Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

PenguinPupLin · Joined: 23 Dec 2011 Posts: 126 Location: The Little Red Dot

My Lighthouse Puppy Linux 5.0.3 Mariner(kernel 2.6.33) frugal installed in my WinXP notebook just hangs randomly even when not doing anything,eg no browser opened or programs running or when left idle for some time. My Acer notebk specs: cpu P4 1.6Ghz, 512MB RAM, NVidia Geforec2go onboard graphics shared memory 16MB, ALI chipset motherboard, 80GB harddisk, wireless pcmcia adapter DLink DWL-G630, and WinXP OS multi-booted with several Puppy Linux distros after first installing Windows Installer for Quickset Wary 511 and then manually adding in other distros.
Btw,the touchpad tapping didn't work so I used a USB wired mouse and running xvesa as xorg failed no matter what I chose even though the onboard nv graphics,Geforce2go, is listed as one of the supported NVidia cards. I don't suspect hardware memory (did memtest with no error) or overheating problems as the system runs well under Wary511(except that the old Seamonkey ver 2.0.1 would sometimes close off itself, I guess I need to update to a newer ver). Also I understand Lighthouse Puppy without KDE(I used JWM or LXDE) runs best with 512MB RAM (256 MB is stated as the minimum but problematic), I intend to add a 512MB swapfile using swapfilemanager.pet. Meanwhile, I am frustrated by the random freezing problem. Any advice or help greatly appreciated.

PenguinPupLin · Joined: 23 Dec 2011 Posts: 126 Location: The Little Red Dot

After adding a swap file of 512MB,the random freezing problem seems to have disappeared. I noticed just before creating the swap file that my available free memory was only about 10MB out of my physical 512MB (actually about 500MB only, after deducting 16MB for onboard graphics shared memory) even without any browser or program running,what with mariner.sfs and xfce.sfs loaded on bootup.
Looks to me that perhaps Lighthouse Puppy,esp the mariner version,is the most resource-hungry or memory-intensive of all the Puppy Linux distros,even without KDE.
In my humble opinion,I'm not sure if I had answered my own question. However,I'd be most glad if anyone has anything to advise me or a better solution or anything to add that would improve or enhance my system;hence enriching my Puppy Linux experience,bearing in mind I'm still quite a newbie.

PenguinPupLin · Joined: 23 Dec 2011 Posts: 126 Location: The Little Red Dot

Sorry,just discovered a new problem. Lighthouse puppy fails to wake up the screen when it blanks off after being idle for sometime. I need help on this one.
And I spoke too soon,even with a 512MB swap file created,the random freezing problem is back;so frustrating and annoying. Anybody,please help before I give up.
Lighthouse puppy is my favourite ,just that it's quite difficult to get it running in older low-specs machine - my 2002 Acer notebook specs isn't too bad actually.