Newbies - Puppy needs YOUR help too!

[acefsw]

My advice would be to open a new thread in Beginners Help, asking for help with Intel HD sound problem
tempestuous is the specialist for this, so you could also try pm'ing him

Aitch

Thanks, I have a post in the sound section. My original post here was that overall I like puppy etc, except for the sound issues and despite that would still recommend it to my friends. Tangent happened due to replies.

[JoePillenwerfer]

I've been playing about with Puppy 545 for a few weeks on a couple of old PCs and am slowly getting used to it but have a couple of questions. Sadly there seems to be TOO MUCH information about and I can't find the wood for the trees.

I've installed Thunderbird and set it to be the default e-mail client but if I click on the 'Mail' logo on the desktop I still get the thing that came with Puppy.

Is there anything equivalent to Window's 'Quick Launch Bar'?

I've also downloaded DosBox but can't work out how to install it. All I'm wanting that for is to run a few simple old DOS programs so if there's an alternative way I'd be pleased to hear it.

The biggest problem I have though is finding files. For instance I saved my FireFox Bookmarks from my Windows lap-top to a USB stick but then had the devil's own job locating them to install them into Puppy as the browser thing seemed only able to see the hard disk. In the end I copied them to the desk-top and loaded them from there.

All told though I think it's a great product and the problems are down to my ignorance and having to UN-learn how to do things the DOS/Windows way.

I'm sure these questions will have been asked and answered before but I can't find them.

Keep up the good work.

- Joe

[theblackpig]

Hi ,Discovered Puppy by chance , what a brilliant distro!
Having read some of the comments I agree that for a newbie the manuals lag behind.
The only downside I have found so far is the ability to increase the "owners " filing system by a max of 512 mb per reboot.
Having said the above and spent a day Googling and delving I now have what I craved for a full install on an external (500 GB hard drive)
Well done!!!

[dru5k1]

>> I noticed that for the 5 series puppy you're using a transparent panel and I really like the transparency! this screenshot is my desktop
with fluxbox set to 116 transparency and I think that it would
be a great default look for puppy - you guys should consider it



(the fluxbox style here is mydefcon_1 by tenr here>) http://tenr.de/styles/

[jerimum]

Hi to everyone,
I am a Puppy Linux newbie and would like to introduce myself.

I run Ubuntu 11.04 on a Dell Precision XPS, but when a friend asked me to install it on his old PC I realized it was not the right Linux distro: the live CD was performing really slow since the system probably didn't meet the basic Ubuntu requirements.

So I started to do some searches and burnt the latest version of live CDs of following distro:

Linux Mint XFCE
Linux Mint LXDE
Lubuntu
Sabayon LXDE
antiX
Puppy Linux 5.2.5

The computer is a HP Pavilion ze4900

CPU 1.5-GHz Intel Celeron M
RAM 256 MB
Graphics/Video Memory Intel Extreme/64MB shared
Hard Drive 4200-rpm 40GB
Networking Options 802.11g
Primary Optical Drive DVD-ROM/CD-RW
Wireless Networking 802.11b/g

I then tested each live CD to the RAM usage and Puppy was the winner, running with 32 Mb only (!). I carefully read installation guide from official site and performed a full installation alongside with Windows XP, which went just fine.

Now I have a system wich is booting in 30 seconds and can do everything I need.

The only drag compared to Ubuntu is the network manager: with Ubuntu my 3G internet key worked just out of the box, with Puppy I really don't understand how to do that. (I will post this in another section)

The overall impression is really good !

[starhawk]

Glad you like it! ...and welcome, as we say, to the Kennels!

One small thing. A "frugal" install is a little different, but will perform even better in a number of subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways. I would politely suggest that you reinstall, and do a "frugal" install the second time.

If you want to know the technical explanation, PM me and I'll give it to ya. I'd post it here, but this isn't really the right place. Suffice to say that the names are a little misleading, at least to me.

[davrosintas]

Just wanted to thank the Puppy Linux community.

I inherited a Toshiba laptop about two months ago with Mobile Celeron 1.8 Ghz processor and 512 Mb ram. It had Win XP installed and ran very slowly.

I had previously very limited experience with Ubuntu, dual booting with Vista on my main PC and realised that it would be too resouce hungry for the laptop.

Fortunately I found Puppy Linux. I have not installed, frugally or otherwise but boot from CD with save files etc. on hard drive.

It has transformed the laptop into a most useful machine.

Once again congratulations to all Puppy developers for such a fine product.

[kozak6]

.rar support would be nice.

The 24 hour clock doesn't seem to be the best choice for a default setting.

[FleaBitten2]

yeah that 24 hour clock was a odd choice for default. I would like to see the dillo browser defaults a bit more in the fashion of the rest of the package also.

not being critical, just sayin

The MENU button was a nice change in the new version, although blue was an odd color, I would have thought grey or something more edgy.

I know branding is important, but the most important branding is obvious, its a beautiful package.

[mechulkalan]

Turkish keyboard support would be nice.

[Kanalu]

Honestly, I've only been using linux about 4 days now, and I've tried about 20 different distros already from live cd. I don't know how much help I can be since I came hear to learn the ins and outs of the distro better.

The reason I started in linux is because I had a Windows 7 desktop that just wasn't salvageable under it's operating system. It's a huge beast of a machine with 8GB ram, a TB hard drive, and a second 320 GB hard drive. It's a quad core AMD Phenom II 64 bit.

After using it for a year Windows usability went out the... err... window. Half the software quit working. Registry errors started popping up. I could still do a few things on it, but it was pretty much a big paperweight.

Enter linux. I like the availability of tons of software packages on the big distros, but I don't like the forced upgrade on some. Reminded me of Windows. I was running mac for a while and I really liked the streamlining compared to windows, but I hated the proprietary software.

I ended up doing a frugal install of lucid 5.2.8 on a 8GB usb solid state drive, and I've been using it to do everything I was doing on windows (with the exception of playing Grand Theft Auto 2 and Plants vs. Zombies) in Lucid. Got my machine back and it is superfast. Still got my notebook running XP, but as soon as I get my desktop set up that might change.

Today, I'm in the process of moving my media to an ext3 partition on my 320 GB drive, then I'm ridding myself of the windows partition. I'll be loading a puppy partition on the TB drive along with checking out a few of the other light distros to see what I like. I may end up going multi boot with a couple puppy family distros, tiny core, DSL, and maybe a few more. I've got plenty of room for it, and all the smaller distros are working seemlessly.

I've got my beast back, and I can finally tap into the power of it. All I can say is... Wow!!!

I love you guys!

[schondie]

All I can say is "Wow" after trying out Puppy. I've played around with some other Linux releases, like many others posting in this thread, but this one has totally blown my socks off.

Everything worked on my Aspire One from the word go. Usually other flavours, and Win 7 but let's not talk about that here, have made me search for additional drivers etc.

Sure, I've had a few problems with the touchpad after installing some .pet (I can't remember which one) but I managed to nearly get it back to how it was when I first installed Puppy on a USB.

I'm so happy that there's a thriving community for this and I'll be sticking with it as this is a great OS.

On the downside, I'm a complete noob and I'm having problems with finding the correct answers in the forums. Eventually I get there (or start all over again) if I persist.

Thanks for making this.

[Moose On The Loose]

On the downside, I'm a complete noob and I'm having problems with finding the correct answers in the forums. Eventually I get there (or start all over again) if I persist.

Think back to the first day you had any computer and compare that with now. I think you will discover to your pleasant surprise that you know a lot more about computers today than back then.

People switching from Windows often have initial problems like clicking twice on the icons. Over time you will find you stop calling spreadsheets "XL" and the like. Mental habits change slowly but they do change.

[killylun]

New to puppy. Tried vector linux on an old laptop, ubuntu and some other desktop-types (e.g., redhat) on a desktop replacement notebook. My new netbook doesnt entirely like puppy, but even as a n00b it hasn't taken me too long to get it pretty much to exactly where I need it. I like the emphasis on ease of install even for booting from USB.

Three things:
1) I would love to have a USB flash drive that looks like a FDD, ZIP, and HDD (the combo-boot option), but I can't seem to get that one to work. Prob just a n00b issue though and really only somehting that people like me, with an old sony vaio (that hates booting from USB) and a new hp netbook, would care about. I'd love to use the same USB flash drive to boot into either one.
2) Most of my friends and aquaintances wouldnt stand the time and energy necessary to get the hang of puppy. Not that puppy is particularly difficult, its really a linux issue in general. Most people expect to be instantly gratified these days. However, as a sign of things to come, perhaps, my parents (retirees) are thinking about a more secure OS like linux and they like the idea of running from RAM off of a USB drive. No doubt - puppy is where it's at for that. Not the easiest to fully configure and get used to, but the installing and running of essentials (in RAM booting from USB) is a hell of a lot easier than many other distros (i.e., even my dad could do it^^).
3) As far as I can tell puppy was originally built for slower hardware and ease of installing/booting (similar to something like vector linux) and also seems to be still be the best for exactly that. I say stick with it. It would totally blow my mind if I could use the same install on a USB drive on virtually any computer I encounter. I travel a lot, prob move to China next year, versatility and security are key. Call it nomad puppy (Cynic linux, anyone? no, too many negative connotations with small c cynicism. at any rate, puppy is much more like what I would expect from something that calls itself linux).

[CEW]

I've been running LUPU for about a month now, and I really like it, but I don't know enough about it to give you feedback about features I'd like to see or bugs that might be occurring, so I'll just tell you how I'm using it, a couple of the problems that I've had, and let you take whatever you can from the information. I am using Puppy to recycle an older PC (Sony Vaio from 2000) for use as a media driver.

The reason I need something like Puppy is that the PC originally came with Windows ME (ugh, I couldn't even stand it when it was brand new). I removed ME and used the machine for almost 9 years with it set up to dual boot Windows 2000 and Red Hat Linux. In 2009, I finally crashed it badly enough that it was not recoverable - the file system and partitions were completely hosed. I would have reinstalled Win2K and Red Hat, except that I've lost the installation discs sometime in the last decade. I tried other Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, but they were too big to run very well on the old machine - the processor was constantly redlined. So, she's been sitting in a closet for over a year now, but I don't want my old Vaio sitting in a closet, collecting dust, when it used to be a powerhouse (circa 2000, it was a relatively powerful machine that I used for Photoshop and other greedy graphics software).

I have other, newer and more powerful PCs for any applications I need to run, so I don't really need to use Puppy for those. Plus, I'm never planning to connect it to the Internet or even to my local network, so there's no need for any of that software in my usage model. I simply want to use the old machine to play movies and media. The processor has plenty of power for that. It still has the original CD RW and DVD players that are both working, plus I've got some newer USB storage devices full of music and movie files that I'd like to be able to access and play.

So, there is a lot of Puppy that is going to go to waste in my use, but the core elements of running on an older PC and playing well with media software and hardware are the two main things that I will be making use of.

Things I like about Lucid Puppy:

• I was able to install and set up everything I needed WITHOUT going online
  It's easy to install (I installed it to the hard drive, because the CD and DVD drives are 10+ yrs old and I don't want to overly use either one of them. My BIOS does not allow startup from USB, and I don't know how to make it happen.)
  The GRUB installer and customization instructions are nicely done
  The hard drive partitioning tools are nice and easy to use
  It works with my old hardware, no drivers were necessary

Things I don't quite like about Lucid Puppy (although they could be from user-error):

• It doesn't play well with NTFS storage devices (they will work, but not perfectly)
  The DVD player doesn't 'quite' work correctly for movie DVDs (maybe just needs a driver, or maybe the problem is with Mplayer?)
  Hard drive install doesn't like a manual shut down (afterward, it stalls during bootup, so I had to start over from the disc)

I am now downloading Wary Puppy and I'll give it a shot to see how it behaves and if it will meet my needs a little bit better than LUPU has.

P.S. I know you're wondering, so I'll just tell you the processor is an Intel Pentium III 866 MHz, and it's got 512 MB PC-133 SDRAM with a 40 G hard drive. (And it came with Tomb Raider!)

[OneMixDJ]

Greetings All,

I just completed my first Puppy install on an old Gateway laptop that was running sluggishly on XP.
Now with Puppy, it just boots up and works. The wait time I experienced in XP is no more.

I did this install because this is the laptop my family uses for quick internet stuff.
It's been so really good, that I am considering rebuilding an XP machine that I use for converting another XP machine to Puppy.

I have an XP machine that I use for general stuff and a faster running machine that I use for recording and other things.
I just might have them switch roles and rebuild the general machine to Puppy and just do my recordings there; leaving the faster one for XP-only stuff.

I installed Audacity and also Samba on the new Puppy laptop; but I haven't moved forward yet on testing that; which will happen during this week.

One thing that I would like to figure out though; and this is regarding GRUB.

When I boot the Puppy laptop, I have to select the kernel from the GRUB menu or else it just sits there waiting.
I want to automate that to have it choose Puppy within 3 secs. This way if one of my kids boots it up, they won't need to select the GRUB entry.

Overall, good stuff!

[torgo]

Loving LUPU so far - booting from CD on a regular system or from an old unused SD card on a netbook is great. Definitely some questions and some things that might need slight tweaks though, especially for new users.

I'm introducing a retiree to Puppy and noting all the issues he's experiencing, and I plan to repeat the process with a few other new users to help find what extra tutorials might be helpful.




The first question/issue is one of my own... I'm running a system with three physical hard drives. The first one has two partitions (a Windows XP setup). The other two are a mirrored RAID, set up through the motherboard (ASUS M4N68T-M V2).

Windows handles the RAID just fine, recognizing the two drives as a single drive.

Lupu does not - it still reads the drives as two separate drives and can write to them individually.

Also, and this is where things get weird... I had a Lupu 5.25 save file that I copied to the non-RAID hard drive. After converting it to 5.28, it no longer sees the RAID drives at all. They simply don't exist in PMount.

But... when I copy the exact same save file to a USB stick and load it from USB, the RAID drives are there.

Anyone know what the heck is happening here?

[torgo]

Another item: I've seen a puplet listed where someone says that a specific Pup runs a game (Battle of Wesnoth, I think) in "windowed mode" because netbooks can't handle the screen resolution required to run that game in full screen mode.

How do we go about getting programs/apps to run in windowed mode?

I would prefer to run at 640 x 480 resolution on my own netbook if I could, but many apps don't offer scroll bars to let me see everything that should be on the screen.

In particular, the Pup Control Panel has buttons and other key components that aren't available on the screen in 640 x 480. Also, trying to install things from the Ubuntu repositories is often impossible at that resolution, as the list of dependencies makes the whole thing too big for the screen, and the buttons you would have to click end up off the screen.

Is there a secret I haven't found yet for making programs run in windows with scroll bars?

[torgo]

And two other observations based on the experiences of a friend that I introduced to Puppy.

He's a recent retiree who runs Windows 2000 on his own system - but has a new printer that doesn't support Win2k. To help him avoid forking over to upgrade to Win 7 on an older machine, I gave him a CD of Lucid 5.25. Getting the right driver was an adventure, but working together we got his printer set up just fine.

And he's getting the hang of Puppy surprisingly well. I'm acting as the tech support desk, which should be a frightening thought for the rest of the Puppy community, as I frankly have no idea what I'm doing either. It's a case of the stupid leading the blind.



First quick observation... New users are highly unlikely to find their way to a forum like this one and post their own experiences.

Some won't know the forum even exists, but most simply won't care enough about learning Puppy to sign up for an internet forum just to post their feedback. If they run into things they don't understand, they'll drop Puppy and go back to another distro or just stick with Windoze.




Second... attaching files to emails (through gmail, Yahoo mail, etc) was overwhelming at first for this one particular new user. Even after the appropriate hard drive was mounted, finding the root directory and then mnt and the drive was a bit much for a beginner.

And in this case, having "root" as the user ID added to the confusion, since the name "root" suggests to newcomers that /root would be the top level directory.

A few quick walkthrough tutorials to show new users basic things like where to find files on their hard drives might be helpful.


(That might even be a good basis for a Puplet - Starter Puppy. Throw in a bunch of tutorials as built-in items, along with WINE, Firefox, and whatever other programs might make Windows users as comfortable as possible with the transition.)

[Lobster]

Help offered:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... ?p=526#526