(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

As a new Puppy Linux user, I've had my share of issues, but most involve how to get a configuration I can live with, and on a range of laptops. I use old Fujitsu Lifebooks for travel, a P-series as the source, and a B-series, one without a CD drive, as the target. The P-series uses a Crusoe 800 MHz processor (no fans) and the B a Pentium III. Wary 5.3 runs rather slowly on the P version, so I am looking for an earlier one that would work better, like tux 2.14, or Puppy 4.3.1?

In reading this thread, it is clear that many new users don't understand the level of knowledge required even to run one of the larger, and more commercial-like Linux systems (I run ubuntu on my desktop). I find that I am referring to reference materials on Unix/Linux often to make the systems do what I want them too. This is especially frustrating for Apple users, closed systems run so well, but Linux is designed to be the opposite, and is maintained by people who prefer supremely open systems. I'm not sure this divide can ever be bridged successfully as the approaches are so totally different. I congratulate you on the attempts.

DRBrown

drphysic, I think you make a key point in your second paragraph - one which I and many others had not fully grasped - thank you.

To paraphrase, if you really want to make it play your way, you really have to put in a bit of effort. I think Puppy has gone a long way to minimise the latter, but it remains as someone once said - 'the price of freedom is constant vigilance!' I'd certainly agree with that. Dumbing-down too far just doesn't cut it, the real challenge is getting the balance just right.

Although this thread is intended for comments rather than answers, I think your choices are wise .... I have great admiration for ttuuxxx's development, and I'm posting from an old box running 4.3.1 - my all-time favourite.

Two "retro" versions of 4.3.1, built with older kernels but otherwise the same, are available here.

Well I have used windows all my life from 3.1 to vista. I picked up a dead laptop and tried all different versions of Puppy Lucid Racy Wary etc. even DSL Retro with little luck and put 98se on it for free. I then picked up a second newer one with better luck as I can do full installs on it. I have to say each version has it's good and bad points maybe that's just my experience Currently I am running Slacko on a Compaq Presario 700u with good performance etc except for wireless so I am using it's built in ethernet wired to my router not convenient but it works I tried Mint I had success with wireless but couldn't access repositories then I upgraded and then no wireless so here I am back with Slacko which I do like. I can download the software I need like Audacity So all in all I got what I paid for. So this laptop is one of 4 used units I have.
My last comment is Linux promises a lot friendly helpful people to help with problems but that was not what I found at Mint was zero zilch except for criticism of why didn't I do a search? . if I could find it by searching I wouldn't post a question. Here was pretty much the same I only got as far as I did was on my own. So I continue on my own but I had to post this here

sasha wrote: My last comment is Linux promises a lot friendly helpful people to help with problems but that was not what I found at Mint was zero zilch except for criticism of why didn't I do a search? . if I could find it by searching I wouldn't post a question. Here was pretty much the same I only got as far as I did was on my own. So I continue on my own but I had to post this here

That's a bit unfair Sasha. I have just checked your posts and except for the last thread you started you have had plenty of replies.

It is not often that someone is told to search on this forum - if only because it is quite difficult to do unless you use the Wellminded search. Nevertheless, it happens sometimes, usually with very common problems that keep being raised, such as getting wireless to work. That particular problem seems to be a bugbear of Linux in general, not just Puppy. I don't know why because I am not knowledgeable in that area. All I know is wireless works for me in my fairly nondescript laptop. Perhaps specific wireless implementations are hard to get Linux drivers for and this causes the problem. Drivers for Linux are always a problem. Everybody writes a driver for Windows - only a select few for Linux and enthusiasts have to write the rest.

I don't want to be mean spirited. For what it is a free os and except for the wireless issue I think Puppy is great. I shouldn't base my opinion of the community on a couple of comments. I am usually pretty diligent about searching and that is how I found Puppy in the first place. I am going to see if I can find a different card to try. I am on line right now with puppy but wired. I do have to say Puppy is friendlier to install and use than mint especially the newer versions that take forever to install. It was just weird that the one version of mint I did get to work flawlessly wireless the repository was dead Enough of this I do like Puppy and hope to meet some nice people here and maybe get my wireless to work
Dwight

I just installed Puppy this morning. I mainly use Atari (TOS), with a Windows laptop for a few odds and ends, and it's that laptop I am thinking of swapping to Puppy (at the moment it's on USB). Working with the Atari I consider myself fairly tech literate, but one thing that is confusing for a newcomer is the file system and I just can't find a really approachable tutorial that presents a clear, newbie friendly explanation of how that works - where to put stuff and things.

Coming from Atari, having HD partitions for different elements of the system make sense, but the way they are presented is very different, and I imagine for those coming from Windows it must be very confusing indeed.

Also the way non Pup applications have to be put together and installed for tarballs could also do with a little demystifying - that said the Pup system (and Quickpet) is absolutely kick-ass and I'm really and genuinely impressed with that, as one reason I've avoided Linux is the tarball confusion.

One idea might be having a tutorial program to guide new users through elements like this in same sort of way (but without the condescending attitude!) Windows does, but as well as just showing "how-to" having brief explanations as to "why" and what goes on when you perform certain actions as well as a simple "type this, click that - dont ask questions" affair.

Thanks, grr_argh
Agree 100% about that so-important "why".
If you really want to get to grips with the filesystem, you could take a sniff at these:

http://linux.die.net/sag/dir-tree-overview.html
http://rute.2038bug.com/node38.html.gz

deleted

So my computer with Windows 7 went to shit, so I decided to try and rescue some files, wipe the hdd, then reinstall. When the reinstall failed I decided that I hated Windows and would force myself to learn to use Linux, but I have to say, I have no idea what I'm doing. I have Slacko Puppy on a USB drive, and I have no idea how to install it to the hdd without burning a disk, which I don't have. My only other USB drive has my backed up files, so I can't use that for anything either.

I searched youtube for puppy tutorials but I couldn't play the video because I didn't have flash, so I went to the flash website and downloaded a tar.gz version because someone on google said that was the one for puppy, but when it finished downloading I had no idea what to do. I searched forums forever but people kept using terms that I didn't know or referring to programs that I didn't have.

I'm still completely lost. What the fuck is bash and do I have it, or do I need to get it somehow? I'm so lost here. I can't even install the Windows 8 beta because I have to install silverlight first, and even if I did download it I wouldn't know what to do with it. How do I use this? Can you point me in the right direction? I mean, I am an ultimate linux-noob. Even getting the internet working took me about 20 minutes.

I typically read previous posts in a thread, but I don't understand most of what is being said...

Help.

So after getting extremely drunk last night, I decided to just go back to square one and install Mint instead of Puppy. I can actually do things now, and hopefully after I familiarize myself some more with Linux I can give puppy another shot. It's not something that you can just jump into without any prior knowledge, or at least I hope it isn't, because if it is I am an idiot.

" because if it is I am an idiot. "

Normally I am tempted to put in the boot.

Puppy is just dead easy...with the right assistance.

You didn't need to install.
A cd or usb would have been easy.
As stated you ran from usb...should have left it there.

" because someone on google said that was the one for puppy "
This forum would have given you great advice.

I always advocate....keep Windows...enjoy Puppy.

I hope you got your data.
" so I decided to try and rescue some files, wipe the hdd, "

I would have pointed to my post here.
Hirens is good for recovery as well.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-re ... 950656&p=2

Chris.

Overall i really like puppy. I'm using lucid 528. i like how it doesn't take itself too seriously like many others.

also you are all very helpful on here and thanks for that.

i hope to play with puppy for a long time.

Hi all. I've recently found out about puppy and I love it. I've tried Lucid Puppy first because I mostly use *ubuntu and crunchbang, but I ended up using Slacko because it looks better and I wouldn't mind compiling stuff if I have to (I apologize btw if i'm wrong, but it think that *ubuntu and debian in general maintain more pre-compiled packages than slackware). I do a lot of python programming, some C and less assembler.

The general way it works seems to be absolutely perfect for a USB thumb drive, much better than a *ubuntu live cd or crunchbang which never worked on this usb anyways. I love how it's run as root, which makes so much sense for a usb distro, and how everything opens up quickly because it's already been loaded into RAM.

I'm a bit surprised though that vim and sshfs aren't included by defaut (correct me if I'm wrong). I would except any distro big enough to include x (or any graphical interface) to ship with vim/screen/nano/sshfs and utilities such as these. Should I be using alternate cli tools or should i try to find PET packages or compile them from source?

Oh and I can't wait to get my Raspberry Pi and start playing with it

Puppy linux main site needs a complete overhaul and it needed one years ago. Start it from scratch.

In short, there's too much crap on the screen, needs more focus. You know it's bad when you have to resort to google to find stuff that's actually explained on the site itself.

Get a nice big fat download button to slacko puppy on the front page. Don't link to lucid puppy, don't link to puppy 4.3.1, just slacko puppy.

Don't make people choose between vanilla and chocolate before they even tasted ice cream.

I personally would plug the hell out of the multi session live dvd install option above anything else just because it's so goddamn cool. Something like:

1.Burn ISO for a normal live cd, boot up puppy for the first time, let people tinker around with it
2. Recommend using burn2isocd to make a multi live session dvd, let people rage because there is no "burn current release to dvd" option(seriously fix that, add that option and let it automatically download an iso if you need to).

The first time startup/booting of puppy linux is still as smooth as baby buttocks, just like I remember it. The first time use puppy splash screen is great.

I think the connect application could use some streamling though, too much buttons. I think a granny is able to click through almost anything on the first startup without any real problems besides that one. Could be much more straight forward with a different UI, I think.

kewlsnake wrote:

Get a nice big fat download button to slacko puppy on the front page. Don't link to lucid puppy, don't link to puppy 4.3.1, just slacko puppy.

Don't make people choose between vanilla and chocolate before they even tasted ice cream.

Sounds good in theory.
However, different builds of Puppy are needed to accommodate different hardware.

Surely you don't need 5-6 different official ones?

On wikipedia, lucid puppy is a side mention and quirky,wary and racy are put forward as the official variants.

On the official site, "Download Latest Release", "How to download Puppy Linux", "Long-Term-Supported WaryPuppy" all link to different releases besides the quirky one. That's also ignoring the existence of puplets.

I think you can see how extremely confusing this must be for someone that just wants to try it out.

Ask yourself the question, if you had to pick one, which one would you recommend for the general public?
Delegate all the other ones to the background, maybe a special mention for "Are you using older hardware? Check out this release!".

i have only recently started using puppy linux(4.21 i cant get it to update to 5.3 <_< )
and personally(and alot of people i know agree) i think JAVA should be added in as a PET so we dont have to spend hours searching for it and puppy should also have a type of theme that looks like windows xp for newer users so people like my parents can use puppy easy like me

(were the heck do i get java )



"I WILL BECOME MLG"

a update button/PET should be added to all puppy linux distro's so that we dont have to go through a ton of CD-R's (my cd burner is fried so i cant make .iso images to easy

Good for searches of Puppy.

http://www.wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html

::::

" This is how I install Java.
This is how I do it in macpup. Should work in other pups too..."

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 8&start=45

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 02267b62c0

::::::

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=77821

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 000a7833c8

"""""

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=67371

UPDATED to versions 1.6u33 and 1.7u5.

::::::::

So Java is no problem.

Our downloads are minimal compared to the other Linux bloat.
Updates for some Puppies....called >> deltas

have only happened in the last few years.

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=58435

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=52232

Chris.