(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I use grub-booted frugal Slacko55PAE and Puppy431 on a DELL Latitude D630 Laptop with 2x Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7250 @ 2.00GHz processors, 2GB RAM & (nominal)150G harddrive.which came with 1 bootable ntfs partition with WinXP Pro installed.

I defragged, resized and repartitioned the drive & made it grub-bootable for WinXP on the sda1/ntfs & frugal slacko55PAE and pup431 installations on the sda3/ext2 partition; a sda2/ntfs partition is for files available to WinXP & Linux :-
sda1 30G ntfs bootable with WinXP
sda2 107G fat32 for misc files available to Puppy & WinXP
sda3 11G ext2 for frugal pup430
sda4 700M Linux-swap

Video resolution is 1440x900 pixels and it has a built-in microphone but no web-cam.
It has 4 USB2 connectors and a CDRW/DVDR optical drive.

Virtually all Slacko55 worked out of the box; Barry's Simple Network setup used the Broadcom B43 driver for the BCM4311 802.11a/b/g wireless card. Screen-brightness buttons & vol-up/dwn/mute buttons all work.
Libreoffice4 and Gimp282 sfs pks are excellent. Firefox works well & fast - I reduced the cache to 20Mb to avoid filling the savefile.
The CPU freq scaling keeps the laptop nice and cool. The Sleep & Hibernate modes work & I can just close the lid & resume next day.
CUPS detected and printed with my Canon S520 colour printer via parallel and USB cables.

Slacko55PAE is a fast and reliable system on this laptop.

The Dell-630 replaces my old Dell-610 which recently lost its power supply (symptoms were vanishing desktop usb-drive icons); at $180 the refurbished 630 (with docking station) cost less than the repair estimate for the 610.

You can upgrade to gimp 284 using Slacko 5.5

http://ns1.murga-projects.com/puppy/vie ... c2713d2b69

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Medion Akoya P7624 Puppies 5XXX OK
Harder with series 4XXXX because of lack of updated firmware and drivers,
Medion is sold in low cost shops (ALDI in France)
-PCI Devices-
Host bridge : Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09)
PCI bridge : Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
VGA compatible controller : Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Communication controller : Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
USB Controller : Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 05) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
Audio device : Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
PCI bridge : Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b5) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
PCI bridge : Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b5) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
PCI bridge : Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev b5) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
PCI bridge : Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev b5) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
USB Controller : Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 05) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
ISA bridge : Intel Corporation HM65 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller (rev 05)
SATA controller : Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05) (prog-if 01 [AHCI 1.0])
SMBus : Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05)
VGA compatible controller : nVidia Corporation Device 0de9 (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Network controller : Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 1030 (rev 34)
Ethernet controller : Atheros Communications AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet (rev c0)
USB Controller : Texas Instruments Device 8241 (rev 02) (prog-if 30 [XHCI])

Acer Aspire V5 Core i3. Clickpad took a little setting up, otherwise runs Slacko like a dream. So fast I now run it from a USB instead of the hard drive. Hard drive has W8 but I dont know if it works as I have never booted it

I have retired the Toshiba A200 as it was getting noisy and I was worried it might fail altogether. I bought a HP Pavilion (dm1 4108au) laptop a few months ago as a modest replacement. briefly the specs are:

cpu : AMD E-450
graphics : AMD Radeon HD 6320
wifi : Broadcom (can't remember which one but it is troublesome for puppy)
sound : (see note below)
4Gb RAM, 320Gb HDD, no built in optical drive (but I have an external one)

I have tried 3 or 4 puppies on this - mainly Slacko until recently. I always set up the newest versions as they became available. I have also tried the 64bit pups, and found Fatdog64 easier to manage. I could not get everything to work in Lighthouse64. I now have Precise 5.6.1 as my regular puppy.

None of these puppies work perfectly straight off, and I'll explain what I did (afair) to get everything working.

In all cases the wifi needs the Broadcom wl driver - there are plenty of posts here describing the method of getting it to work. I think I used a 'Puppy Network Wizard' and then went through the 'Load Module' button, blacklisted the default module and loaded the wl module, and all was well after that. Sounds simple, but it took quite a bit of trial and error to sort it out.

Likewise with the sound:

The Multiple Sound Card Wizard finds two cards, and picks the first one (generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 3: HDMI 0...), which does not work. The second card ( SB(HDA ATI SB], device 0: STAX92xx Analogue ...) seems to be the one to pick. In the Retrovol Configuration app (Right-click on the speaker button in the right hand tray, the pick 'Config Window') I changed the Sound Card to hw:1 and then all the appropriate choices for sliders appeared, and all was good, again, after quite a bit of fiddling around.

I run puppy as a live system off a usb stick with the save file on the HDD. To get it to work like this edit syslinux.cfg on the usb: change pmedia=usbflash to pmedia=cd

Hope this helps others trying to use puppy on this nice inexpensive little laptop.

btw puppy mounts 3 hidden partitions holding recovery stuff and windows drivers etc

I've had Puppy running on some really old machines.

I have a 333MHz Compaq Armada running Retro 5.25 as a frugal (256MB RAM, 4GB HDD, 500MB swap). It's a dog -- I need to find a less intensive browser (FF is too much for it).

My 1.6GHz Dell with 1GB RAM works fine under 5.20, 5.25 -- need to put on 5.28 next (or maybe Slacko)...

New laptop...

I gave in and bought a refurb laptop: HP 6530b.

It's a Windows 7 machine, with 4 GB RAM.

I inserted a 4GB SD card in the slot on the side, and installed Lupu 5.28.005 on it. It installed and identified all hardware flawlessly...

Using it as I write... Still default boots to Win7 (my old, used XP machine is getting rather decrepit).

SInce 5.28 is 32 bit, it only shows 3 GB RAM. I think that should be plenty.

Toshiba T115D on Precise 5.7.1, everything works!

Hi All,

When I couldn't find this thread, I posted elsewhere asking for information. So some information, current as of August 2013, can be found here: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 533#721533.

mikesLr

One thing I have found that is interesting is that a laptop with limited memory can run a version of Puppy without problems till one adds applications or data.

I have an old Compaq laptop with 150 megs of memory.
I created a swap partition and did a frugal install of Lupu 520.
When run with pfix=ram, everything is displayed and works properly.

But after creating a pupsave file and adding a few programs, the desktop icons start displaying as generic icons and a lot of the built in applications fail to run.

I assume that with the heavy use of a swap partition, changes to the pupsave file are not taking into account what might be in the swap partition and corruption of the pupsave file results.

So what I am getting at is a frugal install to a laptop that has limited memory will give problems even when used with a swap partition.

I have not tried doing a full install to a partition on the laptop and that is next.

It would slow up the speed of the laptop, but the applications and data would be stored on the hard drive partition instead of memory and thus have less chance of corruption.

What is your take on this?

Hi 8-bit, I recall having seen some posts which discuss the use of a 'swapfile' rather than a 'swap partition' for machines with lower memory capacity. I haven't yet delved into this myself but maybe there is some benefit in researching this difference.

(If memory serves me correctly I think either jpeps or dewbie may have a thread on this topic??)

If one looks at versions of windows and the memory requirements of them, they seem to take less memory as they have all applications and data on the hard drive.
To have windows run similar to Puppy, one would have to create a startup batch file that would in effect set up a large ram disk, copy all applications and supporting software to it, and then specify that windows was to use the newly created ramdisk as a home drive.
I saw an article by someone that did that.
They stated that windows absolutely flew when ran from a ram disk.
But there again, having the memory for a ram disk of sufficient size was required.
That makes me wonder if a full install of Puppy would be in line with the very low memory requirements of windows 98SE that seemed to be in the area of 16 megs of ram for it and even WinXP was set at 64 megs of memory.
Frugal Puppy installs to a ram disk that is seen as its file system and with low memory on a PC, corruption is more likely to occur.

First, one goes for stability.
Then one goes for speed of execution.

Full install is the way to go on anything 256MB when I ran Puppy 4.0 Dingo on my IBM A22M laptop. Even after I upgraded ram to 512MB. Full install is the way I would go.


Thats my 2 cents on that.
[/b]

8-bit wrote:If one looks at versions of windows and the memory requirements of them, they seem to take less memory as they have all applications and data on the hard drive.

Well, the Windows OSes seem to underestimate the real memory requirements for a functioning machine.

That being said, I do think that most versions of Puppy need more power/RAM than say, Win98. A Win98 with 128MB RAM would generally be pretty usable (who knows how the modern browsers would clobber it though).

That makes me wonder if a full install of Puppy would be in line with the very low memory requirements of windows 98SE that seemed to be in the area of 16 megs of ram for it and even WinXP was set at 64 megs of memory.

I've found a general rule of thumb that Win95 needed 64 MB, Win98 needed 128MB, and every generation doubles... So extending that rule, ME needs 256MB, Win2k needs 512, XP 1GB, Vista 2GB, Win7 4GB...

The extrapolation isn't perfect, but not far off. XP will run fine in 1GB, but with Service Pack 3, probably 1.5-2GB is a better idea... Win7 (32 bit) seems to work fine at 2GB (I've used machines with 1 GB, and they are dogs). Vista was a pig, and probably ought to have 2+. Win7-64 ought to have 4GB...

I would like to see some versions of the newer Puppies have a lower hardware load. My old Compaq 333 laptop runs Win98 pretty good (I stuffed 256MB RAM in it -- it ran fine at 128MB). Puppy 5.20 is pretty heavy for it, but runs.

I recently rolled it back to 4.12 Retro, which shows a Mem load of substantially under 64MB (without loading the .SFS). I have been running 5.20 Retro, and found that at about 64MB. The newer Puppies seem to eat 128+ MB of RAM, with nothing running...

I generally prevent the .SFS from loading, as some packages (e.g. FF) really gobble up memory. On my main desktop (2.2 GHz, with 1 GB RAM), I regularly find things stop working, as FF consumes virtually every bit of available RAM... I flush the RAM cache, and free some of it, and it works for a while, then continues "leaking" to fill the RAM again. It only seems to do this with FF, not other programs that I run (I haven't experimented with other browsers, but probably should). Curiously, I don't think that I have that problem with my 2nd desktop, which has 2 GB RAM (and has no swap). FF creates a heavy load, but doesn't seem to eat all of the 2GB (or only when something "goes wrong")...

Oh, BTW, I run Frugal on everything...

I've tried the latest precise 5.7.1 on my ASUS 1015BX AMD Fusion c60 netbook, all work fine except the sound card. It detects sound card but it doesn't work. What should i do then?

rendysatrya wrote:I've tried the latest precise 5.7.1 on my ASUS 1015BX AMD Fusion c60 netbook, all work fine except the sound card. It detects sound card but it doesn't work. What should i do then?

I think that when I installed 5.28 on my old laptop, that the sound didn't work initially. Then I ran the sound wizard, which identified the correct driver and it worked fine (Menu => Setup).

I use Slacko 5.3.3 on my Acer Aspire One, the label says "Model Number ZG5". It is an early one, about four years old now, and does not get much use. I take it on holiday, and mainly use it to:
Browse, check news, weather forecast, webmail.
Show slideshows of grandchildren to friends/relations.
Store and get a larger view of photos downloaded from camera.

I find that I have to take a mouse, as the I find the left and right pad buttons too awkward to use.

I don't attempt things like games or photo editing, or other things better done on a desktop when I get home.

Within that requirement envelope I've never had any trouble with Slacko.

Gerry

Hi All,
The problem with the Acer Aspire One D270 is its employment of the Cedarview graphics chip, variously identified in the subheading of this post in the hope that doing so will help others find this post. Other computers have used Cedarview chips, including the gma500_gfx and the gma650_gfx. The information here may also apply to those computers.
As of September 2013, at least three versions of Puppy Linux work almost "out of the box" with respect to graphics, wireless and sound on the D270: that is, setting the Pups up is something anyone can do with only a little more effort than setting up any Pup on any other computer. These Pups will boot directly to desktop and automatically initiate the First Run settings wizard. To obtain proper graphics during “First Run

mikeslr wrote:For controlling the mouse, the D270 has a simple touchpad, not even adorned by the two buttons below the touchpad to which I've been accustomed by Thinkpads.

It seems like you may have a "ClickPad". When you press down on the lower edge of the touchpad do you get a mechanical click? If so, does that cause the results you would normally get from a left-click? (I'm talking about actually pressing on the pad as you would on a button, not just a light tap.)

Thanks npierce,

I'll try that. I'll also retry Slacko 5.6 Final and Phatslacko, having just re-installed them to a USB-key. Will post what such trials uncover.

For those interested in why I acquired the D270 in the first place, and which netbooks are currently recommended, see my post @http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 005#725005

mikesLr