can some one define: what is Puppy?

A home for all kinds of Puppy related projects
Message
Author
oui

can some one define: what is Puppy?

#1 Post by oui »

Hm, Puppy Projects, the name of this part of the forum, well, but:

what is Puppy?

What are the special abilities of each ISO being named or deserving the name "Puppy Linux"?

User avatar
mikeslr
Posts: 3890
Joined: Mon 16 Jun 2008, 21:20
Location: 500 seconds from Sol

#2 Post by mikeslr »

Hi oui,

Your involvement is longer than mine. Maybe you can define what unique features, or combination of features, make a Puppy, a Puppy. I think at one time on Barry K's blog there was a list of features such as 'small size', 'user friendly', 'boots from any device'. But I can't find it. The description on http://puppylinux.com/ seems to capture the 'essence' of what currently makes a Puppy, a Puppy.

Ready to use → all tools for common daily computing usage already included.
Ease of use → grandpa-friendly certified ™
Relatively small size → 200 MB or less.
Fast and versatile.
Customisable within minutes → remasters.
Different flavours → optimised to support older computers, newer computers.
Variety → hundreds of derivatives (“puplets

User avatar
bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#3 Post by bigpup »

There is also this requirement to be a Puppy.

[quote]What is an official Puppy Linux distribution?
A: It must meet two conditions. 1) It must be built using Woof-CE. 2) It must be endorsed as “official
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

User avatar
bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#4 Post by bigpup »

A lot of info here:
http://puppylinux.com/faq.html
Q: Is DebianDog considered as Puppy Linux?
A: No. The maintainer itself has said so. Further more it is not built from Woof-CE. But it seeks to emulate most if not all of Puppy Linux features and behaviours; that if you are familiar with Puppy you would be right at home about it.

Q: If DebianDog is not Puppy, why do you support them, or even mention them here?
A: DebianDog is considerd as a member of Puppy Linux family of operating systems.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

User avatar
rufwoof
Posts: 3690
Joined: Mon 24 Feb 2014, 17:47

#5 Post by rufwoof »

Also from the FAQ
Q: Is Puppy really a multiple distributions that live under the same name? What makes them Puppy?
A: Yes. All of them are built using Woof-CE that tailors packages regardless of source, to the puppy needs and principles. They also share a common set of puppy-specific utilities, applications and settings that gives them comparable functionality regardless of binary compatibility. The famous puppy OOB functionality, ease of use, efficiency and speed.

Q: This is silly, a family of distributions? How do I know which Puppy I should use?
which makes the
Q: Is DebianDog considered as Puppy Linux?
A: No. The maintainer itself has said so. Further more it is not built from Woof-CE. But it seeks to emulate most if not all of Puppy Linux features and behaviours; that if you are familiar with Puppy you would be right at home about it.

Q: If DebianDog is not Puppy, why do you support them, or even mention them here?
A: DebianDog is considerd as a member of Puppy Linux family of operating systems.
contradictory (and confusing).
[size=75]( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) :wq[/size]
[url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=1028256#1028256][size=75]Fatdog multi-session usb[/url][/size]
[size=75][url=https://hashbang.sh]echo url|sed -e 's/^/(c/' -e 's/$/ hashbang.sh)/'|sh[/url][/size]

belham2
Posts: 1715
Joined: Mon 15 Aug 2016, 22:47

#6 Post by belham2 »

This thread (and others like it over the past 4-5 years), they all boil down to one thing:

WAS IT BUILT using barry's old woof process or in current woofwoof-CE? That's the essence of the egg. If it wasn't built with either of these, then to many on murga here, despite hiding behind their kind statements and tolerant salutations, they feel therefore that anything else is NOT puppy. This means from the Debian Dog's development, to Barry's Quirkies, to Barry's Easy Linux, to Wanderer's hybrid developments, etc, etc---should not be included here on murga.

I guess I can understand and see where this comes from......still, there's no easy answer here. Exactly what and how much is proposed to cut off the Murga Puppy face all to preserve its woof-core nose? There's the Donald Trump view going on here, and there is the Emanual Macron view going on.

Life writ large is reflected in life writ small. Mandelbrot was right about of all this. There is and are no differential reasons.

I agree with Mike above, but some days, it does seem like that view here is not well practiced, heard, and/or followed by the murga majority.

Otherwise, this question would not repeatedly keep coming up over the years. :roll:

P.S. This narrow minded view of "what is puppy" or "what does it mean to be puppy" or "a pure puppy is what?" (all titles I've drawn from previous threads) would also mean additionally axing Barry's Raspberry Pi stuff, among a few others. How humans incredibly continue to cut off their own noses to spite their own face is just amazing to me. Past sins revisited upon today's young. Yet this maxim has always proven correct: diversity of anything in life will always trump, excel, and progress past anything attempted to keep and/or remain "pure" or "one" or "its essence"

User avatar
smokey01
Posts: 2813
Joined: Sat 30 Dec 2006, 23:15
Location: South Australia :-(
Contact:

#7 Post by smokey01 »

Barry's original goals still on the Wayback machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100122015 ... /about.htm

User avatar
saintless
Posts: 3862
Joined: Sat 11 Jun 2011, 13:43
Location: Bulgaria

#8 Post by saintless »

Reading this:
Puppy's goals:

1. Easily install to USB, Zip or hard drive media.
2. Booting from CD (or DVD), the CD drive is then free for other purposes.
3. Booting from CD (or DVD), save everything back to the CD.
4. Booting from USB Flash drive, minimise writes to extend life indefinitely.
5. Extremely friendly for Linux newbies.
6. Boot up and run extraordinarily fast.
7. Have all the applications needed for daily use.
8. Will just work, no hassles.
9. Will breathe new life into old PCs
10. Load and run totally in RAM for diskless thin stations
Then DebianDog is Puppy linux according to the above list except maybe "5. Extremely friendly for Linux newbies." which needs more improvement.

But I think this is the true answer:
Q: Is DebianDog considered as Puppy Linux?
A: No. The maintainer itself has said so. Further more it is not built from Woof-CE. But it seeks to emulate most if not all of Puppy Linux features and behaviours; that if you are familiar with Puppy you would be right at home about it.
DebianDog and its forks are not Puppy linux. But everything you can do with Puppy is possible with DebianDog.

With DebianDog you can:

- save in file
- save in directory
- save in linux formatted partition
- save on exit or save on demand
- boot in RAM without save
- boot in RAM loading all save sessions in RAM
- boot from CD/DVD/USB saving sessions on HDD or USB
- boot from multisession DVD and save sessions on the DVD
- webboot downloading the iso or main squashfs module from http, https, ftp (having only initrd1.img and vmlinuz1 available).
- frugal and full install
- load sfs/squashfs on the fly.
- make easy your own sfs/squashfs modules.
- use encrypted save file or partition
- remaster the system very easy

Can anyone name one thing you can do with Puppy but not with DebianDog?

Puppy is much more polished of course. It was developed from genious minds from the start. It includes unique scripts fixed and improved over the years. DebianDog can't compete with this and it shouldn't. But it can run more and more packages made for Puppy linux and some Puppy package developers even make debs for Dog based system now.

DebianDog is based on Debian-Live. Almost pure if you use the official live-boot method. Of course most credits go to Debian and Debian-Live team and Debian package maintainers and the work before them.

Live-boot - the official Debian-live boot can do all written above with some small changes in the code.

Porteus-boot - (maybe I'm wrong but I think it is actually based on Slax boot reading the cheatcodes) can do allmost all written above (except save partition and webboot) and has some more options. It attracted more attention and uses busybox mostly as Puppy initrd.gz. Now Fred uses debootsrap (official Debian build method) extracting porteus-boot scripts in the system.

Puppy-boot - official initrd.gz from Puppy linux booting DebianDog with the included Debian kernel (after some small code changes) providing the Puppy linux structure inside DebianDog and keeping all special Dog scripts working. Maybe some day this boot method will be developed further adapting more Puppy linux scripts to work properly and someone will extract puppy-boot inside debootstrap Debian/Ubuntu build (very similar to woofce method and using the original Puppy linux scripts). But is this really going to make DebianDog true Puppy linux? No.

DebianDog is an example what Debian-Live is capable to do. And it still helps some people in this forum. DebianDog serves its purpose well and gets more and more flexible system.

Toni

User avatar
smokey01
Posts: 2813
Joined: Sat 30 Dec 2006, 23:15
Location: South Australia :-(
Contact:

#9 Post by smokey01 »

Puppy Linux has changed quite a bit over the years. The link above showed the Puppy goals set by Barry when he was the main man. Since he stepped down and handed control to 01micko there have been some changes which were agreed by Barry.

The Puppy Linux Home page explains it quite well under the heading First thing first. Puppy is now grouped into three categories.

Category 1.
Official Puppy Linux distributions → maintained by Puppy Linux team, usually targeted for general purpose, and generally built using Puppy Linux system builder (called Woof-CE).

Category 2.
Woof-built Puppy Linux distributions → developed to suit specific needs and appearances, also targeted for general purpose, and built using Puppy Linux system builder (called Woof-CE) with some additional or modified packages.

Category 3.
Unofficial derivatives (“puplets

User avatar
bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#10 Post by bigpup »

http://puppylinux.com/woof-ce.html

Why is it so important that a true official Puppy be built with WOOF-CE?

Because WOOF-CE is maintained by Puppy Linux team.
That team controls the changes to core Puppy files and programs.
It is done by making changes to what is in WOOF-CE.
Those changes are not made just to do it or because you would like it to be done.
There is a lot of back and forth on what the code should be and what it should do.
Code creep is a constant issue.
A lot of tweaking to code is how to do the same thing with less code.

Those changes or added code are not just done because someone wants to do it.
They are done because people in control of Puppy decided they needed to be done.
But if you want your modifications to be included and used for future puppies, they must be merged back to the original Woof-CE repository. To merge that, you need to send a patch or better yet a pull request to the Woof-CE repository.

The Woof-CE stewards will then consider your request and merge them if they feel that your changes are beneficial for everyone.
It is no longer one persons choice, like it was when Barry K. was totally in control of Woof build system.

You may be developing a OPS that is Puppy like, but not 100% Puppy if not built using WOOF-CE.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

User avatar
mikeslr
Posts: 3890
Joined: Mon 16 Jun 2008, 21:20
Location: 500 seconds from Sol

A Sermon for the Day

#11 Post by mikeslr »

Purity = Sterility > Extinction.

The History of Life is a history of change, of adaptions necessary to overcome adversity or to make better use of opportunity. The Histories of Science, of Math and of Art are histories of change, of employing new methods of viewing the World in order make better use of it, or simply appreciate it. The Histories of Religions are histories of change: Christians no longer secretly worship in cellars and caves. Jews no longer pilgrimage to Jerusalem to sacrifice pigeons and sheep. Catholicism has had to adapt to an easily available Bible, the spread of literacy, and the resulting circumstance that every one could learn for himself The Gospel and the Old Testament. Each has had to adapt to fulfill their objectives of helping their adherents to better understand their duties in a changed environment. Even the History of Warfare is a history of change. We no longer kill each other mostly with stones and arrows.

You are neither just the embryo which was conceived, nor the newborn whose continued existence entailed a parasitic dependence on your mother.

Wolves face extinction. Dogs are ubiquitous, having adapted first to the then emerging phenomena, Humans as hunters. We now know of at least a half-dozen humanoid species which failed to adapt. Other primates face extinction. We "have been fruitful and multiplied".

There is nothing "Pure" about Puppy Linux. It is a modification of Linux, itself a modification of Unix; itself a manifestation of the Turing Machine; itself a generalization, perhaps, of the principle introduced long ago when someone invented the weaver’s loom; itself a re-thinking of how to weave; itself, perhaps the inspiration of a child who observed the building of a bird’s nest said to herself, “I can do that.
Last edited by mikeslr on Wed 23 Aug 2017, 01:06, edited 1 time in total.

Pelo

What is Puppy ? well nothing to add, everything is said abov

#12 Post by Pelo »

What is Puppy ? well nothing to add, everything is said above..
But there is an huge delta between what Puppy has to be, and what you want to use it for (i am not speaking of extra-muros users, but of you, you who write here)

Excepted : Puppy is not a training Os for old students, nor an OS for Old computers. It can be, but don't reduce it to that.
Puppy was done for Public usage, home usage, to allow people using their computers with free software, not for computing, unless exception.
Devs must brainstorm for what we need,And not request the users to compile :!:
Saintless and DebianDogs are in a Puppy Linux spirit. They are doing what Puppy devs were doing ... a few years ago , ten years ago. Getting fat Debian a small OS fully efficient.

User avatar
rufwoof
Posts: 3690
Joined: Mon 24 Feb 2014, 17:47

#13 Post by rufwoof »

A problem can be that a user forum that extends too far outside its remit can lead to confusion by casual visitors

https://thishosting.rocks/best-lightwei ... x-distros/

Puppy apparently is a ...
Very lightweight Linux distro that should not be installed on a hard disk
A glance at the Puppy Projects forum section often typically indicates more of a Debian fork project.
[size=75]( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) :wq[/size]
[url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=1028256#1028256][size=75]Fatdog multi-session usb[/url][/size]
[size=75][url=https://hashbang.sh]echo url|sed -e 's/^/(c/' -e 's/$/ hashbang.sh)/'|sh[/url][/size]

wiak
Posts: 2040
Joined: Tue 11 Dec 2007, 05:12
Location: not Bulgaria

#14 Post by wiak »

Hi rufwoof

That reviewer posted somewhere about his review on Puppy Linux forum. Reading it, the Puppy section of the review seems definitely to be about Puppy itself (though uses some old Puppy info like - 128MB RAM required). The bit about the hard drive installation seems to be an error in understanding - the reviewer notes that Puppy runs in RAM and also states:
No hard drive required. Can run on a live CD/Flash Drive/SD Card
Seems to be a somewhat inaccurate review but I don't see any evidence it is due to any confusion about what is a Puppy (and screenshot used in the review is itself of Puppy Tahr, so presumably that is what was tested). Nor is there any mention of Puppy being some kind of Debian fork, which would likely be stated in a serious review if reviewer mistakenly understood it as that.

But certainly a casual visitor to the forum might well pick up on a DebianDog or FatDog-related thread, but I imagine most new users would likely visit puppylinux.com or puppylinux.org rather than drop into a forum as the first point of call.

Actually, having two such (different) websites in addition to a separate wiki and the murga forum, which is different again, and different irc and blog sites and more, and even an 'alternative forum' must be very confusing to new users. Indeed a lot of the info first found on puppylinux.org is about very old Puppy Linux distributions like version 4.3.1 (first page of that website still talks of Puppy image being ~100MB). In fact, if you check out puppylinux.org and read the following link, it is not too surprising someone might pick up the wrong idea that Puppy shouldn't be installed to harddrive:

http://puppylinux.org/main/How%20NOT%20 ... 0Puppy.htm
Puppy is easy to use and does not require a hard disk, so the first trick that you must know is how NOT to install it to hard disk !
[The text in bold is exactly as how the quote is displayed on the puppylinux.org site]

Forums always cover many topics (often only loosely based on main OS subject) so that should not be the focus for a new entry to Puppy Linux. In practice, though, most regular Puppy users probably hardly ever visit puppylinux.com or puppylinux.org (new users likely will though) or even the Puppy so-called 'wiki'. Regular users appear to generally simply think of the murga forum as the main Puppy website; and because of Puppy poor site/documentation organisation, the forum really is the main site. But that's not the fault of FatDog or the various other Dogs. Rather, the fault (confusion) is caused by the fact that Puppy could do with its websites all being integrated and better sorted out in terms of clear and up-to-date documentation.

So, overall, I'd say documentation (too much of it and all over the place and often historic) is the most confusing aspect of Puppy Linux. End result is that we waste countless hours searching this murga forum for relevant up-to-date info (trying to sort out the old from the new assuming we even manage to find what we are looking for) rather than consulting/(helping to update) Puppy Linux Wiki.

wiak

jd7654
Posts: 296
Joined: Mon 06 Apr 2015, 16:10

#15 Post by jd7654 »

What is Puppy?
To Puppy developers, it is what they define it to be. Currently that which is produced by Woof-CE and approved by the Puppy Master.
To Puppy users, it is what they define it to be. Could be based on developer definition, or could be based on Puppy design philosophy, or could be anything that looks and feels like what Puppy has always been, even before Woof-CE existed.

To me, Puppy is a small, lightweight, portable and easy to use complete Linux distro. It is minimalist, but packs in tiny versions of everything including the Out house sink, most of which I never use, but appreciate it is there while retaining such a compact footprint. It makes old computers functional, and modern computers even faster. And it "just works" having had the benefit of many user-years of bug/feature testing under its belt.

Puppy is also JWM/Rox, lets face it. Many of the original scripts/apps are to make such a basic window manager and desktop fully functional. Sure, other desktops environments are fancy and feature rich, but there's just something comforting (and fast) about the classic Puppy JWM/Rox desktop and drive icons that is, iconic. Minimalist, using small custom scripts instead of much larger packages you find in full distros. Abiword/Gnumeric, Seamonkey, all the usual suspects that are not typical defaults in other distros.

As far as Debian Dog. I agree, it is not Puppy. That is not a sleight, just an objective assessment.

If you look on Distowatch, Puppy is listed as Independent, not based on another distro. The base Puppy system of kernel/core-utils+busybox/filesystem-structure are unique to Puppy. It has its own .pet package format, and its own package manager/importer PPM. It has its own repository on distro.ibiblio.org and others, in addition to many .pets scattered all over the place. In addition, the Spup, Upup, etc can import packages from Slackware and Ubuntu and other distros.

(Debian) Dog Linux, if it was listed on Distrowatch, would be listed as a Debian derivative. More specifically Debian-Live, kind of like the old Knoppix, or the current antiX, which recently overtook Puppy as the top lightweight portable distro in the rankings. It uses Debian .deb packages and dpkg/apt package manager, it uses Debian package repository primarily, but also has its own sources. But it incorporates many of the familiar Puppy scripts/apps and can easily function as a modern and more flexible version of a Puppy. It may not be a blood relative, but arguably at least an adopted child or friend of the family.

Do they both belong on the forum? What is the name of the forum: murga-linux.com
Puppy started here, but Dog Linux was born and grew up here, not sure any can claim exclusive territory, that is up to the owner. Yeah, it is messy, but organization, documentation and resources for Puppy always has been.

User avatar
rufwoof
Posts: 3690
Joined: Mon 24 Feb 2014, 17:47

#16 Post by rufwoof »

jd7654 wrote:As far as Debian Dog. I agree, it is not Puppy. That is not a sleight, just an objective assessment.
And should be in the Off-topic Conversations forum section (where users have to be logged in in order to view that) instead of arrogantly dominating the Puppy Projects forum.

User avatar
rufwoof
Posts: 3690
Joined: Mon 24 Feb 2014, 17:47

#17 Post by rufwoof »

saintless wrote:Reading this:
Puppy's goals:

1. Easily install to USB, Zip or hard drive media.
2. Booting from CD (or DVD), the CD drive is then free for other purposes.
3. Booting from CD (or DVD), save everything back to the CD.
4. Booting from USB Flash drive, minimise writes to extend life indefinitely.
5. Extremely friendly for Linux newbies.
6. Boot up and run extraordinarily fast.
7. Have all the applications needed for daily use.
8. Will just work, no hassles.
9. Will breathe new life into old PCs
10. Load and run totally in RAM for diskless thin stations
Then DebianDog is Puppy linux according to the above list except maybe "5. Extremely friendly for Linux newbies." which needs more improvement.
There are a number of distros out there that could fit that definition. Most I suspect would moderate their users forums to reject DebianDog postings. Puppy Forum moderation in contrast is way more lenient ... leading to arrogant abuse.

User avatar
saintless
Posts: 3862
Joined: Sat 11 Jun 2011, 13:43
Location: Bulgaria

#18 Post by saintless »

rufwoof wrote:There are a number of distros out there that could fit that definition.
Name one except Puppy and DebianDog (Dog based) with option to:
Puppy's goals:
3. Booting from CD (or DVD), save everything back to the CD.
9. Will breathe new life into old PCs
I wiil be happy to test it and post the results for you here.

Toni

Pelo

Quirky ?

#19 Post by Pelo »

Quirky ? :P
Musher0 has problems to save sessions on DVD (Puduan). Apparently newer Puppies cannot save on DVD-RW.
I used the process long time ago. you were able not to load last two sessions registered, i remember.
Life was not easy when burning was occupying my saturdays and sundays
Viva la clé USB ! And XenialDog..

User avatar
saintless
Posts: 3862
Joined: Sat 11 Jun 2011, 13:43
Location: Bulgaria

Re: Quirky ?

#20 Post by saintless »

Pelo wrote:Quirky ? :P
I can't find information about saving sessions on the same boot CD/DVD. Only remastering with changes to new CD/DVD, Correct me if I'm wrong or you know a way to do it with Quirky.

BTW I forgot to mention/exclude FatDog because it also can save session on multisession CD/DVD reading the documentation.

Edit: Infact every small enough Debian/Ubuntu based distro and Porteus (after some small changes in linuxrc) booting with aufs could include save on multisession DVD option. Just the developers don't know about this option or they don't want it popular and supported yet.

Post Reply