(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I installed Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to the hard drive of an older HP desktop:

System: Host: bill-GN559AA-ABA-a6220n Kernel: 4.15.0-20-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Gnome 3.28.1
Distro: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Machine: Device: desktop System: HP-Pavilion product: GN559AA-ABA a6220n serial: N/A
Mobo: ASUSTeK model: Berkeley v: 1.04 serial: N/A BIOS: American Megatrends v: 5.13 date: 10/24/2007
CPU: Dual core Intel Core2 Duo E4500 (-MCP-) speed/max: 1438/2200 MHz
Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Oland [Radeon HD 8570 / R7 240/340 OEM]
Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.6 ) driver: radeon Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz, 1920x1080@60.00hz
OpenGL: renderer: AMD OLAND (DRM 2.50.0 / 4.15.0-20-generic, LLVM 6.0.0) version: 4.5 Mesa 18.0.0-rc5
Network: Card: Intel 82566DC-2 Gigabit Network Connection driver: e1000e
Drives: HDD Total Size: 400.1GB (3.5% used)
Weather: Conditions: 63 F (17 C) - Mostly Cloudy Time: May 21, 2:08 PM EDT
Info: Processes: 226 Uptime: 3:40 Memory: 1170.2/3944.8MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.56

I installed software with the Ubuntu Software app, also with Synaptic.

It works very well on this older pc.

Just installed the latest beta of Refracta (beta 2) and Mageia 6. Mageia looks good with a deep blue theme throughout and comes with a full set of applications, though like all the other rpm-based distros I've tried it's quite heavy on system resources.

Refracta is at the other extreme from Mageia in terms of size and comprehensiveness. It fits on a single CD-R and is quite a "bare bones" distro; it comes with abiword instead of a full office suite, no spreadsheet although there is a menu option for installing LibreOffice (without a spell checker though).

It also looks good though in a different way; it has a darkish, "starry night" theme to it.

Liquid Lemur is one of those distros that most people thought had disappeared (indeed, its developer said he wasn't going to work on it any more), but nevertheless here it is again with a new testing release (3.0.0 alpha), which I've been trying.

Unusually for a distro, it has Windowmaker as its window manager, and it works well except that it has a lot of transparency as standard and I kept trying to minimise windows only to find that I was actually clicking on the one above it The configuration is easily changed though; the distro comes with a comprehensive control centre / program launcher called APEman.

It also comes with a really good implementation of Conky, which gives the time and date in large characters at the top right (where I think they should be) and system info in smaller characters below it on the right of the screen and in the middle.

One deficiency it has IMO is that it doesn't come with a lot of standard software; there's no office suite, for example, so you have to install one. Also, it has Chromium as it main browser, which I find quite heavy on resources although Firefox is easily installed, and Geary as its e-mail client whereas I prefer Thunderbird (being more used to the way it works).

Definitely recommended though for anyone who wants a distro that's a bit different, visually quite attractive, and which (being based on Debian) also works on older computers. Even though it's still only an alpha release, it's obvious that a lot of work and thought has gone into it.

I've now installed Bunsen Labs Helium (final version), which has just been released. Again, it's working well but I feel I have to take issue with the theme colours; why, especially for a distro released in the summer, do we need all these dark blues and greys?

By contrast I'm posting this from Exe / Gnu, which is a distro based on Devuan with the Trinity desktop manager and a nice summery wallpaper of a reservoir with trees framing it and mountains in the distance; far more appropriate IMO.

[EDIT; I've now added some new wallpapers to Helium, including one called Glass Green with which I think it looks a lot better. Unfortunately the screenshot's too big for me to be able to include it here.]

im modifying void linux these days, its a bit tedious. i think its got major potential, wow a lot of stuff doesnt work though.

what does work tends to work very well, im done with debian and devuan, its time to get away from those. if there were more puppies like grafpup and librepup, if iguleder were still here i might do more with puppy. its really fine that no one cared about refractahrpup, corepup is awesome by the way.

if more puppy users were dedicated to free software ideals (im not complaining) and not being root-- well, i used puppy and i loved being root all the time, which is why i found the next best thing to "root all the time," root desktop.

void is like the opposite of puppy-- it was made by a bsd fan and you can tell. but thats cool in a way-- if tedious.

first thing to do was add python. to the live iso. to get mpv or qemu working, have to use binaries from debian right now-- not great!

but everything im doing with distros came out of working with puppy. that didnt work out in the most direct fashion, but what i got from it is a remaster tool i love and use on several distros unrelated to each other.

I've just installed Crunchbang Plus Plus (32-bit). It's a bit more "vanilla" than its close relative (Bunsen Labs Helium), but it works very well and IMO merits a recommendation, especially for people with older computers.

I managed to install Sparky 5.4 (the latest version) but it wouldn't boot so I've gone back to an old favourite - MX 16, which on updating works really well (Firefox updates to 60, for example).

It's getting to the stage now where there seem to be very few distros that work without a hitch on this machine, which at ten years old is frankly showing its age, but after all you only need *one (and Puppy still works).

* In practice I'd have a minimum of two apart from Puppy, because there are some programs which work well on Debian-based distros but which don't work well on Slack-based ones, and vice versa. I'd have at a minimum one of each.

[UPDATE, 23rd September; Sparky 5.5 is even worse on my machine. I couldn't get it to boot even to a live session.]

After seeing regular probes of various kinds, more often originating from within China, I've opted to totally bar connection requests from certain countries (using OpenBSD and pf) as per https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article ... 0527054301

Was interesting to watch what type of penetration methods are being deployed, but time to ring the bell.

I've been pretty hard core jwm/rox for years now. However increasingly I'm booting cwm. Key combinations are 'awkward' at first, but with practice become second nature. I have mostly been using full screen windows and flipping between those windows, however more recently I've moved from using ctrl-alt-f for full screen to ctrl-alt-m for maximise to full screen bar the gap border (that I have set to be the left screen edge).

https://youtu.be/9oTIsPe_x_g

ctrl-alt-f is still of course available and useful in some cases.

I'm not a great one for using many different combinations of key-combinations. In addition to the above the only others I tend to use are alt-shift-? to invoke the execute program prompt (i.e. type fir ... and press enter to start firefox etc.), alt tab (thumb and pinky) to flip between windows, ctl-alt-x to quit a window (crab finger arrangement) ... oh and I also set/use ctrl-alt-comma (<) and ctl-alt-period (>) for volume up and down.

I installed Mint 19 to my HP mid tower pc:

System: Host: bill-260-p029 Kernel: 4.15.0-20-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: MATE 1.20.1
Distro: Linux Mint 19 Tara
Machine: Device: desktop System: HP product: 260-p029 serial: N/A
Mobo: HP model: 81B4 v: 01 serial: N/A UEFI [Legacy]: AMI v: F.04 date: 05/10/2016
Battery hidpp__0: charge: N/A condition: NA/NA Wh
hidpp__1: charge: N/A condition: NA/NA Wh
CPU: Dual core Intel Core i3-6100T (-MT-MCP-) speed/max: 800/3200 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel HD Graphics 530
Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.6 ) drivers: modesetting (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 530 (Skylake GT2) version: 4.5 Mesa 18.0.0-rc5
Network: Card-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller driver: r8169
Card-2: Realtek RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter driver: rtl8723be
Drives: HDD Total Size: 1000.2GB (2.5% used)
Weather: Conditions: 82 F (28 C) - Partly Cloudy Time: July 3, 7:59 PM EDT
Info: Processes: 196 Uptime: 1:22 Memory: 601.4/3807.0MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.56

I installed some applications, didn't try flatpaks yet.
Turned on time shift, other features are available but haven't tried
them yet.

It's running fine so far.

I installed to the hard drive of my Compaq Presario:

System: Host: bill-DQ182A-ABA-S6700NX-NA410 Kernel: 4.15.0-24-generic i686 bits: 32 Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3
Distro: Linux Mint 19 Tara
Machine: Device: desktop System: Compaq Presario 061 product: DQ182A-ABA S6700NX NA410 v: 0nB1411RE101COBRA10 serial: N/A
Mobo: ASUSTeK model: Cobra v: 1.xx serial: N/A BIOS: American Megatrends v: 3.28 date: 08/27/2004
CPU: Single core Intel Pentium 4 (-MT-) speed: 2799 MHz (max)
Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RV530 [Radeon X1600 PRO]
Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.6 ) drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 1600x900@60.00hz
OpenGL: renderer: ATI RV530 version: 2.1 Mesa 18.0.0-rc5
Network: Card: Realtek RTL-8100/8101L/8139 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter driver: 8139too
Drives: HDD Total Size: 320.1GB (5.1% used)
Weather: Conditions: 88 F (31 C) - Clear Time: July 4, 4:08 PM EDT
Info: Processes: 165 Uptime: 1:22 Memory: 413.1/2262.7MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.56

This processor is 32bit, was surprised to see that there's a 32bit mint
19 so gave it a try.

Mint 19 runs not too badly on this pc.
I run radky's Stretch-7.5 rc3 from the second hard drive and it runs
a little faster.

Since a long time ago I looked at Slax by Tomas M.
https://www.slax.org/nl/
Around ten years ago it was the first portable system I discovered (later Puppy and Porteus) and I was excited !!
Although looking back it was a big hassle to to create a properly working module with all dependencies included, but it was fun !

Now Slax has changed very much, still a modular system but now based on Debian Stable, I like that !
Can be frugal installed by copying the "slax" directory from the ISO for example to sda1, then grub4dos menu.lst: Didn't find out yet how to save changes, btw.
EDIT: See now that the changes are automatically saved to directory: /slax/changes , nice !

Fred

+1 for Slax !!

Booting from the IPXE.iso from a virtual machine, it's nice toy to play with.

Downloading now...

Thanks.

Saludos.

Going to try this as a frugal install, looks promising.

fredx181 wrote:
Now Slax has changed very much, still a modular system but now based on Debian Stable, I like that !
Can be frugal installed by copying the "slax" directory from the ISO for example to sda1, then grub4dos menu.lst:

Code: Select all

title Run Slax
root (hd0,0)
kernel /slax/boot/vmlinuz vga=normal load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw printk.time=0 slax.flags=perch,automount
initrd /slax/boot/initrfs.img

Didn't find out yet how to save changes, btw.
EDIT: See now that the changes are automatically saved to directory: /slax/changes , nice !

Fred

Hi

I followed your example and slax boots from the 2nd hard drive on my old Compaq.

It's all new to me, kodi runs well.

Thanks

I installed Mint 19 to the hard drive of my Macmini:

System: Host: bill-Macmini Kernel: 4.15.0-24-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: MATE 1.20.1
Distro: Linux Mint 19 Tara
Machine: Device: laptop System: Apple product: Macmini6 1 v: 1.0 serial: N/A
Mobo: Apple model: Mac-031AEE4D24BFF0B1 v: Macmini6 1 serial: N/A
UEFI: Apple v: MM61.88Z.0106.B03.1211161202 date: 11/16/2012
CPU: Dual core Intel Core i5-3210M (-MT-MCP-) speed/max: 1201/3100 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller
Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.6 ) drivers: modesetting (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz, 1920x1080@60.00hz
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ivybridge Mobile version: 4.2 Mesa 18.0.0-rc5
Network: Card-1: Broadcom Limited NetXtreme BCM57766 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe driver: tg3
Card-2: Broadcom Limited BCM4331 802.11a/b/g/n driver: wl
Drives: HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (6.8% used)
Weather: Conditions: 59 F (15 C) - Clear Time: July 8, 7:36 AM EDT
Info: Processes: 183 Uptime: 42 min Memory: 653.4/15947.7MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.56

Works well.

I installed Slax to a 64gb flash drive.

System: Host: slax Kernel: 4.9.0-6-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit)
Desktop: Fluxbox 1.3.5 Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
Machine: Device: laptop System: Apple product: Macmini6 1 v: 1.0 serial: C07JV98EDWYL
Mobo: Apple model: Mac-031AEE4D24BFF0B1 v: Macmini6 1 serial: C072496085YF1HCAG
BIOS: Apple v: MM61.88Z.0106.B03.1211161202 date: 11/16/2012
CPU: Dual core Intel Core i5-3210M (-HT-MCP-) speed/max: 1199/3100 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller
Display Server: X.org 1.19.2 drivers: vesa (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev)
tty size: 80x24 Advanced Data: N/A for root
Network: Card-1: Broadcom Limited NetXtreme BCM57766 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
driver: tg3
Card-2: Broadcom Limited BCM4331 802.11a/b/g/n
driver: bcma-pci-bridge
Drives: HDD Total Size: 561.6GB (8.2% used)
Weather: Conditions: 68 F (20 C) - Clear Time: July 8, 11:28 PM EDT
Info: Processes: 142 Uptime: 15 min Memory: 267.0/15958.8MB
Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.5

I added synaptic and a few others including Kodi.
It's working okay, haven't figured out how to setup for 2 monitors.

Fun and games today. I decided to install LXLE 16.04 but the installer stalled and wouldn't accept my choice of user name or password, so I couldn't log in.

I logged into MX-16 and from there managed to chroot into the LXLE partition and add in my user name and password, only to find, when I did finally log in to LXLE, that the menu text was in either (I'd guess) Persian or Arabic - very pretty to look at but I haven't a clue what it all means or how to navigate it all. I'm coping by launching uxterm by clicking on its icon on the taskbar, and then typing in whichever application I wish to launch.

[EDIT; I solved this in the end by clicking on a couple of buttons at the top right of the login screen, to change the keyboard and language settings; it was Arabic originally].

I'm probably not part of the target market for LXLE though since for me, Ubuntu 16.04 works just fine on its own. I've installed Openbox in it and a handful of other programs such as dmenu, gkrellm and tint2 too, and plank, which comes with Budgie, is a perfectly good program dock.

Another good one; Slint, a distro based on Slackware and Salix but with extra features for the benefit of users with sight problems, and so far it looks to be working well.

It's a big distro though, occupying about 11 GB of hard disk space, and I had to enable internet connectivity myself (with dhclient) as it wasn't working straight from installation.

Shark Linux is a distro based on Ubuntu but with a pleasant, sea-related theme and wallpaper and a relaxed attitude to the free software / open source question;

http://sharklinuxos.org/?page_id=7449

I tried to install the latest version of Shark but it got to the startup screen and then wouldn't boot. I installed last year's version of Shark instead (which went without a hitch) and then updated it, and it's been fine.

[EDIT: it's now frozen up on me when I've left it for about a quarter of an hour and then come back to it. I may install a different window manager on it and see what it's like then.]