Which Pup?

[artsown]

I thought it might be helpful to some new Puppy users to suggest which
Pups have worked for me and which haven't. My test machines here
are mostly old Dells having P4 cpus and 512 to 768 meg RAM. I test
Pups using a Linksys Wireless-G PCI adapter Model WMP54G. The
(Windows) setup disc says version 4.0 I use WPA encryption.

All four Pups I've selected handle wireless flawlessly using Barry's
Simple Network Setup. They all can run the latest versions of Firefox (now
at 17.0). The Pups include Lucid 5.2.8.005 and its three-headed-dog sister
Luci having the same version number. Wary 5.3.90 and Slacko 5.3.1 are
two more reliable and very nice (and fast) Pups in my experience.

Pups I learned to avoid are the cutting edge Precise and Racy using
later version kernels. Both PAE and RETRO versions exhibit unreliable
connectivity, and they have other issues on my PCs as well.

Art

[darkcity]

Thanks the heads up ; -)

This is the puppy version index page on the wiki
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyVersionIndex

feel free to add any info you think is missing

[artsown]

Hello darkcity.

An interesting example of the issues I've found with newer kernels is
a comparison of slacko 5.3.1 to 5.3.3 on my machines. 5.3.1 is built on
the 2.6.37.6 kernel and slacko 5.3.3 is built on kernel 3.1.10

Slacko 533 exhibits the (now to me) familiar "mostly black screen at
startup" problem I saw with Precise and Racy versions also built on
a 3.X kernel. This happens on about 20% of startups. It's not a disaster
since the bottom toolbar allows you to hit Menu-Shutdown-Restart x
server which clears things up for the current session. At least slacko
533 is useable on all my PCs whereas Precise 542 doesn't even start
up on one of my machines,

Before I'd feel comfortable putting up some sort of general info along
these lines, I'd like to understand what's going on. I haven't been able
to get a clue yet as to the reason why the Pentium 4 PCs don't work
well on 3.X kernels. Comments from experts would be appreciated.

Art

[sheldonisaac]

(most snipped)

why the Pentium 4 PCs don't work well on 3.X kernels.

Art, please excuse this; it probably isn't helpful.

I'm in Lucid Puppy 5.28, which I've been using on this Dell Latitude D610, the Acer Aspire One, and the Dell 8300 desktop for approximately the past year.

On my older desktop, based on an ASUS P5A mainboard, I haven't been using other than Classic Puppy 2.14X.

Anyhow, this is from the LuPu I'm in now:

Linux puppypc 2.6.33.2 #1 SMP Thu May 27 10:56:32 EST 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

Later today or tomorrow, I'll report on booting 'lina-lite-003 and SolidPup.

SolidPup:

Linux puppypc 2.6.32.28 #1 SMP Sat Feb 5 11:15:25 GMT-8 2011 i686 GNU/Linux

'lina-lite:

Linux D610-lina 3.2.13 #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Nov 20 00:08:51 CST 2012 i686 GNU/Linux

[artsown]

As a follow-up to my original post here, I've been following the Precise
Puppy bug-reports thread. Precise is now up to 5.4.3 and Barry has
fixed many bugs. This latest version is working well for me, especially
since I've learned how to deal with a alleged kernel bug that's the
culprit with wireless problems on latest Pup versions. It's a power
management problem (of all things!). Pemasu gave me a clue.

The workaround I came up with is similar to others I found later on. I
edit the file /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit and add the following two lines at the end
of the file:

iwconfig wlan0 power off
iwconfig wlan0 rate 2M

It's the power off line that's important. The next line setting the max bit
rate to 2M (2 mhz) is peculiar to my particular situation. It's a stab at
possibly improved wireless reliability.

This workaround applies to the latest versions of Racy and Slacko as
well as Precise.

Art