Newbies - Puppy needs YOUR help too!

Booting, installing, newbie
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TechNot
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Joined: Sun 09 Feb 2014, 20:06
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#921 Post by TechNot »

Hello All

Being an admitted MS Zombie and really only looking at Linux because XP is due to be dropped from support

The first and foremost question on my mind is ... which Linux works best on MY machine

I happened to get here by way of an old disc given to me with puppy 525 on it... which btw installed pretty much hassle free ...it was suggested in the forums I try the new slako56 which I am on now ...again installed pretty much hassle free and seems to be working fine ( I wont know for sure till I try to do something and it wont)

I'm tempted to go get Ubuntu but somehow I get the impression that I would just be switching to a new Zombie clan

It was also suggested I try puppy 528 but there again ... it seems there are various versions of that OS as well

so my lil peek behind the curtain to see what Linux is all about has left me with the temptation to just close the curtain and forget it ... the choices and questions are somewhat overwhelming

From a "Zombie" point of view I dont wish to spend my time finding the right one ...or how to make it work ...

and the words "open a command line and edit this line" .... oh hell no ! I'm outta here lol




[/quote]
IBM Thinkpad R51 2888HU1 .. pent M 1.5 .. 2gig ram .. intel graphics

(This is the smaller 14 inch version) detailed specs in WWW link

jjreid87
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue 04 Mar 2014, 17:58

Greetings

#922 Post by jjreid87 »

Got sick of everything crashing on a windows 7 craptop and found my way to puppy. A year ago I tried loading ubuntu on a frankenstien computer, I got it working a couple of times but then the videocard would go tits up and I'd have to reload it. This was much less painless. However, after learning how to stumble around in the console, I found myself scratching my head while learning that basically everything I was trying to install needed a c compiler. Then I tried to install gcc a couple of times before learning about the sfs manager. It seems like a lot of newbs start here. Why not offer a beefier puppy to them that doesn't leave them scrambling around to get simple programs to work?
I guess you have to learn somehow

431user
Posts: 19
Joined: Sat 01 Feb 2014, 22:42

A familiar experience

#923 Post by 431user »

I have also had problems installing programs in Linux. The requirement for the gcc compiler was not obvious and took me awhile to figure out. I am currently struggling with dealing with dependencies which is very time consuming. If you can find a package for a particular program it is easier but this is not always possible.

A really good user manual would be really helpful but that may be too much to ask. Posting questions in the Beginner section can be helpful if that one knowledgable person who has the answer responds. Searching the forum is also useful as long has you have a specific term to search for.

Unfortunately you're right, you have to learn somehow, and that is often the hard way.

J_D_
Posts: 519
Joined: Sat 12 Apr 2014, 03:10
Location: Indiana

#924 Post by J_D_ »

Just decided to try Linux 2 weeks ago. Put Mint on one laptop but needed a non PAE ISO for my HP nc6000 because of the pentium M processor. Had to do some searching to find Puppy. Then I had to find a way to put it on a USB. LInuxLive USB made it all easy for me, once I found it. Finally got it done and I like it better than Mint. The one thing that is lacking seems to be getting started. I have no idea how, but thats the only thing I see that needs improvement. Make it easy to find and easy to download and put MS out of business. Just kidding about the MS part.
Came to this forum looking for a place to say thanks so that is the reason for this post. THANKS. Slacko Puppy rocks.

rokytnji
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Joined: Tue 20 Jan 2009, 15:54

#925 Post by rokytnji »

so my lil peek behind the curtain to see what Linux is all about has left me with the temptation to just close the curtain and forget it ... the choices and questions are somewhat overwhelming
I hear this alot in forums.

My outlook on this.

Does it overwhelm you when there are choices on the shelves when you buy groceries?

Does it overwhem you when there are choices on buying a car?

Does it overwhem you when you walk into a topless bar and have choices on what table dance you can have?

Does it overwhem you when you go to a party and see all the different choices that you have when choosing to talk to a single person?

Usually when I peek behind the curtain and see a lot of choices.

It makes me want to walk through the curtain and see all the choices available.

But, I guess some are not as adventurous as I am.
Because, we are all not the same.

For all the beginning compiler posts. Remember to look for the devx.sfs that goes for your install. Like I did.
Anybody have a devx.sfs link for the Puppy?
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 141#729141

Don't give up.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 962#739962

Just like I have fun playing with my 5 dogs.

I have fun playing with Puppy Linux.

You have fun too. :wink:

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RetroTechGuy
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Location: USA

#926 Post by RetroTechGuy »

rokytnji wrote:
Anybody have a devx.sfs link for the Puppy?
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 141#729141
The devx should be in the folder with the .iso for the version you selected:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/
[url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=58615]Add swapfile[/url]
[url=http://wellminded.net63.net/]WellMinded Search[/url]
[url=http://puppylinux.us/psearch.html]PuppyLinux.US Search[/url]

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MrAccident
Posts: 361
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#927 Post by MrAccident »

rokytnji - just a little side note - when you pick one of the cars; it's not to mess around with it for two weeks - learning it; only to find out it cannot go in reverse; which makes it useless for you. But the good news is - you can learn to become a mechanic; and fix the problem. Though nobody ensures you that a week after - you won't find another problem like this.
But to make it clear - I think it applies the least to Puppy; more generally to the Linux world.

Anyway I came here to give an advice as this thread asks, from my point of view.
What made me look for another distro, was mostly the lack of flexibility in the choice of software. Mostly not having the option to uninstall software.
Now after a lot of research, and trying out a few other distros - I reached the conclusion that I will probably stick with Puppy; because even with the extra software - it's still much smaller and more complete than the smallest distros; I mean the combination of the two.
It's great to start off from a very small system; but ,I don't know about other people, but I want to change all the applications, other than the ones for the most basic needs (PBurn, GParted etc), system ones, and FireFox. So as a newbie - I start to think about the fact that I'm gonna be stack with them for ever! So I think there should be an option to uninstall them with the same ease as with those I manually installed. And maybe there should be bare-bones versions together with the default ones.
BTW, for me - the program that really broke the camel's back, was ROX-filler.
Another thing is how easy Puppy gets broken with incorrect power-off of the computer; with full install. It happened in two computers from maybe the first time something like that happened. I don't know if in the frugal installation it does not occur. If so - you should warn people about it. And I don't mean just to tell them that it's not "the right way" to install; I mean to tell them it's dangerous! :-)
OK, that's enough ranting. Hopefully it won't fall on deaf ears.

Pelo

Could you say it in french, please ?

#928 Post by Pelo »

Commonwealth citizens, if you want really export the famous australian Puppy, now it would be time to translate it. for barbarians .
Ils peuvent le faire eux-mêmes ? Bien dit.
Your feedback is important (but don't post technical queries here - use a new thread).
Ne postez pas de demandes techniques ici. :D Well. First we translate. Second we shall try to understand 'what you say' dear linuxians geeks.
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dogle
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#929 Post by dogle »

Pelo, merci.

Qu'est-ce que c'est tu fume, mon ami?

Woofer
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Joined: Mon 16 Jun 2014, 15:14

#930 Post by Woofer »

"How NOT to install Puppy Linux"

At the beginning, as French understanding half of some sentences, I thought it meant "The bad way to install Linux"


http://puppylinux.org/main/How%20NOT%20 ... 0Puppy.htm

Also it took time for me and lot of videos to watch on Youtube before I find this sentence :

"Impatient? Jump to frugal install to hard disk
Or get Windows installer"

Which is written in little font.

I would appreciate something like :

"Windows installer"

in big letters as part of the main menu of the website...

SickXXenD
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun 22 Jun 2014, 05:09

Puppy better???

#931 Post by SickXXenD »

Well I think the only way puppy will be better is if anyone can PLEASE help me figure out how to install it on on my droid RAZR Maxx HD and or dual boot it with the current droid jellybean OS then make an app to help other people do it and throw it on the app market for free to increase puppy's user base!!! The more of us out here using puppy the better! : ) Puppy on my droid with network capability would make my millennia! [/img]
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starhawk
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Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...

#932 Post by starhawk »

Sorry, Puppy on phones is a long way away. There seems to be a lot of demand, but the effort to implement such a thing is astronomical at best.

Every make/model of phone has at least slightly different hardware. Each piece of hardware needs a driver for Puppy to use it, like any other OS. Puppy is built primarily for older-but-not-yet-truly-antique computers. It doesn't have phone drivers built in.

Further, phones are kind of a closed ecosystem AFAIK, which means that drivers don't really exist outside of what's provided on the phone when you buy it, unless and until the manufacturer releases an upgrade. On top of that, those drivers are useless to Puppy because IIRC Android drivers don't work in more ordinary Linuces. (Saying "Linuxes" is somewhat grammatically incorrect, because Latin, BTW. Not that I'm being anything but a Grammar Nazi by saying that!)

Remember that Android is Linux-by-technicality. It's a Linux kernel and a Java interpreter, at its core, and absolutely everything else is built (in Java) on top of that. Yeah, it has the kernel, but that's really the only actual Linux in it. It's really a whole different creature at that point, which is why Android drivers and Linux drivers are incompatible.

*ahem*

So in order to get your phone running Puppy, someone would have to write drivers for absolutely every piece of hardware on that phone. Puppy has limited support for ARM-type CPUs (technically SoC's, or "Systems on Chip, but I'm not getting into that here), one of which is in your phone (specifically it's a Qualcomm SnapDragon S4 @ 1.5GHz -- thank you, Mr Google) via FatDogARM which has just recently entered Beta stage. I can tell you offhand that your processor is not supported at this time.

However, Puppy is a sort of a Do-ocracy. This can potentially work out quite well for you. If you are a software engineer with lots and lots of experience doing programming for PCs and smartphones both, and you know how to write drivers (which is, I'm told, highly challenging), then you have a chance here. For the record, nobody on this forum AFAIK has the knowledge and experience to do this for you.

There are three ways to accomplish this...

(1) Get the Android drivers (probably in "binary blob" form) and decompile them back to some form of human-readable code. (You almost certainly will not get open source drivers, even for Android.) Then develop your own Linux drivers that function identically (or nearly so), having picked a kernel to build against, so that they are compatible with Puppy (I will recommend building against FatDogARM so that you're not totally reinventing the wheel). Once you have drivers, you'll have to write interface programs so that Puppy can use the drivers. Once you have working drivers and working interface programs, you have the ability to properly Puppify your phone.

(2) The other DIY option, if you don't want to mess with porting drivers, or if the binary blob decompiling doesn't work out so well, is to get another Droid RAZR Maxx HD and take it apart. Get datasheets for each and every bit of hardware, and reverse-engineer how it all works. *Then* write your drivers. Speaking from a legal perspective, this is probably actually the better way of the two so far -- code can be (and rarely /isn't/) copyrighted, and if the license agreement given with the drivers indicates no reverse-engineering, then Option #1 just flew the coop.

(3) There is a truly infinitesimal chance that you can convince the company making your phone to develop and release drivers for real Linux. If they will listen to you at all, they'll probably ask you to fund it. This will not be cheap, so I hope you're quite well off if you want to do this.

...good luck...

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Deimos
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Re: Newbies - Puppy needs YOUR help too!

#933 Post by Deimos »

Hello Everybody,

Thought it was about time to actually post something. I really like puppy linux. At the current time 'm using precise 5.7.1. I have dabbled around linux since the days of Red Hat 6 and Mandrake 7. And while I'm no power user I get around pretty good.

I really liked the website it was helpful on getting puppy installed. I learned a long time ago what rtfm is and why it is important. I've been running puppy now for about a year and have tried a number of different pups.

I really don't have anything bad to say about puppy linux. It's one of the best if not THE best linux distro's that I have used. Guess that's about all I have to say except, Keep up the great work Puppy is an AWESOME linux distro.
As Above, So Below

Puppy Precise 5.7.1, Toshiba Satellite T135D, 2x AMD Turion Neo X2 Dual Core 4 Gig Ram AMD RS780 Video

Pelo

The main problem is english.

#934 Post by Pelo »

Lot of people will not try Puppy (or Linux) because everything is english written or spoken. newbie means from outside Linux, in my opinion and outside development.
That is the reason why non native English spoken people don't try or stay in Linux.
One way to improve would be that people talk their native language on the forum,
I know that American and British are so eased by the English rule, that they will never admit my proposal.
I am quite sure there are so many non-English users as English ones. A spanish talks to a spanish in english.
Be aware of that, even with Google translation, our thoughts are far from what we say, because lack of vocabulary.
It would be exactly the same when you choose where to go on holidays.
Just to underline this huge problem. Not for you, but for my family. I used to speak English when working (aircraft) but i am an exception.

dogle
Posts: 409
Joined: Thu 11 Oct 2007, 12:41

#935 Post by dogle »

.... catching up ...

... starhawk, star post! ... quite brilliant, and so helpful to me and I think a great many others.

... pelo, you make a very important point on the language issue (I think?) but, heck, you've been around here long enough to know that worldwide there exist several Puppy communities using languages not represented on this forum, and even here we have had French and German speaking sections for many years. As starhawk has reminded us, Puppy is a do-ocracy ... so if you feel so strongly, why not go for it and kick off a Spanish section on this forum? Spanish is surely becoming a very important language computer-wise in terms of population numbers and increasing uptake of the technology.

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Makoto
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#936 Post by Makoto »

...but we've more or less had a Spanish section...
[ Puppy 4.3.1 JP, Frugal install ] * [ XenialPup 7.5, Frugal install ] * [XenialPup 64 7.5, Frugal install] * [ 4GB RAM | 512MB swap ]
In memory of our beloved American Eskimo puppy (1995-2010) and black Lab puppy (1997-2011).

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wimpy
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Re: The main problem is english.

#937 Post by wimpy »

Pelo wrote: A spanish talks to a spanish in english.
.
Of course, if one speaks Euskera and the other Catalán - one of the greatest Spanish copla singers, Conchita Piquer, learned to speak English before she learned Spanish (castellano), because her first language was Valencian. :)
It is a matter of some regret that this English language (only historically associated with the English nation) is not now called something else, say Shingle. It could then be considered a universal language like Esperanto. It is at the moment possibly the most widely known language, counting not only native speakers but those who have it as a second language (wiki has it at 2130M, Mandarin next at 1026M with Spanish at 528M).
As a frequent contributor to the Spanish language section you are no doubt aware of that section's existence. Is there something else that can be done to help non-English speakers take up puppy?
LxXenial16.08, LxPupSc17.07.01,Lucid 5.2.8 and others - all frugal

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otonita
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#938 Post by otonita »

As a non-geek newbie I found linux to be a bit overwhelming at first but it gradually started to make sense (especially with all of the "how to's" and forum support available). I almost gave up at the beginning because I was confused about all the different variations of linux - it just felt overwhelming to a newbie. After trying out a bunch - I now have puppy precise, but I did also try a few others;

- LUCID seemed good at first but then my windows created lots of off screen buttons - which I could only access by clicking "alt." It was doable but got really annoying.

- UBUNTU LUBUNTU and BODHI - they just wouldn't boot from the USB. I'd get the logo screen and then it would run for hours trying to load. I'm not even sure if those are linux platforms (not sure if that's the right term).

A suggestion about Puppy Precise - during the hard drive installation process - using "universal installer," it gives you just two options for where to get the .sfs file from ("CD" and "Directory.") In my case however, I just had a USB but there was no option for selecting USB. I ended up copying the files from my USB over to "downloads" on the hard drive, and then using the "Directory" option.

Also, the thing that messed me up multiple times was the save-file process during first re-boot. I kept doing a save-file (because it really encourages you to do so). But in my case it wasn't necessary because I only had one partition and wanted to use it as my only operating system.

This forum is GREAT - and I've gotten so much help it;s amazing. I wish I had known about the forum earlier on in the process.
-

-

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Techtardette
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Very Easy Install. Difficult software installation.

#939 Post by Techtardette »

I am very new and can't offer much input. WHen looking for help on software installation, I had trouble because I need to install software for tethering my phone in order to get onto the internet. Installing from a CD without internet connection seems to be very difficult to say the least. Maybe I am looking in the wrong places, but I am glad I found this forum.

Puppy Linux impressed me so much that I have decided to take the time to learn how to use the console. So, kudos to all you developers! Keep the updates on Precise 5.7.1 coming! :)

nuagedeboucane
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Location: Baie St Paul, Quebec, Canada

#940 Post by nuagedeboucane »

For my oldest laptop, it will be a keeper. :wink:

As a hobby, I'm trying to make my old Dell Latitude CPi, which was optimized to run with Win 98, then was "upgraded" :lol: to Win 2000, a kind of usable one. I have a few machines (5 desktops, 3 laptops).

I heard about Puppy when I was looking for an apropriate distro for my old "compusaurus" :lol: I have already tried DSL, Debian and then Puppy. DSL was fast, but I have never managed to get wireless network function. Debian was functionning, after a HD change (30Gig instead of 6), but waaaaas toooo sllllooooowwww. Only Puppy made my museum artefact work that well.


Oh, from my point of view, it is not all perfect. Some edges are somehow a little rough. For example, if you want to add repos, you have to manualy edit config files. For a newbie like me, this is a little.... complicated.

The wireless LAN wasn't functionning well with the proposed driver. I used to succeed configuring it, but after some time, it used to disconnect from the LAN by itself. But with ndiswrapper and the XP driver, it works like a charm. No more disconnecting. The network is always available.

Some other things like that: I wanted to install the French langpack. It wasn't available in the PPM. I did a refresh and... ZAM!!! :shock: :? No more packages. So, after some searches I did a full install , opting refresh. No result, still no visible packages. Then full install, opting wipe. Then, as I have started all new, I got all the packages back in PPM. To get my so wanted french langpack, I went on the TOUTOU website and it got installed like a charm, by only clicking on it.

The last thing I have to fix is my network printing problem. I have received some good advices to help me, so, probably, my problems are about to vanish. :D

All in one, this an excellent distro. I wouldn't wipe out all my Mint systems to install it, but if a get another machine for free, I will probably put a new doggie on it :wink:

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