(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

The latest version of Pardus, a distribution developed by the Turkish government and based on Debian 10, is out now and I've just installed it. As with previous incarnations of Pardus, I'm very impressed with it except that I don't at all like the red / purple theme it has throughout (which is very much like PCLinuxOS's).

I've also recently installed the latest versions of Slint (14.2.1.2) and SolydX'S EE (Experimental Edition), which like Pardus is based on Debian 10, and both are running well.

TrueOS-x64-18.12 is supposed to be based on Free BSD. I downloaded the .iso and burned it to a DVD with burniso2cd. It booted and I logged in as root, with no password needed, but I couldn't get it to do anything after that. From what I read, it should have booted to some kind of desktop, but mine never went past a text-only interface and I couldn't guess any commands that it knew. Not like Puppy at all.

Hi Flash

TrueOS follows current and FreeBSD's current is fundamentally unstable, a experimental OS for cutting edge developers. At least it did when first released, may have changed as that didn't go down at all well with the FreeBSD regulars.

All of the packages needed for a fully functional server OS are included out of the box

Desktop environments may be downloaded and installed via the package management (pkg) system

A server is different from a general purpose personal computer. A server sits in a locked room, probably with other server machines. They really don't need keyboards or mice or video monitors or sound cards or even sound card drivers. They just need a network connection and a power supply. Mostly what they do is copy files from the local network and send them to whatever asked for it.

Dell for example sell server machines, optimized for server use.

An operating system optimized for use as a server is unlikely to make a good OS for general purpose use.

A server is different from a general purpose personal computer. A server sits in a locked room, probably with other server machines. They really don't need keyboards or mice or video monitors or sound cards or even sound card drivers. They just need a network connection and a power supply. Mostly what they do is copy files from the local network and send them to whatever asked for it.

The Unix philosophy is : everything is a file ... and ... each task does one thing, and does it well. Sound, videos ...etc. are just files (or streams) of bytes. Mice, keyboards, monitors, sound cards are only needed for human interface, to display a file/stream content that carries video/sound, or enable the person to create file content (keyboard), or control processes flow (mouse).

In a terminal/server setup the terminal end provides the human interface, and depending upon needs that can be very lightweight. I have multi-boot choices and some of those are very lightweight, basically just the kernel + busybox ... typically around 15MB in size and enough to get to a command prompt displayed on a screen and accept keyboard entry (commands). With that I ssh into a server and from there I have multiple sessions that keep running even when my 'terminal' is switched off (can disconnect and reconnect again leaving things running on the server). On that server typically I leave IRC running, others might leave long compilations running ...etc. I can also run a browser (albeit a text only browser), visit BBS's (that often use ansi graphics), store things, view emails and partake of mail-lists ...etc. Fundamentally communicate and share things with others. That setup has just a single encrypted link between my terminal (laptop) and the server. My ISP/state doesn't see the what/where of my activities, only a encrypted connection with the content unknown to them data flow through that link. Similarly places I visit do not see my laptops IP, only the servers IP.

If my general purpose needs are to have sounds/videos/graphical browser etc. then instead of that 15MB terminal boot I have to boot up a system that has X (graphical user interface) and programs such as Chrome browser, along with loading all the drivers displaying videos/listening to sounds etc involves, which massively bloats out the size (typically 1GB minimum (non compressed)) of the system being loaded. That also opens you right up, you're ISP/state can monitor your activities, as can places (sites) you visit, and its much easier for others to slip things into your local system and/or gain control over your system. Google gains much of its revenues from targeting adverts and profiling individuals, so whilst its browser is free to download/install/use, the price being paid is yourself. Many don't care about that price often saying that they have nothing to hide, but paraphrasing Snowden that's like saving you have nothing to say.

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

When a state can monitor your movements, spending and activities (google searches etc.) then that's paramount to a open-prison. You're being left free to do those activities until some one person somewhere may decide that you should be moved to a closed-prison. And where all of your money/wealth is not actually yours, but instead is just a loan that can be called in at any time. The acceptance of that is so broad now that individuals who might opt out attract focus. A part of 'Big Data' is not only to monitor everything/everywhere, but also to highlight and track those not openly shouting out their movements/activities. Fundamentally a bad form of communism has won. The ideal of communism is ...

system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.

.. but where more often in the current world individuals needs aren't being met and instead the few retain the wealth for themselves that otherwise might be spent on others.

Good news for fans of LXLE, the midweight respin of Lubuntu. Despite Lubuntu's abandonment of both LXDE and the "friendly to old hardware" philosophy, LXLE is forging on and LXLE 18.04.3 Beta has just been released. This is the first version of LXLE to be based on Bionic Beaver.

I've been running LXLE on my old P4 desktop for years. Currently I'm on the Xenial-based 16.04.3 version, so it's good to know I'll have a Bionic successor to turn to when Xenial goes EOL.

Anyone done a review of MX Linux? Would be interesting to see it compared to Puppy.

nubc wrote:Anyone done a review of MX Linux? Would be interesting to see it compared to Puppy.

Hi NUBC,

If it helps any, I did a review of Anti-X here in "Other Distros" awhile back:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 626#979626

I since graduated to MX-Linux, since a lot of MX is built off of Anti-X.

MX-Linux, for me, is wonderful on both my old and new machines (they have 32 and 64 bit versions, I run both).

Personally, MX-Linux Tools in the OS is unmatched anywhere (except for Fred's DDogs stuff comes really close) that I have seen in Puppy or otherwise. Specifically: remastering.

In MX-Linux, the ability to quickly remaster and have the remaster save EVERY single Personal Setting (and, imagine this, you can click by simple check-mark in simple boxes what out of Home Directory you don't or what you do want saved) is sublime.

MX's remastering is incredible, fast and efficient. Then, at the end, it asks you (with another simple choice click) if you want to install this created remastered-ISO to a USB stick/drive or if you want to DD it. Again, one click.

As I argued here--http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 633#987633 ....and ended up having to fight the well-known Luddite troglodyte of our Puppy Forum, Puppy's Remastering abilities, while fair and they do work but with limitations (unless you grab Nic007's scripts, but still, even then, things are a bit of a pain and NIC007 should never have had to do this in the first place but he wanted to try to improve the remaster process in puppy) are old, stale and out-of-date. Puppy, with regards to remastering, has been left in the dark ages compared to what MX-Linux has done.

....and the MX- team has not looked back as refinements (all around) keep coming at a good, steady clip. MX-Linux/Anti-X is all about the user.


Give MX-Linux's latest ISO a spin, think you will be more than pleasantly surprised. Just upon seeing the boot menu and the simple layout of having innumerable boot choices/options all simply explained will make your puppy heart warm.

MX won't replace all of our love for Pups/DDogs, but the two have become sort of inseparable to me now. Even though we all know of Distrowatch's crazied & flawed ranking system of Linux OSes on its home age, there is a fundamental "focus-on-the-user" reason MX-Linux has shot to the top of the Distros ranking several months ago, above all other distros (large and small alike).

Just an average user here, nothing techy about this reply. Wife loves it. I put it on her machine back when mx-15 first came out. Full install to the hd, and have since progressed to the latest version mx-18+. We use it on an old e-machine, 32 bit dual core 4gb ram nothing special. This machine is at least 8, or 9 years old, and it loves mx. Everything works as it should on this machine, and when I dropped a little 16 gb transcend ssd in , I got a very good speed increase out of it. It`s a keeper as far as we`re concerned.

After some bad experiences with recent editions of Sparky, I'm happy to say that the latest one, Sparky 2019.08, installed first time on my machine and is working well.

It doesn't come with its excellent configuration of Conky any more though, which is a shame because that was one of its best features IMO.

Although I would prefer that the boot disc be a CD rather than a DVD, I like MX Linux quite a lot. Right now I am happily using tahrpup 605 (community), a frugal install using the CD as the boot device (slow as that is). Tahrpup 606 fails to boot because of kernel panic, so I guess this computer is too old. I would like to add a frugal install of MX Linux 18.3 using the DVD as boot device. Can someone briefly describe how to set that up on my current tahrpup box? I have a dedicated 30 GB ext3 partition on one of my two 4TB hard drives to run operating systems. Right now 21 GB are free on the 30-GB OS partition. The serious problem I had with LXLE was that it only auto-installed, erasing the entire disc. Hopefully, there are more options with MX Linux.Question: How big a footprint does a frugall install of MX Linux make? Can I uninstall unwanted programs like Libre Office?

Second time lucky with CrunchBang++ 10.1; it not only booted first time but installed on my hard drive without a hitch and is working well.

CrunchBang was always one of my favourite distros and it's great to see that someone's taken on the legacy and is working to improve on it (the same goes for Bunsen, which is quite similar but with a few innovations such as pipe menus).

belham2 wrote:

nubc wrote:Anyone done a review of MX Linux? Would be interesting to see it compared to Puppy.

Hi NUBC,

If it helps any, I did a review of Anti-X here in "Other Distros" awhile back:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 626#979626

I since graduated to MX-Linux, since a lot of MX is built off of Anti-X.

MX-Linux, for me, is wonderful on both my old and new machines (they have 32 and 64 bit versions, I run both).

Personally, MX-Linux Tools in the OS is unmatched anywhere (except for Fred's DDogs stuff comes really close) that I have seen in Puppy or otherwise. Specifically: remastering.

In MX-Linux, the ability to quickly remaster and have the remaster save EVERY single Personal Setting (and, imagine this, you can click by simple check-mark in simple boxes what out of Home Directory you don't or what you do want saved) is sublime.

MX's remastering is incredible, fast and efficient. Then, at the end, it asks you (with another simple choice click) if you want to install this created remastered-ISO to a USB stick/drive or if you want to DD it. Again, one click.

As I argued here--http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 633#987633 ....and ended up having to fight the well-known Luddite troglodyte of our Puppy Forum, Puppy's Remastering abilities, while fair and they do work but with limitations (unless you grab Nic007's scripts, but still, even then, things are a bit of a pain and NIC007 should never have had to do this in the first place but he wanted to try to improve the remaster process in puppy) are old, stale and out-of-date. Puppy, with regards to remastering, has been left in the dark ages compared to what MX-Linux has done.

....and the MX- team has not looked back as refinements (all around) keep coming at a good, steady clip. MX-Linux/Anti-X is all about the user.


Give MX-Linux's latest ISO a spin, think you will be more than pleasantly surprised. Just upon seeing the boot menu and the simple layout of having innumerable boot choices/options all simply explained will make your puppy heart warm.

MX won't replace all of our love for Pups/DDogs, but the two have become sort of inseparable to me now. Even though we all know of Distrowatch's crazied & flawed ranking system of Linux OSes on its home age, there is a fundamental "focus-on-the-user" reason MX-Linux has shot to the top of the Distros ranking several months ago, above all other distros (large and small alike).

My understanding is MX linux is like a lightweight version of Linux Mint, so lighter than mint but more heavyweight than antiX, puppylinux and doglinux. Regarding the remaster scripts I agree that they could certainly use an update. A lot of things are not saved on the remastered copy of puppy and while I understand this is in part to protect private information there is much more that could be saved without compromising private information.

Colonel Panic wrote:Second time lucky with CrunchBang++ 10.1; it not only booted first time but installed on my hard drive without a hitch and is working well.

CrunchBang was always one of my favourite distros and it's great to see that someone's taken on the legacy and is working to improve on it (the same goes for Bunsen, which is quite similar but with a few innovations such as pipe menus).

I've been using BunsenLabs on one of my older computers,..but recently switched to Antix. MX is on my second-biggest computer, and it runs like a charm!
Started using "SimplyMepis" back when I first discovered Puppy 3.01.

MX is still like SimplyMepis, in that it is easy to use (with more "bells and whistles" now).

I think I will look into CrunchBang again,..now that you mention it,...
would be good for an older laptop that is running Antix (but won't recognize my wifi). And speaking of CrunchBang's "legacy",...I have been trying out
John Biles' "Legacy" Puppy on my oldest laptop. No wifi (rats!) Love the
distro,..but tired of struggling to get my wifi working. Must try CrunchBang on there.
EDIT: CrunchBang says it won't work on that old laptop,..but Antix says it will. I'm good with that...if I can get the wifi working. My wifi problem is most likely because I am using a dongle from 2008 on there (will look for a more current one).

nitehawk wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:Second time lucky with CrunchBang++ 10.1; it not only booted first time but installed on my hard drive without a hitch and is working well.

CrunchBang was always one of my favourite distros and it's great to see that someone's taken on the legacy and is working to improve on it (the same goes for Bunsen, which is quite similar but with a few innovations such as pipe menus).

I've been using BunsenLabs on one of my older computers,..but recently switched to Antix. MX is on my second-biggest computer, and it runs like a charm!
Started using "SimplyMepis" back when I first discovered Puppy 3.01.

MX is still like SimplyMepis, in that it is easy to use (with more "bells and whistles" now).

I think I will look into CrunchBang again,..now that you mention it,...
would be good for an older laptop that is running Antix (but won't recognize my wifi). And speaking of CrunchBang's "legacy",...I have been trying out
John Biles' "Legacy" Puppy on my oldest laptop. No wifi (rats!) Love the
distro,..but tired of struggling to get my wifi working. Must try CrunchBang on there.
EDIT: CrunchBang says it won't work on that old laptop,..but Antix says it will. I'm good with that...if I can get the wifi working. My wifi problem is most likely because I am using a dongle from 2008 on there (will look for a more current one).

Hi again nitie, good to see you here again! I tried out a few distros on my Mum's laptop a couple of Christmasses ago until I found one that worked to set up wi-fi for her - X-Slacko 4.4 (I forget what the utility was that did it).

Having just praised CrunchBang, I had a problem with (or in?) it in that abiword took up nearly all my RAM (over 3 GB) until I shut it down and restarted it and it was fine then. It may have been a problem with abiword rather than CrunchBang though.

I've had trouble booting MX on my computer in the past but AntiX has always been fine, so I generally prefer that instead (your experience may be different). I was disappointed that they changed the AntiX default theme though as I really liked that rainy train station wallpaper on AntiX 18.

I like Legacy too but I think John admitted that he struggled to get wi-fi working consistently on it.

Colonel Panic wrote:
Hi again nitie, good to see you here again! I tried out a few distros on my Mum's laptop a couple of Christmasses ago until I found one that worked to set up wi-fi for her - X-Slacko 4.4 (I forget what the utility was that did it).

Having just praised CrunchBang, I had a problem with (or in?) it in that abiword took up nearly all my RAM (over 3 GB) until I shut it down and restarted it and it was fine then. It may have been a problem with abiword rather than CrunchBang though.

I've had trouble booting MX on my computer in the past but AntiX has always been fine, so I generally prefer that instead (your experience may be different). I was disappointed that they changed the AntiX default theme though as I really liked that rainy train station wallpaper on AntiX 18.

I like Legacy too but I think John admitted that he struggled to get wi-fi working consistently on it.

Yes,..you can never know how a distro will act on your particular hardware. I just discovered that not much will work on my two old laptops. That includes Antix even. Something weird happens to the graphics. Anyhow,..I'm now on to try a Slackware (like Salix or such). We'll see how that goes.
I DO have Racy 550 working well on the oldest (an HP Ze4300 with that little square screen and all). Going to see if I can get a portable Palemoon working on it.

Hello Nite,

Have you tried anything Devuan lately should run on your HP Pavillion runs on all my Hp and Compaq stuff.

darry19662018 wrote:Hello Nite,

Have you tried anything Devuan lately should run on your HP Pavillion runs on all my Hp and Compaq stuff.

Eh, no,.actually I haven't tried Devuan lately. Very tempting thought. This particular laptop is from 2005,..has 1gb ram with 60gb hd.

I just put Precise 5.7.1 Retro on it,...and so far seems to be running super fast!
It already has Opera 12 on it,..but I will try to see if maybe I can get a newer "portable" browser to run in it. Not bad so far. Seemed to have problems
with newer Puppies,...but likes this Precise Retro.
I'll check out Devuan for my other computers (I had several,..and inherited a a few more).

slitaz variant of puppy
tazpup

it is great
only 58 mb of sfs
very fast, stable...

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=113255

nitehawk wrote:

darry19662018 wrote:Hello Nite,

Have you tried anything Devuan lately should run on your HP Pavillion runs on all my Hp and Compaq stuff.

Eh, no,.actually I haven't tried Devuan lately. Very tempting thought. This particular laptop is from 2005,..has 1gb ram with 60gb hd.

I just put Precise 5.7.1 Retro on it,...and so far seems to be running super fast!
It already has Opera 12 on it,..but I will try to see if maybe I can get a newer "portable" browser to run in it. Not bad so far. Seemed to have problems
with newer Puppies,...but likes this Precise Retro.
I'll check out Devuan for my other computers (I had several,..and inherited a a few more).

Hi again nitie,

You may not know there's been a thread recently about Precise 5.7.1, which made the point that it's still very much a viable option and also made suggestions for software to run on it (I still use Precise 5.7.1 Large);

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=114165

EDIT: Still in CrunchBang++, and I've now added the latest versions of Pale Moon, Vivaldi and SoftMaker Free Office which are all working just fine on this thirteen year old machine. The one downside is that the wallpaper and all the decorations, conky etc. are in various shades of grey and to me look rather drab, so sometime when I've got a spare half hour or so I'm hoping to make it look a bit brighter and more cheerful.