Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[PeterSieg]

Hi Guys..

before someone gets hurt, this is just my personal impression of a first
look at Austrumi 0.9.7 and a VERY rough cut 'comparison' to Puppy 1.0.4

Why? Because only the smart learn from others to make themself better

I downloaded austrumi yesterday and gave it a try in qemu environment...
Nice boot screen.. It bootet in graphical desktop, but resolution was to high, to reach the menu at the bottom.. So burned a cd and tried it at home on my current Puppy machine (P-II 350Mhz, 128MB, No HDD, SB LIve, ATI 3D).

..bootet right into max. Res. of my 17" TFT (1280x1024). I switched to english language.. network was not setup... so set it up via menu and use
dhcp.. worked just fine... one click on firefox icon and viola.. internet is there.. there is abiword, cups, gnumeric, inkscape!, some simple games,
and cd burner tool, gmplayer (with internet radio - works). DVD Playback not testet, because Systems lacks DVD drive Also printing not tested..

So first impression was just fine.

I didn't found a way to save setting between live-cd runs..?
So I dicided to try hdd install. Got a spare 1.2G IDE disk and installed it.
There seems NO (c)fisk tool available..? But the hdd hat already one partition.. so selected that one with lilo in mbr... Installation took app. 5min.. reboot and .. .. .. worked! files under /root will now be saved..

So let me try to summarize my feelings/impressions:

Austrumi 0.9.7 vs. Puppy 1.0.4

+PRO
nice boot screen
nice desktop background image
nice group of icons for most used applications
clean and stable look and feeling
has internet apps (firefox, xchat), abiword, gnumeric, inkscape, cups
has wifi...

-CONS
besides what is mentioned, does not have much else..?
missing (c)fdisk?
missed editor/notepad? vi didn't work. found e3vi...
no mounting tool? usb stick is not auto mounted if not injected before boot
no develoment tools
no PutGet/DotPup/*.sfs extensions
no way of saving settings when using live-cd?
even switched to english, faq and other files still are not translated


So Puppy has a lot more switches and wheels to tweak it, Puppy has more
functionalities concerning saving settings, hdd install, usb install, multisession cd.
But Puppys look is not so clean and lean. The fvwm95 is not my favourite..
All major apps should have an icon on the desktop.. The background image.. ( I liked the one from John Murgas 50m version!)..
And the much debated overall 2 apps for the same job doesn't make it
look clean and lean (ex. Puppy mounter and MUT; xpaint and mtpaint; xxxdialup; etc.)

The look of next Puppy is already to be polished according the the latest news...

So, now it's time to hide

PS

[mike]

PeterSieg, i for one believe that you've done a decent overall comparison of the two.

However, in my experience (not with the latest Ausrumi, however, haven't bothered w/it), Austrumi crashes a lot, a lot, a lot.

The only way that I could get it to run comfortably was to not allow it to try and cache itself into RAM...

The overall look and feel I thought were quite impressive - they were still using FVWM at the time, but it had a very polished look. Great fonts. Too bad about the crashing.

Perhaps I will D/L the new version, see if it's any better.

But....

Can it say WOOF?

[GuestToo]

i have not tried Austrumi for a long time ... just once, a long time ago ... it did not support my ethernet card and no way to load a driver module, so i could not access the internet

Opera did not have nice fonts either ... i had figured out how to install Opera in /root (/usr was read-only at the time ... also Puppy only had Dillo) and i figured out how to get nice antialiased fonts

i just reinstalled Puppy 1.0.4 in a clean /root (ok, i accidently did a rm -rf /root ... ok, actually i accidently did a rm -rf /, which removed about a gig from my XP partition too) and Puppy looked rather crude compared to what i had setup (Icewm, aqua theme, Rox 2.2.0 with antialised text) ... with Icewm and Rox 2.2.0, it looks about the same as Vector 4.3, which is pretty good ... actually, i find Puppy's fonts are nicer than Win XP

[BarryK]

The main problem with Austrumi, I think, is that the kernel is monolithic, no modules.
The developer has created a whopping big kernel, over 2M, and you just have to hope that it detects your hardware.
It's very interesting that people are experiencing success with their network cards, I wonder what network drivers he compiled into the kernel. But how many people will have working sound I wonder? Or software modem?

Yes, Puppy too is getting a makeover!

[Guest]

It still amazes me how much importance people put on the boot appearance.

It's not that big a deal.......

Least if the text is scrolling by you can see what's happening where the boot fails if it does.......

What you really should be looking for is stability after the boot process.

[EarlSmith]

I second Bladehunter!

[PeterSieg]

Yes bladehunter and Earlsmith, of course stability is much more important
than the boot image...

BUT: If everybody would think so, than that would be the end for Windows and Microsoft (haha..)

I ran Austrumi now just for 3 days with just 6-8 times booting it up.
So far NO PROBLEM... but its still to early to say its stable.

And concerning the boot messages... A lot of NOT computer lovers, but
just computer users are really NOT interested what the system has successfully found (they just assume everything has to be ok). They want
the system doing nice gimmics and probably only tell about problems found (if the system can not handle such problems themself)...

BTW: I found sfdisk, so a fdisk program is included...

And of course... looking forward to Puppy 1.0.5a2 to see the polished
desktop and check on the development usrdevx.sfs file system...


PS

[gliezl]

I'm using Austrumi but when I found out there's Puppy, I dumped the former.

Sorry

One thing I like with Puppy, It boots really fast. Even my officemates were really impressed with such speed. I told them, It's not an ordinary lived-cd. It's Puppy

[acklan]

OOooooOOOo... SHE is the next spokes person yes? Woof

[BarryK]

[BarryK]

...er, don't take that the wrong way, gliezl!

I was just reminded of Puppy and his interest in a couple of lady dogs, except they were normal size dogs and he was, well, a chihuahua.

[klhrevolutionist]

I am digging this pocketlinux distro!
I think it is what puppy could be, not much of a learning curve either.
Though the kde-lite, at least there version of it sucks, luckily it comes
with kde3.4 and it runs smooth..... picked up my sound
and right clicking brings wonderful option on a .tgz
easy install, no graphical installer needed, just download "example"
limewire.tgz right click and install!!!!!!!!!

Competition, is good, this is what I have been waiting from barry!!
I think it is 345mb
but I think it could have great ideas for puppy to look at!

[Lobster]

[klhrevolutionist]

well, the first couple of features I noticed, their version of kde-lite
was buggy. Then I logged in to the regular kde, and have not went back to (lite).
I know that don't tell you much! I remind you I have only used puppy
exclusively since I've used Linux, so some things I mention might not be new!
Okay, the packages, I cannot seem to find a gui for slackpkg, but nor do I need it.
The reason being? When you go to download software from let's say "puppy"
There are usually pre-compiled apps for some distro's. Slackware is one.
So I downloaded "puppy" to my home dir. and was messing around with it
and I right clicked to see my options..
It's got a little button with actions->slackware->install!!!
It prompted me and tolde me what was going on, so d id it work? Yes.

That is one feature, and Barry has been trying to make puppy more slack-compatible as I have heard.

But, I don't want to take up to much space, I don't reccommend booting
into kde-lite as it will "freeze"
I'll tell more later

[raffy]

(Aside: Maybe you were just too busy to look - Gliezl has been here for a while:

http://www.ph-islands.net/puptour/

Lobster linked to that site in the July news, and Gliezl joined the forum early August.

Will be glad to link that page to your site, Gliezl...)