Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

izezi · Joined: 19 Mar 2012 Posts: 58

I have a 12 year old Gateway laptop with a 1.2GHz Celeron, 256RAM and 20GB HD that I have to use an external monitor on because the LCD screen burned out several years ago but can't bear to part with it.

I've got FreeBSD 7.4 running Fluxbox on it but recently tried it out with Wary Puppy 5.2.2. It recognized all my hardware right off the bat runs great. I don't care for a flashy desktop anyway so I'm really liking it. I remastered the LIve CD after I got things set up like I wanted it and burned it to an 8GB USB stick to run from.

I'm not that familiar with Linux and the subtle differences between it and FreeBSD but feel right at home with Puppy and will have to say setting it up was a lot more simple than setting up BSD on it was. I'm not ready to do a full install on the laptop HD with it yet but it sure is nice to be able to run it off a USB stick and keep my resident OS without having to dual boot.

antiloquax · Joined: 27 Jan 2012 Posts: 405

Cool

. Wary and Racy are great!
Nice setup!

izezi · Joined: 19 Mar 2012 Posts: 58

I don't know why the M in "Menu" wasn't drawn on the start button in the shot, it is now.

I think I'll call my puppy enu. Razz

starhawk · Posted: Mon 19 Mar 2012, 11:46 Post subject:

Wicked desktop wall there... where did you find that?

FWIW, 'round 1993, a certain awesome dude named Linux Torvalds was working with a version of Unix (the family that has BSD in it), specifically Minix, when he made his own version. (IIRC from what I'm told, he was looking merely to improve memory management but wound up reinventing the whole thing.) He was gonna call it Linus Unix, but someone ran the words together, and "Linux" was the result -- and the rest, of course, was history.

EDIT: also, what's the model of that gateway? screens aren't that hard to put in, and they're pretty cheap, too, usually. Less than $50 for sure in this case.

izezi · Joined: 19 Mar 2012 Posts: 58

starhawk · Posted: Mon 19 Mar 2012, 12:39 Post subject:

Thanks for the link!

You can get memory real cheap on eBay, and as long as it's RAM (not Flash memory like media cards and USB sticks) you can trust it quite well Wink

I do that a lot.

If you find that model number, I can help you find both RAM and a screen.

izezi · Joined: 19 Mar 2012 Posts: 58

It's a Gateway Solo 1450. When I got it new it had 1 red pixel right in the middle of the screen that drew your eyes to it so I threw a fit about it and they sent me a new one. They said the screen contained toxic materials and couldn't be replaced.

Online shopping isn't something I partake in though. I don't use credit cards and have never bought anything off ebay.

I've never had a cellphone or a flu shot and don't have any Windows boxen in my house either. Razz

starhawk · Posted: Mon 19 Mar 2012, 13:44 Post subject:

Heh. Well... if you want to change that, there's a "buy it now" listing on eBay for a perfect screen for $20 + $10 shipping. You'll want to jump on that if you can. Pay as a "paypal guest" with your bank debit card and you'll be A-OK.

You can max that laptop out to a gig of RAM, but that actually costs about $40 (little less -- cheapest "buy it now" listing is $37). I may actually have some compatible RAM that I could just give you if you wanted (I'll look around and post again). You are in the US, right?

starhawk · Posted: Mon 19 Mar 2012, 13:55 Post subject:

Regarding RAM, I have a 128 stick and a 256 stick that will fit your system. Check and see if your RAM config is 2 sticks or one... probably one but ya never know...

RAM is almost always under a door in the bottom of the laptop (but you probably knew that).

izezi · Joined: 19 Mar 2012 Posts: 58

starhawk · Posted: Mon 19 Mar 2012, 16:42 Post subject:

So you've got 2 128 sticks? That works. I can send you the 256 stick for like a dollar -- I have envelopes and antistatic bags aplenty. Two or three Forever Stamps and I'm done

I would just ask that you send me back a dollar or two when you get it, to the return address on the envelope. I've done concealed cash several times, haven't had it fail yet Wink

if that puts you off, and you don't mind the trouble on your end, a postal money order is $1.10 IIRC.

izezi · Joined: 19 Mar 2012 Posts: 58

linuxbear · Posted: Wed 21 Mar 2012, 16:32 Post subject:

I have an old Gateway solo laptop with 256 meg of RAM and a 356 meg processor. This old machine runs the 4.XX versions of Puppy well. I haven't fired it up in about two years, but if I put a 16 gig compact flash in the PCMCIA to augment the tiny 6 gig hard drive, it would still be usable.

izezi · Joined: 19 Mar 2012 Posts: 58

My laptop will soon have 384MB RAM thanks to starhawk. Razz

I'm happy with the way Wary has been running from the 8GB USB stick. I've had to start over a few times but finally got my pup set up like I wanted, remasterd the LiveCD, and am happy with the results.

I've noticed it doesn't always want to shut down like it should and does a light reboot instead, where it doen't even go through the splash screen. It won't be seeing my ethernet card afterwards and I'll have to do a cold reboot to get things right again, but I think that's just due to the bootloader and running it off USB.

I made the mistake of upgrading to the new version of X that's listed in the upgrades and my monitor didn't work after that. The upgrade system itself seems to break if you update it and it doesn't show anything at the top where it was showing the different distros to choose from anymore. It also shows Wary 5.2.1 as an upgrade to 5.2.2.

I really don't have any interest in other Linux distros, didn't really want to install Linux at all and tried Wary more or less out of curiosity, but am glad I did. Smile

izezi · Joined: 19 Mar 2012 Posts: 58

After a small postal snafu the letter starhawk sent me containing a 256 stick of RAM arrived today, which increased the total RAM by 50%. It was the right size, is being recognized and the box seems to be running a lot cooler too.

starhawk had never spoken to be before I posted this thread to tell about my experience with puppy and made the offer out of the goodness of his heart. He's an asset to this forum and a great guy.