Is Puppy Linux the best Linux distro?

[way12go]

Right now I'm absolute fan of Sparkylinux.

I think Sparkylinux is best Operating System in the World.

http://sparkylinux.org/

http://sparkylinux.org/download/

http://sparkylinux.org/forum/

Most of SParkylinux iso's are around 1.4GB around 10 times the size of puppy, They have a smaller 700MB one but its still 5 times larger, SparkyLinux 3.5 JWM (no-codecs) i486 <--- No Codecs, so its even broken out of the box, no Video, Really you might think its the greatest, but you added all that bloat to puppy and you'll have a better Os with puppy.
ttuuxxx

There is no doubt what you said is something that can't be dismissed with ease. I have used more than 15 Linux Distros and I found that only

1. Opensuse

and

2. Sparkylinux

are stable. All other distros have so many issues for a beginner like me. Yeah I have been using Linux for a while but, I'm still a beginner. The problem is I have a mind disorder so I can't remember stuff and can't learn with ease.

Opensuse is bloated.

Sparkylinux is light weight.

Yeah Puppylinux and Quirkylinux which is fork of Puppylinux are very good but, my experience with them was not pleasant in terms of stability.

I became a great fan of Puppylinux because of it's size+efficiency and RAM booting but installing apps was a big headache. Again, that is my personal experience.

[darry1966]

Right now I'm absolute fan of Sparkylinux.

I think Sparkylinux is best Operating System in the World.

http://sparkylinux.org/

http://sparkylinux.org/download/

http://sparkylinux.org/forum/

Most of SParkylinux iso's are around 1.4GB around 10 times the size of puppy, They have a smaller 700MB one but its still 5 times larger, SparkyLinux 3.5 JWM (no-codecs) i486 <--- No Codecs, so its even broken out of the box, no Video, Really you might think its the greatest, but you added all that bloat to puppy and you'll have a better Os with puppy.
ttuuxxx

There is no doubt what you said is something that can't be dismissed with ease. I have used more than 15 Linux Distros and I found that only

1. Opensuse

and

2. Sparkylinux

are stable. All other distros have so many issues for a beginner like me. Yeah I have been using Linux for a while but, I'm still a beginner. The problem is I have a mind disorder so I can't remember stuff and can't learn with ease.

Opensuse is bloated.

Sparkylinux is light weight.

Yeah Puppylinux and Quirkylinux which is fork of Puppylinux are very good but, my experience with them was not pleasant in terms of stability.

I became a great fan of Puppylinux because of it's size+efficiency and RAM booting but installing apps was a big headache. Again, that is my personal experience.

Debian stable is far better than Sparky or try Vector Linux (Slackware goodness).

[nic007]

I'm back to using Windows XP Pro basically full time now. Puppy is a nice plaything, I play around with it sometimes when I have time. Everything just works with Windows XP Pro, can't fault it and never have had any problems.

[mikeb]

You prefer pros eh??!!

Well it is a good bunny once tamed... removing IE not quite so clean as 2000 but seems to be good enough.

Linux...well it can do some nice tricks... always worth having around but like windows it needs taming but in a different way.

Puppyisms...the good ones ...are worth applying to distros in general...theres a lot of pup in my slax....

mike

[ttuuxxx]

I'm back to using Windows XP Pro basically full time now. Puppy is a nice plaything, I play around with it sometimes when I have time. Everything just works with Windows XP Pro, can't fault it and never have had any problems.

So you mean things like Viruses, malware, adware, trojans, exploits. Running XP is like having a one night stand with someone you just met that night, you got to use a lot of reliable protection. lol
Actually I liked XP, I used to remove around 60% of it, Secure it up and ran really well.
ttuuxxx

[nic007]

If you work on an old machine with only 256MB RAM just use windows xp end of story. Puppy linux could be useful though. For instance, if you only browse the net and don't do anything else it could be perfect. My 80 year old dad has Windows 7 on his machine. Now, he forever phones me about something he doesn't understand, bloody popups appearing everywhere, something going wrong etc. confusing him. So I decided just to do a customised frugal install of Wary Puppy which runs totally in RAM. Perfect for him, straight forward, he can now crap around with the system and nothing can go wrong. Just switch off and on again and everything is like before. Perfect, he is very happy now and has no stress that he may screw up something

[nic007]

I'm back to using Windows XP Pro basically full time now. Puppy is a nice plaything, I play around with it sometimes when I have time. Everything just works with Windows XP Pro, can't fault it and never have had any problems.

So you mean things like Viruses, malware, adware, trojans, exploits. Running XP is like having a one night stand with someone you just met that night, you got to use a lot of reliable protection. lol
Actually I liked XP, I used to remove around 60% of it, Secure it up and ran really well.
ttuuxxx

Have been using it for years. No anti-virus programs (had a long time ago before realising it's just a pile of crap), I don't use IE, outlook and all that crap. I don't download from tricky sites, I don't use media player when on line, I clean my registry every second month or so, etc.

[ttuuxxx]

I'm back to using Windows XP Pro basically full time now. Puppy is a nice plaything, I play around with it sometimes when I have time. Everything just works with Windows XP Pro, can't fault it and never have had any problems.

So you mean things like Viruses, malware, adware, trojans, exploits. Running XP is like having a one night stand with someone you just met that night, you got to use a lot of reliable protection. lol
Actually I liked XP, I used to remove around 60% of it, Secure it up and ran really well.
ttuuxxx

Have been using it for years. No anti-virus programs (had a long time ago before realising it's just a pile of crap), I don't use IE, outlook and all that crap. I don't download from tricky sites, I don't use media player when on line, I clean my registry every second month or so, etc.

But you have a firewall right, They did a test once with XP without a firewall, something like 45mins before the first intruder.
ttuuxxx

[nic007]

So you mean things like Viruses, malware, adware, trojans, exploits. Running XP is like having a one night stand with someone you just met that night, you got to use a lot of reliable protection. lol
Actually I liked XP, I used to remove around 60% of it, Secure it up and ran really well.
ttuuxxx

Have been using it for years. No anti-virus programs (had a long time ago before realising it's just a pile of crap), I don't use IE, outlook and all that crap. I don't download from tricky sites, I don't use media player when on line, I clean my registry every second month or so, etc.

But you have a firewall right, They did a test once with XP without a firewall, something like 45mins before the first intruder.
ttuuxxx

Just the normal built-in firewall which is on by default anyway. Point is, if you do not use IE, outlook, Media player online, you have basically dodged 90% of your security problems. Helps when you use a relatively up to date windows xp pro SP3, too.

[nic007]

Double post

[linuxcbon]

Hi,
I am doing exactly the other way around.
I am used to use windows XP a lot because of PC games (especially TF2, skyrim, fallout)...
But now, I see many games in Steam are ported to linux, like TF2, so I am going to get rid of XP forever. I am also surely going to use "wine" or "playonlinux" for non linux native games.
Take my advice, go full linux, it's the future, even for games.
XP and windows in general can be good, but has many cons :
- very few programs ported to windows 64 bits (firefox is not !)
- too many adwares, especially in "public" softwares (they often don't even tell you and it's hidden).
- too many viruses (no comment).
- needs too many tweaks and attention : the autorun programs (often hidden), some registry optimizations lacking, the services to disable, uneeded system files to remove (take much hard disk place), etc.
- many ports open by default : dcom rpc, rpc locator, netbios, upnp, ssdp...
- ntfs needs defragmentation all the time
- tcp ip not optimized by default
etc
Cheers.

[nic007]

Hi,
I am doing exactly the other way around.
I am used to use windows XP a lot because of PC games (especially TF2, skyrim, fallout)...
But now, I see many games in Steam are ported to linux, like TF2, so I am going to get rid of XP forever. I am also surely going to use "wine" or "playonlinux" for non linux native games.
Take my advice, go full linux, it's the future, even for games.
XP and windows in general can be good, but has many cons :
- very few programs ported to windows 64 bits (firefox is not !)
- too many adwares, especially in "public" softwares (they often don't even tell you and it's hidden).
- too many viruses (no comment).
- needs too many tweaks and attention : the autorun programs (often hidden), some registry optimizations lacking, the services to disable, uneeded system files to remove (take much hard disk place), etc.
- many ports open by default : dcom rpc, rpc locator, netbios, upnp, ssdp...
- ntfs needs defragmentation all the time
- tcp ip not optimized by default
etc
Cheers.

No, I'm not taking your advice but nice try anyway

[mikeb]

No, I'm not taking your advice but nice try anyway

rofl

Yo...anyway it took just 2 minutes for 2000 to get infected direct to the internet.... rpc on port 135 ...netbios/windows networking is equally vulnerable (so why all this SAMBA on linux???)

Routers save the day as their firewalls are enough to deal with all these open by default ports (ie a second one on the PC is a bit of a waste of time and can be a headache for local networking) though you CAN close them if you want or need to...

Beyond the ports the bundled windows 98 type software is the killer..it needs removing or at least avoiding... they are the gateways to hell...you know the ones by now.

Windows...has to be secured (but can be)
Linux...secure by default
the main difference I see.

Not sure beyond XP how friendly windows is to creative/clever software...oh yes the newer systems are shiny but then so are ball bearings....and seem to be heading into the tablet...'ah well who needs a computer anyway when you can have the next generation of mindless TV...' Its more about selling new hardware anyway. I used windows pretty much daily and have not had a single virus/adware etc for 10 years without any 3rd party 'defenses'... but that's my gain and others choice.

Oh the topic.... its not a competition...puppy does at least try out different approaches...ok some are crap...the system is not what you would really classify as a 'system' but some of it does work and often where others fail (wifi)...linux is a pic 'n' mix jobbie anyway...just take a pile of the good bits and stick them together.

mike

[tallboy]

One if not the best as a LiveCD.

Boot a factory fresh operating system and browser each and every time - a brand new 'install' all achieved within a few minutes. Do whatever you like, completely trash it or be exposed to virus ....and a reboot has you back to fresh again.

Many of the other LiveCD's aren't really usable as LiveCD's, they're more like demo's of what a 'installed' version might look/feel like. Or their support is relatively low/slow. Ask a question on these boards and likely you'll have a reply within the same day, if not within the same hour - 24/7.
When I go to my bank website I like to know that I'm using a brand new opsys/desktop and browser that's not been used to go anywhere else - all run from CD and within memory (no HDD activity). Not some other choice that's been around a while and been here and there - potentially having caught a virus/key/session/comms logger or that might leave confidential data sitting somewhere on the disk. ...

The quote is from a post made by rufwoof early in this thread, and I couldn't agree more! I only run live puppys, and I have not found any other compact, fast and versatile distribution that is a match for a live puppylinux. You have to look at the whole package; a tiny distro offering blistering speed, ease of use, totally safe, lots of available programs, and not to forget the support from a very large and extremely active forum like this one, which is absolutely superb! Very hard to beat!

The whole idea behind puppylinux, was a small but complete distribution that primarily could run totally in RAM, off a live disc or a USB stick, but also could be installed. Personally I would never install a puppy, as an installed distro, it would have a lot of competitors that may be more mature and stable, and some are also reasonably compact and close to puppy in size.
For ordinary distros primarily designed to be installed, the Debian is hard to beat when it comes to stability and variety of programs. My own is huge, regularly upgraded, but rarely used anymore for everyday tasks - my live puppys takes care of those! I also like the more compact Debian based Mint distro, which somewhat resembles the puppy idea when it comes to delivering a complete package, ready to run. They also have versions that are designed to be very easy for Windoze users to migrate to.

tallboy

[mikeb]

I go for the horses mouth... slax based as it does all those fast...ram loading ...install anywhere type stuff using aufs to its max and with xfce you get something around the 100MB mark and infinite sfs ability to add on what you like. It also benefits from a full set of linux/unix utilities and standard system structure ..and multiuser and...oh well I am biased.

Safe...well if you ignore those scripts that can potentially wipe a hard drive...but we won't go into those....
Chaotic package management...one for improvement.

Swings and roundabouts really...I just try and jump on the best swing I can find

mike

[Saladin]

Ask a question on these boards and likely you'll have a reply within the same day, if not within the same hour - 24/7.

Definitely worth repeating. I recently joined the forum for another distro, and it was a completely different experience. Right from the registering I didn't feel welcome. It was an especially difficult captcha, no audio option either, and then I had to do it again before I could post. My password wasn't up to their standards (I mean jeez, it's a Linux forum -- it's not like I'm giving it my credit card number), and then there was something like twelve pages that I was asked to read before posting -- the forum rules, the FAQ, the wiki, the distro's philosophy, and so on.

The Puppy Linux forum has always been welcoming and helpful. One of my best forum experiences of the last fifteen years.

[mikeb]

Agreed... a saving grace is the open nature of thee forum.. we drift further off topic than most could ever dream to cope with and the rest of the linux world tends to be so far up its own butt that darkness has befallen them

mike

[nic007]

Agreed about the forum. Very helpful and mostly decent guys. And best of all is that those posters who really know a lot do not act like people having chips on their shoulders (well mostly).

[darry1966]

Agreed... a saving grace is the open nature of thee forum.. we drift further off topic than most could ever dream to cope with and the rest of the linux world tends to be so far up its own butt that darkness has befallen them

mike

Yes not many Linux forums have an off-topic section where you can talk about other stuff very much enjoyed your Boat stuff Mike.

[mikeb]

Whatever floats yer...sorry ...my boat eh

Well most humans do tend to have interests and needs outside of the one in question. In this case we all run computers and at some point puppy linux was used/tested but that common thread does tend to include a multitude of other systems and hardware even within the topic.

That is perhaps stating the obvious but such flexibility here does keep it bouncing along when others have ground to a halt.

Should the topic be 'Is murga the best forum in thee world?'
mike