Puppy on a lap top? Hardware requirements? Work on older PC?

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HoosierDaddy
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Joined: Mon 25 Jun 2012, 08:26

Puppy on a lap top? Hardware requirements? Work on older PC?

#1 Post by HoosierDaddy »

Hey folks..

Hey, I"m wanting to buy a used Lap top x86 64 bit.. with windows on it, etc,.. and then I thought I'd probably format it and then ready and install Puppy on it..(If puppy will do some other stuff I want to do as a developer).. If not, I wondered about how hard it is to do a dual boot install on a lap top? What is good hardware in others experience? What laptops to stay away from because of Graphics cards not working ,etc? I need puppy to work with the lap tops graphics card, and it's wireless card, etc,? HELP!

Any suggestions would be great.. I want to install puppy directly on the hard drive as either the stand alone OS or as a dual boot with Windows since I do write VIsual Basic, DotNet and SQL server stuff..
God speed..
Tim

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Terryphi
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Re: Puppy on a lap top? Hardware requirements? Work on older PC?

#2 Post by Terryphi »

I have Racy 5.3 triple booting with Windows 7 and Linux Mint using GRUB4DOS on a new 64-bit Acer Aspire 5749 (Intel). Graphics and wireless card work perfectly. Racy is 32-bit but I have seen no benefit in normal use of using 64-bit software so that is not a problem.

On a 10 year old Acer Aspire 1350 (AMD) I dual boot Wary 5.3 with Windows XP. That one does not run Racy which is intended for more recent hardware.
[b]Classic Opera 12.16 browser SFS package[/b] for Precise, Slacko, Racy, Wary, Lucid, etc available[url=http://terryphillips.org.uk/operasfs.htm]here[/url] :)

HoosierDaddy
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Where to get Racy?

#3 Post by HoosierDaddy »

I guess I need to know what software I need to install puppy on a used lap top that already has Windows XP or something such as that. This way I can choose what OS I want to use? Will the Racy Puppy work?
Thanks so much.. Sorry for the newbie questions, but I'm a big time newbie..hehe.. Love Linux so far.. So much power! Love it..

Tim

Dewbie

#4 Post by Dewbie »

HoosierDaddy wrote:
I guess I need to know what software I need to install puppy on a used lap top that already has Windows XP or something such as that. This way I can choose what OS I want to use?
You need a bootloader for that.
Try Grub4DOS (see Terryphi's post above); it's the most user-friendly.
Will the Racy Puppy work?
You might get lucky right off the bat, or you might need to try several Puppies before you find one that works. It would help if you were more specific about the hardware.

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Tote
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#5 Post by Tote »

I used this method when I first started using Puppy http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=43203 It worked for me on an old-ish laptop (8-10 years old, very basic), dual booting with XP.

I've since deleted XP in favour of Puppy. No regrets. :D

I can't answer your other questions but I'm sure someone who can will be along.

Good luck with it.

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CatDude
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#6 Post by CatDude »

Hello HoosierDaddy

Welcome to the kennels.

As Dewbie has already stated:
Dewbie wrote:...It would help if you were more specific about the hardware.
You may also find this link useful: http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyOnLaptops

CatDude
.
[img]http://www.smokey01.com/CatDude/.temp/sigs/acer-futile.gif[/img]

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Burn_IT
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#7 Post by Burn_IT »

Over the years I have found that if a machine will run Windows (3.1 onwards), it will easily run Puppy.
Obviously some of the later Puppies DO expect later hardware, but the oldest version I've ever had to revert to was 4.2.
I have an old 486 machine upstairs that has Puppy as it's main OS.
"Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush" - T Pratchett

Les Kerf
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Joined: Sun 24 Jun 2012, 13:30

#8 Post by Les Kerf »

I didn't join the forum until recently, but I have been playing with Puppy Linux for nearly a year off and on. I have tried quite a few varieties, but keep coming back to the "official" varieties (Slacko, Lucid, and Wary).

The biggest "problem" I run into is internet connectivity; this is mostly due to drivers. Slacko doesn't like older my hardware, and Wary doesn't like the newer stuff. Lucid seems to have more of the stuff that I like to use, but Slacko will auto-connect to wi-fi (and ethernet) better than the others.

I highly sugest that you start out slow, burn a few re-writable live cd's and give them a try. If you don't like one, just erase it and try another.

Don't erase Windows for a while, just boot with a live cd and put the save file on the hard drive (unless you're paranoid, then just use live cd only).

Many Puppians prefer frugal installs. I don't.
YMMV
Les

HoosierDaddy
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Wow, thanks so much for the info..

#9 Post by HoosierDaddy »

Will the Racy Puppy work?
You might get lucky right off the bat, or you might need to try several Puppies before you find one that works. It would help if you were more specific about the hardware.[/quote]

I'm sorry. I don't know the hardware yet, because I'm buying a used lap top today or tomorrow. I just moved to GA from Indiana. Still moving into apt, etc,. That's the reason I was trying to find out what software is out there to help guide me on hardware..hehe.. The Laptops I'm looking at are:

1) A 64bit OS. Windows 7 I think with a small hard drive about 3 meg or 4 meg of ram I remember, and wireless card, 512 meg video card integrated into the board I do believe. I'm telling you this off of memory..

2) The second laptop I'm considering is really old. Has windows xp pro, and is like an AMD with 1 gig of ram and about 100 meg of hard drive and an added later PCMPCI or whatever the slot is called for the wireless card. It is real basic.. but cheap. This would be a Lap top that I'd only use with Linux. I'm looking hard at the SuSe Distro.. I've been doing some research.. I guess it's supposed to be very stable..

I've figured out puppy pretty well. Really, linux reminds me of an apple GUI kinda. Better than Windows and not quite as pretty as Apple OS, but the thing I love is the "POWER" and better yet the "Stability"..

Thanks so much. When I get the lap top I'll for sure write you folks back with my experiences and any questions I have. I really, truly appreciate your help here. You folks are a great bunch of help! god speed
Tim

HoosierDaddy
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Thank you so much

#10 Post by HoosierDaddy »

The biggest "problem" I run into is internet connectivity; this is mostly due to drivers. Slacko doesn't like older my hardware, and Wary doesn't like the newer stuff. Lucid seems to have more of the stuff that I like to use, but Slacko will auto-connect to wi-fi (and ethernet) better than the others.

Les, thank you so much. I'm going to try and do a dual boot and like you said just use the Live CD and save the save file to the hard drive.. I will then work on getting the software recommended here for a dual boot. I'm just trying to prepare everything as much as possible before I buy a used laptop..

I'm really interested lately in writing for android using a software called "RevRun" which I guess used to be used for a mac and was called "Heyper Card". Anyway, it's a commercial software, compiler, but allows one to develop for windows, linux, mac, android, and IOS, web, etc,. on Mac, Linux or Windows.. That way I don't have to learn JAVA. Too low level. That's what hardware is for..hehehe.. Just kidding.. I thought I'd use Puppy for this if it will meet the software requirements, etc,.. But, I do want to use Netbeans IDE from Sun for developing PHP, etc,. I just figured it out as it's really very much like classic ASP was, and I used to a lot of work for a state with ASP. I'm now doing Dot Net stuff on my own / web development / sql server, but want to move to PHP, Java, etc, on linux as I'm over MS.
God speed
Tim

Les Kerf
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Re: Wow, thanks so much for the info..

#11 Post by Les Kerf »

HoosierDaddy wrote:...

1) A 64bit OS. Windows 7 I think with a small hard drive about 3 meg or 4 meg of ram I remember, and wireless card, 512 meg video card integrated into the board I do believe. I'm telling you this off of memory..
Definitely get the newer unit if at all possible.

I'm running a two-year old Acer Aspire laptop with a 64 bit Windows 7 that I purchased for college (needed W7 to run some proprietary electronics engineering programs). One of my classmates is a Linux nut, and he got me started, then I found Puppy.

The only issues I have with this unit is that I can't seem to find drivers to run Wary Puppy on ethernet. So I run Slacko and Lucid, depending on my fancy at the moment. SUPER easy, just put in a different CD.

Since you have stated that you want to do something far more advanced than just web surfing, don't waste your time and money on an old machine.
Les

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ravensrest
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#12 Post by ravensrest »

I have Puppy 4.31 running on a Dell Inspiron 2650 in a triple boot with Win XP and DSL using GRUB as the boot loader. Works fine, including wireless net access with a Netgear WG511 v2 card. Note that USB booting is not possible with this computer, and only USB1 is supported. Hard drive, floppy, and CDROM all work well though.
BS

starhawk
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#13 Post by starhawk »

Puppy can run comfortably on anything with a Pentium 3 or newer processor. I have been attempting to get it working comfortably on a Dell Latitude CPi (Pentium 2) recently, with little success -- although it will run, it is painfully slow. (My most recent attempt to modify puppy for it ended in something of a mess as well.)

RAM is not a big issue. As long as you have half a gig (512meg) you should be good.

As a side note, I think that you (like many folks these days) are messing up your metric prefixes on the computer side of things. Note capitalization.

bit = 0 or 1
nibble = 4 bits
byte = 8 bits
word = 16 bits
kilobyte[kB] = 1,024 bytes
megabyte [MB] = 1,024kB or 1,048,576 bytes
gigabyte [GB] = 1,024MB, 1,048,576kB, or 1,073,741,824 bytes
terabyte [TB] = 1,024GB, 1,048,576MB, 1,073,741,824 kB, or 1,099,511,627,776 bytes -- phew!

Remember that in computers, everything is powers of two: 2^10=1024. Hence all of that numeric mess when you expected /normal/ metric prefixes (which are powers of ten).

Part of the confusion is from the big corporations (how unusual :roll: ) -- storage companies like to defraud people and go by powers of /ten/ (per the metric prefixes of the rest of science): 10^3=1000. Easier for them to count by. So they put in little tiny text that makes you get out your magnifying glass "This stupid company defies proper mathematics and defines 1 gigabyte (GB) as 1,000 MB..." etc. -- or something like that! Rather stupid since you can't really redefine widely accepted mathematical terminology, but the law and society-in-general let 'em do it. That's why the "formatted capacity" of a hard drive is always less than it should be, according to your computer. At least the memory (RAM) companies haven't figured out how to pull that krap yet...

Oh, and don't feel too bad, I needed a calculator several times to get you those numbers!

I would say for you, something like a Thinkpad T4* (T40/41/42 etc.) series system would do you quite nicely. Pentium M CPU (these can be upgraded to something like 2ghz if you're not afraid of eBay or your own hands) and up to 2gb of RAM. IDE hard drive (the older kind) but it's plenty fast enough. Don't want a hard drive? Buy a Compact Flash card (not CFast!) from Newegg (www.newegg.com) and get a laptop IDE -> CF adapter from eBay -- like this one. Don't get the CF card from eBay, you can't trust 'em from there.

Dunno if you can do Visual BASIC on Linux, but DotNET is an MS thing and they have rather a habit of Linux-dislike. SQL shouldn't be much of a problem, though, I would think. That said, check behind me -- my programming skills were gained in QBASIC on a 386!

HoosierDaddy
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Joined: Mon 25 Jun 2012, 08:26

Got the laptop.. Ok Everyone.. Just a couple questions

#14 Post by HoosierDaddy »

Ok folks.. I really appreciate all the help.. I'm not a hardware guy, but here's what I bought for a 150 bucks..

Dell Latitude E4300 <==== Specs below:

Intel Core2 Duo CPU @ 2.4 GHZ
2 Gig of RAM
Dell Wireless 1397 Mini Card
64 Bit OS
75 Gig hard drive.

I partitioned the drive and have a free volume now of 15 gig rougly. I thought that should be enough? I want to install Puppy on here as a dual boot.
Will the Windows EXE work with the Slacko PAE build? Is there a better one? I want to make sure it recognizes hardware,wireless lan, etc,.
I know a lot of folks use a DVD or CD to run from and or save to, but I want everything to work off of the hard drive. This PC is just for working with.
I plan on using this PC to run a program called RunRev or Live Code(www.runrev.com) to write Android and IOS apps, and sell the same. I'm wondering if it would run faster using Linux for this task? The company sells the software for both Windows, Mac, and Linux. So, I could of course use Windows 7 Ultimate which is the other OS on this machine now, or I can use Puppy once installed. Anyone have an opinion on this?

Really, I'll probably use Puppy most of the time for surfingi, email, etc, for security purposes and so I don't have to worry about Viruses, etc,.
Windows will be used for writing Windows Apps. I have got a lot of Free Development software from MS in a program that they had.

Also, I thought I'd develop, or learn to use Netbeans for PHP work maybe, or at least to work with Java and learn it. Would use Puppy for this. Will it work ? ?

Oh, do I need to format the new partition before using the Windows installer EXE for puppy? If so, what type of format? Fat or NTFS or will the Puppy Installer for Windows format the new partion for me?
Best Regards and again thanks so much. You folks are great. I love this open source stuff. I should have looked into a long time ago !!!! Love Puppy so far installed on a really old desktop and running it from a DVD.
Tim

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8-bit
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#15 Post by 8-bit »

Take this as as a suggestion in that on the windows laptop, get and install Easy BCD.
It is a boot loader for windows that will let you install other Operating systems like Puppy Linux without the fear of overwriting your Windows boot code.
It takes a little longer to boot that way, but may be worth the effort.
If some others can give you detailed information on installing Puppy along with windows vista - windows 7, be sure to take it to heart.

HoosierDaddy
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Joined: Mon 25 Jun 2012, 08:26

#16 Post by HoosierDaddy »

Thank you so much.. I'll get Easy BCD. I really appreciate it.. I'll wait and see what the concensus is first. Thanks again..
Tim
8-bit wrote:Take this as as a suggestion in that on the windows laptop, get and install Easy BCD.
It is a boot loader for windows that will let you install other Operating systems like Puppy Linux without the fear of overwriting your Windows boot code.
It takes a little longer to boot that way, but may be worth the effort.
If some others can give you detailed information on installing Puppy along with windows vista - windows 7, be sure to take it to heart.

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Burn_IT
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#17 Post by Burn_IT »

I personally steer well clear of EasyBCD as I find it confusing ( and I throw partitions around like confetti. )

I use two boot managers:

1) is Symon and sits in the disk boot sectors and allows me to dynamically manage what disks and partitions are visible (I have 3 fixed disks in my machine with lots of partitions on each from which I can choose up to 4)

2) is Grub4Dos that sits in the partition boot sectors and controls what partition is booted.

Grub4Dos is so much easier to use than EasyBCD and is far better supported/documented.
"Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush" - T Pratchett

HoosierDaddy
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#18 Post by HoosierDaddy »

Hi 8bit, Question for you. I donwloaded EasyBCD. Do I need to install Puppy first and then use BCD?
Or, do I need to use EasyBCD first? I'm confused.. Sounds dumb I know, but I didn't want to install puppy and then nothing work for instance?
Tim
8-bit wrote:Take this as as a suggestion in that on the windows laptop, get and install Easy BCD.
It is a boot loader for windows that will let you install other Operating systems like Puppy Linux without the fear of overwriting your Windows boot code.
It takes a little longer to boot that way, but may be worth the effort.
If some others can give you detailed information on installing Puppy along with windows vista - windows 7, be sure to take it to heart.

HoosierDaddy
Posts: 20
Joined: Mon 25 Jun 2012, 08:26

Hey Burnit..

#19 Post by HoosierDaddy »

Hey Burn it..

Downloaded Slacko, latest version, and I downloaded Grub4Dos which is a pet file. I take it you have to install puppy first and then use Grub4Dos within Puppy to configure the dual boot?
May I ask how you did this?
My machine is a Windows 7 with 2 gig of ram, intel dual core2 2.4ghz, dvd player cd writer, etc,.. USB drive.. BUT I DON'T HAVE A USB DRIVE OR CD OR DVD WITH ME. I'm stuck in a motel as I'm moving, and don't want to do a frugal install or use any of the above. Do you know if it will work if I install everything on the HD? I don't want to mess up the Windows 7 OS that's currently there.. I did shrink and add a partition inside of Windows 7, but I didn't format it.. thinking I could possibly do so inside of Linux when working with the install? I have only installed puppy once and that was on a WIndows XP machine / Desktop using the Frugal install with a DVD ReWritable .. Any help would be appreciated..
Tim
Burn_IT wrote:I personally steer well clear of EasyBCD as I find it confusing ( and I throw partitions around like confetti. )

I use two boot managers:

1) is Symon and sits in the disk boot sectors and allows me to dynamically manage what disks and partitions are visible (I have 3 fixed disks in my machine with lots of partitions on each from which I can choose up to 4)

2) is Grub4Dos that sits in the partition boot sectors and controls what partition is booted.

Grub4Dos is so much easier to use than EasyBCD and is far better supported/documented.

Minnesota
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Joined: Thu 11 Sep 2008, 11:25

testing

#20 Post by Minnesota »

MY 2 cents:

Puppy comes in many flavors. Some with tons of software included, some bare bones. Also other flavors as you mentioned are available.

I highly suggest till you are more familiar with all the goodies in Puppy. That you make CD's and run Live. First test each version without a save if you wish. Or save the save file to a memory stick. Or the blank partition you built.

My search of the computer you have indicates you have a optical drive DVD+/-RW. Pick up a package of CD's. The cost is minimal. You can if you want use the option to save to the CD. One fancy feature of Puppy.

THE key here is become familiar with different versions and do not worry about immediately saving to the hard drive. You will find the speed difference between running from the hard drive and the CD is not that significant. You can always have a cup of coffee while it is reading the CD and initializing. Once running in memory it will run just as fast.

By the time you find a version you like you will have more knowledge of how to set it up. And the options available to you.

Unless you have to save, you might even be able to test your special design package with each version to see if it will run. As to VB.. that is a MS package. Don't think anything similar exists in Linux. Unfortunately neither is there an ACCESSS. Many Puppy's have a flavor of SQL lite. Even though the latest Wine indicates it will run all of O-2010. Have not tried to load Access. Speaking of that it might be possible to run your special package under Wine. Check www.winehq.org/ for what is known to run under wine.

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