Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

darrelljon · Joined: 08 Apr 2007 Posts: 545

I've posted about Windows 8 before here http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=87647
Just got a new laptop that came with Windows 8 and after a few hours of frustrating use, I am looking for an heavyweight 64 bit alternative.

darrelljon · Joined: 08 Apr 2007 Posts: 545

Just discovered you can't move the user profile to another partition let alone another disk. There are ways involving regedit but no official or supported method. Thanks Windows 8. What a POS.

Smithy · Joined: 12 Dec 2011 Posts: 378

Fatdog 64 and Lighthouse 64 are the ones in Puppyland. There may be others.

I think they start off light but can become heavyweight. Depends what you want to do I guess. Hope this helps you a bit.

rokytnji · Joined: 20 Jan 2009 Posts: 1143 Location: Pecos/ Texas

After struggling still with installing Windows XP drivers (I have the OEM driver cd for XP) on my eeepc 900 so I can sell it monday.

Anything is better than Windows. On my 64bit computers. I am partial to AntiX
64bit 13.1 so I voted other.

Macpup 550 is going on the replacement netbook I bought to replace the eeepc instead of Windows (washes face and hands).

But, I don't game, CAD, or use Skype and could care less if Adobe Flash Player
dies and HTML 5 takes over also.

Ted Dog · Joined: 13 Sep 2005 Posts: 2058 Location: Heart of Texas

Fatdog64-621 with the right HD drivers for video card can be more useful out of the box than windows 8 after a week of tweaking,
Fatdog64 will even boot with the crazy EFI 'lockdown' Microsoft attempts, just be-sure to turn off hibernation in Win8 or newer linux drivers will refuse to mount win8 active partions due to a VERY nasty method win8 uses to fastboot. To avoid disk corruption, best to not dual boot, just use a different HD
My Win8 had a oversized harddrive, but I found if you shrink the image first, then direct copy onto a smaller harddrive, windows 8 does not throw a fit like past versions. It now wisely has your 'product' key embedded in firmware at manufacturer. I reduced my win8 active portion to 11G, and after perfecting the backup/restore (at 8G moved to bluray storage) so I fit Win8 into a 60G HD. It complains but for what little use I have for it, works OK.

Colonel Panic · Joined: 16 Sep 2006 Posts: 1456

I'm not familiar with the recent 64-bit Puppies but Fatdog was good when I last used it (version 511).

Apart from Puppy, if I had to choose just one 64-bit distro for my machine my choice would probably be one of the RPM-based distros - either CentOS (or one of the spinoffs like Stella) or SUSE, and given the need to choose I'd go for CentOS or possibly one of the other RedHat clones and derivatives such as Scientific Linux. The RedHat derivatives are like Windows NT - a bit retro and perhaps boring but rock stable and they get the job done.

Other people may have been luckier with Mageia than I was - the last time I tried to install it on my machine (a beta version btw) I trashed the MBR and couldn't boot my computer at all.

Terryphi · Posted: Sun 29 Sep 2013, 01:01 Post subject:

Linux Mint is the best alternative to everything - but Puppy is fun to play with.

koulaxizis · Joined: 17 Jul 2011 Posts: 423 Location: Greece

Colonel Panic · Joined: 16 Sep 2006 Posts: 1456

grump · Joined: 10 Oct 2011 Posts: 90 Location: Melbourne, Oz

darrelljon · Joined: 08 Apr 2007 Posts: 545

Ended up using the following tutorial though not officially supported
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/4275-user-profiles-relocate-another-partition-disk.html
works perfectly.
Moving My Documents is not sufficient

linuxbear · Posted: Mon 30 Sep 2013, 14:46 Post subject:

Colonel Panic · Joined: 16 Sep 2006 Posts: 1456

linuxbear · Posted: Tue 01 Oct 2013, 14:57 Post subject:

I use Win 7 to connect to machines at work, so my laptop is capable of that. I run Ubuntu/E17 about 80% of the time because Enlightenment (or Bodhi Linux) is very fast. Anything but Unity. I also like Cinnamon for speed, but E17 is a lot faster.

bark_bark_bark · Joined: 05 Jun 2012 Posts: 709 Location: USA

Slackware is a good option.