Newbies - Puppy needs YOUR help too!

Booting, installing, newbie
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Master_wrong
Posts: 452
Joined: Thu 20 Mar 2008, 01:48

#21 Post by Master_wrong »

Installing to a USB was easy, but getting the files in their proper place was next to impossible for me to understand.
I agree... it would be great to put link to all known partition with their name not just sda1, hda2 etc...
so if we write in abiword then we want to save the document, we don't have to diving and search the right place... just select the link to the partition.

Sylvander
Posts: 4416
Joined: Mon 15 Dec 2008, 11:06
Location: West Lothian, Scotland, UK

#22 Post by 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.
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Master_wrong
Posts: 452
Joined: Thu 20 Mar 2008, 01:48

#23 Post by 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
Posts: 452
Joined: Thu 20 Mar 2008, 01:48

#24 Post by 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
Posts: 4416
Joined: Mon 15 Dec 2008, 11:06
Location: West Lothian, Scotland, UK

#25 Post by 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?
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Master_wrong
Posts: 452
Joined: Thu 20 Mar 2008, 01:48

#26 Post by Master_wrong »

Notice there are LOTS of partitions/drives!
Do you find that convenient and more easy/quick?
:shock:
You must be joking
for me after 1 year with linux, it's not too confusing, but surely for someone fresh from window surely see these as list of cryptic code,
it would be better alot if we can also see the volume label so it should show list like these

sda1 =drive C:
sda3 = Extended partition
sda4 = Puppy partition
sda5 = drive D:
sda6 = drive E:
sda7 = drive F:
sda8 = spare Linux partition
sda9 = Ubuntu partition
sdb1 = R: [USB 1st partition]
sdb5 = S: [USB 2nd partition]
sr0 = optical drive

medicalystoned
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun 17 May 2009, 07:04

#27 Post by medicalystoned »

Beuleuleu wrote:hi,



- 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.
I have the same issue, it's like looking at webpages on my PDA....

Master_wrong
Posts: 452
Joined: Thu 20 Mar 2008, 01:48

#28 Post by Master_wrong »

@ Sylvander

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

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

sky king
Posts: 72
Joined: Wed 08 Apr 2009, 08:42

Automatic updates

#29 Post by 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
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue 02 Jun 2009, 10:39

New User

#30 Post by 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

rft-hillview
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri 29 May 2009, 19:19
Location: Somerset, England

#31 Post by rft-hillview »

I guess I am probably fairly typical of many home computer users - retired but have used the large zoo animals for many years.

I have a network consisting of a main PC running Windows XP (2.4ghz "gb ram) , ADSL broadband connection , two network printers (one on HP Jetdirect and one on Linksys PSUS4) , a wireless access point , a Netgear SC101 network disk system ( 120gb mirror) and an OLD Laptop also running Windows XP but struggling. (Gateway Solo 5150 PII 300mhz 228mb ram)

I thought that one of the linux varieties might make life easier and so took advise from an old colleague who said try one of the Ubuntu flavours or if I wanted a more "windowsy" system try Puppy Linux. My friends and most if not all web searches indicated that my Puppy (or any other linux) would not be able to access and share Windows created files on the SC101 network disk - I accepted this BUT JOY of JOYs they were all wrong.

So what we now have is:
1) dual boot WindowsXP / Puppy Linux on the laptop - installation made much simpler by the excellent Forum Post entitled "Dual Boot Windows/Puppy install Documentation" . My thanks to JVR for that

2) Sucessful connection to the network - by direct Lan it was so easy but my wireless connection was harder and the dialogue boxes here could be clearer - putting all the dialogue in one window instead of sequencing the operation can lead to confusion. Still all done and up and running.

3) Access to both network printers was a very simple CUPS operation - not the best or clearest dialogue boxes to be sure but adequate.

4) Download and install of Firefox and Thunderbird both straight forward but messy to get them onto the desktop - Puppy could do with a drag and drop > put shortcut here tool - Yes I know very Windowsy but not everything out of the Bill Gates stable is bad.

5) Interesting that in Puppy Control Panel under drives there is a button called WinLan but a search of the forum does not throw up any useful information - however using the said WinLan feature it was easy to see how many stupid shares I had open on my Windows PC so I closed most of them. Then the problem began - I could connect to my shares but could not access them - always a permissions error.

After I worked out that my Windows login had no password I added one and all my shares were accessible.

6) Purely out of interest I decided to share the Netgear SC101 network disk one my Windows PC - really a waste of time because the Netgear software was already on the Windows version on the laptop. However the share popped up in Pnethood and low and behold it worked.

Ok so there is the limitation that a windows PC needs to be up and running to provide the Share of the SC101 but IT WORKS.



After all this where to now:
Well the Puppy is a really nice pet - quite well behaved and no messes on the carpet. It was not hard to install and even a Puppy newbie like myself has been able to install a moderately complex network setup and make most of it work.

I still have to experiment with Puppy applications and get my head round the somewhat wierd names that linux people use for things and I still have to make file shares on the Puppy so my Windows PC can see them but all in all setting up the Puppy was a rewarding experience and certainly one which other potential newbies should not be afraid of.

My Thanks to all the Forum contibutors without whom we would be telling a much sadder story.

rft-hillview
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri 29 May 2009, 19:19
Location: Somerset, England

Happy Puppy

#32 Post by rft-hillview »

I guess I am probably fairly typical of many home computer users - retired but have used the large zoo animals for many years.

I have a network consisting of a main PC running Windows XP (2.4ghz "gb ram) , ADSL broadband connection , two network printers (one on HP Jetdirect and one on Linksys PSUS4) , a wireless access point , a Netgear SC101 network disk system ( 120gb mirror) and an OLD Laptop also running Windows XP but struggling. (Gateway Solo 5150 PII 300mhz 228mb ram)

I thought that one of the linux varieties might make life easier and so took advise from an old colleague who said try one of the Ubuntu flavours or if I wanted a more "windowsy" system try Puppy Linux. My friends and most if not all web searches indicated that my Puppy (or any other linux) would not be able to access and share Windows created files on the SC101 network disk - I accepted this BUT JOY of JOYs they were all wrong.

So what we now have is:
1) dual boot WindowsXP / Puppy Linux on the laptop - installation made much simpler by the excellent Forum Post entitled "Dual Boot Windows/Puppy install Documentation" . My thanks to JVR for that

2) Sucessful connection to the network - by direct Lan it was so easy but my wireless connection was harder and the dialogue boxes here could be clearer - putting all the dialogue in one window instead of sequencing the operation can lead to confusion. Still all done and up and running.

3) Access to both network printers was a very simple CUPS operation - not the best or clearest dialogue boxes to be sure but adequate.

4) Download and install of Firefox and Thunderbird both straight forward but messy to get them onto the desktop - Puppy could do with a drag and drop > put shortcut here tool - Yes I know very Windowsy but not everything out of the Bill Gates stable is bad.

5) Interesting that in Puppy Control Panel under drives there is a button called WinLan but a search of the forum does not throw up any useful information - however using the said WinLan feature it was easy to see how many stupid shares I had open on my Windows PC so I closed most of them. Then the problem began - I could connect to my shares but could not access them - always a permissions error.

After I worked out that my Windows login had no password I added one and all my shares were accessible.

6) Purely out of interest I decided to share the Netgear SC101 network disk one my Windows PC - really a waste of time because the Netgear software was already on the Windows version on the laptop. However the share popped up in Pnethood and low and behold it worked.

Ok so there is the limitation that a windows PC needs to be up and running to provide the Share of the SC101 but IT WORKS.



After all this where to now:
Well the Puppy is a really nice pet - quite well behaved and no messes on the carpet. It was not hard to install and even a Puppy newbie like myself has been able to install a moderately complex network setup and make most of it work.

I still have to experiment with Puppy applications and get my head round the somewhat wierd names that linux people use for things and I still have to make file shares on the Puppy so my Windows PC can see them but all in all setting up the Puppy was a rewarding experience and certainly one which other potential newbies should not be afraid of.

My Thanks to all the Forum contibutors without whom we would be telling a much sadder story.

niksfish
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat 21 Feb 2009, 19:44

#33 Post by niksfish »

Hello, I have some suggestions about puppy, and I hope you can do something about it.

First of all, I'm kinda newbie in this linux stuff, at least I know something about the terminal, but I don't know very much (and I dont want to). But I know a lot about computers, and googling, and windows, so I consider myself something more than the "aimed user" of this OS. I always try to solve the problems by myself. Enough of that.

Secondly, this was tried with a very much older version, I think from 2008, let's say november - dicember 2008 (I think it was 4.00) Maybe you have already done something about this.

Real start:
======
_________________________
I only wanted to do a hard drive install, not frugal, but the full one, but it was too dificult for me. I couldn't install lilo or grub correctly.
It is posible that my computer was broken, but i couldnt do it.

Then I tried frugal. It installed but I couldn't get the machine to boot correctly, I still needed the cd.

So I said fuck linux, and attempted to install W98 (yes, you may hate me XD). Unfortunately, it had a weird error that i couldn't configure the clock (bad download :roll: ). Then I got angry and let the dust take care of that shitty computer.

The important thing is that what I was looking for was a O.S that when you turn the computer on, it boots normally. I dont want to boot from USB or disket, cd or whatever, I have a HDD... And I want to use it.

I think this OS wasn't designed with the focus on that. Instead, it seems that you put a lot more effort on the cd that loads to ram, the usb, etc.

It really needs something more automatic to install lilo or brub. Or something more intuitive.
I dont want to have windows and linux at the same time on that old computer. I want only one OS, and to boot from the HDD.

Also, It stinks that you have to put the cd and wait to load the OS to look in the menu for the script to install puppy in the HDD. You should really do something without the graphical einvorement. Something that makes posible to simply install puppy in your HDD, like when you install windows. That way it wouldn't need to load all the menues, windows, etc. to the ram, and you could install it simplier and much faster.


So it should have somehting like an option, to select if you have only this linux, or you wanna do an install for various OS.

I would love to see at the begining, when it ask for a command, something to install, or an option like "try puppy from CD (or whatever)" and under that "install puppy". And everything else that it may need to ask for.

Thanks for reading.

computerophil
Posts: 48
Joined: Thu 19 Feb 2009, 07:39
Contact:

#34 Post by computerophil »

MP3 –file and ASF-file
(rechte Mouseklick) > Set run action
defaultmediaplayer "$1"

WAV-file and FLV-file
(right Mouseklick) > Set run action
gxine “$1“

could be set automatically
[img]http://forum.ubuntu-it.org/avt/avatar_66267.gif[/img] [url=http://computerophil.at/PUPPYdetail.html]computerophil.at[/url]
Puppy-Links, ältere Versionen, Sprach-Derivate, etc.

puppy_linux_newbie
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun 07 Jun 2009, 19:51

Puppy newbies

#35 Post by puppy_linux_newbie »

I am using Puppy Linux version 4.2.1, which worked great "out-of-the-box". Use Puppy on a 2nd-hand Dell Latitude C600 to connect wirelessly to internet. Have flirted briefly with Fedora and Ubuntu, but Puppy is the only distro that worked right off the bat with my Ativa Wireless G card, which was the whole point. (Yes, as a matter of fact, I am too damn stubborn to just go out and buy a different wireless card!)

As a newbie, when problems occur, it is hard to determine whether a) I am an idiot, or b) something in Puppy could be easier, clearer, or more user friendly. (More often than not, it turns out that I am an idiot.)

Biggest problem with Puppy? Puppy moves so fast that documentation and forums have a hard time keeping up. I might find a solution on a forum, but it applies to a previous version of Puppy, and things have changed so much that it is no longer relevant.

That said, I love Puppy! I love the small size, ability to use live CD or install to HD, and that Puppy is ready to go as soon as the ISO is copied to a CD. (The concepts of iso, distro, live CD, etc. are all new to me. Kids, I learned to program in Fortran and Cobol on PUNCH CARDS in the 1970's! Look that up in your Funk & Wagnall's! I have never been a programmer, sys admin, or otherwise directly involved with computers except as a user.)

My biggest issue is with the Unix/linux file system, which is just a learning curve. That, and the tarball thing. Nothing Puppy specific.

Why linux at all? Tired of the MS Windows game of increasingly bloated OS's requiring more RAM, HD capacity and processor speed. Plus the broken promise of every new Windows OS being less crappy/bug ridden and more secure than the previous version. Barry Kauler et al have put the Redmond gang to shame.

DonnyOsmond
Posts: 14
Joined: Sun 07 Jun 2009, 20:48

Introduce myself

#36 Post by DonnyOsmond »

Greets all! I couldn't find an "introduce yourself" thread so I will post here!

I found Puppy via Cocko's yesterday or the day before, one very slow iso torrent later, here I am.

First impressions are...well the little fecker's gone and pee'd all down
my leg -- in a Linux sense. I've been using Suse since 5.1.

Puppy worked "out of the box". Can't believe how fast and stable it is. Hats off to the crew .

My son on my lap watching a dvd and it stuck - jam/jello.

Popped the konsole up and one 'ps ax | grep xine' and a 'kill -9 pid' later it was gone. Great stuff! Love the F12 from inside rxvt. ;-)

More to come!

drphysic
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon 08 Jun 2009, 02:28

Issues with Pup on an old Fujitsu Lifebook.

#37 Post by drphysic »

Just finished spending 1.5 days getting PL to work on a Fujitsu Lifebook, Crusoe cpu, 256 MB ram, 20 g drive. Was running Xubuntu on it, but too slow, so tried to replace with a full PL install. Spent all day yesterday trying to get grub to run, but could never get the menu.lst to run at all, and when I tried to use the interactive grub, just got errors. Gave up on that. Reinstalled Xubuntu, then did a frugal PL install, and modded the Xubuntu menu.lst and all worked fine. Was using "vga=normal" all along...

I run ubuntu 9.04 (64 bit) on a desktop, and was years ago an Unix sys manager, but have had to reacquaint myself with Unix/Linux.

Will use the laptop as a travel machine, so don't need to do heavy work with it, but until I feel comfortable with PL, will keep the Xubuntu as well.

Reactions so far:
1. Full install seems to have some deep bugs, at least on the Fujitsu, in getting it to boot.
2. Install/update of software still requires major unix smarts, could be easier without becoming Win-like.
3. Runs very well on old hardware, but ubuntu did too, just slow.
4. And last, after I registered to join this forum, Firefox crashed when transferred back to the login page, and would not restart, requiring a reboot. Very strange...

drphysic

User avatar
NinjaProof
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun 22 Mar 2009, 23:32

#38 Post by NinjaProof »

I have an old laptop that came with windows 95. It has a usb port, but I could never get it to work with a flash drive, and I couldn't find drivers for my wireless ethernet adapter. I ran puppy live from CD and immediately I could use the usb for anything and my wireless just worked.

However, at home I can't connect my laptop wirelessly, so most of my annoyances and hurdles with Puppy have been trying to find files I need without the direct connection. It took me some digging to find a version of WINE for Puppy, more digging to find and download dotpuphandler, which I needed to install/upgrade freetype - another problem I had to dig for with fonts in WINE looking distorted or blurry. Thankfully, a post with links to freetype and webcore fonts cleared the problem up.

If not for my friend telling me about WINE, I would never even have considered using Puppy, regardless of the fact that I can have both OS's installed, it's too cumbersome for me to go back and forth between windows and puppy; I'd rather have my few windows apps just work in puppy. Anyway, I wonder if more people would give puppy a chance if they knew WINE to be a viable option for windows programs that don't have a linux alternative, with a link provided for the latest WINE pet package.

ssme
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu 15 Jan 2009, 14:40

#39 Post by ssme »

i don't know if this is really the sort of thing to go in this thread - or even whether it is a problem with puppy, xorg, or jwm - but one thing that really bugs me about puppy is that despite being 'marketed' to people with old machines, it assumes a high resolution display.

my laptop runs at 1024x768, but a lot of dialog boxes are far too big to fit on the screen. this means i can't read what is at the bottom of the window or, for example, what the button options are. the box can't be resized, and maximising it simply widens the little bit i can read. the only way out is to hit Enter and hope that the button i have just selected is the right one. it happened to me just now when i tried to install the java-jdk.

in an otherwise great OS, it is incredibly frustrating!

EDIT: and it's just happened again. seeing as i've spent the best part of 5 hours downloading packages for some university work, the fact that there might be huge dependency problems simply because i couldn't read the bottom of a dialog box or see a button saying "fix this!" is so utterly depressing it's almost funny. i note there is an option in the menu to check dependencies. however, i can't use this as, guess what? the list in the box disappears off the bottom of the screen and is not scrollable or resizable. joy!

is something like this really so hard to fix? i doubt puppy will be a viable alternative to windows until it discovers scroll bars!
Last edited by ssme on Thu 11 Jun 2009, 02:03, edited 2 times in total.

mainiac
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu 11 Jun 2009, 01:20

very nice!

#40 Post by mainiac »

As a first time linux user, I am very impressed by how painless you made everything so far. The manual on how to get puppy running off a disc and install it onto my hard drive were clear, concise and helpful and you were kind enough to include the drivers and apps I needed to get onto these forums. So overall, I'm saying fantastic job so far.

I did notice something of concern. In the "How to get Puppy" section of the manual, there is a dead link to an application "md5sum.exe". I also don't think this application is needed, I was able to burn a boot disc without it just fine.

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