LegacyOS 4 and games

[vjones777]

Hi,
Legacy sounds like it might be exactly what I need for a friends older (2003) PC, but I need some guidance on which to go for.

a) I think OS4 should work on the hardware (Pentium 4), so I suppose I should try that. However they play games a lot so I would like to give them the games that come with 2.1 gamer.
Is it possible to install those games on OS4 mini? How would I do that - would it just be a case of a adding the gamer extra pet packages? What about games that are in the base 2.1 gamer but not in the extras (Dukenukem, quake etc)? How would I add those to OS4?

b) For OS2, OS2.1 and OS4, is there a system requirements list? eg What type of processor is required (eg 386, Pentium 2, pae, acpi etc.) ? It would be great to be able to save them from buying new hardware.

c) It looks like the recommended install is a full install to hard drive. I would like to back up before installing new pets (I've broken puppy installs before). Since this is a full install, I presume I can't just backup sfs files. Is there a recommended way to backup the system (other than cloning the install partition)?

Thanks very much.

[ardvark]

b) For OS2, OS2.1 and OS4, is there a system requirements list? eg What type of processor is required (eg 386, Pentium 2, pae, acpi etc.) ? It would be great to be able to save them from buying new hardware.

Hi...

From what I understand, a minimum of a Pentium III with 256 MB's memory is recommended for OS 2.1. Not sure how well it would run with anything lower than that nor do I know what versions 2 or 4 would require. I've never run this version of Puppy before, so I couldn't tell you anything about it.

Regards...

[Colonel Panic]

Hi. Just briefly on your questions. John's really the person to ask but I've run Legacy on a couple of computers including my present one, which is as old as the one you mention, so I have at least some experience with it. However, please treat what follows as provisional until someone better qualified comes along.

a / To run Legacy 2 games on Legacy 4 you need the SDL libraries, which 4 doesn't have. I think they can be installed from library pets but I don't know which ones would work.
Maybe other libraries too, depending on the games.

b / System requirements

Memory

Legacy 2 should run with 128 MB of RAM but you'll need a swapfile (John recommends you make one before attempting a hard drive install anyway). It's more comfortable with 256 MB or more.

Legacy 4 isn't really viable with less than 256 MB of RAM, and really needs 512 MB.

Processor

I've never tried Legacy on less than a Pentium 3 so I wouldn't know. One of the earlier Teenpups (the forerunner of Legacy) might run on a Pentium 2, but I wouldn't guarantee it. Even a Pentium 3 is practically vintage nowadays though.

c / No, not really - this is a drawback of a full install rather than a frugal one (which makes backups easy).

Hope that helps.

[vjones777]

Thanks chaps.

Col panic - you are a wealth of information as usual... I've seen a lot of your posts about on the forums. Thanks for all the help you provide everyone.

Yes, that does help. If anyone knows details on how to get games going on OS4 I'd appreciate any further info. In the meantime I'll see what info I can dig up on SDL.

The machine has 512Mb - since it has plenty of drive space I may just end up installing both gamer and OS4 as dual boot so they can play games as/when they want.

Thanks again.

[Colonel Panic]

Thanks chaps.

Col panic - you are a wealth of information as usual... I've seen a lot of your posts about on the forums. Thanks for all the help you provide everyone.

Yes, that does help. If anyone knows details on how to get games going on OS4 I'd appreciate any further info. In the meantime I'll see what info I can dig up on SDL.

The machine has 512Mb - since it has plenty of drive space I may just end up installing both gamer and OS4 as dual boot so they can play games as/when they want.

Thanks again.

Hi, and thanks for the kind words! Installing both OS2 Gamer and OS4 sounds like a good idea to me too (I use OS2.1 LTS, which is very similar to Gamer).

In case you or anyone else reading this doesn't know, here's the repository for both OS4 and OS2 (which is far more extensive than OS4's).

http://puppylinuxstuff.meownplanet.net/LegacyOS/

With 512 MB of RAM available you should be able to install Wine in OS2, which would be a good move IMO since that would give you access to most of the older (XP and before) Windows software programs and even some newer ones such as the latest Firefox, Seamonkey and Thunderbird - and there's a lot of those!

There's a link to Wine 1.3.7 in the OS2 repository: I think it would work in OS4 as well.

Best,

CP .

[vjones777]

In case you or anyone else reading this doesn't know, here's the repository for both OS4 and OS2 (which is far more extensive than OS4's).
http://puppylinuxstuff.meownplanet.net/LegacyOS/

Thanks - I didn't know that. That would ge good info for the Legacy wikki (unless I missed it)
Good idea about wine. I'll add that to the list.

Cheers.

[Colonel Panic]

In case you or anyone else reading this doesn't know, here's the repository for both OS4 and OS2 (which is far more extensive than OS4's).
http://puppylinuxstuff.meownplanet.net/LegacyOS/

Thanks - I didn't know that. That would ge good info for the Legacy wikki (unless I missed it)
Good idea about wine. I'll add that to the list.

Cheers.

You're welcome. I have to say that for a distro which runs on old computers, Legacy OS2 is amazingly complete.

It does pretty much everything I could want except for one thing - for some reason (libraries too old?) it won't run Softmaker Office, and I wouldn't even worry about that if I hadn't shelled out a year or so ago for the paid for version of Office 2012.

[Colonel Panic]

A quick update; as an experiment I'm posting from OS4 having managed to get some SDL games working in it (concentration and icebreaker). To make it work you need to install the dotpuphandler pet (which enables you to install software from .pup files as well as pets) and then one called LIBSDL1.2-forDoom.pup.

Here are the links;

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... .0.4-2.pet

http://dotpups.de/dotpups/Games/LibSDL1.2-forDoom.pup

[john biles]

Hello vjones777,
Legacy OS 2 will run on a Pentium II PC with a 350Mhz Processor with 128Mb's of Ram. I'm currently got one set up as a Jukebox using Javatunes at work for our foyer music. Occasionally I use it for work related stuff and it's usable.

Getting all those games working in Gamer took time so I recommend installing both Legacy OS 2.1 Gamer and Legacy OS 4 Mini and boot which ever one you need at the time.

If you want to experiment go for it! Good luck.