laptop puppy to replace aging ibook?

[Eric Nord]

New apple laptops are pricey, used intel P4 laptops are cheap.
A friend who uses linux (Ubuntu) recommends the folowing apps:

Open office (I see this is available for (fur?) puppy
Bibus - Bibliographic database app which integrates with writer. anyone use this or an equivalent?
GRACE - a 2d wsiwyg plotter
R - for statistical analysis / math modeling - a dotpup already exists for this.

Any advice on:

1) laptop puppy as primary machine for PhD student with limited Linux experience (nearly a newbie = nanoob?)

2) laptops to avoid or seek

3) Bibus and GRACE?

thanks

Eric

[muggins]

hi eric,

regarding some of your queries. i think if you do some casual reading of the forum, you will find many posts from people that have tried a lot of the bigger linux distros & found puppy to be much more friendly & easy to configure. so i would answer:

1) puppy is the best linux to play with & learn

2) have a look at this site:

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/LaptopsWorking

the general site for working/non-working hardware on puppy is:

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyHardware

another non-puppy-specific site is:

http://www.linux-laptop.net/

3) grace is here:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=20362

not sure how easy bibus will be to get working on puppy as it has a few python library requirements.

[Eric Nord]

If bibus isn't available, any other thoughts on bibliography software?
I love using EndNote with MS word, but the $$ of proprietary software gets me more and more annoyed all the time....

Eric

[cthisbear]

I am very disappointed that Sage has not replied to your query..ha! ha!

Acer or Toshiba are better setup than most.
512 memory should be the minimum now...any less and they are having you on.
And memory is dirt cheap now.
Vista needs 1 gig.....2 gigs sweetspot...4 gigs memory to really run.

Dell .....no.
Compaq...HP...no.
Maybe Lenova...haven't come across one.

Take the latest Puppy...revision 2.17 is coming out soon.
Go to whichever store you know has the above models in stock.
Preferably a larger tech store........ only because smaller computer shops can often be cheaper........but won't open a new item in stock, just so you can play around with it.

Bring your money with you...or credit card
Make them boot the laptop....try sound, network etc.
Make them have it connected to the Internet.

However I suggest you try Puppy on a friends laptop first, so that you know what you want, and you know how to boot it.
Don't be a tosser....3 minutes tops with the firewall enabled to be connected.
Type some other location in the browser to make sure you really are connected.............for a home page I always recommend:

http://scroogle.org/

for privacy reasons.

Also go to the store when things are slow and not peak hour.
Know your prices..print a copy from sites that carry similar stock in your local area.
Some smaller computer shops run their own price lists...so you will be
able to haggle...Remember though that smaller ops may have smaller overheads....if it is a matter of $10 or $20 and the salesman has been fair
and let you try it out, and that the store is not too far from home...then maybe... Nice beats Price.

If they don't want to know you...move on to another vendor.

//////////////////////////////////////////////
" Bring your money with you " aka Joe The Gadget Man

http://www.abc.net.au/newcastle/stories/s1030271.htm

" Joe died in 2002, but years after his show finished on television people would call out to him on the street "Did you bring your money with you Joe?".
.........................................................................
Chris

[Eric Nord]

as the HD on the ibook just croaked....

[Neolynx]

I realize your post is years old, but thought I could tip off anyone stumbling here on a bibliography manager.

I'm a grad student in the sciences and use Zotero (http://www.zotero.org). It operates as a plugin for Firefox 3+, which is really handy, as it provides a one-click button in the browser that extracts citation info when I'm looking at an abstract on any major scholarly article search engine. There's also a download to add compatibility with openoffice for facilitating bibliographies, which I've used in Windows (works great) but not Puppy - think it requires a later OOo release than the pup standards.

I've been happier with this program than RefWorks or RefMan, but haven't tried the one you mentioned.

There are several forum posts for getting FF3 on puppy - here's one to try: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=27521

[Puppyt]

Neolynx -

you are dead right regarding the research virtues of Zotero - I much prefer it over EndNote (though I still export my Zotero libraries into EndNote for my publications using MSWord: I'm still in mid-stream with the Windows-to-Puppy journey) and other bib tools that I have tried.

FF3 has been copping some criticism over reports of "disk thrashing" with its page refreshing schedule - not great for solid-state drives (SD /CF) apparently. I think that FF2.0.10 and later in the FF2 series are considered ideal - the latest versions of Zotero work fine on those.

What I would love love love to see is an application (maybe a Puppy exclusive, for all you programmers?) that combines Zotero libraries (incl. tags) with an outliner (e.g., FreeMind) so that you can visually arrange and organize your search records for generating articles - rather than the mostly linear way that you are otherwise forced to use with Zotero alone.

Most Regrettably, Mozilla appears to be disinclined to have Zotero running in the Puppy faves like Seamonkey and Firepup, so without Zotero those browsers are useless for me. Someone please post me if they know otherwise about Zotero and browser compatibility issues...

EDIT: NEWS FLASH I have had Zotero working well in ttuuxx's final version of Firepup - 4.3. ttuuxx works his majik yet again...
AND A NOTE TO ALL NEWBIES GETTING LOST ON THE FORUMS: Use Zotero to save your searches, make and categorize notes, and organize your findings - many of us can get lost for days in the maze of information here, and now that I'm using it I only wish I had started using Zotero for this task at the very start of my puppy exploits.

[raffy]

You can use Firefox 2 simply by downloading the tar.gz version and decompressing to, say /usr/local/firefox. Then you can make it the default browser by changing /usr/local/bin/defaultbrowser to use /usr/local/firefox/firefox

For running Flash, make sure that there is a symlink to the Mozilla plugins in /root/.mozilla (.mozilla is a hidden folder in /root).

1. Look for mozilla plugins directory (could be in /usr/lib/mozilla) using Rox File Manager.

2. Open /root/.mozilla in another window (click on the eye icon in Rox to show hidden directories and files).

3. Drag /plugins from window(1) to window(2) then when you drop it, choose "symlink".

4. Restart firefox.