Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[Moose On The Loose]

[minesadorada]

[torgo]

Minesadorada and DesertScene - welcome aboard ! I'm still new at this too, but if I can get the hang of it, pretty much anybody can !


On applications being able to see your drives to load and save files, that's something that has caused confusion for many beginners.

Most apps can load or save files from anywhere. The first trick is that the target drive has to be mounted first. If it's not mounted, apps can't see it. Once it's mounted, apps have full access to it.

The second trick is knowing to look in /mnt to find your drives. When you open Rox or open a load/save window in some apps, it starts you out in /root by default. New users might think that's the top level directory, but it's not. "Root" is your user ID. It's your home folder, but NOT the root directory.

You have to click the green up arrow in Rox (the icon to go up one level) or click on File System in some other browser window to get to the top level directory, and then go to /mnt and then your drive of choice.

The third trick: if you have your save file on a particular drive, that drive will show up as "home" ( /mnt/home ) in Rox and browser windows even though the desktop icon will still show the drive's other name (sdb1, etc). You have to get used to the idea that this folder called "home" isn't your home folder.



DesertScene - I think one of the things you'll quickly love about Puppy is that there's no need to install it at all. It can be completely non-invasive. Boot from a CD or USB stick, create a save file on USB stick or any hard drive partition, and that's it.

It can run quite happily on a system otherwise configured for Windows (such as a laptop). And if you take out the CD and reboot, Windows would never even know Puppy was there. If you choose to store your save file (and perhaps even a copy of the main system file) on a Windows drive, it just shows up as an ordinary file in Windows. There's no partitioning, no messing with the file allocation table or master boot record, etc. It's as harmless as it can be.

That also lets you try out CDs of many different versions and see what you like, without even touching your hard drive. Slacko seems to be picking up in popularity. I prefer Lucid 5.28 myself - particularly remastered CDs that include important apps like browsers. Others like Wary, BigPup, or other variations.

[Dewbie]

Great info, torgo...often overlooked.

[Vansloneker]

I find it a real drawback for portable use that Firefox has to be installed by the user. In situations where one is working on any computer and has to look up things and can't or won't use a save file it's an omission.

[Dewbie]

Try Classic Pup 2.14x.
Firefox is pre-installed.

[kocg]

well, here's some observations.

1. make everything like on xp. )

2. translation is number one, and encoding of course.

3. simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. you think that things are simple, but for average linux beginer it looks nice and simple, but when wants something to do - everything is complicated.

4. make 2 modes: 'simple' and 'advance' mode for users, and their pictures on desktop to switch. in 'simple' mode make everything on click, and don't put anything that orangutan with alzheimer can't figure out.

5. that console stuff is not necessary. in generall, that stuff like 'usr/mnt/bin' is complicated, not easy for understanding at the start, and boring later (to write everything you want to do...). don't go to users with that.

6. leave just one program for one area in basic packege. i.e. gimp for photos, leafpad for text, abyword for office, wget(mixed with uget) for downloading, mplayer for play everything, and simillar.

7. there are couple of key bugs in gnome mplayer, but it's perfect. move bugs, firstly for encoding.

8. make encoding automatic for everything.

9. dillo is a joke, but... it has a nice potencial. move it from puppy . and back when they make nice browser.

10. interface is very very nice, and simple. but when you right-click for anything, there's too many options. i.e. for desktop arrangment there's zillion programs with zillion possibilities.

11. make window-slider widhter. now, mine is very tiny, (slider), and can't find option to be fat.

12. don't go with so many versions, it's confusing, people! make that users get notifications (once a year) for upgrading, or maybe is good - to choose version they like.

don't want to sound annoying with all this, but this is some things that could be changed.

in total, because you work for free as i understood, top rate from me!

go on!

[torgo]

Vansloneker - also check out Slacko Pup. It has SeaMonkey (a sibling of Firefox) already installed as its default browser.


Slacko won't work with my Tenda wireless-N USB sticks, so I use Lucid instead. The best approach for Lucid is to make a small save file with a few applications that you'd want to have on the fly, and then create your own remastered CD.

That sounds scary, but it's actually pretty simple. Click the Control icon, then click the Install tab, and click the Remaster icon. The wizard will walk you through the whole process.



One note that tripped me up when I first started: after you create your own remastered ISO, it's a good idea to delete the working files or move them to a folder at least two layers deep. If Puppy sees a main system .sfs file in a top level directory or one folder deep on any drive, it will load that one rather than the one on your CD.

The idea is to save time while loading. But once you start creating your own versions, you'll have several different ones available. The one it loads from the hard drive might be different from the one you want to load.

[mocatz187]

After reading the the forums and other sites regarding GCC on live Puppy DVD's I am convinced that GCC can't be run on a live DVD.
Not interested in partition my HDD or even creating files on my HDD.
THe only reason for me to use Puppy was to have the live DVD environment.
99.99% of all puppy users just want to get an app working with gcc but I wanted to compile C programs from code that I wrote.
It is proving to be way different than what is written in the docs.
I've read other posts from people having the identical problem unresolved.

[torgo]

mocatz187 - if you want someone to try to help, you'll need to provide them at least SOME information that might be useful. Like, for example, what exactly seems to be going wrong, and what version of Puppy you are using.


Have you tried creating a session file on a USB flash drive? That way you wouldn't have to put files on your hard drive.

[starhawk]

Reboot and make a saved session.
Download the devx.sfs for your version of Puppy.
Put it in /mnt/home.
Open the bootmanager (configure puppy at bootup) and make sure that it loads the devx.sfs at boot.
Reboot again. Your session may or may not autosave.

You should be all set when it comes back up.

[mini-jaguar]

To answer the original post, I have to say that I am not new to this forum as I have been here a few years ago. I did stop trying to use Puppy after first joining as the information on how to make a working multiple boot is/was lacking.

Started really getting into Puppy a few weeks ago, as I now had what I needed to experiment: a computer I can experiment with and Windows installation CDs if anything goes wrong. Surely enough I did mess it up the system by using the Legacy Grub program. But Grub4Dos works clearly and perfectly, so I would recommend using this one.

I have since done many Puppy and Windows (pain, but now I know how to do it) installs, mainly for trying out different configurations. Now I really need to learn all the other stuff besides installing the o.s.

[torgo]

Mini-jaguar - hopefully you'll find that Puppy has come a long, long way since then. Here's a silly question from a fellow newbie... have you tried running Puppy by booting off a CD or USB stick but running the main system file and session save file off the hard drive?

I'm finding that one of my favorite things about Puppy is not having to install it at all, merely making a folder named "Puppy" on a Windows drive to hold my saved session files. It lives quite peacefully with Windows that way, and having to alter the Windows drive with GRUB isn't necessary.

[mini-jaguar]

No, I never tried it, but I find it pretty easy to install now. Booting from CD takes quite a long time.

I did have a frugal install for a while, no particular problems as far as I remember.

I am getting kind of annoyed though, I haven't really gotten any programs other than GIMP to work properly, my Lucid partition stopped booting for some reason, even if I type the usual stuff like xwin and xorgwizard it will not boot, and my Slacko partition changed a quarter of the icons to another type I had set earlier and won't go back to setting all the icons to the same type, even if I reboot. I also need to install some sort of proper battery management.

[Lobster]

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