(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I got a kick out of this Thread!
It's fun to see what other people are running as their every day machines. On my Desktop computer I have Win XP (which is banned from the internet! About the only safe way to use it LOL), Opensuse 11.2 KDE and A slew of Puppies!

I still use XP for Photoshop. I can't get the swing of Gimp and I have tried too. And a few rare instances where I have to use it because of obscure software. Besides that I am Done with Microsoft!

Opensuse looks fancy and has some nice software repositories (when their server is working) and when I figure out how to use Torrent files in Puppy I won't be using it either.

I have tried to install Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Mint. I think out of all the versions I have tried only Xubuntu worked for the most part. The rest would not even finish installing. I have a Dell Desktop computer that is perhaps 4 years old. That speaks poorly of Ubuntu to me so far.

I have Loved Puppy from the first time I saw it and now it's all I like to use. The more I use it the more I hate to use anything else. For me it just spoils me. It just works no matter what I throw at it, and is a joy to work in. If I hunger for some variety, I just download a new Puplet and it feeds the hunger for change. I am using Stardust 13 now and am really loving it! I am still very partial to Regular Puppy 4.31 though!

I will still be curious to try new Linux Distro's if they seem good to me, but I realize that it will be Very Difficult to pry puppy away from me for more than a few days now! Puppy is my Best Friend and daily companion. So Yes it is My Favorite Distro and am working very hard to make it my Only One!

Kirby

Oh and one more thing
Why is it that something like Ubuntu or others that are 3.4 GB don't work out of the box for any computer I try to install them on? But Puppy which is only 100 MB works every time! It Just doesn't make sense to me?

To me this Speaks Volumes about an OS! Barry K and Friends are the Finest!

Kirby

when I figure out how to use Torrent files in Puppy I won't be using it either

Do you mean you don't know how to download files in the "torrent way"? If so, you can install Transmission from here http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=38969, that is a great torrent software

Kirby wrote:Oh and one more thing
Why is it that something like Ubuntu or others that are 3.4 GB don't work out of the box for any computer I try to install them on? But Puppy which is only 100 MB works every time! It Just doesn't make sense to me?

To me this Speaks Volumes about an OS! Barry K and Friends are the Finest!

Kirby

Puppy is GREAT! Please allow me to second the praise being heaped on Barry and Friends!

In answer to the original question, I have migrated pretty much all of my internet usage to Puppy431 (my XP system stays offline, and my Win98 systems are semi-retired -- Puppy now sits in their place). I still plan to install Debian, hoping that it is less painful than the last time I did an install...

The fact that Puppy seamlessly installs most everything that can be found as a Debian package, removes most possible software limitations (note: you may need to add libraries, but those are also available from Debian -- run the new program from command-line and you can identify the missing libraries, download and install)

RetroTechGuy wrote:[I still plan to install Debian, hoping that it is less painful than the last time I did an install...)

I pretty much am stuck w/ debian on my macs, or at least left out of the "kennel". And I can tell ya.... You'll be back, to the Puppy, that is. While not that difficult to install, it just aint Puppy!!
RP
BTW xfce gives me the best "debian experience".

racepres wrote:

RetroTechGuy wrote:[I still plan to install Debian, hoping that it is less painful than the last time I did an install...)

I pretty much am stuck w/ debian on my macs, or at least left out of the "kennel". And I can tell ya.... You'll be back, to the Puppy, that is. While not that difficult to install, it just aint Puppy!!
RP
BTW xfce gives me the best "debian experience".

I'm figuring Debian just for those occasional operations requiring more horsepower than I'll find under Puppy. I suspect that for day-to-day use, I'll stick with the Pup.

Though I need to do some digging in the Puppy CD -- I really want to modify it so that by default it performs "fsck" on the pupsave, on boot...

(I've already set my Frugal to do so, but I want a bootable CD that I can give to Newbies, that will keep them from running into file system corruption).

RetroTechGuy wrote:
I'm figuring Debian just for those occasional operations requiring more horsepower than I'll find under Puppy. .

I'll be surprised.
gFTP, works as well on Puppy as on any distro.
Seamonkey, as an HTML editor, is the same.
Firefox 3.6 seems universal. [even on the MacOS]
Gimp is fully functional
Cups is printing to my ID card maker under puppy/cups!!! [wow]
If I get wine figured out I might even get filemaker pro going... That's a maybe.
The only thing I can't do currently [on anything But Windoze] is my cutter plotter
Plenty of Power for my needs. tho admittedly I don't do video editing and the like so... this is Not all-encompasssing.
Just My Experience.
RP
Oh ! I did forget Open office, works dandy... but I don't use that.. The Bitter Half does all that typin' stuff!! Yes with Puppy!

racepres wrote:

RetroTechGuy wrote:
I'm figuring Debian just for those occasional operations requiring more horsepower than I'll find under Puppy. .

I'll be surprised.
gFTP, works as well on Puppy as on any distro.
Seamonkey, as an HTML editor, is the same.
Firefox 3.6 seems universal. [even on the MacOS]
Gimp is fully functional
Cups is printing to my ID card maker under puppy/cups!!! [wow]
If I get wine figured out I might even get filemaker pro going... That's a maybe.
The only thing I can't do currently [on anything But Windoze] is my cutter plotter
Plenty of Power for my needs. tho admittedly I don't do video editing and the like so... this is Not all-encompasssing.
Just My Experience.
RP

I have a PVR (old computer with a TV capture card), and so I do a bit of video editing -- a task that I'm not sure Puppy is up to...

I also don't know if I can get that Windoze software to run under Linux (either under wine, or under a virtual machine -- but it does run under Win98...and I'm pretty sure that I can get Debian to run a virtual Win98 box, if necessary...)

Gotcha! Hope it works for you... I know less than zero, abt that..
RP

racepres wrote:Gotcha! Hope it works for you... I know less than zero, abt that..
RP

I get chuckling, thinking about making my Win98 system a virtual box sitting under Linux...

It's getting hard to find hardware old enough to be supported by Win98 -- if I can make a virtual machine...I can bypass the hardware support issue. It may also be useful for me at work.

RetroTechGuy wrote: It's getting hard to find hardware old enough to be supported by Win98 --

Now That makes me chuckle.... Not around here It Aint Hard!!
Where did you say you was at anyway??
I'm wringing my hands , calculating shipping..LOL
RP

racepres wrote:

RetroTechGuy wrote: It's getting hard to find hardware old enough to be supported by Win98 --

Now That makes me chuckle.... Not around here It Aint Hard!!
Where did you say you was at anyway??
I'm wringing my hands , calculating shipping..LOL
RP

I'm in the US. In fact, looks like I grew up not too far from you. Going to school there?

My newer machine is a 2200 Athlon (which is a few years old now). I had a hell of a time getting the appropriate Win98 drivers to make everything work (and I had a similar problem with my 900 Athlon -- the sound never did work quite right).

Now my "scrap pile" probably has lots of Win98 class machines (mostly ranging from 166 to 233 MHz). But realistically, Puppy needs a moderate amount of horsepower, in comparison (for whatever reason, it sometimes dogs down my 2200 MHz machine - rather annoying).

RetroTechGuy wrote:Going to school there?

Now I'm really chuckling.. Naw My youngest is! Not at central tho... at Ferris. [we live exactly between them]

RetroTechGuy wrote:Puppy needs a moderate amount of horsepower, in comparison (for whatever reason, it sometimes dogs down my 2200 MHz machine - rather annoying).

Now I am surprised! is it Firefox by chance? I am interested in what could cause a performance hit like that!
RP

racepres wrote:

RetroTechGuy wrote:Going to school there?

Now I'm really chuckling.. Naw My youngest is! Not at central tho... at Ferris. [we live exactly between them]

I'm not exactly a spring chicken myself (being a quite bit more gray than my avatar... )

RetroTechGuy wrote:Puppy needs a moderate amount of horsepower, in comparison (for whatever reason, it sometimes dogs down my 2200 MHz machine - rather annoying).

Now I am surprised! is it Firefox by chance? I am interested in what could cause a performance hit like that!
RP

Yup, seems to be primarily Firefox (though I often have Thunderbird open at the same time).

And when I check free memory, I generally have plenty...

What's interesting, is that my Win98 (well, that was limited to FF2.x) doesn't seem to show that slowdown. Nor does my XP, running FF3.6.

Seems to be something specific to the Linux (in the old days, Nyetscrape used to "memory leak" on me, so maybe this is a similar issue).

Hmmm... Maybe I need to try running the Win version under wine... Could be an interesting experiment.

I don't know abt the windoze version, But, I noticed a change to the Good, when I went to FF3.6. I use it on all my pup's currently.
RP

racepres wrote:I don't know abt the windoze version, But, I noticed a change to the Good, when I went to FF3.6. I use it on all my pup's currently.
RP

I'm running 3.6 (and also on my XP at work). I've been getting some rather strange behavior from time to time (mouse pointer completely disappears, entire FF session just disappears) -- I haven't determined if it is one of my plugins (e.g. Noscript, ABP, etc...)

Maybe I'll try disabling all of those and see what happens.

Good idea maybe... I have not had those experiences w/ 3.6 at all.
RP

Yes, narrowly over the other distro I use (Vector). I've been using both since 2006.

Other distros;

I like the look of AntiX although I haven't yet got it working properly on my machine.

Zenwalk used to be good but the recent versions have been hopeless on my machine, the same with Deli. Mint is good too but I can only just run it on my machine, and even then it's an old version (Mint 5, "Elyssa").

bugman

yes, yes, yes

occasionally i think i might give slackware another shot, and then i sit and watch it boot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

you missed something very important

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .done !


Joe

Let's not forget the fact that Puppy has Portabase, a small but attractive app with all the features most people (including me) need from a flat-file database. No other Linux distro I'm aware of has anything like it (thanks Warren)

Even if there wasn't any other reason to choose Puppy, Portabase would be enough IMO (especially if you use your database a lot, as I do).