Puppy is good for experimenting

[eric52]

I'm no expert. I RTFM later. Puppy has a large following and a lot of documentation, so I will never RTFM - not all of it. However, Puppy has a unique advantage - you can burn it on optical disks with persistence, and working on that platform, you can simply reboot without saving and all the mistakes you just made vanish, leaving the way clear to make lots more. With Puppy, you run at root, which means you can do anything, and you can remaster easily to make your successes permanent. All of these features mean you can act like an expert without knowing what you are doing, and the negative consequences are minimal. Even in the worst case, you lose a very cheap disk and some time. Just burn the latest ISO and try again. Puppy is an experimenters' dream OS. It doesn't hurt to learn from the mistakes of others, but with Puppy it doesn't really hurt to learn from your own mistakes, if you stay on disks. I really recommend that you use disks while learning and enjoy the freedom of your own bleeding edge. If you don't discover the answer quickly, then you can spend time on instructions... or not.

[unicorn316386]

Completely agree. I haven't used CD/DVD for around 10 years as most 12.1" or smaller laptops don't even include them, so I experiment with Flash sticks and grub4dos entries on HDD (very easy to add more and more puppies to play around with).

[Sylvander]

1. In general, I boot [almost] all of my Puppies from CD-RW disks...
Then...

2. I make a pupsave in a suitably named folder, on a partition, on an internal HDD...
But...

3. I then make the necessary changes in each Puppy that allows, and most do, so that:
a. There is a "Save..." icon on the desktop, even if the pupsave is on an internal HDD.
b. I configure so that there is NO auto-save during the session, although I CAN save manually by clicking the "Save..." icon.
And...
c. At shutdown/reboot, I'm asked whether I want "to save or not to save".
Hence...

4.
a. Normally I save no changes.
Although...
b. I CAN choose to save if I want to.

5. Ask how if you want to know.

6.
a. Puli [loaded from a Flash Drive that can be removed once at the desktop] has interesting and different means of doing the above, and more.
e.g. If you make changes, you can choose to save them as a backup [or not], and arrange to have those [or others] loaded at startup [or not] by simply hitting a particular letter key to load a particular set of packages/programs/backups.
AND...
b. It also has other useful/interesting features [that I'm still learning].
e.g. Security features.

[eric52]

Unicorn316386 & Sylvander - thanks for the excellent advice. I confess that I am so error-prone I waited a year B4 risking a decently set up HD. USB's seemed too expensive, so I put off using them too. Now half a dozen machines quake in terror whenever I'm home, I'm broaching the 64-bit threshold, and even the RAID drives are not safe. USB drives are cheap and a blast, and I only use DVD's as a starting point. Puli remains the last major distro still on my to-do list, although I must admit DebianDog and MintPup still need a lot of work. (Yeah, I know, but they look like Puppy.)

[rufwoof]

When I first started with pup around 18 months ago I got through a massive stack of DVD's, burning each pup (and other distro's) to DVD and booting.

I later installed grub4dos and since then haven't used DVD/CD's. I just download the ISO, open it using ROX, create a directory on HDD that corresponds to the pup's name, and then copy the vmlinuz, initrd..gz/xz or whatever, and any sfs files (puppy......sfs and sometimes (more usual now) zdrv...sfs) to that folder.

I then manually add a entry to my grub4dos menu.lst file to point to that new addition, reboot and select it from the grub4dos menu.

This is mine, the timeout is 2 seconds and defaults to the 2nd choice (default counts from 0 upwards)

The (hdx,y) values are just disk/partition pointers, again counting from 0, so hd0,2 is disk1 partition 3 which in my case is sda3

Code: Select all

# menu.lst produced by grub4dosconfig-v1.7.2
color white/blue black/cyan white/black cyan/black
timeout 2
default 1

color light-gray/blue black/light-gray
splashimage=(hd0,0)/splash.xpm.gz
foreground ffffff
background 004992 

title LUPU barebone
kernel (hd0,2)/LUPU_barebone/vmlinuz
initrd (hd0,2)/LUPU_barebone/initrd.gz

title Wary 5.3 XVesa with LTS Kernel from Slacko 6.1
kernel (hd0,2)/WARY_XVESA/vmlinuz
initrd (hd0,2)/WARY_XVESA/initrd

title Wary tahr
kernel (hd0,2)/WARY_TAHR/vmlinuz
initrd (hd0,2)/WARY_TAHR/initrd

title 214x
kernel (hd0,2)/214x/vmlinuz pmedia=idehd root=/dev/ram0 psubdir=/214x
initrd (hd0,2)/214x/initrd.gz

title 435
kernel (hd0,2)/435/vmlinuz
initrd (hd0,2)/435/initrd

title pUPnGO
kernel (hd0,2)/pUPnGO/vmlinuz
initrd (hd0,2)/pUPnGO/initrd.gz

title s533t
kernel (hd0,2)/s533t/vmlinuz pfix=ram,nocopy
initrd (hd0,2)/s533t/initrd

title Full version - No NVidia but MESA ok
kernel (hd0,2)/FULL/vmlinuz pfix=ram,nocopy
initrd (hd0,2)/FULL/initrd

title fatdog
root (hd0,1)
kernel /fatdog/vmlinuz
initrd /fatdog/initrd

Different pups have different parameters that sometimes need to be included. More usualy I just use the basic format first and if that doesn't boot then hunt around for guidance of what parameters to include. For 214x for instance I had to add a pointer to ram and specify a sub directory location (otherwise it only looked in the / (root) directory.

I don't bother with savefiles. If I like a pup I add in my own remaster script that's quick and creates a new initrd (pup) containing any changes (locale etc) and I replace the original initrd with that newly remastered initrd.

Whilst puppy read only mode is great for experimenting, its also great for more industrial work. I used to use XP heavily, but for the last 18 months haven't touch Windows other that casually on other PC's. I use puppy for all office work - predominately Libre, masterPDFeditor, Openshot/Blender/Audacity and full blown inkscape for audio/image/video editing, and Skype for telephony/texting. I also run Samba for file sharing (server, pnethood for client) with Windows boxes, VNC for remote destkop control, PXE so other Windows PC's can net boot puppy.

I found the best approach that suited me best was to keep the core puppy lean and add everything else as SFS's on top. My core pup is 66MB in size and requires infrequent remastering. With that booted I can then top it up by loading sfs's making it a more bloated pup - abiword, gnumeric ...etc and/or Libre Office, Skype, Openshot ...etc. Being SFS's they're also read only so its difficult to corrupt the configuration. When I do want to preserve changes such as how Libre is configured I usually load the sfs, change its configuration to how I like, and then recreate a new sfs with those changes incorporated i.e. open the sfs up in rox (view contents), copy/paste those to outside directory, copy in the configuration file that's usually under /root or /root/.config into the respective place in that extracted directory, and then reform the sfs using

mksquashfs somename.sfs /somedirectory

to create a new somename.sfs formed from the directory somedirectory sub-tree. That sfs then loads with my desired configuration already 'built-in'

I tend to forget how stable/resilient that is. New piece of software to try out, load it, if it screws up the system reboot and its gone. Browse wherver you like in total disregard for viruses ... as a reboot and they're gone. On my son's Windows boxes I forget that and the care that has to be taken on a read/write install as a single wrong turn can have you having to spend hours reinstalling or finding a virus cure ...etc.

The main risk is data. Store that all outside of puppy on removable and back that up elsewhere, and overall you're pretty safe. Only plugged in when needed ...etc.

My dislikes of puppy is how there's too many different places to configure it. My usual routine is to first set the global font size, then change gtk_theme's font size to get the menu fonts to the size I like (and choose a theme where the colours are how I like), and then pick a jwm theme that somewhat matches. And then load QT configuration and set the font size etc in that (afterwards I more usually unload the QT sfs having saved the configuration and forget about it thereafter). A year ago I found that (where to look) all quite confusing. My other dislike is the default menu entries. WTF is that type shock in my early days. You have to sort of know the program name for what you want to do rather than having a action in mind and finding the program that does that for you.

[eric52]

Thanks, rufwoof, for sharing your approach. I think I'll adopt parts of it. I was initially resistant to SFS modularity because it works poorly on disks. On HD you can bring a boot manager to bear and it becomes an effective architecture. Lately, I've taken to multiple, use-specific save files for fewer Puppy versions. The menu Puppy offers for this extra step is very basic, so it helps to name the save files to indicate use. I now run Lucid and earlier very seldomly, Precise occasionally, Tahr as a standard, Unicorn for specialization, and Vivid for a do-everything OS. I keep Slacko around for Slackware access, but I find the new version appealing. I have full installs of antiX and MX-14 for Debian access, Bodhi to be different, Lubuntu for access, and deepin to follow what the Chinese are doing. It's really not so much spread over a dozen machines (most from the dump), and one of these days I'm going to explore networking. Retirement suits me.

[8Geee]

Completely agree. I haven't used CD/DVD for around 10 years as most 12.1" or smaller laptops don't even include them, so I experiment with Flash sticks and grub4dos entries on HDD (very easy to add more and more puppies to play around with).

I've had to buy an external for a netbook. I find it a useful tool with puppies, and the investment is worth it if you remasterr and/or watch the occasional DVD thru the netbook. Essentially everthing I experiment with is stored to USB, but I like to make an iso --> CD/DVD as a "hard copy".