Bash on Puppy lacking certain commands

[mihailolja1]

Hello,

I'd love to use Puppy for learning the Linux command line, in particular to pass the Comptia Linux plus exam. (I have it installed on an ancient 10 yr old netbook device)

My issue is that many commands seem to be missing, lsdev for example or who-r.

Do I need to install something else and if so what?

Thanks in advance.

Mihailo

[Dingo]

Puppy provides a set of standard linux commands bundled with busybox. These have not all the switches of standard linux commands, to have these, you can compile or download the coreutils package

[greengeek]

Don't just use one distro.

If you plan to end up working in a server environment you will probably need to focus on a combination of Redhat (or CentOS as an easier variant) and also Debian because they are so different. (Redhat and Debian are the best examples of distros that use the very different RPM and DEB packages), but also work with Slackware because it teaches you to be more self reliant (doesn't contain bloat to do your work for you).

SUSE might also be worthwhile depending on your future employment choices.

There is also value in using Arch at the beginning (because it's documentation is great) but you may also want to get started with Ubuntu because it is bloated, broadly functional and helpful (the opposite of Slackware). Ubuntu will be mostly useful if you want to work in an informal, small business environment. Otherwise for Enterprise use - stick with the aforementioned major distros.

Puppy is a cutdown distro and will help you build a skinny system that does basic stuff but will lead you astray if you want to learn mainstream stuff.

[mihailolja1]

Thanks so much both of you for the advice.

I will look into coreutils and perhaps installing a very light version of Centos/Debian/Slackware on this ageing netbook.

And yes of course I will be experimenting with various distros, probably several VMs is the best way to go? That way I can test commands on various distros.

[tallboy]

Run busybox without options, as shown, and you'll get a list of available commands, but they again may have limited options.
Edit: they use arguments and functions, but you know what I try to say...

[Mike Walsh]

@ tallboy:_

Yah, I agree, Olaf; easiest way to find out what commands are available. But it's still an impressive list for such a tiny OS, ain't it??

(Needless to say, core-utils would have to be compiled for the specific kernel you're using...)


Mike.

[jafadmin]

Debian based distros use the "runlevel" command instead of "who -r", I think.