Advantages/Disadvantages of HD Install?

Message

JMW4th · #1 Post by **JMW4th** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 16:28

Hi there everyone, I'm new to the forum, and new to Linux in general.

I've been looking around(using NetBootIn), to find a replacement for my windows XP installation, because my computer is old, and very sluggish in Windows. I figure a fresh OS install might help with performance(since this computer was a hand-me-down), and since I am fresh installing, I'd may as well look at some other Operating Systems as well.

this is my computer:

HP Pavilion zt1130
Windows XP SP3
Intel Mobile Celeron Processor 1133MHz
684MB RAM
S3 Graphics Twister 16MB
20GB Hard Drive
DirectX 9.0c
Linksys Wireless-G Network Adapter

anyhow, I am wishing to make this machine sort of a Cloud Computing-focused computer due to it's small HD(XP takes up like a good 1/3 to 1/2 of my HD space). also the fact that the majority of my computer time is spent on the web. I use Web Applications for just about everything I do. Google Docs, GMail, Google Reader, Twitter, etc. I like to keep OpenOffice.org as a backup though, just incase.

I'm thinking about going with Puppy since it is so small while still seemingly a full-featured OS.

my question for you is, are there any particular advantages and disadvantages to installing Puppy on my Hard Drive as a full install, with the purpose of using it as my only Operating System? I read that Puppy is mostly run from the LiveCD, or from a USB drive. I'm wondering if it actually functions well enough as a primary, HD-installed operating system.

also, while I was trying gOS through UNetBootin, I decided I really liked the GUI, particularly the Window Manager, which I understand is called Enlightenment. Is it possible to get this Window Manager on Puppy?

and lastly, does Puppy support Google Chrome and Google Gears? Chrome is my preferred Browser, but I'll settle on Firefox. I DO really *need* Google Gears though either way.

thanks for your time!

#2 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 17:12

JMW4th wrote:Hi there everyone, I'm new to the forum, and new to Linux in general.

I've been looking around(using NetBootIn), to find a replacement for my windows XP installation, because my computer is old, and very sluggish in Windows. I figure a fresh OS install might help with performance(since this computer was a hand-me-down), and since I am fresh installing, I'd may as well look at some other Operating Systems as well.

this is my computer:

HP Pavilion zt1130
Windows XP SP3
Intel Mobile Celeron Processor 1133MHz
684MB RAM
S3 Graphics Twister 16MB
20GB Hard Drive
DirectX 9.0c
Linksys Wireless-G Network Adapter

anyhow, I am wishing to make this machine sort of a Cloud Computing-focused computer due to it's small HD(XP takes up like a good 1/3 to 1/2 of my HD space). also the fact that the majority of my computer time is spent on the web. I use Web Applications for just about everything I do. Google Docs, GMail, Google Reader, Twitter, etc. I like to keep OpenOffice.org as a backup though, just incase.

I'm thinking about going with Puppy since it is so small while still seemingly a full-featured OS.

my question for you is, are there any particular advantages and disadvantages to installing Puppy on my Hard Drive as a full install, with the purpose of using it as my only Operating System? I read that Puppy is mostly run from the LiveCD, or from a USB drive. I'm wondering if it actually functions well enough as a primary, HD-installed operating system.

also, while I was trying gOS through UNetBootin, I decided I really liked the GUI, particularly the Window Manager, which I understand is called Enlightenment. Is it possible to get this Window Manager on Puppy?

and lastly, does Puppy support Google Chrome and Google Gears? Chrome is my preferred Browser, but I'll settle on Firefox. I DO really *need* Google Gears though either way.

thanks for your time!

I've been running it live for years now and just use my hard drive to save files etc.
Enlightenment on the latest version of puppy with Firefox.
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=49526

welcome to the forum, enjoy your stay

ttuuxxx

rjbrewer · #3 Post by **rjbrewer** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 17:13

Full install to hard drive, or frugal install to hard drive?
They both work very well; this is an argument that will go
on forever.

I think Google Chrome is a work in progress, but Gears does
work with certain versions of Firefox.

Yes to all your other questions.

Macpup Foxy is really impressive with Enlightenment.
Sneekylinux has some youtube videos about it.

I'd suggest getting a rewriteable cd or 2 and trying different
Puppy version.

JMW4th · #4 Post by **JMW4th** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 17:20

rjbrewer wrote:Full install to hard drive, or frugal install to hard drive?

I want a full, regular install.

rjbrewer · #5 Post by **rjbrewer** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 17:23

JMW4th wrote:
rjbrewer wrote:Full install to hard drive, or frugal install to hard drive?
I want a full, regular install.

Best way to start.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 782#201565

Bronco Billy · #6 Post by **Bronco Billy** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 18:03

JMW4th wrote:
rjbrewer wrote:Full install to hard drive, or frugal install to hard drive?
I want a full, regular install.

Why Do You Want a Full Install as Opposed to a Frugal Install? I Felt the Same Way Initially But Now after Experimentally trying Both 30 or 40 Times in the last Month or So.... Now I am TOTALLY Convinced that the Frugal Install is Infinitely Better in Many ways.... Frugal Installs are much more Versatal, Stable, Unbreakable on Power Outages with One SMALL Fix, etc.. In My Opinion the Full Install in Puppy is an Archaic, Out of Place Relic that should be Taken Out of the Distribution Package... Have a Great Day with Your New Found Knowledge.....

racepres · #7 Post by **racepres** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 18:24

I OTOH Prefer full istall.. to hdd, originally because that was the only way really old equipment can run Puppy, lately... cause I have Never had any problems with it.. Only other way I run puppy is live cd with a save at reboot/shutdown.
RP
Yes B.B. I pull the plug on my boxes all the time... never even miss a beat... course they are all laptops!!!

bugman · #8 Post by **bugman** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 18:38

i like full

uses less ram, feels less weird

Colonel Panic · #9 Post by **Colonel Panic** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 18:47

The disadvantage of a hard drive install in the old days used to be that when an XOrg crash happened - and it did with monotonous regularity - it was pot luck whether or not you'd be able to get X Windows working again as there was no easy way to fix it (yes I've posted on it here

). Now that XOrg is more stable on the recent versions of Puppy, this may not be an issue any longer and I'm thinking of giving it another shot.

Bronco Billy · #10 Post by **Bronco Billy** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 19:01

Colonel Panic wrote:The disadvantage of a hard drive install in the old days used to be that when an XOrg crash happened - and it did with monotonous regularity - it was pot luck whether or not you'd be able to get X Windows working again as there was no easy way to fix it (yes I've posted on it here ). Now that XOrg is more stable on the recent versions of Puppy, this may not be an issue any longer and I'm thinking of giving it another shot.

Have a Great Day with Your New Found Knowledge.....

Bronco Billy · #11 Post by **Bronco Billy** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 19:12

racepres wrote:I OTOH Prefer full istall.. to hdd, originally because that was the only way really old equipment can run Puppy, lately... cause I have Never had any problems with it.. Only other way I run puppy is live cd with a save at reboot/shutdown.
RP
Yes B.B. I pull the plug on my boxes all the time... never even miss a beat... course they are all laptops!!!

Puppy Installed Frugally ALONE on a Linux Formatted Hard Drive With a SMALL FIX "Never" Fails on a Hard Plug Pull..... Have A Great Day With Your New Found Knowledge.....

`f00 · #12 Post by **`f00** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 19:34

Well, you have a goodly amount of RAM. My suggestion is to try the liveCD route first (to find a Pup-let that you like, mostly), liveCD Puppy is very clean if you want to keep win and lin separate and avoid any possible issues with your present setup (never know if you might need that win someday

). Get a feel for what it can do - liveCD runs in RAM, then saves to either the disc itself (multisession) or a savefile at your choice, that can come in handy if you mess up .. it happens occasionally

- and get familiar with it before commit to a full hd-install.

gl&hf (btw, welcome..)

JMW4th · #13 Post by **JMW4th** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 21:30

well, I screwed up my Boot using UNetBootin to try Puppy. dunno what I did, but whatever it was, it caused a recurring "Hard Drive Boot Sector Not Valid" error.

so i went to the library and made a livecd of Puppy, and used it to fix my problem(by installing Puppy on the HD and making it bootable).

I don't see what's wrong or "archaic" with it being installed on the HD, to be honest. kinda tedious to need the CD/USB every time i turn the computer on, you know?

I'M really enjoying the speed so far, it's much faster than my XP install was. and much smaller. i only had half of my HD available for programs with XP, now I've got almost all of it.

got Chrome installed, but for some reason it does not seem to come with Gears, and the Gears website says that my browser is not supported. so i gotta figure that out, cause i want to be able to use Docs, Reader, and Gmail while I am offline(so as to not need an Office Suite or Email program).

beyond that, it's just re-learning computers, the Linux way.

thanks for the comments folks!

rjbrewer · #14 Post by **rjbrewer** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 22:20

JMW4th wrote:well, I screwed up my Boot using UNetBootin to try Puppy. dunno what I did, but whatever it was, it caused a recurring "Hard Drive Boot Sector Not Valid" error.

so i went to the library and made a livecd of Puppy, and used it to fix my problem(by installing Puppy on the HD and making it bootable).

I don't see what's wrong or "archaic" with it being installed on the HD, to be honest. kinda tedious to need the CD/USB every time i turn the computer on, you know?

I'M really enjoying the speed so far, it's much faster than my XP install was. and much smaller. i only had half of my HD available for programs with XP, now I've got almost all of it.

got Chrome installed, but for some reason it does not seem to come with Gears, and the Gears website says that my browser is not supported. so i gotta figure that out, cause i want to be able to use Docs, Reader, and Gmail while I am offline(so as to not need an Office Suite or Email program).

beyond that, it's just re-learning computers, the Linux way.

thanks for the comments folks!

A frugal install to hard drive doesn't require cd or usb to boot; I
still prefer full install though. Anyone capable of typing "reboot" or
doing ctrl>alt>delete can recover from a full install power
loss as well as from a frugal powerloss.

Do a google search for "puppy linux google gears".

Gmail offline works with any puppy browser I've used.

DMcCunney · #15 Post by **DMcCunney** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 23:19

JMW4th wrote:I'm thinking about going with Puppy since it is so small while still seemingly a full-featured OS.

my question for you is, are there any particular advantages and disadvantages to installing Puppy on my Hard Drive as a full install, with the purpose of using it as my only Operating System? I read that Puppy is mostly run from the LiveCD, or from a USB drive. I'm wondering if it actually functions well enough as a primary, HD-installed operating system.

I run Puppy on an old Fujitsu Lifebook, with an 867mhz processor, 256MB of RAM, and a 40GB HD. The HD is partitioned and triple boots Win2K Pro, Xubuntu 9.10, and Puppy 4.31. Win2K gets a 19GB slice, Xubuntu and Puppy get 8GB slices, there's a 2GB FAT32 partition, and a couple of 512MB swap partitions for Xubuntu and Puppy.

I prefer to use a Full install with a swap partition. You may well be able to repartition your HD to multi-boot Puppy with Grub, especially if you use Puppy as your main OS. I gave Puppy an 8GB slice, but even with Puppy 4.31 and apps like Open Office 3.2 installed, I still have close to half of the partition unused.

The advantage of a full install with swap for me are more effective RAM usage, and no need to worry about resizing my SFS if it starts to fill up.

also, while I was trying gOS through UNetBootin, I decided I really liked the GUI, particularly the Window Manager, which I understand is called Enlightenment. Is it possible to get this Window Manager on Puppy?

There are a number of window managers ported to Puppy. I normally run XFCE4, but I have builds of Blackbox, Enlightenment, Fluxbox, IceWM, OpenBox and a few others installed to play with.

and lastly, does Puppy support Google Chrome and Google Gears? Chrome is my preferred Browser, but I'll settle on Firefox. I DO really *need* Google Gears though either way.

Chrome is a work in progress, and while there are Puppy ports of v0.4 and 0.5 available, I think there are still issues. Personally, I have Chrome installed under Windows XP, but still prefer Firefox.

You should be able to install Google Gears with Firefox by going to the Gears site in FF and downloading and installing the Gears XPI. I say "should" because I tried it in FF 3.6, installed from the Mozilla bz2 file, and Gears complained it was incompatible with my Firefox build. I don't know yet what is going on.
______
Dennis

JMW4th · #16 Post by **JMW4th** » Sat 23 Jan 2010, 00:03

yeah it seems that gears is not working with 3.6.

it is the first thing i tried.

anyhow, i had another question. could anyone point me to a recent version of Enlightenment in .pet format?

Bronco Billy · #17 Post by **Bronco Billy** » Sat 23 Jan 2010, 00:24

rjbrewer wrote:
JMW4th wrote:well, I screwed up my Boot using UNetBootin to try Puppy. dunno what I did, but whatever it was, it caused a recurring "Hard Drive Boot Sector Not Valid" error.

so i went to the library and made a livecd of Puppy, and used it to fix my problem(by installing Puppy on the HD and making it bootable).

I don't see what's wrong or "archaic" with it being installed on the HD, to be honest. kinda tedious to need the CD/USB every time i turn the computer on, you know?

I'M really enjoying the speed so far, it's much faster than my XP install was. and much smaller. i only had half of my HD available for programs with XP, now I've got almost all of it.

got Chrome installed, but for some reason it does not seem to come with Gears, and the Gears website says that my browser is not supported. so i gotta figure that out, cause i want to be able to use Docs, Reader, and Gmail while I am offline(so as to not need an Office Suite or Email program).

beyond that, it's just re-learning computers, the Linux way.

thanks for the comments folks!
A frugal install to hard drive doesn't require cd or usb to boot; I
still prefer full install though. Anyone capable of typing "reboot" or
doing ctrl>alt>delete can recover from a full install power
loss as well as from a frugal powerloss.

Do a google search for "puppy linux google gears".
Gmail offline works with any puppy browser I've used.

I Install Puppy and Only Puppy Frugally on a Hard Drive that is Formatted with Linux Partitions.... Both Installs Appear and Behave IDENTICALLY from an External Observer.....The Difference in Function is Stability..... My Frugal Install Will "NEVER" Crash(Lose the OS) on a Dirty Power Down... You're Full Install of Puppy Will ALWAYS Crash(Lose the OS) on a Dirty Power Down.... Have a Great Day With Your New Found Knowledge....

bugman · #18 Post by **bugman** » Sat 23 Jan 2010, 00:34

Bronco Billy wrote: I Install Puppy and Only Puppy Frugally on a Hard Drive that is Formatted with Linux Partitions.... Both Installs Appear and Behave IDENTICALLY from an External Observer.....The Difference in Function is Stability..... My Frugal Install Will "NEVER" Crash(Lose the OS) on a Dirty Power Down... You're Full Install of Puppy Will ALWAYS Crash(Lose the OS) on a Dirty Power Down.... Have a Great Day With Your New Found Knowledge....

this record is skipping, can we hear another one?

`f00 · #19 Post by **`f00** » Sat 23 Jan 2010, 00:38

..seems to be a bit different than other 'bolt on' wms, so no dotpet that I'm aware of. Best bet is to try ttuuxxx' suggestion and do the whole Macpup magilla (or you could give compiling it yourself a go..) - several other wms are available as dotpets, however. hth

~edit~ sigh, 'forgot' about the e dotpets mentioned downstream (stashbox dls are problematical for me, so I'd hesitate to recommend it personally but the other is fine except for no libasound at ttuuxxx' lib repo if it's indeed even needed..)

rjbrewer · #20 Post by **rjbrewer** » Sat 23 Jan 2010, 00:57

Bronco Billy wrote: My Frugal Install Will "NEVER" Crash(Lose the OS) on a Dirty Power Down... You're Full Install of Puppy Will ALWAYS Crash(Lose the OS) on a Dirty Power Down.... Have a Great Day With Your New Found Knowledge....

Same claim you made about flash drives last week, and then backed
off from.
Your new found knowledge is wearing very thin.

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Advantages/Disadvantages of HD Install?

Advantages/Disadvantages of HD Install?

Re: Advantages/Disadvantages of HD Install?

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Re: Advantages/Disadvantages of HD Install?

Hi There.... Full Install and Frugal Install Both Boot

Re: Hi There.... Full Install and Frugal Install Both Boot

Re: Hi There.... Full Install and Frugal Install Both Boot