(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

What's your favorite Puppy version these days?

And why?


I've been using Lucid 5.2.8 for years -- well-proven, many users if I encounter something I don't understand, and access to the huge Ubuntu software repository.

I still install Puppy 4.3.1 when I run into a old P-IV box. (I'm guillty of just sticking with what I know rather than trying Wary, which I probably should. Oops.)

Lately I tried out my first new Puppy release in years -- XenialPup 7.5 CE -- and I'm really impressed with the excellent explanatory diaglogs for setup/configuration and the attractive graphics. Wow! I gotta keep up with this stuff better.

The one I use every day for 3 years. Slacko5.7... albeit with tweaks for an Intel Atom to make the pup smaller.

Blimey, that's a hard one...

I run a total of 10 Pups in my 'kennels'. These are as follows:-

Xenialpup 7.0.8.1;
Tahrpup64 6.05;
Racy 5.5;
Slacko 5.6.0;
Slacko 5.7.0;
Precise 5.7.1;
Lucid 5.2.8.7;
Tahrpup 6.0.6 efi;
ETP's 'ChromeBook Pup' (v1) - which I've long since christened 'Chromepup'; based on Precise 5.7.1, &
Upup Raring

Every one gets fairly regular use, in rotation. Although I run these on an old 64-bit capable Compaq desktop, I prefer 32-bit Pups; they just seem to run faster, and smoother.

I run Tahr64 mainly for putting together my Chrome and Iron browser packages, and for trying out the many AppImages now available, since these are nearly all in 64-bit format.

I run the same range of apps in every Pup, so I can switch from one Pup to another as the mood takes me, and simply carry on with whatever I happen to be doing. Many of these I run from a remote 'data' partition, sym-linked into each Pup at the appropriate places.....in most cases, with common .config files, too, so that settings are maintained.

But out of all of them, my favourite, day-to-day 'workhorse' has to be Micko's 'classic' Slacko 570. Rock-solid, and trouble-free. Can't beat it!

And PhilB's Tahr 606 efi is getting more and more use, too; the original Tahr 6.0, released in November '14 was one of my real favourites. It was the first Pup that would run on my ancient, 15-yr old Dell lappie w/out any messing about....and absolutely everything just 'worked'.

Tahr 606 efi is proving to be a worthy successor, benefiting from Phil Broughton's careful attention to detail.

I love all of 'em, really; they all have their own, unique character.


Mike.

A lot of the older ones won't run on my computer (especially those based on Puppy 2.14), and I can't get connected to the internet on any of the 4 series Pups any more, which is a shame because I really like what John did with the Teenpup and now Legacy OS series.

There are also some that will run but the software's getting old, such as the UPup series (including Polar and Midnight Sun), the Saluki / Carolina Pups with the lovely title font whose name escapes me, and the Precise 5.7.1 series; in fact I used 5.7.1 Precise Large only yesterday.

I got my Mum's laptop working over Christmas with MacPup, but I gather that one also hasn't been updated recently.

Of the ones that will run on my machine, I tend to go for the Slacko series (especially the Exton version) and Tahrpup too. If I had to choose one though, and it ran on my machine, I think I'd choose John's LegacyOS or maybe ttuuxxx's Classic Pup, which is also based on Puppy 2.14.

UPDATE; the question's just answered itself (for this computer anyway) as it's developed a fault and won't boot from the hard drive. I've had to pick a Puppy to use and I'm posting this from Precise 5.7.1 Large.

I've added micko's Firefox 47 (for slacko, but it works just fine in this one), Thunderbird 17 esr (from the Mozilla download site), Seamonkey 2.49.2 (ditto) and Softmaker FreeOffice 2016, and it's absolutely fine except that the video playback on Youtube is a bit quiet.

My primaries are Precise 5.7.1 and Fatdog64 7.10

Well since I've come back tried some of the newer ones and come to really like Slacko 570/571 and SuperLucid. Speciasl mention of 8GEES work.

For a long time LxPupXenial was my favorite, until for unknown reasons I could suspend my pc no more. Then I tried LxArtful. Although it did work ok, I was not totally at ease with it.

In the waiting for BionicPup, I happened to find Dpup 7.5 Stretch. After replacing Fbpanel with LxPanel and a few minor additional tweaks, I can say it's actually one of the best Puppies I've tried so far

I like tahrpup 6.0.6 because it works on a wide range of machines from very old machines to the newist machines. It is also fairly up to date. I like fatdog64 but my version is out of date and starting to slow down. The old machines that I run puppy on don't have enough ram to benefit from 64bit software and in some cases may be hindered by it.

Tahrpup is my goto for older machines and fatdog64 is my goto for when running puppy in a virtualbox. I've tried others like Wary, Racy, Super Lupu and these are all good but I've had issues with them trying to get newer browsers to work well. I think people here may have solved these issues but they are more challenging because they don't have new enough libraries for many recent software. I tried Xenial and Slaco 6.9.9.9 and found them both slow on my system. I haven't yet tried Musher0's version of Xenial with the older kernal. This might solve the speed issue.

I still want to play with older pups like Racy Wary, and Super Lucid to learn to resolve the issues I've previously had but this has been put on the back burner for now. I also want to try some other older pups like, TLC pup and Anitaos. I also want to try faster verions of newer pups like Xenial with the older kernal.

I think though for my hardware, the Tahrpup era is the sweetspot. So along with Tahrpup, I want to try Slaco 5.7.1, x-slaco slim. I also want to try lighter weight versions of new pups like tazpup.

Note that part of the reason the newest pups are slow for me is that I'm often running of USB 2.0.

P.S. I also want to try Easy OS because the Easy containers sound cool.

when i was a more hardcore fan i liked puppy 2.x more than puppy 3.x. this either refers to the puppy linux version, the kernel version, or both.

3.x had far better hardware support (2.x didnt even support sata drives) but 2.x was ridiculously fast. it was dos-like speed with stable graphics (allegro is terrible) and multitasking. if youre looking for a dos replacement. puppy 2.x was just incredible.

once youve gone to full debian though, i think tahr is really good. for easy-to-guess reasons i prefer librepup, which is based on tahr.

however, after 10 years with debian-based stuff and 3 with devuan, i am leaning towards arch-like distros these days. which means no librepup for me. but it was good, very good stuff.

i have always liked way that puppy doesnt make you worry about user/root although i used grafpup (long time ago) because it made great efforts towards giving you "proper" permissions/multiuser.

today, for the convenience of puppy with the security "etiquette" of other distros, i have pcmanfm desktop running as root on top of everything else running with standard permissions. if i use hotkeys i get a user-account term, if i click the icons on the desktop they open as root without ever asking for gksu or whatever.

kill pcmanfm desktop and it respawns. kill the script that respawns it and it doesnt come back until reboot. delete the script and its gone, eh? so this is how i run a "best of both worlds" root-convenience desktop. because using puppy spoils you in this regard, but ive got all the root that i want this way. totally inspired by puppy, and actually one person on this forum in particular.

I prefer Precise 5.7.1 series.

My favorite Puppy distro is Dpup Stretch 7.5 CE (RC-3)

It has plenty of useful applications included, with the PPM others can be
added easily.
I've added Kodi,VLC,Smplayer/Smtube,some games,and a few others with
PPM.
It runs well on older and newer hardware.
I like it a lot

Thanks to radky!

As Billtoo wrote,

My favourite Puppy distro is Dpup Stretch 7.5 CE (RC-3).

@ Billtoo thank you for the coffee and I too more than agree with u,

I have way over 50 additional apps (around 50/50 Puppy and Wine). Here, everything is super fast, super stable and working superbly.

So, I'm well pleased to second your thanks to radky.

nosystemdthanks wrote:but ive got all the root that i want this way

Personally the amount of time I need to run things as root is very small. Run things as user perhaps 99% of the time. The "inconvenience" of having to enter the root password for the times I do use root is a trivial matter AFAIC. It's more inconvenient if you separate your data areas from internet facing programs i.e. different userid's, but that's just a consequence of security and usability being inversely correlated.

I find myself running Tahr 605 most of the time on my 11 year old laptop. Relatively up to date and not too heavy. Base and zdrv just about 200MB (compressed) whilst Xenialpup already going over 300MB in size. I see there is an update function for Palemoon-browser in the menu. Anyone used the latter and what is the best method to update the browser ie. uninstall and install new version or just update?

nic007 wrote:Anyone used the latter and what is the best method to update the browser ie. uninstall and install new version or just update?

I just use the SSE version by Walter Dnes. Since the most popular complaint I've heard about Tahr/Xenial from people is that the browser won't open I think this one should be the default: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 724#995724

The Palemoon browser that comes with Tahr605 (version 25.8.1) works fine. What I want to know is if the palemoon updater in menu does the job for updating. I can check myself but I don't want to update yet.

@ nic007:-

AFAICT, and the way I've always used it, is you just run the updater and accept the new version. I believe it simply overwrites the existing Palemoon.....yet it's never failed to fire up after an update.

As far as I'm aware, it's exactly how FF updates itself, too. Overwrites the core FF stuff; obviously, it doesn't touch your /root/.mozilla folder, where your profile lives. And Palemoon appears to do the same, leaving the /root/.moonchild productions directory alone.

I hardly ever actually use Palemoon, having always been a Chrome man. I do, however, always keep it up to date.....just in case!

IMHO, you can never have too many browsers.....


Mike.

Thanks, Mike.

nic007 wrote:The Palemoon browser that comes with Tahr605 (version 25.8.1) works fine. What I want to know is if the palemoon updater in menu does the job for updating. I can check myself but I don't want to update yet.

I've been running Tahr 606 and just use the standard Palemoon updater off the "Internet" menu. According to my logbook, I've done over a dozen updates this way and never had a problem.