What I would like to see in puppy

[Auda]

Puppy is wonderful, best thing since sliced bread ( and I can remember when we first got that )
However there are a couple of things that I think should have a bit of time spent on them.

Printing: I have a small samba network here half a dozen computers all share an old Brother laser printer. Xandros works fine, win98 does but I cant get puppy to, guess if I knew what I was doing it would. A bit of intergration between the printer wizard and LinNeighborhood would fix it. If it did, Xandros would go into the bitbucket.

LinNeighborhood: A button that says auto login next time I boot up would be nice. It could be in the network setup script perhaps

Games: A couple more would be nice, nothing to flash a few basic card games reversi and mastermind perhaps, to keep the wife and kids happy.

Harddrive install: I've had a bit of a play with this and havent had much luck. I would like a type 1 install and a puppy.bat file to start it. I realise that config.sys and autoexec.bat may/will need to be changed to live with windows. I have a second primary part. for puppy and use Simple Boot Manager to select what is called C: and what is / isn't hidden, its simple and is smaller than a type 2 install, but I cant get puppy to boot or run from it. Yep grub works but its big and I guess wont work with a type 1 install ?

Archive option: How about and archive script that compresses pup001 and stores it some other place, ie network, partition, drive. We would need a restore one as well.

As Peter ? has suggested an option not to make a pup001 file on the hard drive would be nice. Then I can show others how good it is and not leave a trace on their computer

Those are my thoughts, I run puppy every day and love it. I have shown it to many others and a few now use it. With the printing and HDD install sorted out every computer in this and a mates place would use puppy for all the serious work and windows would be use for what it does best, play games and use up disk space.

Finaly as its and Australian product how about a Blue Healer ( Australian cattle dog ) pup photo ?

Keep up the good work, puppy is the the best linux I have tried ( its about Nr 12 )

Auda

[Rich]

Another happy camper. !

Check the Wiki for printing problems, there might be something there.
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/

The old Forum had loads of posts in it about printer configuration ( you can find that from the above link ).
Worth a search through, it answers a lot of questions.

Rich

[GuestToo]

a type 1 install (also known as a poor man's install) is very simple

you copy the 3 files from the cd (vmlinuz, image.gz, and usr_cram.fs) to the hard drive ... and Puppy is installed

any partition will do ... C: is fine, you don't need to hide it

to start Puppy you need a boot loader ... a boot loader on a floppy or cd is ok ... Puppy has it's own floppy that should work

it can also boot directly from a boot loader installed on the hard drive ... if you can boot DOS, you can boot Puppy using loadlin or gujin

Grub or Lilo can boot Puppy (option 1 or option 2) ... Grub is easier to install and configure than Lilo ... it's not big (it will fit on a floppy ... you can install Grub on a floppy and boot Puppy from the Grub floppy)

if you already have a boot manager installed, you can install Grub on your second partition's boot sector instead of the mbr ... it can boot Puppy where ever you put it, and Windows too

i have my Puppy files on C: and boot Puppy using Grub

[Rob]

Is it possible to get IRDA and bluetooth working in puppy to push files as well as network?
Is openobex included, so files can be sent?
And a howto if anyone has already managed it would be nice please!

[Rob]

If a cram_fs file has already been found for an earlier version of puppy, and therefore ignored, I'd like to see an option on the first boot to overwrite this old cram_fs with the new one. Otherwise I have to do it manually each time I upgrade.

[Fox7777]

We see 3 main prioriities for mini Linux distros like Puppy Linux. (1) Keep older computers functional for today's needs and out of landfills. (2) Provide an operating system for low capacity new computers. For example they will soon be making many thousands of $100 laptops for developing countries with low capacity. (3) Complete OS storage on flash drives, etc.

[Guest]

I think the above picture might have solved our bootsplash problem, discussed in a different thread. But the puppy needs to be further away with better photography, otherwise it's quite .

[Auda]

Have you ever tried lieing on the floor holding a camera with 6 very happy gleeful 8 week old pups running through the house ? They all have teeth and claws and I have ears and a nose, lots of fun for a pup ! But your right the background and lighting arent the best. Puppy uses a photo of Barrys old dog, I didnt know the story behind it when I posted the above sugestion.
Auda

[Walt H]

We see 3 main prioriities for mini Linux distros like Puppy Linux. (1) Keep older computers functional for today's needs and out of landfills. (2) Provide an operating system for low capacity new computers. For example they will soon be making many thousands of $100 laptops for developing countries with low capacity. (3) Complete OS storage on flash drives, etc.

There are maybe a couple of other things worth considering:
4) Those of us on slow dialup connections who cannot afford to tie up our phone lines for several days downloading the latest release of Behemoth Linux.
5) Those of us who don't have the need or the desire to download and/or install four-zillion gigabytes of applications we'll never need or ever use.

I plan on buying a new computer soon, and I expect I will still be running a smaller distribution on it and installing applications as I want and need them.

[Flash]

We see 3 main prioriities for mini Linux distros like Puppy Linux. (1) Keep older computers functional for today's needs and out of landfills. (2) Provide an operating system for low capacity new computers. For example they will soon be making many thousands of $100 laptops for developing countries with low capacity. (3) Complete OS storage on flash drives, etc.

There are maybe a couple of other things worth considering:
4) Those of us on slow dialup connections who cannot afford to tie up our phone lines for several days downloading the latest release of Behemoth Linux.
5) Those of us who don't have the need or the desire to download and/or install four-zillion gigabytes of applications we'll never need or ever use.

I plan on buying a new computer soon, and I expect I will still be running a smaller distribution on it and installing applications as I want and need them.

There are even more good reasons to like Puppy. I like it because a small, easily customizable OS with excellent hardware recognition is ideal as the starting point for a lot of useful applications-on-a-disc. Just add the application of your choice: a backup program, a game, or a project you want to take with you and work on wherever you go. The possibilities are endless.

[Fox7777]

We have distributed a lot of Chubby Puppy CD's (with Open Office) with fairly good success in getting new users started with Linux. However some obstacles to mainstream acceptance remain:

1. Despite all the Howtos at http://web3.foxinternet.net/fox7777/sig.htm , etc. , people still end up trying to install on NTFS & other things like that when they start the install process & then end up abandoning Linux when things don't work. The best solution is probably to have more step-by-step instructions & error trapping on the Chubby Puppy CD when they are going through the install process. Also SUSE has a very good installer, partition resizer, etc. to get people started. Perhaps something like that could be adapted to Chubby Puppy. We realize that features like this could increase the size of Chubby Puppy but having something different from the standard Puppy could help get new users started & offer some variety. We don't see a slightly larger Chubby Puppy as a problem for most new users (& they always can choose the standard Puppy if it is).

2. Speaking of variety, it would be nice to have Firefox be the default browser in Chubby Puppy too because, like Open Office, it has been very popular & therefore would be compelling to new users.