Newbies - Puppy needs YOUR help too!

[spongedaddy]

Oh, from my point of view, it is not all perfect. Some edges are somehow a little rough. For example, if you want to add repos, you have to manualy edit config files. For a newbie like me, this is a little.... complicated.

True, but I think that is one of the great and unique things about Linux in general and Puppy in particular: you have to learn and get your hands dirty a bit to get things the way you want it.

I remember having to edit some files when I wanted my screen background black instead of gray but got all the info I needed off the puppy IRC channel (and now I wish I had written those steps down somewhere!).

I just downloaded Slacko 5.7 after running 5.3.3 for the past year or so and really looking forward to trying it out. I'm glad you are enjoying your Puppy experience!

[chromie]

I'm what I guess you'd call a "moderately knowledgeable n00b."

I go back to the DOS days, so I've been comfortable with the CLI right from day one, and I've been running Ubuntu as my daily driver from 2007 until a couple of months ago. I'd had the metaphorical cup of coffee with Fedora before that, and Knoppix, but settled on Ubuntu because Gnome felt comfortable. I basically used Ubuntu for seven years without *needing* to learn much about Linux in general, because I was perfectly happy to Google things when I had a problem, and cut/paste 'em into Terminal.

Unfortunately, when Canonical updated the stack in 12.04, it borked my (always problematic) NVidia drivers. I updated to 14.04, since many reviews said that ran faster than the older versions, but it proved not to be the case with my hardware. I've been using LXLE instead for the past couple of months, and it's been perfectly adequate, but sometimes choked on my dual-monitor setup.

Last week I tried a frugal install of TahrPup, just 'cause. I installed from USB, which caused one minor inconvenience. The installer provides an option for finding the ISO on an installation CD, but not on a USB stick. I tried using the "browse for file" function in the installer to find my downloaded ISO, but I was too tired and cranky to feel my way through the filesystem. Instead, I opened up sda1 and copied the ISO to my desktop. After that, the installer found it without even asking and the install whizzed right through. Easy-peasey.

I wasn't entirely enthralled with the default JWM (I'll play around with it some more, and try to get it tweaked to please me), so I've also installed LXPupTahr. I'm really liking that. Both Pups run like hot spit on my 8yo HP, with a dual-core AMD Turion (2GB RAM, NVidia GeForce 7150M).

Responding to the question upthread, I think Ubuntu/Unity is arguably the most user-friendly for anyone coming to Linux without a predisposition to any other OS's way of doing things. My parents just bought their first computer recently, and I was seriously tempted to install it for them. For anyone steeped in the traditional Windows layout (or Gnome, I guess) Mint/Cinnamon is pretty smooth.

I'll try to provide more detailed feedback re: the first-time experience over the next week or two, while everything is still fresh in my mind.

[LazY Puppy]

Lot of people will not try Puppy (or Linux) because everything is english written or spoken. newbie means from outside Linux, in my opinion and outside development.
That is the reason why non native English spoken people don't try or stay in Linux.

Yes, this is a big problem!

If I hadn't found the Muppy 008.3F -which came completely in German interface- probably I would have never ever tried Linux in general or Puppy Linux especially.

After around one year of using Muppy 008.3F I was just on the search for some updated/newer versions of its applications as I've had entered the forum. Though I found there was not much help to be found in the German section of the forum, so I was in the need to refresh the fragments of my English knowledge.

After all it was worth the effort and my fun and joy in using my LazY Puppy of course will continue - even if I would disappear from development and from the forum completely.

[wboz]

I'll agree that language is an issue. I can understand that someone finding limited support in their native language would be turned off.

But what can you do about it though, aside from providing space for specific-language-speakers to find each other? For example, I know English quite well, so I'm going to continue to post and read with such; I'm not about to deploy my much-more-limited French to proactively start a post in French. (I do occasionally read them when the topic is interesting).

Puppy is a small community, it's a very niche distro and so the likelihood of having, say, 5 people who regularly post in Finnish is small.

Of course this is not an issue just for Puppy. The majority of internet content is in English, so it's advantageous to pick up at least some command of English to access it. But people choose to do that on the margin: there are plenty of Chinese people who will never learn English and are quite happy exclusively to access the large Chinese-language Internet.

[fuelish]

I’m glad Puppy doesn’t run on phones.

I like computers. They have proper displays, proper input devices like keyboards and mice. They can't fit in my pocket. They can’t bother me when I’m driving or at other inappropriate times.

My 2cents.

[Burn_IT]

Look up Android Puppy (not the advert one)

[fuelish]

Look up Android Puppy (not the advert one)

If puppy does run on android I can look forward to people t-boning me while they edit sys files in geany.

[Burn_IT]

I have a Kobo Book reader and I'm looking to run Linux/Puppy on that.
I believe it uses Android.

[fuelish]

I have a Kobo Book reader and I'm looking to run Linux/Puppy on that.
I believe it uses Android.

What would be the benefit?

Maybe I'll learn something from your reasoning.

[Burn_IT]

It is limited to reading books, web access, and either Chess or Sudoku

There a loads of other Linux Stuff that it could run on it. It has 256Mb of memory, backed by an easily updated MicroSD 2Gb internal card which holds the ROM? and user storage and up to 32Gb external MicroSD for extended user storage.
It has built in Wifi and a Micro USB adapter.
The screen is 800x600 E Ink touch sensitive

There is terrific potential there that is not being exploited.

[fuelish]

It is limited to reading books, web access, and either Chess or Sudoku

There a loads of other Linux Stuff that it could run on it. It has 256Mb of memory, backed by an easily updated MicroSD 2Gb internal card which holds the ROM? and user storage and up to 32Gb external MicroSD for extended user storage.
It has built in Wifi and a Micro USB adapter.
The screen is 800x600 E Ink touch sensitive

There is terrific potential there that is not being exploited.

Impressive specs for an e-reader. Almost seems like overkill.

My Kindle is useful as an e-reader. Navigating with the web browser is hopelessly slow, no keypad. I never registered it at amazon. I don’t trust them.

When traveling I use my phone for internet access. It’ll do in a pinch. The laptop is far superior, if I have it with me.

The idea of using puppy on anything other than a real computer just doesn’t appeal me.

[Burn_IT]

I only use it at night in bed for reading and the odd game at the moment.
I really wanted to extend the game range as I like crossword puzzles as well.
Having the web access at a touch is very nice for reference whilst reading, though the built in dictionary is Websters so is not bad.

The touch Keyboard can be a bit of a pain though.

[pcpunk]

Not sure if this is the right place for this? Not super organized here, no offense. I recently booted up my old fatdog and could not use the web browsers for some very important tools, screenshots and youtube to be exact. So I could not post my issues and could not view vids. that might have helped me. I also did not understand the file system well enough to install the newer versions of these browsers. I feel there should be a Sticky for this, or something somewhere like maybe in the Manual that points out how to do this. Simple stuff but for the noob, it is not.

[Newbie33]

What will make puppy better?

OK, a small app that will enable me to encrypt external hard drives and USB drives.

For example, if I have a large file and I wish to save it to my encrypted puppy save file it will take up a lot of RAM when I reload.

If I download a large DVD and save it in my documents.
My save file expands over 4gb.
thats cool, but what happens when i next plug my USB stick into my friends computer if he only has 2gb of RAM? it will crash.

so, What if I stored the large file (encrypted) on the base of the USB stick?
I can load the OS and still play the file.
Simples.


My next "wish" for puppy is to have a non-complicated way of installing python.
I'm not a prgrammer and I often have to install some dependancies before I can use most consumer apps like skype and others.

sometimes if I'm dowloading somehing from the package manager the program tells me I am missing some dpeendancies, but it does not give me the option to download them.

I then try to download them manually, which sometimes works, but most often I cannot find a version which will make my app work.

I often favour X preicse as I like the way .rar and zip files can be "extracted here". I for some reason had problems with this in the normal precise puppy version.


I noticed tails gves you an option to enable a mac-changer prgram. I would love this option in puppy also. sometimes when I'm downloading from my university i have "benefits" when i'm not using my own mac address.

I would love torchat to work out of the box, but this is not essential if it can be downloaded as a pet or from the package manager,

The difference betwen Windows users who are migrating (in mass numbers) from XP to linux, are that they are consumers and NOT programmers.

Linux itself is quite complicated to use in many respects and this is the main reason why the windows OS became so popular in the first place.

Addressing a more simple approach to the actually usage of puppy linux, (and indeed all linux distros) will always be a selling point - or in this case increase puppy's popularlity.

I personally think the puppy versions should be organised a little better. although I accept this will not be easy due to the shear number of versions.

The problem is so many versions are impossible to choose from.

Most consumers will look for something that does everything XP did, and with the least amount of install size.

for example, I use X Precise as my pup. I chose this as it works well and the GUI allows me to extract rar files easily.
I also found that precise puppy will sometimes install .deb files, which is usefull if i'm looking for a program that doesn't have puppy support.
Especally if I cannot find a .pet file or SFS.

and since I had problems finding pets for the slack and wary puppy, I chose X precise. yet.. to this day, I have no idea what the difference is between wary racy, slako, or precise. I just use precise as it suits my consumer needs better.

the main programs people will want to use (from XP) are...

Skype
TOR
TORchat
WIne
full disk encryption, for usb and external hdds.
eveything else can be fund in puppy.

However I often have problems with sound in skype. in fact I have no sound. I think this is becase puppy uses alsa mixer and skype requires something else.

I noticed Tails is a really good OS, but it's big. far bigger thn puppy. IS there a version of puppy that is suited to encrytped messaging and disk encrytpion. (anti NSA blocking is becoming a priority for many people these days).

can't think of anything more to add now, but you heard it from the horses mouth!

[keyboard]

Well..... I have been using puppy for quite a while now , although I am new to the forum. I started using it 4 to 5 years ago. it was just for writting books and navigating internet as I was very cautious of my privacy and normally in those good old days any room mate /classmates/batchmate or other used my laptop or desktop. so I used it to keep my programming, writting and other private documents seperate in puppy linux flash drive (protected it with password) which they couldn't access and hinder them,

To be honest I didn't knew much on let alone linux but it served my purpose and it was small lightweight which I could take it around anywhere. Afterwards I guess I unknowingly started using slackopuppy , i didn't knew much difference of the different distros it looked new so I downloaded it. The site was pretty confusing to see what I had to download.

Then , i started using it regualry as well it was more convinent and fast at most of the systems.

Later on, I discovered that there are many distros of puppy linux , and was more community driven which I was wishing it for so long.

Now, I am using it because it the only thing which runs on my old netbook.
To me it gives better service than what came preinstalled with it , windows 7 starter. I hopped on different disto of puppy linux , to find which one does suits my netbook best, while i like prescise puppy and recently released tharpup , I liked lighthousepup the best as it was a full os and it didn't felt like it was kind of bit striped down. Rather it was much more that the windows 7 started had provided.

But for a long time Lighthousepup wasn't releasing anything new,and especially for my 32 bit system so I moved back to slacko puppy. It's recent release works great, but as I guess it is with slackware I guess there arn't many new softwares in in it package manager.Although it is pretty stable with it no PAE version. Running apps as spot it working great as well in this version. I was pretty cautious while using linux on the internet as root before, so before I mostly used it for offline activities.
Running everything on root while offline and the restriction of single user was pretty convinient. I don't care much about the graphics in os. I care for what is it's utility to me. I like it's sfs packages more than it's pet packages as these sfs packages works with puppy without much hassel and saves my precious space on my pendrive. Pet packages on the other hand , if it comes from the official puppy package manager, it takes up a lot of space in my personal save file plus there are also some other issues like i always switch computers often, so I maintain 2 or 3 personal save files which are adjusted to load only those sfs which are needed for that work.But while keeping different personal save files I have to install same packages in different save files which is quite annoying as, I have mostly dialup connection and I get a fast internet only when I use one of the computers of the university. Also installing pet packages overheats my small netbook so normally use sfs packages. By now I use computers for web development. I am used to working in LAMP, puppy linux introduced me to hiawatha server. Although I installed LHMP it doesn't seem to work properly so, I am using a third party server for developments for now.

I am pretty new to this and I am learing how to convert pet packages to sfs and compiling softwares from source, or compiling my own kernel as one of the major drawback of puppy linux i think is the lack of sfs packages in the community. and that some sfs packages onlly contain one or two software and are not providing it in bulk. maximum sfs I guess one could add would be 7 probably , (i had read it somewhere , don't remember it exactly) so it pretty logical comeup with sfs packages with bulk of softwares , such as like internet sfs should contain a couple of browsers and and chat softwares. LHMP shoud be sfs as well as it is very large package, eats up most of your personal space. I recenlty also tried this attackpup which was a dervative of lighthouse pup but well... it never booted from the cd. i guess it had some faulty intrd.gz files or didn't had the drivers for my hardware. I mean it rather better just to make a sfs package with most of backtrack/kali os tools which could be compatible in slackopuppy and lighthouse pup isn't it ?

[Yan]

I had a few serious tries with Linux, but there were always things not working.
May it be Synaptic Package Manager, Update Manager, dimming brightness or ceaseless crashes, insufficient manuals, updating, etc..
No wonder a vast majority is using Win. Getting things done with Linux...no!
Endless tinkering around...yes!
Never install Linux on your HDD, try it from a stick. Otherwise you encounter problems to delete it. Had it as dual-boot, but nobody could explain how to delete it, that I could only do after lengthy research outside of the forums!

[Newbie33]

Hi Yan, did you try killdisk program like dban or something to wipie the hard drive. or where you trying the keep the windows installation?


As for anybody else, does anyone know how to encrypt a USB storage drive?
It seems there are no app or pets for this?

Thsi is related to large files also which are unsuitable for the puppysave.sfs file.
Thanks

[Yan]

No, I had to keep Win, because it is a ridiculous, tiny netbook without optical drive. I have no installation disk, too.
You can encrypt your flashdrive with Diskcryptor, simple, but you cannot use it with Linux. Take Truecrypt, more difficult, but definitely doable. It runs on Win and Linux! With T. you can even encrypt just folders, or, better, creating a container, where you save your stuff.

[KennyFields]

I'm a person with a great computer upgrade program. I wait until somebody throws away a computer that is better than mine and I do what I can with it. Recently I was given a junk Emachine laptop (2.8 ghz, 256 MB ram 30 GB HDD). It had Win XP sp3 on it. I wanted Linux on it but the opotical drive was missing. I had a few that fit, but none worked. I finally decided the channel (IDE?) was bad. I tried to boot a live version from jump drive, but the distro never came in the list at bootup. I plugged in an externel CD RW and was not expecting any better results, but it would try to boot. I tried Slax 7 and other light distros, but no boot. I remembered a former coworker crowing about Puppy Linux, so I gave it a try. It booted up and ran great! Of course there was some lag time so I decided to go native. I installed Puppy 4.3.1 first. It installed with Grub2 so I kept winxp and dual booted. When I found 5.7 Slacko I had to try it. It installed without a hitch, but when I tried to boot 4.3.1 again, all went south. No biggie, I just reloaded Windoze to recover the boot sector, then reloaded Slacko. Everything is lovely. I would like to try other Puppy versions though. Is there some VooDoo I should do to prevent screwing everything up...again?

[RetroTechGuy]

I'm a person with a great computer upgrade program. I wait until somebody throws away a computer that is better than mine and I do what I can with it. Recently I was given a junk Emachine laptop (2.8 ghz, 256 MB ram 30 GB HDD).

A good candidate, other than I like to see more RAM...

It had Win XP sp3 on it.

You can leave the XP, and use "Lin'N'Win" to hook into the existing boot loader.

I installed Puppy 4.3.1 first.

I liked 4.31, but found the 5.28 family seem to be lighter hardware/memory load. In fact, I installed LupuMini on my old P2 333MHz, with 256 MB RAM.

My report here:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 540#827540

You can go back to the first page of the link above, to see the latest versions.