Ether wrote:..
I've used various Puppy versions "as-is" for the past 5 years, mostly for rescue. Most have worked flawlessly. Amazing.
Now I'm at the point where I'd like to leave Windows behind and start using Linux full time.
To do this I would need to install software apps.
I made made an appeal for help here, but after doing a lot more reading I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that if I want hassle-free installation of software apps I am going to have to "graduate" from Puppy to a mainstream full Linux installation.
I'll bet this is what happens to a lot of new users.
Cold shiver at the thought of a - FULL INSTALL !!! - no thanks. Puppy is the ultimate LiveCD IMO. Its one of the few that can actually be used in LiveCD mode in practice. From power on to desktop fully loaded with spreadsheets, word processor, browser, video editor ...etc in 2 or 3 minutes. And with no lag thereafter (all running in memory).
Make a mistake and a reboot has you back to a fresh working version.
No savefile or frugal required - although the option is always there if you need it. My LiveCD puppy is minimal - basic desktop, notepad (leafpad), a calculator (galculator), MT Paint and XPaint, together with the usual desktop stuff (mplayer, CD/DVD load, rip, burn, author etc). Usual desktop admin tools and network connect/firewall etc stuff.
Banking - boot, grab a factory fresh browser and all running from CD/Memory - low/no risk of a virus (provided of course you surf nowhere else before or after).
Office - ditto, but load LibreOffice SFS. Ditto for other tools (for video editing stuff I have a SFS that loads inkscape, audacity, xvidcap, blender, openshot).
For persistence, rather than a savefile - that can fill up at the worst possible time, I just drag the relevant sub directory from /root to HDD using ROX and select move, then drag that back again and select symbolic link. Then next reboot just replace the /root subdirectory with another symbolic link again (in practice I use a script to make several of such rearrangements all automated via a single mouse click). That way my personal storage space is always all of available memory plus some (1.7GB in my case).
I tried savefile/frugal's - didn't like them. Full installs - had enough of managing recovering those back to 'how it was before' under windows. LiveCD - absolutely great IMO - yet new users seem to want to skip over that option asap, and in so doing miss out on one off (if not the best) aspects of Puppy.
Try running one of the other distro's as LiveCD's. Often they're painfully/unacceptably slow.
For me, PPM isn't even required, I haven't even updated its database. I'll try PET's, SFS's galore - and have found that some from other distro's even work ok - but if not a reboot undoes things. Mostly however I just use the LiveCD in banking mode (no HDD's mounted) or in Office mode (HDD's mounted and a script run to load my usual SFS's and set up the relevant symbolic links for persistence).
My original intent back in early March as a new Puppy user was to create a LiveCD just for banking purposes, remove the CD and boot into XP boot for other more general stuff. In practice I haven't booted XP for over a month now - and not missing it either. Puppy takes care of all my surfing and low level calculating, writing stuff (firefox, galculator, leafpad), and office stuff (Libre), and audio, video watching/editing stuff. Is safe, needs no antivirus updates, and doesn't even need updating if the particular choice of existing SFS's are working well enough already. And I get to choose when to update, unlike my son whose windows desktop totally changed and left him with several hours of recovering/effort after MS decided that he should have a automatic update installed at a time chosen by them.