Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[darrelljon]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[koulaxizis]

[Colonel Panic]

[grump]

[darrelljon]

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]

[Colonel Panic]

[linuxbear]

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]

Slackware is a good option.