I finally got a new(er) PC, which Puppy is the best for me?

[tallboy]

Hi all, today I was given(!) a PC, a bit newer than my old P4 boxes.
It is not new-new, but a 2011 model 64-bit mini-PC AsRock Vision 3D 156b. A cute little black box!
With 4Gb RAM and a 500Gb HDD, i finally have a somewhat more serious toy to play with. But, the question is which Puppy I should load into it? It is stuffed with Win 10 now. I like to use my multisession CDs or DVDs - or a USB stick, but I have noticed that some of the later Puppys don't like the idea of being run live, they are made for frugal install. Another 'problem' is that I haven't been following the development work on the latest 64-bit Puppys, and I have also read that using a 32-bit puppy on a 64-bit PC may be a smart move.

So, please give me some advice on my choice of Puppy.

AsRock Vision 3D 156b
Intel Core i5 560M (2.66GHz) Max Turbo 3.2GHz
2 core, 64 bit, 3 Mb SmartCache
2x2GB RAM installed, Max 8Gb
Intel HM55 Express Chipset
NVIDIA GeForce GT425M Graphics
DVD-Writer/Blu-Ray Combo Drive
1x500Gb Sata 2.5" HDD
MMC/SD/MS/MS PRO Card Reader
7.1 Ch HD Atheros AR5B97Audio with THX TruStudio PRO
802.11b/g/n WLAN
10/100/1000 LAN

Screen is an HP L2245w

Presentation:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 856158019R

Test of same PC, but with Intel i3 370M CPU
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... on3d&num=7

[musher0]

Hello tallboy.

Lucky man!

The ideal pup for your machine is obviously my xenialPup-706 32-bit
with kernel 4.12.

I'm surprised you asked!

I'm suggesting a 32-bit even if your new box is 64-bit, because it will fly!

BFN.

[peterw]

Lucky you Tallboy. You have a more powerful machine than I have ever had.

First things first. Since you have 4 GB of RAM you can use either a 32 bit system or a 64 bit system and both will use all the RAM. If you had more RAM then it would be better to use a 64 bit.

Whilst a full install is OK and it is what I preferred for years but then having switched to a frugal install I found it much better. The advantages are: it is very easy to install; is easy to have a number of different Puppies on a USB stick or on a HD; etc; etc. If you need more space to do something then just create a folder outside you save folder.

I like the Slacko versions http://slacko.eezy.xyz/index.php and Fatdog http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/ which is only for a full install. And of course there are the xenial ones. The world of try and have fun is open to you. Why not try with a frugal installs to find one you like and then install that in a full manner if you want?

[perdido]

USB3 is great to have, very fast.

The Atheros based wifi card should be compatible with all late model puppies.

Nvidia graphics means you will probably want an nvidia driver.
Here is a list of compatible 32-bit drivers for your nvidia card.

*Please note that the Nvidia search only listed recent drivers.
Any 304.xx, 340.xx , 384.xx, 387.xx, 390.xx versions
of the driver should work.

It looks like some of them are available here, they are kernel specific.
https://archive.org/download/Puppy_Linu ... river_Repo



Should be plenty fast to run any puppy.

.

[Burn_IT]

Whichever you prefer/like.
All will work so it is down to your preference.

[mikeslr]

Hi Tallboy,

You'll have to do a bit of experimenting, and using USB-Keys rather than CD/DVD really expedites that. For example, if a Puppy's kernel does't support NVIDIA GeForce GT425M Graphics, you can swap kernels in five minutes or less. If the present kernel enabled you to boot to desktop with a discernible, if not optimal display, you can even switch kernels from your running Puppy. Of course, a reboot to use the "new" kernel is required, and there's a chance the "new" kernel won't even get you to desktop. So I'd suggest that as soon as you find a Puppy which 'sort of works', set up your USB-stick to dual-boot it and the Puppy you want to experiment with.

Keep in mind that 32-bit Puppies can use 64-bit kernels, but not vice-versa. And, yes, 32-bit OSes still have advantage of lower resource demands. So, unless you're going to compile your own graphics driver, I'd begin the search for your "ultimate" Puppy by seeing what's in the repo perdido provided a link to, and hunt up Puppies which can already use them; alternatively, for an appropriate kernel package, https://archive.org/download/Puppy_Linux_Kernels to swap in.

Since the AsRock Vision 3D 156b came with Windows 10, I'll have to assume it uses UEFI boot. Limbomusic's post, http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 227#989227 is a good 'jumping off point' to begin dealing with that complication. For future reference, see http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 159#858159

Alternatively, I'd make sure that it's possible to safely remove Windows 10, especially the boot partition used by UEFI before doing so.

[musher0]

I was just kidding, of course.

[mikeslr]

I was just kidding, of course.

Still, If musher0 hadn't suggested it, I would have. Ultimately, which Puppy depends on what you're interests are. The Slackos --and I rather like Sailor Enceladus' Slacko 5.7.1-- are solid but tend of offer less software OOTB, and I, at least, find them more challenging to 'flesh-out' than those woofed from Ubuntu binaries.

Of the 'Ubuntus' BionicPups (32 & 64) seem to be coming along very well; but for 'ready-made' applications, the Xenialpups are a couple of years ahead.

p.s. FWIW, using custom search, plugging GeForce GT 425M into https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=015995643 ... #gsc.tab=0, turned up this post: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 941#878941. Use Ctrl-f (find on page) to locate the reference to GeForce GT 425M.

[tallboy]

Thank you, all. I have a CD with an .iso of musher0's Xenial, I'll test that one first, I also have some Bionic .isos on CD. I'll come back if I get problems.

musher0, that is you french link!
Again!

Lucky you Tallboy. You have a more powerful machine than I have ever had.

My newest of the old PCs is nearly 18 years old, so it is a giant leap for me.
BTW: Windows will be deleted, and the HDD formatted for ext3 ot ext4.

[ITSMERSH]

Use ext3 !

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, Olaf.

Coo, some folks have all the luck, don't they?

I should talk; the big old Compaq desktop I use everyday was gifted to me by my sister when she 'upgraded' from Win XP to Win 7 a few years ago. Very early, first-generation dual-core 64-bit; it's been upgraded so much I doubt even Compaq (if they'd still been in business) would recognise it by now..!

I run around a dozen Pups, including the flagship 64-bitzer, and PhilB's Bionicpup64 'beta'. The rest are all 32-bitzers; as musher0 says, they do indeed fly.

Burn_IT is correct. The world's your oyster now; you can stretch your wings. mate. No more limits..!

(BTW:- RSH is right. As I understand it, there are certain problems with Puppy and ext4. Stick with ext3; it's reliable, and, for Puppy, it just 'works'.)


Mike.

[mikeslr]

Hi Tallboy,

Not to rain on your parade, but make sure you have a functioning Puppy before you wipe Windows 10. Perdido having brought up the subject of nvidia drivers got me scurrying. [I haven't had to deal with them]. But I ran across posts from Ubuntu Bionic Beaver and Xenial Xerus users indicating problems which remained unsolved. I could find no posts from Slackware users; but silence really doesn't say anything. That's why I edited to include the p.s. which, at least indicates that installation should work in Tahrpup 6.0.5.

Unless I'm mistaken, nvidia drivers are kernel specific: Tahrpup 6.0.5 employed the 3.14.56 kernel and Tahrpup64 6.0.5 used the kernel 3.14.54 kernel. If so, problems under Xenialpup and Bionicpup may be related to their use of later kernels.

You'll find some recent 3.14.xx kernel here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/huge_kernels/ and you'll find that some FatDog64's used the 3.18.xx kernels. [Assuming changes in the 4.x kernels from the 3.x kernels cause the problems, perhaps recent 3.x kernels will avoid them].

But, worse case scenario, it wouldn't be terrible to have to use Tahrpup. There's hardly any application for the Xenialpups which doesn't run under the Tahrpups, or has an equivalent. And not that long ago I consolidated the post- publication-of-Tahrpup-6.0.5 upgrades of Puppy-Unique applications here: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 927#982927.

At any rate, starting with a Puppy likely to work seems a good idea before branching out to explore potentially more troublesome ones, or doing anything as radical as wiping out the one OS you know works.

[bigpup]

Yes the Nvidia driver is kernel specific.
It has to be compiled for each specific kernel.
It will only work with the kernel it was compiled for.

This is the best way to make sure you have the correctly compiled driver for Nvidia hardware and the kernel being used.

Nvidia driver run package installing
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=110611

Basically, get the correct Nvidia run package, compile the driver, install it, and use it.
It is not that hard if you closely follow the steps to do it.
Getnvidia holds your hand and does all the work.

[mikeslr]

Hi Tallboy,

As soon as I opened my browser to the Forum I thought about this thread. Fortunately, bigpup had posted. I'm pretty good at research and analysis; but that's always trumped by experience.

Before opening this thread, I discovered there's a lot of info about nvidia in the Additional Hardware >Driver's Section; not only the "How to" thread bigpup linked to above, but one on the "getnvdia". shinobar has recently published getnvidia-1.4.pet, http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 25#1009025. Suggest reading the page or two before that post to understand the need for this new version.

Posts on that thread indicate that nvidia drivers have successfully been built for the 32-bit Xenialpup and UpupCC, and the 64-bit Xenialpup. There was only one attempt under bionicpup. It was unsuccessful, but there were suggestions which might resolve that. Regarding the success under Xenialpup64, a 64-bit driver was build [fine for Xenialpup64, itself]. However, this genereated an ELF (wrong version) problem when trying to run 32-bit Wine.

As all of my Windows programs are 32-bit, I have no practical experience with Version2013's WOW (64-bit Wine implementation). If running 32-bit Windows programs under wine is among your priorities, that would suggest setting up some 32-bit Puppy (xenialpup recommended) at least as an alternative for those occasions when they are needed. But see don570's post announcing success running 32-bit Windows programs under Wine64-3.18_v4.1, http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 93#1008693. [I guess it's time for me --or someone-- to test and consider building a portable version of Wine64].

[tallboy]

Thank you for the useful inputs regarding the nvidia drivers. The Xenial with kernel 4.1 started up as intended, and I noticed an other driver than nvidia was used, but I did'nt jot it down, so I have to restart to find out which. A problem is of course that the Xenial is not intended for running live, there is no menu option to save to a live multisession CD/DVD, but I haven't checked if the binaries still are available.
I have only one screen, keyboard and mouse here, divided among 3 PCs, so right now I am using my Lucid in an old PC.

Use ext3 !

Of course, Reiner, I've already done that! Always ext2 for memory sticks, ext3 for harddisks. I split the 500GB HDD into 4 primary partitions, all ext3. With 4 Gb RAM, I see no need for a swap partition, at least not yet. Win 10 gone forever.

If running 32-bit Windows programs under wine is among your priorities...

No, no, no, I have always found everything I need here on the planet 'Nix!

[ITSMERSH]

Of course, Reiner, I've already done that! Always ext2 for memory sticks, ext3 for harddisks. I split the 500GB HDD into 4 primary partitions, all ext3. With 4 Gb RAM, I see no need for a swap partition, at least not yet. Win 10 gone forever.

I was using ext2 for years on all USB flash drives AND HD drives.

Lately I discovered some rough trouble on ext2 partitions caused by not properly unmounted SFS modules at shutdown/reboot. If there's such SFS modules it's drive can NOT properly unmount which is similar to a hard reboot by reset button!

A e2fsck returned a lot of wrong data in inodes and wrong counts in summaries. This was quiet heavy stuff!

I discovered this using BionicDog and checked all my Puppies (stored on internal/external HDs and USB flash drives) after that. The issue applied to all of them under ext2.

Since I'm using ext3 on all my drives/partitions everything just went fine!

So, I strictly would recommend: drop the use of ext2 definitely and completely.

[oui]

It is probably an error to continue to use

- 32 bit on 64 bit
- ext3 instead of ext4
- old grub legacy instead of official actual grub!

I would first install a very minimal Debian or Devuan and let it prepare optimal the installation and later shrink the debian partition (if needing! I have only one partition on my 3/4 TB HD and a SWAP, use 90 % of time a Puppy, always remastered (locales, keyboard, didiwiki added where not available, dito seamonkey, asian fonts collection, dictionaries collection and links to /usr/share/hunspell) but always live out the RAM without saving somewhat in Puppy. all the private stuff goes into the /home/my/ from actually Devuan excepted some files having to have to be a bit safer against trojaner etc. They are in /var where Slitaz is installed as full install within a different installation , see Slitaz wiki (in 1/2 GB you can install a lot stuff in Slitaz!). Warning: you can reach the Slitaz find but Slitaz can't read the stuff from Debian/vuan as the Slitaz / is within the /var ! No trojaner will search in the /var a really active normal Linux system excepted such search for all /home 's on an HD!

Also all in one about 3/4 TB partition...

Only one little problem: the different owner of doc's is not comfortable (you have to use chown more frequently or handle as root also in Debian/vuan...), but as I many use Puppy's as root, it is a very little problem (note: it is very easy to define a new owner you wish in the /var/... Slitaz installation! With the same rights (working in sudo without password! ).

Next consideration:

Debian/vuan is 64 bit
Slitaz starts with 64 bit kernel but uses 32 bit stuff
Puppy is as you download and start (the actual puppy_bionicpup64_7.9.4 works very fine, and also the puppy_jessie_6.4.2 named Pupjibaro with synaptic continue to be best but sorry not 64 bit. Seamonkey 2.49.4 32 bit is a bit slower in Pupjibaro in very long internet pages of newspapers with pollution of self starting videos... Le Figaro for ex. You can use Semonkey 2.30, the last version based on xulrunner, but it will sometime crash encountring HTML5 with activity like that online newspaper)

[Peterm321]

I'm using Tahrpup 6.

Ext3 is a journalling filesystem which in my view rules it out from use on flash based media.

I use Ext4 (not Ext2/3) on extra partitions (and also works well on flash drives if created by mkfs.ext4 with the journalling disabled (^has_journal).

I have to use Ext2 on my bootable Tahrpup partition because GNU grub version 0.97 will not boot from an Ext4 partition. Other than that, I see no disadvantage using Ext4 instead of Ext3/2.

[tallboy]

I have used the CD with BionicBeaver on my new PC, which is one of the few Puppys newer than Lucid that can save to a multisession CD-R at shutdown. Thank you for that info, James C. Funny enough, using the save button on the desktop, only produces a dialog window that asks for a DVD, it will not save to a CD.
And then there is the nvidia problem. A different kernel may be a solution.
musher0's Xenial will not save to a multisession CD/DVD at all.

I'll continue to use ext2 on flash media, I use them only for backup. (2 identical - I have learnt the hard way)

I will test other Puppys to find the optimal one for my use, and report back to you.

[perdido]

I have used the CD with BionicBeaver on my new PC, which is one of the few Puppys newer than Lucid that can save to a multisession CD-R at shutdown. Thank you for that info, James C. Funny enugh, using the save button on the desktop, only produces a dialog window that asks for a DVD, it will not save to a CD.
And then there is the nvidia problem. A different kernel may be a solution.
musher0's Xenial will not save to a multisession CD/DVD at all.

I'll continue to use ext2 on flash media, I use them only for backup. (2 identical - I have learnt the hard way)

I will test other Puppys to find the optimal one for my use, and report back to you.

There is an nvidia driver for bionic that will work with your card.
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-304.137 pet (nvidia-x86-304.137_k4.9.96.pet)
After installing the nvidia pet you reboot and set up nvidia.
See the third post in peebee's bionic beaver thread that has the link to the driver package.
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 000#990000

.