Newbies - Puppy needs YOUR help too!

Booting, installing, newbie
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johnfriction
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue 04 Jun 2013, 22:57

My experience with Puppy

#881 Post by johnfriction »

Glad this thread is up -- helps me feel like I'm contributing in a small way. :) I just started “getting into" Linux a couple months ago. We have several computers in the house: a new Windows 8 HP Envy dv7, a 2009 or so Dell Latitude 1440, and an HP Mini 110 netbook (1.6Ghz Atom, 2GB RAM). I've tried several distros on the Dell or the HP Mini, including Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, and Linux Mint. I've decided on Mint for the Dell (dual boot with Win7) and Lubuntu (only) on the netbook. The netbook is INCREDIBLY more satisfying to me with Puppy or Lubuntu than with XP!!

At the same time, I've been playing with Puppy and found it to be fun. It does run faster on the Dell than Mint. I would definitely say that Lubuntu is faster on the netbook though than Puppy, including bootup and even overall speed. Puppy works out of the box on both machines, including wireless, which is very impressive because the stupid Broadcom drivers do not work on any of the *buntus/Mint without plugging into Ethernet and downloading the firmware.

The Windows 8 HP is another story, and I haven't spent a lot of time on it yet. Mint 15 might be best, and that's probably what I'll try and convince my wife on with dual boot if I can get HDMI to work right… we don’t get cable or anything and use it every day to watch TV. Puppy does boot on it with UEFI set to legacy mode and Secure Boot turned off, fortunately HP makes both pretty easy. However, it took some tinkering to get the video to work in Puppy and initially did not boot to GUI (it's got an AMD A8 CPU with AMD Radeon graphics), and I have had no luck at all with the sound. Tried the ALSA wizard several different ways, etc. I probably won’t keep trying.

Anyhow, I’ve been very impressed with Puppy and would probably use it on a computer with a dead hard drive or a slower system than the HP Mini. I suppose I wonder why I personally would use it frequently over Lubuntu, which seems just as fast and easier to set up certain things I need (like Dropbox and WINE with Word 2003). I think Puppy might be better off too with something like LXDE—JWM looked very dated when I first pulled it up, although it’s grown on me a little. I know there’s LxPup, but how much space would it take to offer both JWM and LXDE, which is also very lightweight? I know the idea of switching to Firefox or Chromium with Slypheed has been tossed around too – SeaMonkey’s horrible UI was a turn off and I installed FF right away, which works great on both my Dell and HP.

It’s been fun diving into the Linux world, and I’m going to continue using Puppy USB stick now and then.

starhawk
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#882 Post by starhawk »

johnfriction -- a note about sound, I have a particularly persnickety Compaq that's not quite as new but taught me a few things nonetheless.

There may be a setting in BIOS to set the internal audio to "Auto" or "Enable" or "Disable" -- there was in my Compaq, and when I plugged a graphics card into it, which by the way was a 2xDVI card, Puppy claimed the card had HDMI ports and tried to pipe the audio (unsuccessfully) through that! Whoopsie. Changing the BIOS setting from "Auto" to "Enable" and then running Puppy's "Multiple Sound Card Wizard" fixed that pretty quickly -- once I figured out that this was the source of the issue.

Also -- you might try Upup Precise 3.8.3.1 or Upup Raring 3.8.7 -- both are in the "Puppy Projects" section of this forum and are extremely well done. (We call 'unofficial' versions "Puplets" and they are usually supported just as well as the official builds.) I have Upup Raring running on a small, weird, but very new motherboard I have that's waiting for a case right now. That board previously had an earlier build of Upup Precise (Upup Precise 3.8.2) and those two Puplets are the only ones that I could get to work with the board -- it has "Poulsbo" graphics (Intel's new graphics whoozimawidget for Atom processors that don't use the i945 chipset -- those things are a real trip, I tell you!).

johnfriction
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue 04 Jun 2013, 22:57

#883 Post by johnfriction »

starhawk - Thanks for the tips! I'll have to keep trying the sound -- I'd take Puppy over Windows 8 any day!!

ssreddy
Posts: 41
Joined: Wed 12 Jun 2013, 16:39
Location: Hyderabad, India

Love Puppy Linux

#884 Post by ssreddy »

Started using Puppy Linux Slacko version since 2 days & am immensely happy with it.

Really amazing how so much is built into such a small foot print. Hats off to the developers.

I have installed it on to an 8 GB USB flash drive.I keep getting the message that the max limit that I can allot to my personal file is 1.50 GB. When I have so much space left, why can't I allot more? In fact, I did allot 2.2 Gigs now & it's working fine. I have 2 GB of RAM.

I have downloaded & installed Google Chrome; It has no menu entry. How to open it from the console? I have subsequently installed & using Chromium though. This one does have a menu entry.

I have been using Linux (Ubuntu, Mint) since 2011, so not a total newbie to linux. I love Linux in general & now, Puppy in particular. I have win XP on the hard drive & this one on the flash drive & am immensely happy. I now feel there is no need to go for Ubuntu or Mint.

Thanks once again.

andytwo2
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun 30 Jun 2013, 21:27

newbe help

#885 Post by andytwo2 »

Hope im in the right general area. I was looking for some help with xastir.

TKS

Dewbie

#886 Post by Dewbie »

andytwo2 wrote:
Hope im in the right general area. I was looking for some help with xastir.
First try a search using xastir as keyword.
See if your question is answered in those threads.
If not, start a new thread, perhaps in the Beginners Help section.

PuppyUser2309
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue 18 Jun 2013, 23:26

#887 Post by PuppyUser2309 »

Not sure if this is the right place for this kind of feedback, but here goes - I tried to follow the instructions in the Puppy Linux Manual for installing Puppy to the hard drive. They're good but possibly outdated.

The "Installation-Frugal" section here http://puppylinux.org/main/Manual-English.htm#Manual05 explains how to use GRUB bootloader. I'm new at this but my understanding is that GRUB bootloader has been superceded by Grub4DOS.

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Omega
Posts: 37
Joined: Wed 12 Jun 2013, 09:50
Location: Germany

#888 Post by Omega »

I have a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L1300 with a CeleronM CPU with 1,4GHz and 512MB memory.

At first I tried Puppy Precise 5.4.3 but this version didn't worked because a CeleronM is apparently not PAE compatible. Then I tried the Retro version of Precise 5.4.3 and was amazed by it.

Everything was like I wanted from the beginning: A clean desktop, WLAN, Internet, accessing windows shares, a word processor, spreadsheet, all common video codecs, flash, java vm and many more. Wow!

Meanwhile I updated to Precise 5.6.1 and am still very excited. And I'm glad that the kernel in Precise 5.6.1 supports both PAE and NON-PAE processors.

I hope that Puppy Linux will continue to support old(er) computers in the future because I don't feel like buying a new PC and updating to Win7 or Win8 anymore.

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ardvark
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Location: USA

#889 Post by ardvark »

Hi all...

I just recently installed Precise Puppy 5.6.1 for an old eMachines T-1090 that has a Celeron 900 Mhz (Socket 370,) 256 MB's of memory and a Radeon 7500 64 MB PCI add on card. Before that it was using the onboard Intel 82810 graphics chipset.

Of all the lightweight OS's I've tried so far, Precise Puppy works the best on this system, even though the hardware is too old to handle videos.

One recommendation I would like to offer is that the Puppy Package Manager be reworked to where I am not asked a series of questions when I choose something to install. Questions like what server to download from and whether or not to install dependencies can be left up to the manager.

For those who want to be able to have these choices, an "Expert mode" button can be offered that would allow this. Otherwise the manager can handle the details. I like Synaptic a lot for this reason, it just does the job without bothering me. :)

Also, having a lot more software to choose from would be a great bonus. Currently, it's pretty slim pickin's as to what's available.

Best Regards...

tropicalretriever
Posts: 27
Joined: Mon 24 Jun 2013, 10:54

#890 Post by tropicalretriever »

Hello everybody,

I have tried a lot of different distros including Debian based and Slackware based, but I have only tried Puppy once. As I am typing this I am burning another ISO and will give it another look. The reason I am hesitant is that you are always running as root and I couldn't find a firewall, although there may be one I don't know about. I think the best thing about linux is all the choice it gives the end user, so why not let them choose if they want to set up a root account or not? That is about it, and thank you for a great distro. I know a lot of hard work goes into making it.

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ardvark
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Location: USA

#891 Post by ardvark »

tropicalretriever wrote:The reason I am hesitant is that you are always running as root and I couldn't find a firewall, although there may be one I don't know about.
Hi...

While I'm not sure about the other versions, Precise Puppy 5.6.1 (and probably earlier, to some extent,) comes with a firewall, which a window, (either during a live session or upon installation to, say, a hard drive,) will offer to set up for you if Puppy detects and is able to use your ethernet or wireless device. If given this option, it's probably easiest, in most cases, to choose "automatic" unless you want to fine tune the parameters. :)

Regards...
Last edited by ardvark on Sat 27 Jul 2013, 04:37, edited 1 time in total.

tropicalretriever
Posts: 27
Joined: Mon 24 Jun 2013, 10:54

#892 Post by tropicalretriever »

ardvark,

Thank you for your reply. I found the firewall and have set it up. I appreciate your response.

Kindest regards-

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ardvark
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Location: USA

#893 Post by ardvark »

tropicalretriever wrote:Thank you for your reply. I found the firewall and have set it up. I appreciate your response.
You're welcome, glad I could help :)

kidx
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun 28 Jul 2013, 08:42

#894 Post by kidx »

This just too dificult to install i would love an arcade edition with steam and thunderbird on it but its to damn difficult to install and nothing installs right please fix teh installer casue if I cant install it rihgt then i cant use it at all same goes for angel linux nothing works right for installing nice distro but dont install right.

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ardvark
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#895 Post by ardvark »

kidx wrote:This just too dificult to install i would love an arcade edition with steam and thunderbird on it but its to damn difficult to install and nothing installs right please fix teh installer casue if I cant install it rihgt then i cant use it at all same goes for angel linux nothing works right for installing nice distro but dont install right.
Hi....

It is a bit more challenging than other distributions, I agree. I had to learn by trial and error with Gparted (which is probably going to be your first stop before installing,) and the boot loader before I was able to install it on the hard drive of the system I'm using it on. If you would like to give it another shot, let us know and we can give you a hand. :)

Regards...

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Pat the Rat
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri 02 Aug 2013, 03:05

Puppy install = waggin' tail

#896 Post by Pat the Rat »

Have had a pair of HP T5540 Thin Clients sitting around for a while. They've a VIA Eden running at 1GHz. I upped the RAM to 1GiB. The internal 44-pin header is populated with a 512MiB DOM or flash card. I'd previously run Slitaz 3 on one of them, but have never been able to get 'Taz 4 to run — something hinky with the graphics I suspect. I tried Puppy a looong time ago and set it aside. I've been tinkering with 44-pin adapters with a plan to install an SD card. While waiting for my parts from the River People, I went ahead and burned the two latest releases of Precise. The box supports PAE so I used the non-Retro version.

Installation was quick and fairly painless. I've ditched SeaMonkey for FF and installed UnPet. I don't need the combo-chat-mail-browse. Now I'm in the process of figuring out how to shrink my install down since the DOM has about 188MiB left free. Been uninstalling stuff I don't need using UnPet. I'm thinking this will make a dandy low-energy fanless torrent box, using an external NAS or USB drive as a target. Of course, I'll be acquiring only legal and public-domain files from the interweb.

I think this is a mighty nice distro for this application. Documentation is good, pop-up dialogues help neophytes like myself understand what's up, and tweaking is pretty easy. Everything important has worked "out of the box": network, sound, graphics. For now I'll be keeping one unit running Puppy. The other will get the 16GiB SD adapter and will get a "chunkier" install of some Debian-type distro (this I tested using a notebook drive adapted to the DOM header).

This is a fresh install so I'll keep messing with it until I break something. Maybe, as time goes on, I'll report back. Give it a few weeks to "age".

Good dog. Sit , stay.

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mikeslr
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If (or NOT) a Puppy Works on your Computer, let others know

#897 Post by mikeslr »

Hi all,

I figure that if you multiply the number of different computer models --each with different motherboards, CPU, wifi adapters, sound and video cards-- by the number of puppy variants, you'll get a number in the hundreds of thousands. Almost invariably, your first question was "Will this Puppy version work with my computer?" By next year they'll be many more "Beginners" asking the same question. By next year they'll probably be 6 more Puppy versions. And there's a good chance that a couple of years from now you'll be thinking about buying a new computer and wonder whether any of the recent Puppy variants will work with it. Of course, you can ask, and some "Regular" may know, stumble across your question and answer. But there are many more users than Regulars.The information each user possesses has value. One way every fan can "pay for" receiving a great, free system is to "pay-it-forward" by providing information.
If you have a laptop, take the time to post the make, model and Puppy version which works fully, or almost fully, to the end of the PuppyOnLaptop thread. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 175#705175.
If a Puppy version is still being developed and some essential function doesn't work, post that information on the thread discussing that Puppy. Essential functions are "boots to desktop," sound, graphics, ethernet and wifi. The Dev of the Puppy Version and those "testers" who follow his work are the people most likely to figure out how fix something which doesn't work. But even if they can't, future beginners and Puppy fans will know not to use that Puppy Version or, when possible, avoid that computer.

mikesLr

rufus
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed 11 Sep 2013, 15:31

tiny c compiler

#898 Post by rufus »

I run Slacko and Lucid from usb sticks. They just work and are blindingly responsive. So thanks to everyone who has made this possible. I can now carry my own PC in my pocket.

Could some consideration be given to including a binary of the Tiny C Compiler (tcc)? The GCC is HUGE and does not seem to fit in with the Puppy philosophy of having a small but pretty complete Linux which can be run from a usb stick.

I use the Windows version of tcc and find it does all I want.

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vovchik
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#899 Post by vovchik »

Dear Rufus,

I use gcc every day and have used tcc when I was toying with the idea of creating a tiny BaCon pet that would include tcc. Peter van Eerten obliged me by including tcc as one of the compilers that can compile BaCon-generated c source. Unfortunately, I found that the tcc-produced binaries were huge, and I still don't know how to shrink them. I can produce a little GTK Bacon program using GTK shared libs, which I strip and then UPX and some weigh in at as little as 6k (using Bacon's PROTO and PRAGMA options, plus clever gcc compilation parameters). I have not found a way to come anywhere close to this using tcc. This means, in my limited testing, that while tcc is small, the progs it produces are not. :( Perhaps somebody has some experience here and can give us some hints.

With kind regards,
vovchik

rufus
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed 11 Sep 2013, 15:31

tcc compiler

#900 Post by rufus »

Dear vochik,

Thanks for the response. My interest is in having tcc included in a Puppy distribution so that I can run it from a usb stick just as I am doing now. The size of the binaries it produces is of less concern to me as my C program are a few hundred lines at most and for me gcc is a bit of overkill. I already use the Windows version of tcc from a usb stick and find it very good for my purposes. It just works! And that is the great thing about Puppy it just works!

rufus

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