I have been bouncing around distros for this laptop. Dell Latitude LM 3com Ethernet card P133 40 MB RAM 2G of disk space. Tried Free bsd, redhat 8, and was referred here for the folks at Ubuntu.
Can you suggest if chubby Puppy will load and boot into this near door stop of an old laptop? the laptop was fully functional as a win 98 box. but I was uncomfortable with the virus threats that inherently are in WIn98 over a cable modem (router is in front of the laptop).
My Goal:
Boot into a GUI surf the net and mail. Not much else is required -important.. (I like Firefox and the Ubuntu interface) under Dapper Drake
What might I expect with Puppy or Chubby Puppy
I'm looking at 1.0.5
Added: 07.12.05 Downloads: 12382 Download (91.4 MB)
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/downloads.php?cat_id=1
Thank you in advance.
suggestions requested even if it's go away!
looking for the right Distro
Re: looking for the right Distro
With only 40Mb RAM you will need to first boot from Gparted LiveCD - available as a small ISO from Distrowatch.com - and create a small swap partition on your hard drive, say 128Mb. Puppy won't boot from its LiveCD until you do that.marc66thomas wrote:I have been bouncing around distros for this laptop. Dell Latitude LM 3com Ethernet card P133 40 MB RAM 2G of disk space. Tried Free bsd, redhat 8, and was referred here for the folks at Ubuntu.
Then you will be able to boot the Puppy LiveCD and complete your hard drive install using Start>Setup>Puppy Universal Installer. Puppy version 2.02 works in 32Mb RAM or more with a swap partition, but needs 64Mb RAM if you don't have a swap partition. If you need better hardware driver support, try Puppy 2.13 "fulldrivers" version, but only if Puppy 2.02 misses a vital piece of hardware. That's not likely on your particular box.
Both versions are available for download here:
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/DownloadLatest
Hope that helps
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marc66thomas
- Posts: 15
- Joined: Fri 26 Jan 2007, 23:10
Re: looking for the right Distro
Goal Restated: I would like a have a GUI inteface to surf the net and check mail and learn more about linux.WhoDo wrote:With only 40Mb RAM you will need to first boot from Gparted LiveCD - available as a small ISO from Distrowatch.com - and create a small swap partition on your hard drive, say 128Mb. Puppy won't boot from its LiveCD until you do that.marc66thomas wrote:I have been bouncing around distros for this laptop. Dell Latitude LM 3com Ethernet card P133 40 MB RAM 2G of disk space. Tried Free bsd, redhat 8, and was referred here for the folks at Ubuntu.
...
Hope that helps
I have by hook and crook installed Partition 1 dr Dos and partiton 2 a swap file using Hal91 Fdisk 255MB linux Swap (type 82) rest of the drive is not formated.
But now I need some nubie hand holding.
Booting to DR dos my CD is "Drive R" Is there a drdos comand to issue to boot through to Puppy CD?
I have tired to use SBM (Smart Boot manager) on a floppy disk to attempt to address the CD (hoping to gain access to CD drive and Puppy install on Puppy CD -again I come up short -SBM gives me "SBMK bad!" return yields "operating system not found" and doesn't give me any command prompt, and will not take commands. - I have to shut down to gain any control of my cursor.
My bios doesn't support boot from CD. I can't figure out how to boot to the CD Puppy 2.13 Can some one help this lamer with the Linux command from # in Hal91 or tell me a post to follow through to boot though to puppy.
I have read a number of posts related to Low RAM old CPU installs and think I'm just doing/not doing, something stupidly obvious.
Thank you
all i can say is that it's daunting if you're unsure what you're doing, but if you've just got an old pizzabox with dr-dos, (no offence meant to any regulars), then dive in and experiment.
i'm not sure what the minimal specs are, in terms of minimum ram, installing puppy, then surfing the net, but if you're willing to experiment then two tools worth getting to know are cfdisk & grub. once you're acquainted with them, getting a friendly distro, like puppy, going is easy peasey.
anyway, i was curious when you said you tried sbm & got SBMK bad , so googling for this gave this link:
http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/ ... rhead.html
where they're saying the problem isn't with SBM but with the floppy drive itself!
i'm not sure what the minimal specs are, in terms of minimum ram, installing puppy, then surfing the net, but if you're willing to experiment then two tools worth getting to know are cfdisk & grub. once you're acquainted with them, getting a friendly distro, like puppy, going is easy peasey.
anyway, i was curious when you said you tried sbm & got SBMK bad , so googling for this gave this link:
http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/ ... rhead.html
where they're saying the problem isn't with SBM but with the floppy drive itself!
You will certainly get MicroMuppy running, but I'd go for John Murga's MeanPup which has Opera. With so little RAM, be sure to severely restrict the size of your swap partition, say ~50-60max, in order to avoid HD thrash. I have actually run trials on some of these old machines, so be careful about advice from folks who guess on this subject.
Maybe John will come up with a new version soon?!
Maybe John will come up with a new version soon?!
"suggestions requested even if it's go away!" Thanx for your flexibility but we'd rather you stay. Hope Puppy can make you happy.
"Tried Free bsd, redhat 8, and was referred here for the folks at Ubuntu." Those are 'full sized' Linux distros. Generally they are too large to work on old (maybe older than 2 - 3 years) computers (either to succeed in loading or to work at a reasonable speed). On older computers the category of MiniLinux works better [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniLinux ] . There are many MiniLinuxes. Puppy is a MiniLinux. So youve come to the right place. If for some reason down the road Puppy doesnt work for you, then please try another MiniLinux.
However, Puppy has worked on machines older and slower and more limited in resources than yours. Please remember that many regular puppy users on this forum have 7 - 10 year old computers. Forum users have loaded Puppy into machines similar to yours. The 'lowest' ive heard of was a P100 mhz, 16 MB Ram. My point is that it can be done. However, you may have to wait a while until someone(s) with the right knowledge and experience find(s) your post. The difficult part with your laptop is that it wont boot from the CD. There are ways around that. One involves removing the HD, installing it in a desktop computer via an IDE adapter, loading Puppy, then reinstalling the HD in the laptop (this is probably how Windows was installed in it).
Lots of good resources are available in 'Index of Resources for Beginner's Help Forum: [ http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=597 ] at the top of the Beginner's Forum Page.
Wiki Main Page: [ http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyLinuxMainPage ]
Raffy's HDD Guide: [ http://www.ph-islands.net/pupinstall ]
A HDD Guide: [ http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HardDiskInstall ]
Another HDD Guide: [ http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HardDriveInstall ]
Puppy 2.10r1 Manual:
[ http://www.puppy-linux.info/en/manual/p ... /main.html ]
Probably any Puppy version or 'flavor' will run on your machine. However for your laptop a smaller Puppy version or 'flavor' (a modification of a 'main' version release) may be a safer and more satisfactory choice. You may wish to avoid the 'Chubby Puppy' since it's larger. The 'Mean Puppy' 'flavor' (about 50 MB) that Sage suggested is smaller than the main versions (about 70 MB). Also Mean Puppy has the Opera browser which is reported to be faster than the Seamonkey browser that is common in most Puppy versions. However, whichever Puppy version you chose you can load Opera later if you wish.
All 'Main Version' Puppies have GUIs and browsers. Most modifications or 'flavors' of the main version also have GUIs and browsers. I think only the 'flavors' of OneBone and BareBones don't have GUIs -- only command line.
"Tried Free bsd, redhat 8, and was referred here for the folks at Ubuntu." Those are 'full sized' Linux distros. Generally they are too large to work on old (maybe older than 2 - 3 years) computers (either to succeed in loading or to work at a reasonable speed). On older computers the category of MiniLinux works better [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniLinux ] . There are many MiniLinuxes. Puppy is a MiniLinux. So youve come to the right place. If for some reason down the road Puppy doesnt work for you, then please try another MiniLinux.
However, Puppy has worked on machines older and slower and more limited in resources than yours. Please remember that many regular puppy users on this forum have 7 - 10 year old computers. Forum users have loaded Puppy into machines similar to yours. The 'lowest' ive heard of was a P100 mhz, 16 MB Ram. My point is that it can be done. However, you may have to wait a while until someone(s) with the right knowledge and experience find(s) your post. The difficult part with your laptop is that it wont boot from the CD. There are ways around that. One involves removing the HD, installing it in a desktop computer via an IDE adapter, loading Puppy, then reinstalling the HD in the laptop (this is probably how Windows was installed in it).
Lots of good resources are available in 'Index of Resources for Beginner's Help Forum: [ http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=597 ] at the top of the Beginner's Forum Page.
Wiki Main Page: [ http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyLinuxMainPage ]
Raffy's HDD Guide: [ http://www.ph-islands.net/pupinstall ]
A HDD Guide: [ http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HardDiskInstall ]
Another HDD Guide: [ http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HardDriveInstall ]
Puppy 2.10r1 Manual:
[ http://www.puppy-linux.info/en/manual/p ... /main.html ]
Probably any Puppy version or 'flavor' will run on your machine. However for your laptop a smaller Puppy version or 'flavor' (a modification of a 'main' version release) may be a safer and more satisfactory choice. You may wish to avoid the 'Chubby Puppy' since it's larger. The 'Mean Puppy' 'flavor' (about 50 MB) that Sage suggested is smaller than the main versions (about 70 MB). Also Mean Puppy has the Opera browser which is reported to be faster than the Seamonkey browser that is common in most Puppy versions. However, whichever Puppy version you chose you can load Opera later if you wish.
All 'Main Version' Puppies have GUIs and browsers. Most modifications or 'flavors' of the main version also have GUIs and browsers. I think only the 'flavors' of OneBone and BareBones don't have GUIs -- only command line.
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marc66thomas
- Posts: 15
- Joined: Fri 26 Jan 2007, 23:10
Nice detective work on the the SBMK BAD! issue. as i read it looks like old dell laptop issue is central and I'll look to see if the dirvers have been updated...muggins wrote: ...but if you're willing to experiment then two tools worth getting to know are cfdisk & grub. once you're acquainted with them, getting a friendly distro, like puppy, going is easy peasey.
anyway, i was curious when you said you tried sbm & got SBMK bad , so googling for this gave this link:
http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/ ... rhead.html
where they're saying the problem isn't with SBM but with the floppy drive itself!
I have had some more time working the problem and by gleaning bits and pieces have the drive partitioned and formated with Sawp 82 linux 83 and dos.
I found DSL boot disk to address my CD rom and load all the way through on my current configuration. It found my 3com pc card nic and gave me an IP. whoo hoo ..
on the down side, my video settings are not right but I can boot and use the machine.
Ok lessons learned.
boot floppy is great if the HD is already partitioned and ready to run.
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marc66thomas
- Posts: 15
- Joined: Fri 26 Jan 2007, 23:10
Lessons learned from OS load
Sage and all: Thank you for the help and support.Sage wrote:You will certainly get MicroMuppy running, but I'd go for John Murga's MeanPup which has Opera. With so little RAM, be sure to severely restrict the size of your swap partition, say ~50-60max, in order to avoid HD thrash. I have actually run trials on some of these old machines, so be careful about advice from folks who guess on this subject.
Maybe John will come up with a new version soon?!
I'm up and running puppy-2.13-seamonkey-fulldrivers.iso. Now that the project machine is up and running. I can see the tools and utilities mentioned above. Most of the tools (gparted, Wakepup2, cfdisk) may be available to the folks already running puppy, but I found that not to be the case with a fresh install from drdos or working from a boot floppy.
So here are some of the lessons hard learned the hard way.
Tools Hal91 one floppy that boots and runs many utilities and tells you what the applications do to get running. Warning - not all the utilities will get you running on puppy. http://chris.silmor.de/hal91/
**partitioning a HD is not a simple case of fdisk gparted or running from a boot cd... The computer doesn't boot from the CD so most of those are not available.
**wakepup2 to address the CD. http://208.109.22.214/puppy/viewtopic.p ... ac31969040
**Formating the new partition from inside puppy if you can.
**rewrite or format partitions not formated with HAL91.
**Run cfdisk, e2fsck mkswap on unmounted partitions.
I used Hal and made the partitions from Fdisk in Hal91 making partitions as listed here http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/ in my case I found that
hda1 dos boot drive 250MB vfat
hda2 (linux swap 82) 60MB 1.5 - 2.0 x ram (Some one suggested on old hardware less is better)
hda3 extended partition (rest of drive for extended hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8)
Hda4 Win 95-98 type B
hda5 100mb type 83 linux
hda6 100mb type 83 linux
hda7 250mb type 83 linux
hda8 rest of drive 83 linux
**After partitioning make files systems hda1 dos
hda2 mkswap (important to load the live CD)
hda3 are the extended
hda4 win 32
hda5-8 mke2fs
I installed DLS that was a sweet install and had some frame buffering issues brought to light. I added to the boot "fb800x 600 lowram" I found that it was easier to get up as well as made it easier to understand some of the puppy install issues.
**Use that Wakepup2 floppy to get up with the Live CD Use the latest kernel puppy-2.13-seamonkey-fulldrivers.iso because of changes have made it load even in low ram machines and to boot disks and video driver checks this made a world of difference.
I plan to end up using a slimmer distro, but to get up and going, I found that havening the benefit of a the latest boot and distro changes had it's advantages. (for me it was the first way.)
So I must say to all Thank you for the helping hands and suggestions.
I will try to find or assemble the tool that will help the next guy to make this simpler and will add to the wiki MT
welcome to the puppypack marc,
yes, if you're coming from dos/windows to puppy, and can't boot from cdrom, partitioning/formatting your hdisk is a bit more tricky. that's why i mentioned fdisk as a good tool to become familiar with as, although you can't move partitions with it, you can use it to create/delete/rename partitions.
some possible alternative partitioning tools, ( none of which i've used, so no guarantees!), are:
http://www.cutepm.com/download.htm
http://partitionlogic.org.uk/
http://www.ranish.com/part/
http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/fips/fips.html
yes, if you're coming from dos/windows to puppy, and can't boot from cdrom, partitioning/formatting your hdisk is a bit more tricky. that's why i mentioned fdisk as a good tool to become familiar with as, although you can't move partitions with it, you can use it to create/delete/rename partitions.
some possible alternative partitioning tools, ( none of which i've used, so no guarantees!), are:
http://www.cutepm.com/download.htm
http://partitionlogic.org.uk/
http://www.ranish.com/part/
http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/fips/fips.html