How to install Puppy via USB onto old Asus netbook?

[Sailor Enceladus]

Hi DavidSpector,

Glad you got Tahrpup working on USB. To put on hard drive, when you're in Tahrpup on the USB stick, click on Install icon on desktop, then select Puppy Universal Installer (top icon), Internal Hard Drive (probably the first icon on the 2nd section from the top), pick the partition you want, choose Directory, grab the vmulinuz from your USB, Frugal Install, and it should copy it to a folder on that drive. After that is finished, then run Grub4Dos bootloader config in the menu, and it will create a menu entry for Puppy next time you boot (without the USB stick plugged in). You can delete Windows XP later if you want, everything you need will be in the puppy directory on hard drive. Good luck!

[bigpup]

It looks like each time I boot I will get the system already set up, although I haven't tried that yet.

Now we are getting into how Puppy works.
That you will need to learn from using Puppy.
Puppy does do some things different from other OPS.

Yes everything is saved if you make a save file when you do the first shutdown.
You will be asked to make a save.
Select to put the save on the usb if offered a choice.
The shutdown process will walk you through making a save.
Any settings and stuff added are stored in the save.
It updates as things change while running Tahrpup.

Because you are using fat32 for the format on the USB flash drive.
The save file can only be up to 4GB in size.
When you first make it you are given choices about what size.
The save file stays that size until you use the resize personal storage file program to change the size.

Think of the save as the data storage location for Puppy.
Example:
save file is 2GB in size.
Tahrpup has stored 300MB of data in it.
The save file still has 1.7GB of free space left for storage.

[DavidSpector]

Sailor Enceladus, please explain "grab the vmulinuz from your USB".

I had fun with puppy live on the USB, now taking forever to save a 512 MB Save image.

I like this desktop so far, especially the fact that everything works and that the menu system is so compact. Too bad I can't use Linux for my "real work" since I have to be compatible with Windows. Also because I've grown dependent on the wonderful tools I've found under Windows: editor (although I woud probably love retirning to Emacs if you have it, PHP, good integration between those two, etc.

Probably I would need a more familiar name in Linux distros for serious development work, but this puppy seems perfect for my wife, who only does browsing and maybe someday Skype video.

Thanks all so much for your patience with me and your help so far.

[Mike Walsh]

@ DavidSpector:-

One word of advice. You won't notice any difference in speed during normal operation, whether you run from USB or whether you run from the hard drive. Puppy's operational speed is dictated by the clock speed of your RAM.....and it doesn't matter if loaded from USB or from HDD, that will not change.

What you will notice is a difference in boot-up and shut-down times.....but that is all.

----------------------------------------------------------

Since I haven't run Windows for years, I'm not the best person to give advice on what you want to do next.....I can't replicate your steps, so as to give relevant advice!

Sailor's instructions appear very straight-forward; however, if you need any clarification, don't hesitate to ask.

You won't need to make any partition changes; you will, however, need to specify the partition you want Puppy installed to. The Puppy Universal Installer won't be able to perform its job unless you do.

What you're contemplating is, to the best of my knowledge, only possible with Puppy.....since it is the only O/S, Linux or otherwise, which is capable of running from a directory/folder, rather than requiring a partition all to itself, the way Windows (and most 'mainstream' Linux distros) want.

Any problems, ask away. That's what we're here for! This isn't any harder than any other 'install'.....it's just different to what you're used to, that's all.

.....I would probably love returning to Emacs if you have it.....

Hah! The man's a glutton for punishment, too... (You don't happen to have a penchant for Vim, too, by any chance?)

It's certainly available if you really want it. I believe you would be able to get it through the Puppy Package Manager in Tahrpup (the PPM, for short).


Mike.

[foxpup]

Sailor Enceladus, please explain "grab the vmulinuz from your USB".

I had fun with puppy live on the USB, now taking forever to save a 512 MB Save image.

Sailor probably means that you click the file vmlinuz on your usb when the installer asks you to point where the system files are. The installer will give you the choice to indicate a directory or an iso file; choose directory and navigate to your usb and click vmlinuz on the usb.

The long save with the save file is probably just for making it. The first boot after that may take a little longer too. After that everything should be fast. Fastest will be to have the savefile on your hard disc and not on your usb stick.

[DavidSpector]

Mike,

Yes, I figured out that puppy saves into a partition just like a Windows device drive letter, rather than creating a partition.

My old computer has a C: and D: drive that are both partitions on the same hard drive (C: is outside for speed, and D: is inside). So I am using D: to save the live puppy settings. I guess that large first Save time was because it was formatting a customized Linux fs to fit the D: drive.

Well, if the only speed difference truly will be boot speed (because paging is done to the hard disk and/or because most paging will not needed because 1 GB of memory is enough), then maybe I'll just continue to use this as a live USB OS. The boot speed isn't bad at all. I'll see what my wife says when she tries this out. I wonder if the system will sleep if I shut the lid?

Wow--it sleeps faster than Windows! This is what we will use to get around the boot time (which is still faster than a Windows boot). No need, I guess, to install on the hard disk at all (except, maybe, to be nice to the flash drive, which has a finite writing lifetime).

If I had known about live USB puppy years ago, I would have set this up then, and not bothered with customizing Windows for my wife. So far, this is providing the browsing speed I was hoping for, and new life for the old computer (whose name is Charlotte, by the way).

I will definitely post this somewhere to help others put new life into old computers.

And I think I'm done here. Thanks to all and I will hang around if anyone has anything to comment about.

[foxpup]

What you're contemplating is, to the best of my knowledge, only possible with Puppy.....since it is the only O/S, Linux or otherwise, which is capable of running from a directory/folder, rather than requiring a partition all to itself, the way Windows (and most 'mainstream' Linux distros) want.

There are 'live' installs for several mainstream distros, but they are (much) harder to get them running than Puppy, and they NEVER run as well and as fast as Puppy does. Puppy is made for running this way.
(I installed Knoppix, debian and slackware 'frugally', maybe forget some)

[DavidSpector]

Okay, I can't resist replying about Emacs. Emacs is the programmable text editor that even secretaries can and have learned to use (it is easy to learn one larger subset at a time). Everything about it is customizeable through two levels of customization, all based on an extension of the Lisp programming language. Every command has its own Help, right there where you need it (much better written than man pages).

Emacs can easily be customized to work with any desired keyboard map, so it can simulate other editors but go way beyond them in features with just a bit of programming. You can run programs and network from inside it, and do development work easily.

For example, I wrote a small extension so that you can create files containing a list, one per line, of all the directories, files, and commands associated with a task (such as fixing a bug in a product). To open any of these, you just locate the cursor to it and press a single key combination. I wrote another that can complete whatever word you are writing by looking back in the current file for words with the same prefix.

It is almost an insult to even mention Vim, Vi, Edit, Teco, Notepad, Notetab, or any other editor in the same sentence with Emacs. It comes out of the box easier to use than any of those (although, it must be admitted, with a bigger first-time learning hurdle than any other editor).

[bigpup]

Well, I was posting this before I read your last post.
See, Puppy on a USB flash drive is not so bad.

But, if you want to do the hard drive thing.


Before deleting Windows XP and taking over the hard drive.
Be sure that is what you want to do.

Tahrpup can be installed alongside Windows XP and have both on the hard drive.

You tell us for sure what you want.

Maybe just use Tahrpup from the USB flash drive and see if it really is what you want.

If you do not want Windows on drive.

You can keep the hard drive setup the way it is, but I would redo it before installing ONLY Tahrpup.

If you no longer want Windows on the computer I would reformat the hard drive to one single partition formatted ext3 and flagged boot.

menu>System>Gparted Partition manager can do this.
Start Gparted.
Choose the hard drive as the device to access. (Probably (sda)
If it shows only one partition on the drive.
Right click on the partition.
Select format.
Select ext3.
Press apply button at top right of window.
After the format process is finished.
Right click on the partition.
Select manage flags.
Select boot.
Select close.
You should now have a partition on the hard drive formatted ext 3 and flagged boot.
Close Gparted.

If it shows more than one partition on the drive and you only want one.
Right click on each one.
Select delete.
Apply.
Right click on the now unallocated space.
Select new.
(Only change the format selection to ext3. Other selections are OK the way they are.)
Select add.
Select apply.
The new partition will be made.
Right click on it.
Select manage flags.
Select boot.
Select close.
You should now have one partition on the hard drive formatted ext 3 and flagged boot.

Gparted is finished close it.

[bigpup]

It may seem like we are not directly answering your original question.
But we see too many people do something installing Puppy and it was not really what they wanted to do.

Running from the USB flash drive.
Puppy is installed on the computer.
Just a different storage device.

The first time Puppy makes a save file. It is slow to make it, but that is because of the make process.
The save file is important and needs to be 100% correctly made. Not something to do fast.
Using it will not be that slow.

[DavidSpector]

bigpup, you seem not to realize that installing puppy was exactly what I wanted to do. It solves my problem perfectly.

I don't want instructions on changing partitions because there is no reason to do so. My existing partitions are far larger than my wife will ever need for any purpose.

If you would just read my recent postings you would see that I am happy running the live puppy on flash memory, at least for now. Everything is faster than on Windows, as I expected. I just didn't expect I could do it with a live flash drive, and so easily. All the beginners instructions, all of them, are way too complicated for what beginners want.

Anyway, I've been playing around with puppy on USB and have some problems:

1. The screen goes blank after ten minutes. The screensaver controls are not part of the fs that is saved on the hard disk, so any changes don't persist across system restarts. I don't need a screensaver because my modern monitor doesn't need one.

This problem of losing customization of screensaver and power settings on reboot goes back to 2008, according to web searching, and has only clumsy solutions involving two startup processes. Why is this customization not yet fixed to be simple and persistent?

2. I want to install VNC (RealVNC) to view the old computer's screen and send keyboard events from other computers on my home network (the software is free). The problem is that VNC doesn't know about puppy, so it wants to install in /usr/bin and /usr/lib, which I think don't exist.

The VNC website says to download the installer and follow directions, but the "installer" is an archive of all their various Linux versions. An archive is not a program! None of the directories and programs in the archive are for puppy, of course, or for Tahrpup. Should I give up, because puppy was never designed to run any arbitrary app? It's okay, I don't mind giving up, I just want someone to tell me so.

[Sailor Enceladus]

1. The screen goes blank after ten minutes. The screensaver controls are not part of the fs that is saved on the hard disk, so any changes don't persist across system restarts. I don't need a screensaver because my modern monitor doesn't need one.

One way to change it is to use pupx. If it's not in the menu -> Desktop, try just typing pupx in console to see this.

[mikeslr]

Hi DavidSpector,

Now that you have Tahrpup on your hard-drive and have created a SaveFile, its time to do a little exploring.

It may help you to know how Puppies work. This is my layman's view: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 192#862192

Obtaining applications not provided by Tarhpup's creator.

Rule # 1: Prefer applications already created by Puppy Fans if they exist. You can find them by searching the Additional Software Forum which is divided into Sections almost identical to those appearing on your Pup's Menu; or by typing the name of your operating system (i.e., tahrpup) + the name of the application (e.g. VNC) into this website's search box: https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=015995643 ... #gsc.tab=0

Rule # 1.a. If the actual application isn't found, search for the category rather than the specific.

Rule # 2. Tahrpup is binary compatible with but not identical to Ubuntu Trusty Tahr. Menu>Setup>Puppy Package Manager, in addition to its own repositories, provides access to Ubuntu's repositories. If Tahrpup includes the Quickpet Application, it only provides access to applications built for Tahrpup. If an application isn't available via Quickpet, see Rule #1. Building applications using Ubuntu debs can be done, but it's an art. Post questions to the User's Forum.

For example, I'm not running Tahrpup (32 bit) having switched to Xenialpup. [Now that you have one Puppy, if you wanted you can easily add another -- one of the great advantages of not requiring an entire partition for each OS]. But, its very likely that similar applications are immediately available from Tahrpup. Perhaps not for the Asus, but now that you've got Tahrpup on a USB-Key, something to consider carrying around in your pocket.

Open Menu>Setup>Puppy Package Manager, Both Emacs and PHP are available for installation. Just type those names in the Search Box. I know nothing about them and the Search Box provides several choices. If and when you're interested in installing either into Tahrpup, you can either post a question on the "Users" Subforum, or Email me and I'll walk you through how I build applications using Puppy Package Manager and an application named PaDS, http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 359#658359

If you're unfamiliar with rox-filemanager watching this video is an easy way to discover its strengths and peculiarities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_IUVF914O4

Frugal Puppies run in RAM and you only have 1 Gb. Suggest you read this post. Ask questions if you have any. http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 066#974066

We love questions. Unfortunately, the Forum is about a decade old, using software which can't be upgraded. So we try to maintain some semblance of order by more or less insisting (a) One question per THREAD and (b) they be posted in the most appropriate SubForum/Section/Thread. Doing so will enable people having similar questions to find answers already given.

The User's Section is probably the best place to post 'technical questions' and those about applications 'the general user' may be unfamiliar with.

Each version of Puppy usually has its own Thread, for example, Tahrpup's http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=96178 This would probably be the best place to ask questions specific to tahrpup, such as how to configure its screen saver, or why it's not working as it should.

Many applications have their own threads in the Addition Software Forum. And, if the application you're interested in doesn't, the Category it would fall under would be a good place to post questions, such as this one about TightVNC, http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 060#950060

If in doubt, remember this anecdote:

Judge to Prisoner: I sentence you to two life terms to be served consecutively.

Prisoner to Judge: I don't think I'll live that long.

Judge to Prisoner: Well, do the best you can.

mikesLr

[DavidSpector]

mikeslr, thank you for all these details. I will put them on a bookmark so I can refer to them into the future.

I'm sorry to hear that frugal puppies such as Tahrpup cannot be upgraded. But they are certainly full of functionality, especially for beginners who just want to browse, like my wife.

She came home from her long trip to her relatives and wanted to see Linux, so I showed her how Pale Moon works just like Firefox, and she used LastPass to read her email (which comes from gmail through her school portal). It worked the first time she tried it, and she could read an email by clicking it and only waiting 100 msec or less. With Firefox under Windows XP that simple operation had taken a minute or so. She is happy.

David

[mikeslr]

Hi DavidSpector,

Although there is no "one-button" you can click to upgrade a Puppy to a newer model, for at least the last four years Puppies employ a modular design making it relatively easy to upgrade if and when you want to.

If you examine the files you installed you'll find:

Initrd.gz -- the initial RAM Disk containing instructions as to what files to copy into RAM.
Vmlinuz -- the kernel, essentially the engine/operating system.
zdrv_xxx --- the firmware which, being kernel specific, must correspond to the vmlinuz
puppy_tahr_xxx.sfs -- the applications 666philb chose to include in his Puppy.

There are available packages containing newer vmlinuz and zdrv_xxx.sfses you can almost just drop in, replacing the originals. You have to rename the file which will be zdrv_xxx.sfs.

Or, you can just 'flinch' them from another Puppy. For a creative example of doing that see: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 629#977629

Many applications are published as SFSes --Squashed File Systems-- which are loaded rather than installed. When a new version is available, you can unload the old, load the new and test it. If there's a problem you can just unload the new, load the old and wait for the next-newer publication.

Many applications are now being published by "Independents" as AppImages. You just place them anywhere on your hard-drive and click them to run them. Again, easily upgrade-able when a newer version becomes available.

And see my email regarding the VNC which may be functional on your system and run from a folder on your Home Partition. If so, it will run as a "Program Folder" on /mnt/home, essentially a portable. Again, easily upgrade-able.

SFSes include /usr/share/applications/xxx.desktops, a file which creates a menu entry. As for the others, you can just drag them (or just their executable) to the deskop, creating a short-cut. Or you can create your own xxx.desktop file.

Lastly, with 160 Gbs to work with, adding a newer Puppy would be 'a piece of cake'. Try it. If it's more suitable than you old, delete your old. If not, delete your new, or keep both.

But the fact is that there are only three types of applications which are worth upgrading: (a) Those which you use pursuing a special interest in some endeavor; (b) Web-browsers, because websites can be finicky; and (c) security because the Web is a scary place. So it pays now and then to see what's being discussed and what's now available on the Additional Software Forum's "Browsers and Internet", "Security and Privacy" and such other sections in which you may have a special interest. Everything else just adds "Bells and Whistles" you'll probably not know are there.

mikesLr

[bigpup]

Why should you reformat the partition on the hard drive to a Linux format.
Simple answer.

Puppy installed on a Linux format (ext 2, 3, or 4) will already be running in a Linux file system.
It will not have to use a program to convert files from Linux to a Windows file system and back and forth.

Also, there are things that can be done in a Linux file system that can not be done in a Windows file system.

Puppy works OK on a Fat 32 file system.
It is designed to do that.
But it takes added layers of programs to make it work.
On a Linux format it does not need extra stuff to work.

If you are going to install Tahrpup to the hard drive and only have Tahrpup on it.
Why would you want it to have to work under a Windows file system and not a Linux one.
Only one reason.
You still want Windows to be able to use the hard drive.

[bigpup]

Screen going black problem.

There is also the power saving for using on laptops. That may be what is kicking in after so long of no use.

To be honest, I never see this problem, but I do not leave a computer unused for long periods.

Understand this. If you put the save on a partition that Windows used. There is a good chance the file system is fragmented. Windows defrag program has to be used to defrag it.
Puppy stuff stored on a Windows fragmented file system wil not always work, because of the fragmentation of the files.

Linux file systems, for all practical purposes, do not fragment.

[DavidSpector]

Having had so much success with one Asus HE1000 netbook, I decided to try another one that I sometimes use. This time I put the files tahr-6.0.5_PAE.iso and unetbootin-windows-657.exe directly on the USB flash disk drive and ran unetbootin from the flash drive to create the Linux files and the boot files.

When I booted to the flash drive, after a few seconds it gave me an error message: "puppy_tahr_6.0.5.sfs not found", and gave me a Linux prompt.

I rebooted and pressed F2 to get help, but nothing seemed likely.

I'll try again, this time starting with the two files on my Windows computer, but this seems like a strange sort of error to happen just because there were two extra files on the USB drive. I'll bet it makes perfect sense to someone here.

PS - Happy holidays to all! *Snowflake lazily falling*

[Sailor Enceladus]

I would install Unetbootin to the Hard Drive, not the USB, then right-click on the usb in Windows and format it as fat32 so it's a fresh empty partition, then use Unetbootin to install Puppy to the USB. Then before booting into the USB, I would make sure the boot flag on the USB is set (you can do this with Rufus or GParted or maybe something already in Windows).

[DavidSpector]

Sailor Enceladus,

I thought I already said this earlier: I ran Unetbootin on the hard drive of my Windows 8.1 computer, not on the USB drive.

The USB drive came from the manufacturer formatted in FAT32.

I've never heard of a boot flag on a USB drive, so clearly I don't know how to set it.

Hope this helps. Currently, I'm trying out EasyPeasy, which comes with lots of promises.