Distrowatch reviews Puppy 525

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nooby · #21 Post by **nooby** » Mon 18 Apr 2011, 20:44

Yes it is very unlikely so some kind of workaround seems more likely. To up the security without totally rebuilding.

bugman · #22 Post by **bugman** » Mon 18 Apr 2011, 22:52

MinHundHettePerro wrote:Didn't really keep his/her own stick on the ice, there........

i called him out on his bs, so of course:

Comment deleted (off-topic).

MinHundHettePerro · #23 Post by **MinHundHettePerro** » Mon 18 Apr 2011, 23:16

bugman wrote:
MinHundHettePerro wrote:Didn't really keep his/her own stick on the ice, there........
i called him out on his bs, so of course:

Comment deleted (off-topic).

S/h(e)/it is quite full of it, isn't s/h(e)/it

? /MHHP

scsijon · #24 Post by **scsijon** » Tue 19 Apr 2011, 03:44

2byte wrote:I truly don't understand why multiuser cannot be implemented when other tiny distros manage to do so. It wouldn't be the end of the world for Puppy. Quite the opposite I would think.

Actually, I wonder if you could pseudo it as other users, just having the login/password features added and using aliases for the rest.
ie home of user1=/home/user1 and a hard link back to /root.. You would at the time need to put a bar on external access to /root so remotes couldn't tell your a root level user but that shouldn't be that hard.

just an idea.

Remember puppy goes back to the windows95 days, in those days it was an addon for the general computer user to have to login, by default it just came up to the desktop when turned on. Even WindowsME had that feature available still, although they didn't tell you about it it wasn't hard to work out.

bugman · #25 Post by **bugman** » Tue 19 Apr 2011, 08:48

MinHundHettePerro wrote:
bugman wrote:
MinHundHettePerro wrote:Didn't really keep his/her own stick on the ice, there........
i called him out on his bs, so of course:

Comment deleted (off-topic).
S/h(e)/it is quite full of it, isn't s/h(e)/it ? /MHHP

i'm just trying to figure out why the dw mods kiss his ass so thoroughly

this is the second time that my criticism of him/her has gotten pulled

is ladislav cold? does he need the hot air?

Colonel Panic · #26 Post by **Colonel Panic** » Tue 19 Apr 2011, 09:21

2byte wrote:I thought it was a fair assessment of Puppy, one of the best ones I have seen anyway. I have used Puppy 4 series since 2008 in my daily office work and have had great success with it running as root.

Until recently that is. I installed 5.11 in the boss's computer to replace his overly aggravating XP. He loved it. The trouble began when he started sharing files on the company samba server. You guessed it, file owner and group permissions. Regardless of how you log in to the server, created files have incorrect ownership and permissions. Before anyone mentions it, there are restrictions on the server for users and groups that will not be changed. Period.

Yes I know, Puppy is not really intended for this scenario, but, and it's a big BUT IMHO, a full non-root user, not spot, is the main thing holding Puppy back. And no, PG's mods to 4.21 do not get the job done.

I truly don't understand why multiuser cannot be implemented when other tiny distros manage to do so. It wouldn't be the end of the world for Puppy. Quite the opposite I would think.

I'm no expert but I agree, I think it could be done. The question is, do we really need it though? Puppy's got a niche which it occupies extremely well; it's an OS which runs as root, can be set up very quickly and saves its sessions for future use. There are other distros which do the full corporate thing, such as SUSE and Red Hat Enterprise (also spinoffs like CentOS), and do it well.

MinHundHettePerro · #27 Post by **MinHundHettePerro** » Tue 19 Apr 2011, 09:41

bugman wrote:this is the second time that my criticism of him/her has gotten pulled

Happens to me too, and a lot of others....

Yeah, I suspected it was you that pulled the quote from his/her #!-"review" and threw it into the discussion

(while there still was a discussion). But, did you read his/her own puppy "review"?

ICPUG · #28 Post by **ICPUG** » Tue 19 Apr 2011, 12:20

2byte

In your response to my previous post it seems we both know the reason why Puppy cannot have non-root users and your refined query is perhaps rhetorical. Nevertheless, I will provide an answer.

To answer it, I suggest:

Puppy should not have full non-root users because the developers don't want them.

More than once I have read on the forum about the pain of operating as a user and not being able to quickly do things that a developer wants to do. I sometimes feel like this when I want to edit the Windows registry in my work PC but I am not allowed to do so! Being root solves this problem.

Occasionally, we users need to be reminded that Puppy is not totally for our benefit. It is for the developers to have fun as well. I think catering for being non root is one of those lines in the sand that removes the fun.

We have to accept it or find a developer who has fun creating non root users and starting again from that basis.

bugman · #29 Post by **bugman** » Tue 19 Apr 2011, 12:55

MinHundHettePerro wrote:But, did you read his/her own puppy "review"?

there's only so much abuse i can take . . .

nooby · #30 Post by **nooby** » Tue 19 Apr 2011, 13:04

Haha we love our Puppy so much that when others say it can not do the tricks the big Doggies do then we tend to say our Puppy is the best there is!

Should I put in my signature ?
I am a proud Puppy Fan Boy!

nooby · #31 Post by **nooby** » Tue 19 Apr 2011, 13:14

I think that ICPUG is right on that the Devs of Puppy don't want to be ordinary users of Puppy and a user is not privilege to do things without setting permissions by root and so on.

Could one not have two puppies then? One for Devs being root and one for the Ubuntu people that is very restrict and warn all the time

"Are you aware of that it is not a good thing to be root. We don't want you to be root but if you insist go to this link and read about it and then we tell you how to do it. But we don't like it. So now you know! "

Would be cool to be able to give the Neighbor a CD and say. Hey this is just like Ubuntu only better and faster and smaller and leaner and have more in less and so on

But I am all for that the Devs should have fun or there will be no Puppy at all. I find that very true. I had that experience too when I tried to accomplish things on my level. If it was not fun then I tended to stall and get nothing done at all. So Puppy should be all fun for sure.

dejan555 · #32 Post by **dejan555** » Tue 19 Apr 2011, 13:33

I find that it's a pretty good review. He gave few small tips for customizing too that wouldn't do harm if implemented for example terminal prompt and /dev/hda2 thing... on newer puppies it usually reads sda for hard disks and hda in that dialog is leftover from pre-4 series. It's not a big thing though but good noticed.
AFAIK one thing that he was wrong at is the sh/bash when running as spot - in puppy linux /bin/sh is symlink to /bin/bash binary so it uses bash anyway.

Also, regarding multiuser thing... well it does need quite of work to modify puppy for it BUT if Barry has his Quirky testbed for trying new ideas it wouldn't hurt to start making changes step by step - this does not have to be a radical change it can start with small things like moving spot's home to /home/spot and some other configuration files to places suitable for multiple users, then in the next release some scripts could be changed etc... then after several puppy releases, maybe this could be taken to level when it will become usable.

Once all these changes are implemented into the puppy base skeleton/woof all new releases would have the same multiuser feature.

bugman · #33 Post by **bugman** » Tue 19 Apr 2011, 14:48

nooby wrote:Haha we love our Puppy so much that when others say it can not do the tricks the big Doggies do then we tend to say our Puppy is the best there is!

Should I put in my signature ?
I am a proud Puppy Fan Boy!

i don't even use puppy any more, apart from specialized tasks

that said, its goals seem to be pretty clear:

# Easily install to USB, Zip or hard drive media.
# Booting from CD (or DVD), the CD drive is then free for other purposes.
# Booting from CD (or DVD), save everything back to the CD.
# Booting from USB Flash drive, minimise writes to extend life indefinitely.
# Extremely friendly for Linux newbies.
# Boot up and run extraordinarily fast.
# Have all the applications needed for daily use.
# Will just work, no hassles.
# Will breathe new life into old PCs
# Load and run totally in RAM for diskless thin stations

i don't see multiuser environments mentioned in that list

and while hard drive installs are mentioned, on the installation page it states:

Frugal . . . For most people this is the recommended option.

it's fine if people don't like this, but to me it seems to be what the distro is intended for - the reasons i no longer use it are that i have a new computer and want to run a server environment [apache, php, mysql, users, etc] on it - not what i think of when i think of puppy, whether i can make it behave that way or not

nobody reviews gparted and complains about the lack of an office suite, do they?

2byte · #34 Post by **2byte** » Tue 19 Apr 2011, 16:26

Thanks to everyone for the reasonable comments re multi-user. I do wish Barry and the devs would give it some serious consideration. My experience with permissions is only one real world example where multi-user is desirable.

I wonder if anyone has considered what Puppy has in fact become, regardless of its mission statement or intended purpose. It is consistently in the top 10 at DistroWatch, right up there with the big boys. That indicates to me that there are a lot of Puppy computers running in the world. Most are running with the well known default root password and browsing as root. I am concerned that some day soon someone will create a web or email exploit that will have the ability to add these Puppies to their botnet. Most of us run frugal or full installs, relatively few run only live CD/DVD. How could the average Puppy user even know if they have been compromised?

I'm very fond of Puppy. It was the one that enabled me to get away from Windows. I dread the day when I might read the news that Puppy has become the first known Linux to became a significant part of a botnet.

Think about it.

bugman · #35 Post by **bugman** » Tue 19 Apr 2011, 16:35

2byte wrote:I wonder if anyone has considered what Puppy has in fact become, regardless of its mission statement or intended purpose. It is consistently in the top 10 at DistroWatch, right up there with the big boys. That indicates to me that there are a lot of Puppy computers running in the world.

well, there are a lot of computers in the world that puppy is suited for, that the other "big boys" have left behind

i have a house full of them

there's one sitting on the floor behind me as i speak - oddly enough it's really new, with a 3.4 ghz p4 cpu and 2 gigs of ram and no hard drive and no place to put one

i have to assume that normally one would buy an external drive, but i can't afford that - so i boot it in puppy

it's so fast it frightens me a bit . . .

sneekylinux · #36 Post by **sneekylinux** » Tue 19 Apr 2011, 21:04

Well guy's as you may Know i have been taking out pup for it's walks for a long time now,and yes some previous chaps in this chat here have quoted that they think it is a good or fair review.........................................
Well i beg to differ,and the first is that a lot of linux users are root without there knowing,as someone new to linux will normally just accept things,unlike us so called moles...lol,or peeps who know better.
now many moons ago,i think it was pizzagood(dont quote me on the name) set out about making pup multi user,and i did get it to work,and this was quite a while ago,so i will be doing this again on the tube for all to see(just hope it still works..lolol)
i have a lot of respect for the guys at dw as most of the review are fine,there has been a lot i don't agree with but hey,they get it out there for all to see.
but it seems to me that we may not have using the same iso,so just pop over to the tube and have a look at my little rant,plus it's in HD...lol

Lobster · #37 Post by **Lobster** » Wed 20 Apr 2011, 02:24

sneekylinux video on youtube
http://youtu.be/EpbxUWAB6i0

Put a 'super duper' link on the wiki

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HomePage

Bligh · #38 Post by **Bligh** » Wed 20 Apr 2011, 05:57

I've never seen so many posts on Puppy in the comments section of dw. Mostly comments on root/user rather than the features and merits of Puppy. I have been following Puppy nearly from the beginning. Each release seems to get better. Cheers to Barry K. and Friends.
Cheers

Luluc · #39 Post by **Luluc** » Wed 20 Apr 2011, 16:12

Bligh wrote:I've never seen so many posts on Puppy in the comments section of dw. Mostly comments on root/user rather than the features and merits of Puppy. I have been following Puppy nearly from the beginning. Each release seems to get better. Cheers to Barry K. and Friends.

Can you provide a link? I see an article/review on Puppy there, but no comments. Where are they?

dejan555 · #40 Post by **dejan555** » Wed 20 Apr 2011, 16:34

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Distrowatch reviews Puppy 525

ot, but...