Thanks JB.jamesbond wrote:@rufwoof - because it happens too frequent that people setup a small savefile and before you know it, it gets full. Save-to-directory "saves" you from this problem but it doesn't consume a whole partition like save-to-partition. And you can still have a full backup easily by copying the entire save directory, if you wish. But save-to-directory only makes sense for others who are already running Linux since it requires a Linux-compatible partition (not only ext2/3/4, you can have it with f2fs, xfs, jfs, reiserfs, btrfs, zfs, nfs, whatever-fs you can think of which is an Unix-compatible partition --- ntfs, vfat and cifs are specifically *excluded*).
I started using Puppy back in early March in anticipation of the April XP deadline. Initially I thought I'd just create a small Puppy LiveCD for online banking purposes - a sort of browser linux, and use XP for all other stuff. I haven't however even booted XP for over a month now. I'm finding that Puppy caters for all of my needs.
Initially I did try a savefile and experienced what you said - mozilla cache was filling it up. Played around with moving .mozilla outside of savefile, creating backups etc, but by then I'd more or less remastered a liveCD that had everything I needed and as I liked, so decided to just ram boot and sym link any changes I did make to outside of the savefile space. That's worked well for me and I've stayed with that since.
I don't want to full install as I'm more comfortable booting with the same pristine fresh image all of the time (I realise that could be achieved with frugal or full installs - but I'm ok with using a CD - especially as once booted the CD can be removed - leaving everything just running in RAM (no HDD's, on CD)).
I've a small Slacko based liveCD, 80MB (uses extreme compression so squeezes more into less space i.e. -b 1024K compression dictionary size) that boots quite quickly. The rest I've set up as a few clickable icons that each load multiple sfs's/pet's (word processing, audio/video editing etc). I just drag the EXTRA folder (the name I've given to the folder containing all of the sfs's) to / and then load them from there (in memory).
I store all images, music, docs etc on the HDD's, together with a script that sym links in the various selective persistent saves that I want - primarily program configuration (under /root) files.
Even though this ancient single core runs at 100% CPU when heavily loaded, Puppy manages the timeslicing/loading well and actual interaction is very snappy/quick. So snappy in fact that I've been unwilling to boot sluggish XP.
I've tried loads of other distro's, none work as well as Puppy as a LiveCD IMO. The developers/team are to be congratulated.
A big thanks to all concerned.