(OLD) (ARCHIVED) Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[Kainnech]

HI, I'm totally new to Linux. I have tried out a few distros on CD before choosing Puppy (puplet Macpup 4.1.2). I really like it because it is so small and still has everything I need - almost.
It is lacking one thing that has me thinking about moving to another distro. I have done a full install on my family laptop and totally removed Windows XP (feels really good!). I want my wife and kids to be able to log in to their own separate account so they can have their own email, browser bookmarks, desktop wallpaper etc.
I have read about creating a copy of the pup_save file but there doesn't seem to be one in the full install?

How can I setup separate logins?

[Bruce B]

[thebeaky]

Hi

I have been using puppy 4.2 for about a month now, I really like the feel and the speed. I am not a complete linux newbie, but I feel I don't understand all that much. I can and am willing to learn.
There are however a few things that made it difficult to make the jump.


The first and possibly the biggest is the wireless wizard.

I could not connect to a wep router. after a long times research and help from the forum, I discovered it was because I was entering a string network key, instead of using hex, which was required. It would be worth mentioning on the screen at least, but even better to accept string and convert to hex. (its not hard I know that I wrote a program in prolog to do it in just about 5mins). ( I dont know how to add code and I suspect prolog code is rather useless in a system that doesn't come with prolog).

the second tarballs.

I keep finding downloads as tarballs .tar.gz which I want, I cant work out how to open them,

like pete22 mentioned manuals are out of date, and I followed manual instructions, and buttons I was supposed to use were not there.
I cannot even open them, let alone install them. That would be good to have defaulted to the system.

the third webcam.

I understand that as manufacturers dont seem to care about linux they don't publicize their driver documentation. which makes it hard for linux people to keep up. But when a new driver is out, it would be nice for it to be easy to add. I have 2 webcams, for which I am told to move to jaunty puppy for, so I tried downloaded the iso's and they begin boot, but stop before accesing any drives.
there must be a way of getting the up to date drivers installed onto an older puppy.

I have tested everything I feel I need before I drop windows, I feel I have almost reached that point. it remains just the webcam.

The fifth
full install: it works well off the disk, but I feel it would be so much faster if I could get it to work off my hard drive.
I have no partition ability on my computer, so I cannot make a swp partition, I also cannot put puppy in its own. but I was under the impression this should still be ok for frugal if I put puppy in the windoze part, and then got grub to work ( I had 7m to part, so I put grub in there). but although the installer says all is well, I have copied the lines it told me to the grub file, and it fails to boot.

I wrote a list of requirements, and have been working through them to see if I can complete the jump.




office Y
download manager Y
skype Y
webcam N
prolog. Y
Wireless Y
Audio editing Y
video editing N

video editing I havent found yet, I am sure there is, its not a hardware thing, but I cannot get my webcam working so when I do skype with my fiance I have to go back to doze.

On the other hand, things I have been impressed with.

I love that the community is so quick to help.
I did not find it hard to get started off the disk. it just worked. (except for wireless).


this has turned out a lot longer than I intended. hope it is helpful to you developers out there.

[Beuleuleu]

hi,

i'm noob on puppy, and he's wonderful on an old computer.

but i have two problems :

- in seamonkey i can't see all the web pages (like as the web page are too large for seamonkey), and i don't find how to resize.
- the policies are not nice, it's blurried and my eyes will soon explode.
And i don't know how to change it to have it sharper (must be antialisasing problem).

Sorry for my english

[Tuna]

I'm using Puppy for the first time in an attempt to replace Win98se on a POS HP Pavilion with 128M ram.

I've used Mandriva for a few years now, and I have a couple of Ubuntu servers running in the office for web apps and SAMBA, so I'm not quite a newbie, but Puppy is a fresh experience.

There are some areas where improvements to the setup could be made:

• partitioning - I have no problem setting up a hard drive for Linux usage, but a neophyte will be lost here. Scripted or automated partitioning would be very useful.
  
• software updates - this should be as simple and brainless as Ubuntu's implementation. A message pops up informing the user that updates are available, click, done. I shouldn't have to worry about tarballs, extraction, and directories. The Seamonkey .16 update is a perfect example of how this is flubbed.
  
• GRUB - a minor annoyance, but once the OS is installed, I don't need to sit at the boot screen. A default timeout to get to the desktop would be handy instead of having to mess with the menu.lst config.file.

Once I play with the system some more, I'll post some daily usability suggestions, if I think they're worthy of mention.

[Master_wrong]

[Sylvander]

What I did as a newbie coming from Windows to make sense of handling files/folders in Puppy:

1. Installed "X File Explorer" [Xfe].
See post #24 here.

2. Ran Xfe and made some new folders named 00, 01, 02, 03.
These will automatically position themselves in numerical order at the top of the Puppy filesystem because of the way filenames are handled alpha-numerically [numbers 1st, then letters].

3.
(a) Configured my web-browser [see installing Firefox below] to auto-save to /00, unless told otherwise.

e.g. Say I was to download a PET file to /00...
Then...
(b) I can use verifypet to to check that the internal contents of the PET match its internal md5sum.
[See post #73 here]
And here's the thread that originally offered the file.

(c) Then I might use the twin panes in Xfe to move [to folder /01] PET files that have been installed, and eventually delete them.
This is an additional/alternative method to keep track of what has just been installed, having been downloaded.

4. To install Firefox.
See post#98 here.

[Master_wrong]

so what is 00, 01, 02 ?
where the partition : sda1, sda2, sda3 or c:, d:, e: ?,
can we make link ?

like 01 for sda1 etc? then change the name 01 to 01-drive c?

[Master_wrong]

this is sample of what newbie would love...

simple and all i did was rename the volume name of partition from windows

[Sylvander]

1. "so what is 00, 01, 02 ?"
Some new empty folders I made.
They could be named anything, but giving them these names means they are located at the very top of the Puppy folder system.
I make folders with these names in Partitions all over the place.
I know exactly where they are on each partition, and the kinds of things they are likely to hold.

2. "where the partition : sda1, sda2, sda3 or c:, d:, e: ?"
Those are normally located further down the Puppy folder system as seen in the screenshots below.
I have no problem remembering for example:
sda1 = C:
sda3 = Extended partition
sda4 = Puppy partition
sda5 = D:
sda6 = E:
sda7 = F:
sda8 = spare Linux partition
sda9 = Ubuntu partition
sdb1 = R: [USB 1st partition]
sdb5 = S: [USB 2nd partition]
sr0 = optical drive

3. "can we make link ? like 01 for sda1 etc? then change the name 01 to 01-drive c?"
Seems unnecessary to me, since I have no problem navigating down to those and remembering where they are located.
Notice there are LOTS of partitions/drives!
Do you find that convenient and more easy/quick?

[Master_wrong]

[medicalystoned]

[Master_wrong]

@ Sylvander

Please check http://pcmanfm.sourceforge.net/

it's file manager is surely beautiful and seem easy to use...

[sky king]

Earlier in the thread, there was a comment about automatically updating Puppy. Well, that's pretty much what I was trying to get away from in XP. I suppose I could go turn them off, too much of this kind of automatic stuff is not wanted by me. For its simplicity, Puppy is a wonderful thing. There are so many automatic setup features now, it's almost a no brainer for anyone who is curious to try Linux.

I'm pretty much a noob, and I almost immediately had a running OS from a CD! I had that success with a couple other distros, but got a cold feeling from them. On the surface, this system is real simple. And you can involve yourself as much as you want. Learning is part of the fun.

There are capable folks here to write little programs to do nearly anything (and spend hours or days testing and refining them), though. So don't let me discourage you from adding or subtracting features. Some will be included, others won't for various reasons.

A button for creating a pupsave file would be a good feature, I think

[Graegareth]

Hello, this is my first post. I have been using Linux for around three years, so when I got a new netbook from China, I naturally removed Windows and set about to find a suitable Linux distro. I soon discovered that my new toy was not well supported. It has a VIA C7 processor and a unichrome pro-II video chip. The video is at the root of most of the trouble as it is unsupported by most distros, and the few that do support it think it is 1024x768 when it is really 1024x600 so I lose a lot of necessary bits of the desktop. After going through more than 50 different distros I finally reached for a disk of Puppy that I use to rescue my desktop computer when I mess things up. It worked! That was 2.15CE. After downloading 4.2.1 I loaded it and here I am, with a working wifi, a screen with the correct resolution and a rapid startup. I did download the update to Sea Monkey and don't know how to load it but that is simply something to entertain me later. As these laptops come onto the market, expect to see a lot more people using puppy as it is almost the only distro which suits them, apart from being a first class experience.
Syd