Announcing the OBVIOUS: Puppy, Replacement - WinXP/Vista/7/8

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stray_dog
Posts: 65
Joined: Wed 19 Mar 2014, 00:14

#101 Post by stray_dog »

Hello, Puppy people.

I just wanted to say hi, give a sniff & snort, & introduce myself. I think a bit ago you guys were talking about Puppy as an option for those poor Windows XP people looking down the plank to the end of the OS support. Well. Here I am. I'm one of those people.

A good many years ago, a friend and system admin at work gave me burned bootable disks of slax 4.2 and knoppix 3.7 to try out on laptops I was thinking of buying. It was amazing!!! And a huge help, even though wifi for them was buggy. Well that, and the computer store guys thought I'd drifted in from another planet or something, which was fun. But. It's always been on my mind, and sometimes I would boot them up just to reacquaint myself. But really, the thing that got me in the end was the endless updates, and even worse was the endless bloat using up even more of my (apparently?) limited cpu & ram resources for OS & firewall & antivirus etc. For a while now, I've been seriously irritated with the whole situation. Sure, I can pay for Zonealarm or whatever, and then have to turn it off because it eats up so much of my cpu to render the app useless? Or maybe I should say "try" to turn it off. Or turn it down? Or update Flash only to find out that the thing that makes clips unwatchable on youtube is the xtra adverts & annotations that showed up because I updated? Growwwlll.

I've been testing Slacko Puppy 5.6 on my old laptop for the last few weeks off a CD. This past weekend I figured out how to navigate my bios correctly to get a bootable usb to work. I could save files easily (too easily!), got stay-connected-to-the-internet to work on my built-in wifi. I decided to go for broke and try voice chat from my gmail & was able to have 2 hour conversations where before it was unworkable due to sounding like I was swallowing The Matrix in a big gulp. Even gave Wine a whirl and installed the gucview pet & tried to see if I could use Vsee video chat. The gui was buggy but I got on with better video quality than with xp. Not bad for a first whirl.

Sure, I have some kinks to work out and such. But overall, this rocks. I went from the person who thought okay, I can use this as an emergency thing because it works, to the person who thought ya know what, never mind that old stuff. Let's find out what we can do. I read somewhere that Windows is a product, but Linux is an experience. This has been a real experience for me. Pretty amazing one, too. So I just want to say thanks to Barry & you other guys & folks who've worked to make this possible. Learned more in the last couple weeks than the last 10 years. And I can still have my XP if I need it for some reason, just boot differently.

Oh - one more thing. My go-to girl at work with the old laptop that wouldn't work? And the manager lady at the grocery store with the box that wouldn't work after that Russian virus? Yeah. About that ...

So thank you. I mean it.

jpeps
Posts: 3179
Joined: Sat 31 May 2008, 19:00

#102 Post by jpeps »

stray_dog wrote:Hello, Puppy people.
Welcome! You'll have fun.

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Moose On The Loose
Posts: 965
Joined: Thu 24 Feb 2011, 14:54

#103 Post by Moose On The Loose »

[quote="stray_dog"]
I think a bit ago you guys were talking about Puppy as an option for those poor Windows XP people looking down the plank to the end of the OS support. Well. Here I am. I'm one of those people.
[quote]


I saw a cute joke. Someone took a nice picture of some countryside, added "Windows 9.3" as text and set it as their background. They then told a friend who didn't know much about computers "the hardest thing about Winows-9 is getting used the new icons"

A couple of things I have found very nice about Puppy:

1) If you set cups to make public your printers, a second puppy on the same network can print to them with no configuration needed.

2) "gnumeric" makes it very easy to quickly make a graph that you can then take out of the spreadsheet as a picture to use elsewhere. Because it is so easy to do, this is how I often make a quick graph for a document.

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mikeb
Posts: 11297
Joined: Thu 23 Nov 2006, 13:56

#104 Post by mikeb »

I think a bit ago you guys were talking about Puppy as an option for those poor Windows XP people looking down the plank to the end of the OS support. Well. Here I am. I'm one of those people.
that would suggest the sharks are linux distros :D

mike

cthisbear
Posts: 4422
Joined: Sun 29 Jan 2006, 22:07
Location: Sydney Australia

#105 Post by cthisbear »

" And I can still have my XP if I need it for some reason,
just boot differently. "

Exactly....Keep Windows....enjoy Puppy.

Welcome to Puppy mate.

And whether it's good or bad it is nice to have feedback.
Lucky for us it was a good experience for you.

Tell your friends about Puppy...
and say hello here occasionally.

Cheers ...........Chris.

stray_dog
Posts: 65
Joined: Wed 19 Mar 2014, 00:14

#106 Post by stray_dog »

Thank you, folks! Jpeps, yea, I actually have already had some fun. Moose, I really got a chuckle from that Windows 9.3 joke. Mikeb ... haha sharks - I guess so! Or at least the great unknown. Chris the bear, thanks. Yeah for those folks from XP who are nervous about it, hey, you know, you can try it, and no harm done. I was thinking to myself well hey, if the internet access works with Puppy, in the worst case scenario I could always just use my disc for internet stuff and then just keep XP for when I was offline. Thanks for the welcome. Wow, you people seem friendly! I will mull these things over & try to come back with some kind of coherent worthwhile thought. The old brain is tired tonight.

jpeps
Posts: 3179
Joined: Sat 31 May 2008, 19:00

#107 Post by jpeps »

stray_dog wrote: Wow, you people seem friendly!
Only when we agree on something, which is rarely.

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mikeb
Posts: 11297
Joined: Thu 23 Nov 2006, 13:56

#108 Post by mikeb »

Actually perhaps we are the sharks.

I think not agreeing is part of the nature of the current theological computer/linux debacle.

meanwhile back to surfing and banking on 2000..... :D

mike

jpeps
Posts: 3179
Joined: Sat 31 May 2008, 19:00

#109 Post by jpeps »

mikeb wrote:Actually perhaps we are the sharks.

I think not agreeing is part of the nature of the current theological computer/linux debacle.

meanwhile back to surfing and banking on 2000..... :D

mike
Why not just donate your money directly?

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mikeb
Posts: 11297
Joined: Thu 23 Nov 2006, 13:56

#110 Post by mikeb »

Hmm good idea since no one's rushing to take it the other way. :D

mike

stray_dog
Posts: 65
Joined: Wed 19 Mar 2014, 00:14

#111 Post by stray_dog »

Having been laid up with the flu, I was letting this whole thing roll around in my head for a bit. You guys seem really smart and knowledgeable about this stuff - which is really great. I'm so new, I'm not too sure about anything. But I can share my experience.

At first, I was thinking okay, we are coming down to the wire. April 9th, I think, is the date xp will be officially done. I've got a couple months to figure out what I'm going to do. What's practical? Sure, upgrade to windows 7 is an option. A couple guys on smokebreak with me were telling me how it wasn't so bad with them. But I'm running windows 7 on my pc at work (no choice) and can see just how much stuff is going on in the task manager. Do I really want to go down this road again? Especially when I have an old machine with limited resources? Mmmm, I'd rather not. It just doesn't make sense.

So I have to start thinking practically. What if I do another OS? Like Puppy? They say on techradar it's good for old hardware. What do I really need to do? Well, I'm thinking, I need to get on the internet, pay some bills, watch some entertainment on youtube and hulu, and do some voice calling & video chat if I'm lucky. And some downloading. And do that stuff safely. Okay, so, how do I do that? Can I do that? Get on the internet, do stuff, and be secure. Can I?

So that led me down this road of making a live cd, and testing it out. I found out right away that wow, my built-in wifi card actually worked really smooth with the internet wizard. I thought wow, okay! Nice! I did not think it would be that smooth! Okay, so I have an alternative pcmcia wireless card with an antenna that I'll try to figure out later. We're on for now. Then I started looking up whether this is secure or not. I started learning that there's a way to think strategically about security, really different from the 'pay-for-antivirus-and-hope' strategy I'd been living with. I looked up the guidelines here & on the wiki, looked at the dod live cd, and thought wow, this rearranges my whole idea of being secure. Quite frankly, I think it's pretty clear Puppy can be a lot more secure than just doing the usual windows routine when we follow best practices guidelines.

Anyway. I read near the beginning of this topic somebody mentioning how Linux distros are for people who want to learn, who are open to becoming more intimate with their machines & how they work, respecting them to get the most out of them. I'm definitely one of those people that needs to go after a bone and learn and chew. So personally, I've felt really intrigued, and challenged, to go find out about xyz that I wanted to know about Puppy. So then, I got all jazzed up because I was learning a lot, in a very short period of time. I liked that.

So a couple weeks ago I sat down to try to figure out how to get my other pcmcia wifi card to work. Little did I realize, the reason it was glitchy in the first place was because I'd saved preferences of my built-in wifi card & those two were trying to contend with each other. But after searching the forum, the web, learning about this particular card, I came to realize hey, this has worked in Linux for a long time, I should be good. Let's go back to basics. So this past weekend, I managed to follow the forum guidelines on how to configure wifi from the command line, and lo and behold, it worked like perfection. And it still is. All I had to do was follow the instructions, even if I didn't completely understand them. And on top of that, I'm using the terminal?!? How crazy is that??? A couple months ago, I would have said there is no way in the world I'd be doing that. Sure, it's only a handful of commands in the giant world of computing. But do I feel more intimate with my machine, and the meanings of each of those commands that do work? I sure do.

With the thought of security on my mind, I remembered the suggestion to not surf the web with your hard drive mounted. Then I remembered, in Puppy, at first I had a hard time telling whether a drive was mounted or unmounted. Some other distros would put a green dot on the drive icon if it was mounted. In Puppy I saw an X. That in my mind meant "no". So for a couple days I freaked out trying to figure that out, and oh dear, did I put myself at risk? Ran some antivirus, as a precaution. Result? No problem.

This made me think about how secure it can be to just run a live cd or usb on a machine that has no hard drive in it at all. I looked up my machine price on ebay. What does it go for these days? 30 USA dollars. Ouch! But I thought hey, if I want a really fast processor in a laptop for cheap $$$$, I could buy a machine with no harddrive and no OS, but a really fast cpu, and make out like a bandit! This could be awesome!

So I'm busy thinking about this stuff, and the girl I gave my first live cd to tells me it booted up perfectly & walked her through all the steps & it's working fine. Now her young boys are playing video games on it, without having to expend any effort to get it working. Pretty amazing.

I can tell you for sure now, I'm confident to be using Puppy as my replacement OS. I'll keep windows xp on my old machine, but Puppy is my new standard and home. I don't think I'll be going back.

jpeps
Posts: 3179
Joined: Sat 31 May 2008, 19:00

#112 Post by jpeps »

stray_dog wrote:Having been laid up with the flu, I was letting this whole thing roll around in my head for a bit. You guys seem really smart and knowledgeable about this stuff - which is really great. I'm so new, I'm not too sure about anything. But I can share my experience.
The nice thing about Puppy is that after you've exhausted every imaginable technological permutation on the forum, you can move on to other areas such as religion or alcohol abuse. Learning just never ends here.

stray_dog
Posts: 65
Joined: Wed 19 Mar 2014, 00:14

#113 Post by stray_dog »

The nice thing about Puppy is that after you've exhausted every imaginable technological permutation on the forum, you can move on to other areas such as religion or alcohol abuse. Learning just never ends here.
I'll start with the booze first & let you know how it works out!

nooby
Posts: 10369
Joined: Sun 29 Jun 2008, 19:05
Location: SwedenEurope

#114 Post by nooby »

Moderator Flash has numerous times told us about his set up
using multi session CD/DVD. I trust he knows what he is doing
using that one that would be something I would want o use too.

But two of my Nettop have no does not have any DVD drive built in.

I wonder if it is possible to use some adapter that allow me
to get in contact with the sea plane pilot. Just kidding no big deal
what I wanted to say is thatsuppose I find a abapler that really works
then I could have his set up too.

And then you have a secure way to boot and use Puppy.
Using DVD/CD. Sure it will download virus and keyloggers but as soon as you break power then the memory loose thinterne

USB is not possible to use in the way he used the DVD to be secure.
It would keep the memory even when power is broken.
So it is there when you wake up.

The virus can download and put nasty files on the HD.
And they change files and all gets permanent.

Now I am a true noob so I hopefully can be very wrong
Then USB would works as well. Would be a great thing indeed.

So share all the knowledge you have on how
to achieve secure set ups also on usb.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

starhawk
Posts: 4906
Joined: Mon 22 Nov 2010, 06:04
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...

#115 Post by starhawk »

USB will work, one of two ways -- never save a session or remaster (always answer 'no' when it asks) or disable session saves... I'm pretty sure that I've heard mumblings here about the second idea, but I've never looked into it, so I can't give you a link (sorry!).

Chrispy
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun 27 Apr 2014, 08:01

Windows Refugee

#116 Post by Chrispy »

I made the switch from Windows to Linux this year. It all started with Microsoft Office. When I found out that Microsoft is charging $139.99 for Office, I promptly downloaded LibreOffice. Not soon after, I wiped my hard-drive clean of Windows 8.1 and replaced it with Fedora 20. Later I was able to resurrect a family members old 32 bit Windows XP machine with Puppy Linux, and brought my old 64 bit Vista machine back to life as well. So I agree with the original poster 100%: Puppy Linux is the OBVIOUS replacement for Windows XP & Vista.

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