer within an hour, and if I remember correctly, it was within a half-hour. Either way, it was along the lines of "heck yeah, we can do that!"...
...and the rest, as they say, was history.
Just curious, Colonel... how fast is WattOS compared to, say, Puplite5 or Akita? (A very slightly modified Puplite5 is what went on that thin client!) I imagine, being an Ubuntu derivative, WattOS winds up carrying at least a good percentage of the same bloat... and therefore is far more slow and pudgy than it needs to be.
I only really notice if things are extremely fast or slow, but I'd say WattOS is fast enough for a Pentium 4 (which mine is, bearing in mind that all its apps are lightweight ones by design). Abiword opens in about three or four seconds on my machine and Gnumeric almost instantly when Abiword is open.
I haven't tried Akita on this machine but I'd guess it's about the same as WattOS. I don't know Puplite, sorry.
As I said though, at the moment it seems like several packages in WattOS are broken, which is a shame.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.
Just messing with Sid........
Code: Select all
Wed Dec 19 13:57:21 CST 2012
bbq@bbq:~$ uname -r
3.7-1.towo-siduction-686
bbq@bbq:~$
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- Posts: 1885
- Joined: Tue 05 Jun 2012, 12:17
- Location: Wisconsin USA
...Yes,..and now I read where Wheezy will be coming out on 11 DVDs!!!! ELEVEN!bark_bark_bark wrote:I always wanted to try Debian, but it comes on 8 DVDs. That's 8 DVDs I don't have. I never really write DVDs.
I used to use Debian a lot,...and would get the DVDs ('cause I'm still on dialup). Lenny only had 4 DVDs,...and was super-nice. I peeled out the extra $$$ for the 8 Squeeze DVDs,.....but NO WAY am I gonna go for 11 DVDs.
I took an old 20 Gig hard drive I had,....and loaded it with Lenny and ALL the games that Lenny and Squeeze had on their DVDs for my grandson. I simply switch out my 160 Gig hard drive for the old 20 G ...when the grandson comes over. Now I can use whatever linux distro I want,....and he can get all his linux games he wants, as well. (Another old computer is loaded with W2k,...and about 100 or so old windows and old dos games for him).
Naw,....no more Debian for me, it seems. Too many DVDs.
- Colonel Panic
- Posts: 2171
- Joined: Sat 16 Sep 2006, 11:09
Well, good news on that front. I've removed gkrellm now and the programs that weren't installing before have since installed just finestarhawk wrote:One more WattOS question: are the packages broken right away, or does it try to update, fail badly, and break everything as a result?
I'm still aware that I know a lot less about Debian- and Ubuntu-based distros than Slack-based ones though (how to locate and enable appropriate repos, for example). Still, it's all working now.
Last edited by Colonel Panic on Sun 30 Dec 2012, 23:03, edited 1 time in total.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.
Just messing with AntiXJames C wrote:Just messing with Sid........
Code: Select all
Wed Dec 19 13:57:21 CST 2012 bbq@bbq:~$ uname -r 3.7-1.towo-siduction-686 bbq@bbq:~$
Code: Select all
$ uname -r
3.7.1-antix.2-amd64-smp
$ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux wheezy/sid"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
ID=debian
ANSI_COLOR="1;31"
rokytnji wrote:Just messing with AntiXJames C wrote:Just messing with Sid........
Code: Select all
Wed Dec 19 13:57:21 CST 2012 bbq@bbq:~$ uname -r 3.7-1.towo-siduction-686 bbq@bbq:~$
Iso was 300MB for Base. 64bit also.Code: Select all
$ uname -r 3.7.1-antix.2-amd64-smp $ cat /etc/os-release PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux wheezy/sid" NAME="Debian GNU/Linux" ID=debian ANSI_COLOR="1;31"
Still running AntiX here too....
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james@antiX1:~
$ uname -r
3.6.6-antix.1-486-smp
james@antiX1:~
$
Guys this is really funny.
http://distrowatch.com/7622
SparkyLinux 2.0.1, a lightweight Debian-based distribution
featuring a customised LXDE deskto
Yes finally a lightweigt Debian. How small it is?
Download: sparkylinux-2.0.1-gameover-i386.iso (3,913MB
3.913 MB that is even smaller than my DVD having some 4.70 or 4.37 GB?
(Jasper Thanks for correction) Typical of me.
I mean come on Puppy Linux. You have to cut size to fit in
among the really light weight guys
http://distrowatch.com/7622
SparkyLinux 2.0.1, a lightweight Debian-based distribution
featuring a customised LXDE deskto
Yes finally a lightweigt Debian. How small it is?
Download: sparkylinux-2.0.1-gameover-i386.iso (3,913MB
3.913 MB that is even smaller than my DVD having some 4.70 or 4.37 GB?
(Jasper Thanks for correction) Typical of me.
I mean come on Puppy Linux. You have to cut size to fit in
among the really light weight guys
Last edited by nooby on Thu 20 Dec 2012, 14:36, edited 1 time in total.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though
not an ideal solution though
Nooby and Jasper,Jasper wrote:Hi nooby,
It seems to be 3 GB (not 3 MB)?
My regards
I believe nooby's post referred to the games version.
The authors also offer a "Venus Lite" iso at 673M, third entry at http://sparkylinux.org/download/. It's based on Debian Squeeze.
BFN.
m0
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)
Lubuntu 12.10
Not being very adventurous, I've been playing with Lubuntu 12.10. Nice, compact, reasonable feature set. Still prefer Slacko though.
Porteus 2.0 today but have not much to say.
It has save file on NTFS so that is good.
did frugal install.
title Porteus 2.0 root toor
root (hd0,0)
kernel /porteusboot/syslinux/vmlinuz from_dev=/dev/sda1 from_dir=/porteus toroot changes=/porteus/porteussave.dat max_loop=256 fsck kmap=se
initrd /porteusboot/syslinux/initrd.xz
kmap=se i sfor to get swedish keyboard butto keep
English as language in menu
It has save file on NTFS so that is good.
did frugal install.
title Porteus 2.0 root toor
root (hd0,0)
kernel /porteusboot/syslinux/vmlinuz from_dev=/dev/sda1 from_dir=/porteus toroot changes=/porteus/porteussave.dat max_loop=256 fsck kmap=se
initrd /porteusboot/syslinux/initrd.xz
kmap=se i sfor to get swedish keyboard butto keep
English as language in menu
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though
not an ideal solution though