Puppy and Intel's NUC boards... will they work together?

[starhawk]

Hey folks, just wanting a little help with some long-ish-range planning. My birthday is June 20. (FYI: I'll be 27. Heh. As if it matters )

I'm thinking of putting together a system around a cheap Intel NUC ("next unit of computing" -- think "really dinky but with powerful CPUs") board if I can get my folks and OFFLINE friends to chip in the parts. I want to know tho -- can I run Puppy on this hardware?

If this happens, I will get this motherboard with its power supply --> http://www.logicsupply.com/products/dcp847ske

It requires an mSATA* solid state "hard drive", which I will get (used) from eBay. The 32gb ones are about $1/gb right now so I'll be asking for that along with 4gb of RAM (or so). I've already got the wireless card -- an Intel 6250 WiMAX PCI Express Mini Card.

I'll be running the display through one of those found-on-eBay HDMI->VGA+Audio adapters, as I don't have anything in my house fancy enough to have an HDMI input.

So final specs would be --

65W power supply brick
Celeron 847E CPU @ 1.1GHz
4gb DDR3 RAM
Integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics controller
32gb mSATA HDD (unless I find something much bigger for super cheap)
HDMI->VGA+Audio Adapter

I'll definitely be watching for a much much bigger SSD -- my laptop right now has a 250gb drive in it, but that has actual mechanical components that spin, and is considerably larger! But this is what I and my family and friends can (hopefully) afford. (I will be contributing money to this myself.)

As for Puppy -- I want to stick to a 32bit Pup for now (sorry FatDog and LH64 devs). I really, really like getting PETs off this forum and having them "just work". I can do PAE on this system if the CPU will let me. I don't mind that here. Just don't try and convince me that it's better for my Pentium M based stuff I do want GNOME 2 on this Puppy -- I'll likely be using the SFS here. I'll download that tomorrow and see how it plays with Slacko 55 as a dry run -- but I don't necessarily need or want to stick with Slacko 55.

What I do want is your suggestions, folks -- what Puppies and Puplets are likely to boot and run on this board, and of those, which do you recommend most? I don't mind doing a little troubleshooting here -- this will be a project build for sure.

Oh, right. By the way, that laptop I mentioned before, which is my main system -- it has Windblows XP on it right now (boy is that an eXPerience!). That's my "daily driver" OS after something like three years on this forum?! WHAT?? So part of this project is a move of a different sort. It's time for me to close some Windows and move on I'm ready to adopt a Puppy. It's time (The NUC boards will never ever ever support XP anyways, which rather pushes me in this direction anyways.)

*A note about mSATA -- basically this is an SSD (solid state "hard" drive) in the size/shape form factor of a PCI Express Mini Card -- that is, a modern WiFi card. It doesn't use the PCI Express bus, per se, but it does use that connector.

[tempestuous]

With such cutting-edge hardware, you should get a Puppy with a very recent kernel version, and recent Xorg version.
Slacko 5.5 would be a good starting point.

The mSATA disk drive should be no problem - the "mSATA" designation relates mainly to the physical connection. The electronic interface should be standard SATA.

You're more likely to encounter problems with the graphics display and sound interface - especially since the only audio output connection is HDMI. This requires that the ALSA audio driver (snd-hda-intel) can pass its audio stream via the graphics device, thus there's an interaction with the graphics driver ...
... that's why I suggested a recent kernel, and recent Xorg.

[starhawk]

I figured as much. The trick is going to be whether or not the GNOME sfs works with anything newer than Slacko 533.

I'm also thinking about Upup Precise & Upup Raring.

Oh -- one thing I forgot in my original post. I will need Wine. I have one closed-source program (Corel's CorelDRAW X3 application suite) that I just simply cannot give up. I hope Wine is easy to use (I've never touched it!).

[starhawk]

More advice requested -- any suggestions on Pups to try? I'm waiting on a PM from jejy69 right now -- one of the links in his GNOME SFS post is dead. It's something I need in order to make the thing work, of course.

[starhawk]

Not sure why I'm not getting more responses here... did I word something wrong?

[bigpup]

tempestuous has given you the best guess answer to what you are asking.
No one has any experience with Puppy and the setup you are talking about.
You will be one of the first to try it.
What does Intel provide as advice on operating system for this setup?

[bigpup]

Oh -- one thing I forgot in my original post. I will need Wine. I have one closed-source program (Corel's CorelDRAW X3 application suite) that I just simply cannot give up. I hope Wine is easy to use (I've never touched it!).

Go to Wine's web site and see what it says about running this program.
There is an application database that has info about how specific programs will run under Wine.
http://www.winehq.org/
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... n&iId=5321

[starhawk]

Intel is in bed with Micro$ux so you can guess what they endorse

Apparently CorelDRAW X3 partially installs, but only partially, and needs an MSI extraction utility and some manual finagling to finish.

I think I'll email the Inkscape folks and see if they've added the one thing that I found missing in their program... or learn Xara Xtreme on top of everything else.

[tempestuous]

I reiterate: Slacko 5.5 would be a good starting point.

You're in unchartered territory with that new hardware. We can't give you definitive answers, you need to load up various Puppy versions from USB, and see what happens. You need to put in the hard yards, yourself.
A Google search for "Intel DCP847SKE Linux" yields very little, except a Debian compatibility report (which is successful) here -
http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/Intel/NUC+DCP847SKE/

I do want GNOME 2 on this Puppy

Frankly, I would consider basic compatibility more important that Gnome eye-candy.
But once you have Puppy running, it should be possible to find a suitable Gnome package. Slacko 5.5, for example is based on Slackware 14.0, so you would go looking for a Slackware 14 build of Gnome.

Taking a broader look at this, Gnome + Wine + Corel Draw will increase the size of your Puppy installation as much as five-fold! It might be a better decision to choose a larger Linux distribution in the first place.

[starhawk]

I should know in the next couple days whether or not I'll be getting this hardware -- if I do get it, it will be in late June -- it's for my birthday, which is June 20.

...and I don't know ANY distro as well as I know Puppy

[starhawk]

It appears that I will be getting this hardware after all. I have to make special arrangements to pay for the NUC board itself, as I don't have a spare ~$215 all in one month -- but that is the only uncertainty present at this point.

In regards to hard drive space, and how much of it Puppy uses...

I already keep most of my data on a USB flash drive. I will either get, as part of this project, a much larger drive of that type, or I will find a way to get a reasonably spacious SSD (128-256gb) as its replacement (once Puppy is up and running on the NUC board, I can safely sell or trade my current main system, a Dell laptop with some good hardware inside). The internal drive that will be attached to the NUC board will be primarily for the operating system (Puppy) and associated programs, and will be 32gb in size. I do believe that's more than enough space for what I need

[starhawk]

May have spoken too soon. Whether or not I'll get this is now uncertain. Something came up to do with our (typically poor) internet, so I may not be getting the hardware to do this after all.

Life's like that sometimes

[RetroTechGuy]

Hey folks, just wanting a little help with some long-ish-range planning. My birthday is June 20. (FYI: I'll be 27. Heh. As if it matters )

Hey kid, y'know all those aches and pains you have in the morning?

Well enjoy them!! 'Cuz when they quit, yer dead!

[starhawk]

Ha! Wondered what those were for.

Just glad that my doctor doesn't use the word "arthritis" with me. It'll probably happen. I have psoriasis, so at least I know what kind of arthritis I'll (probably) wind up with, eventually.

To keep this thread at least a little on topic -- I won't be getting the NUC board, but I will be getting...

An Axiomtek PICO820 Pico-ITX board with an Atom Z5xx CPU! Datasheet here --> http://www.axiomtek.com/Download/Downlo ... ICO820.pdf

Well, OK, my board is a rebrand of that model, the iGoLogic i2820. It doesn't matter, the board is identical except for the model # sticker.

[RetroTechGuy]

Ha! Wondered what those were for.

Just glad that my doctor doesn't use the word "arthritis" with me. It'll probably happen. I have psoriasis, so at least I know what kind of arthritis I'll (probably) wind up with, eventually.

I had some of that on my legs at one time. I cut out tomatoes, and it went away... (I actually did that to try to eliminate the arthritic pain in my hands -- when that worked well, I also cut out potatoes)

Google the topic "nightshade arthritis"....

[starhawk]

I have it on my everywhere. I'd probably have to bathe in V8. Which I really can't afford to do...

[RetroTechGuy]

I have it on my everywhere. I'd probably have to bathe in V8. Which I really can't afford to do...

No, don't bathe in it. Eliminate it from your diet... (you would be amazed the number of things that have tomatoes in them).

[starhawk]

Meh. I can live with it. Have for years now -- it's actually not that bad, in my case. I don't itch much at all. It doesn't look that great, but then the rest of me doesn't either... 5'3" ~210lbs guy with long hair who doesn't shave often enough I'm a sight.

[wboz]

Follow up question on this - the NUC comes without a SSD, and that's the most expensive add-on part you need to buy. Is it possible to run puppy on a computer WITHOUT a HDD installed?

Because if so this would actually be a much cheaper proposition

[RetroTechGuy]

Follow up question on this - the NUC comes without a SSD, and that's the most expensive add-on part you need to buy. Is it possible to run puppy on a computer WITHOUT a HDD installed?

Because if so this would actually be a much cheaper proposition

There are a number of users who run without a HDD (often old broken machines). They run RW-CD, USB drive, etc.

My preference is to use a USB or SD card (flash memory). My Win7 laptop have a SD slot, where I installed Puppy. I use Puppy daily, and about once a month boot Win7 to check for updates, and whatnot...

For the board in question, that would be a good choice. I'd also look for one of the really stubby USB sticks. They make some that are barely longer than the metal housing...

Of course, eventually your USB flash may wear out, so periodically make copies of any important files (including your save file -- which should not be mounted when you copy it).

If you have a working machine, you should be able to install to the flash drive, then plug it into the board (I'm assuming that it will work with one of the Puppy versions, based on a report of running Debian).