What are Puppy's minimum system requirements?

[Shep]

but with the video still goin fits and stops...

Close all other tabs in the browser, and have as few other processes going, to give your computer the best chance at playing smoothly. There might be a cache setting that would help performance.

[Shep]

There's a thread on installing in a PC with only 16 MB of RAM, though it's earlier than Wary & Lucid, so does not directly help the OP. Nevertheless, is deserving of some sort of award.

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=48214

[hayden]

Re the original question as to Puppy's minimum requirements, I find it useful for MS refugees to place Linux distros on a MS continuum. So on my hardware Ubuntu is a bit heavy compared to Win98 but Puppy is somewhere between 98 and 3.1. In fact, the slowest machine I run Puppy on (2.x) has a Pentium 200 clone and 64Mb of RAM. Win98 won't install and I don't think I would be very happy with it if it did. With this machine we are getting back to a different family of requirements. It has no USB support and will not boot from a CD. So I did a frugal install and there is a swap file in there somewhere. The HDDs are 1.6 and 2.1Gb. I boot from a floppy. Puppy runs fine for what I use it for on that machine.

Which brings me to my second point. When we go that far back in time we hit a mind boggling point where the OS takes up a small fraction of the resources that applications do. Puppy is like that. So the right question may be, "What are the requirements of the software you want to run?" For my old machine burning CDs or browsing the web isn't possible in Win3.1 and doing it in 98 would be slower than Puppy (assuming I could get 98 to install). Puppy lets me install a CD burner and use it to back-up the Win3.1 partitions.

So figure out if your HARDWARE can do what you want to do. If it can, then for old computers, Puppy is less likely to drag it down than any Windows since 3.1. A swap file helps a lot. I seem to recall some Puppies automatically use one if present while others require you to turn it on. Antique memory can be pricey but old IDE hard drives are cheap.

[necromatic]

Re the original question as to Puppy's minimum requirements, I find it useful for MS refugees to place Linux distros on a MS continuum. So on my hardware Ubuntu is a bit heavy compared to Win98 but Puppy is somewhere between 98 and 3.1. In fact, the slowest machine I run Puppy on (2.x) has a Pentium 200 clone and 64Mb of RAM. Win98 won't install and I don't think I would be very happy with it if it did. With this machine we are getting back to a different family of requirements. It has no USB support and will not boot from a CD. So I did a frugal install and there is a swap file in there somewhere. The HDDs are 1.6 and 2.1Gb. I boot from a floppy. Puppy runs fine for what I use it for on that machine.

Which brings me to my second point. When we go that far back in time we hit a mind boggling point where the OS takes up a small fraction of the resources that applications do. Puppy is like that. So the right question may be, "What are the requirements of the software you want to run?" For my old machine burning CDs or browsing the web isn't possible in Win3.1 and doing it in 98 would be slower than Puppy (assuming I could get 98 to install). Puppy lets me install a CD burner and use it to back-up the Win3.1 partitions.

So figure out if your HARDWARE can do what you want to do. If it can, then for old computers, Puppy is less likely to drag it down than any Windows since 3.1. A swap file helps a lot. I seem to recall some Puppies automatically use one if present while others require you to turn it on. Antique memory can be pricey but old IDE hard drives are cheap.

tnx for all the contributions,

i think hayden hit the point, sometimes the applications use more resources than the OS itself, so can you plese tell me the best applications for a "normal" use of the computer (playing video, music, youtube, etc).


i pretend to use a p3 1.2ghz and 256 mb of ram, b




PS: sorry for my bad english

[Shep]

but with the video still goin fits and stops...

I never use the flashplayer. It is hopeless, needing too much resources. (PIII 560 MHZ)

After clicking on a video, and checking that it starts okay in the flashplayer, I pause the flashplayer. The video continues to download in the background.

Using the filemanager, I go to the /tmp directory and click on the Flashxxxxx file (which is the temporary file where the browser is buffering the video for its flashplayer).

Your multimedia player (it's Mplayer here) then plays the flashvideo much less resource-intensively, and much smoother, than the flashplayer.

You don't have to wait until the whole video has downloaded before you click to start the media player, either.

[chinamike]

OK, just putting this here for a date code more or less. I will be trying Puppy out on a PC with 1300Mhz CPU, 1,281 HD (of which only 400-500 available; it has Win 2000 Pro on the other 550-600MB). I will also use a 4GB flash drive for storing files? I don't think I can set it up to run from USB because I don't think it will boot from it. I know there is a proggy I can get that can boot older PCs to flash drive, but for now I don't want to mess with too much. Just going to run the live CD, install something to the HD (the minimum what ever that is). I used Puppy four years back. Went to Knoppix from there, then Ubuntu, then finally Fedora. Just playing with Puppy again, see if he fetches a bone.

Will report back in a few days.

[starhawk]

Last post here was January of 2011.

chinamike, what made you think it would be better to post in a thread that has long been consigned to antiquity, than to post a new thread? I'm not really trying to be rude (although it may come across that way) -- I'm genuinely curious.

EDIT: to be on topic... Puppy does not per se have minimum requirements to run. That is, it will try to run on just about anything new enough to boot the kernel in question. How far it gets is another question -- as is whether or not it is usable at the other end.

I have what I call the "infernal Dell" -- a Latitude CPi from 1999. It has (once) booted Slacko 533, although it took a very long time (well in excess of five minutes) to boot to a desktop and was appallingly slow to the point of being barely useful. That said, such is to be expected from a system with a 300MHz Pentium II and 128mb RAM!

To run Puppy comfortably, the general rule is 512mb RAM. If you've less than that, and you've got a hard drive around, stick it in there and make up what's missing in swap. If not... it's gonna be slow going until you can upgrade RAM or add swap.

Your 1.3GHz system will run Puppy just fine as long as you've got the RAM. Much higher on your list of things to worry about should be resizing your Win2k partition so that Puppy can fit on the drive! (Windows does not like its partitions shrunk!)

[RetroTechGuy]

OK, just putting this here for a date code more or less. I will be trying Puppy out on a PC with 1300Mhz CPU, 1,281 HD (of which only 400-500 available; it has Win 2000 Pro on the other 550-600MB). I will also use a 4GB flash drive for storing files? I don't think I can set it up to run from USB because I don't think it will boot from it. I know there is a proggy I can get that can boot older PCs to flash drive, but for now I don't want to mess with too much. Just going to run the live CD, install something to the HD (the minimum what ever that is). I used Puppy four years back. Went to Knoppix from there, then Ubuntu, then finally Fedora. Just playing with Puppy again, see if he fetches a bone.

Will report back in a few days.

I run Lupu 5.2x on a Asus 900 eee Netbook, using a 4GB SD card instead of the internal HDD (SSD). It works fine (though I have 1GB RAM on that).

I have 5.25 running on a 333 MHz laptop, with 256MB RAM, and a 512MB swap partition. It's a little heavy for that machine -- I may roll back to something lighter (I once ran 4.11/12 on it which worked pretty well -- planning to try Wary on it next).

If you run a flash drive on an old machine, it will likely be slow to shutdown, as the USB 1.1 is pretty doggie... But otherwise, it should work fine.

I run 5.28 on my 1600 MHz laptop (I also have 1GB installed in that).

If you've got 500+ MB RAM, you'll probably be fine -- though you may want some swap space depending on browser selection.

I use the rule that you want at least 512 MB in RAM+swap. But typically, more is better.

5.25 does exhibit a lighter hardware load (and lower memory load).

[Dewbie]

RetroTechGuy wrote:

I have 5.25 running on a 333 MHz laptop, with 256MB RAM, and a 512MB swap partition. It's a little heavy for that machine

Are you referring to 525 Retro?

planning to try Wary on it next

Try Wary 5.1.4.1.
The last of the 5.1.x generation, it includes the older, lighter SeaMonkey 1.1.18.

[capicoso]

Last post here was January of 2011.

chinamike, what made you think it would be better to post in a thread that has long been consigned to antiquity, than to post a new thread? I'm not really trying to be rude (although it may come across that way) -- I'm genuinely curious.

EDIT: to be on topic... Puppy does not per se have minimum requirements to run. That is, it will try to run on just about anything new enough to boot the kernel in question. How far it gets is another question -- as is whether or not it is usable at the other end.

I have what I call the "infernal Dell" -- a Latitude CPi from 1999. It has (once) booted Slacko 533, although it took a very long time (well in excess of five minutes) to boot to a desktop and was appallingly slow to the point of being barely useful. That said, such is to be expected from a system with a 300MHz Pentium II and 128mb RAM!

To run Puppy comfortably, the general rule is 512mb RAM. If you've less than that, and you've got a hard drive around, stick it in there and make up what's missing in swap. If not... it's gonna be slow going until you can upgrade RAM or add swap.

Your 1.3GHz system will run Puppy just fine as long as you've got the RAM. Much higher on your list of things to worry about should be resizing your Win2k partition so that Puppy can fit on the drive! (Windows does not like its partitions shrunk!)

Maybe because it's better to not post something that has been already posted. That's what the search button is for, i think. It's all in the same place..

[`f00]

Absolutely correct, capicoso. I was having a heckuva time with getting a certain window manager to load until I found a topic by zigbert from a few years back - the topic was aptly named in the subject line so I found it even with my almost total lack of any skill at searching.

Bringing back a 'necro'd' topic is not considered as such (usually) on the pldf. Funny coincidence(?) , the op here was necromatic

Now if only 'new' topics weren't so evergreen at coming back whenever "Lost my icons/desktop" happens

[starhawk]

Bringing back a 'necro'd' topic is not considered as such (usually) on the pldf.

OK, OK, I'm learning!

...sorry for the fireworks.

[RetroTechGuy]

RetroTechGuy wrote:

I have 5.25 running on a 333 MHz laptop, with 256MB RAM, and a 512MB swap partition. It's a little heavy for that machine

Are you referring to 525 Retro?

Yes, it is 5.25 Retro.

[hayden]

The reason Puppy's system requirements are so vague is that Puppy is so light that the applications you want to run will be the limiting factor rather than your choice of OS. Someone mentioned video. Generally, entertainment applications require far more resources than productivity applications. Puppy is a HUGE upgrade from Windows 3.1 because it writes CDs, supports USB devices, and gets on the Internet. To do that reasonably with M$ products requires at least Win98SE which will run MUCH slower than Puppy while attracting viruses. (no security updates)

Good targets for a Puppy installation are computers running Win 3.1 fine or 9* slowly. I find Puppy 2 runs slightly slower than 3.1 but much faster than 98 on the same hardware, and runs fine on hardware where 98 would be painfully slow. Probably anything that boots from a CD and has USB ports will be fine. (Anything that boos from USB will be way more than you need.) So first see if there is a CD drive and look in the BIOS setup to see if you can get it into the boot order. If so, do it. If not, you may need to do a frugal install and boot from a floppy. If you CAN boot it from CD, and have enough RAM to load Puppy into it, you should be able to see if it runs fast enough for what you want. (Unlike many live distros, Puppy does not run painfully slow from a CD if you have enough RAM.) If Puppy is slow, and the problem is not enough RAM, use Puppy to create a swap file on your hard drive, reboot, and turn on the swap file if your version of Puppy does not do that automatically. Boot times will be slow from an slow CD drive -- the question is how rapidly your applications of choice load and do what you want them to do. If they work OK you may want to install Puppy to the hard drive which will greatly speed up booting.

In addition to the 200MHz Pentium mentioned above I have a 233MHz non-Itel chip running Puppy 2 just fine. A slight hesitation when I click on something but no need to go make coffee while Abiword opens;-)

On the issue of adding to old threads, I LIKE to do that. Too often I have done a Google search that leads to several independent discussions that reach no conclusion because each has only part of the answer. So I like to add to the first relevant thread I can find that I have access to figuring that the next person to do the same Google search will land there as well, and get info both old and new. There is a question of whether the topic makes sense today. A thread on "latest Puppy version" that discusses 1.09 is not the place to post about 5.4, but for old hardware any Puppy that runs is OK so I think it is great to have all the relevant info in one thread.

[Dewbie]

hayden wrote:

In addition to the 200MHz Pentium mentioned above I have a 233MHz non-Itel chip running Puppy 2 just fine.

Java versions are also a factor with older hardware, as shown here.

[hayden]

Thanks. I think of Java as the greatest tool for slowing down computing since Windows so I wonder how this will work out on antique hardware.

I am working with the 233Mz machine now and will post what I learn as I learn it. I discovered the chip is a Cyrix 686. It is supposed to be like a Pentium 300 in performance (at least if you do not do heavy math.). 233 MHz is the maximum speed for the 1997 P5TX-A MB as is the installed 256Mb of memory. People talking about old computers often say "memory is cheap" but it ain't necessarily true for antique memory chips (though you might be able to find some for free is you scrounge around). There are also the issues of how much memory the board can handle, and finding out what sort of chips it requires. In any case, I noted that Puppy 2.02 had NOT activated the swap file yet performance was fine for just running the desktop and opening the default applications. No promises if you try to install KDE4 or edit movies;-)

As I joke I hooked up a USB Blu-Ray drive that I use for backups and was able to read files from a Blu-Ray disk. Pretty good for a 25-year-old system. Performance was rather slow with USB 1.0.

I see these antiques as useful for a variety of audiences. Poor kids who can use if for school. (Maybe it is a feather if it CAN"T be used for play?-) Older folks who want to get on the Internet and receive email from grandchildren who don't write real letters, or check the news and weather online, maybe shop a little. Someone who wants to write a book. but has no money.

[Dewbie]

hayden wrote:

Thanks. I think of Java as the greatest tool for slowing down computing since Windows so I wonder how this will work out on antique hardware.

To see if this might affect your computer, go to Menu / System / HardInfo / Processor, then scroll down. Look for cmov in the Capabilities section.

[WillE]

The problem is we aren't an unscrupulous marketing company like Microsoft.
We lack the incentive or financial motivation to lie to you.

If we were, the minimum specs could change, it might be like this:

• Minimum specs for Puppy is a 386 computer with 2MB RAM.
  Pay 89.95 at the register.

~

Well... I have successfully installed the basic Slacko 5.4 on a system with a K6 350MHz and probably 48 Mb RAM. I say probably because I think one of the sticks was defunct -- it was allegedly 64.

It was, of course, a full install to the (1Gb) hard drive.

It ran well; far better than the Windows 95 SE native to it.