Macpup 550

[wibble]

I was looking for a fire and forget/work out of the box solution for my rapidly aging desktop and a good base for a kiosk/locked down system + something to do my programming/playing on (I feel somewhat presumptuous about calling it 'developing' lol.)


Precise 5.7.1

Puppy linux, why can't I quit you! lol. I had 5.6.1 and it worked pretty well. Had many a happy hour but around a equal amount of time shouting at an unidentified foe who was forever stopping me from getting work done.

But I still stand by the statement that Precise puppy is an excellent tool. I used it for day to day computing for a while now. my memory stick suddenly gave up the ghost and I figured why not try 5.7.1... no dice.

Perhaps a bit more polishing and this promising version will shine. Up until the point where the save file didn't work it looked to be a great improvement on the previous version. Lot of hard work has obviously gone into this.

Tiny Core Linux.

Tried tiny core linux (no dice, couldn't detect my wimax network.., no apps..) but on the plus side it was a mere 14 megs. On reflection expecting out of the box functionality from such a bare bones distro was perhaps asking for the moon on a stick.

Damn Small Linux.

Next I figured, Damn Small Linux... More features, desktop is a bit 1995 but what can you expect for 50megs... kinda looks a lot like tiny core but with more apps. Heart was sinking and as expected no dice with the internet/network. Shame.

Looked at a bunch of other distros but my old desktop is a bit of a weird beast not new enough to run the fancy linux distros like ubuntu/debian ect (only have 1gig of ram.. and a dual core). I know I can have a pretty desktop experence, just without the insane bloat of the more modern distros.

It was after lunch so serious work was to continue lol...

Macpup 550:

oooohhhh your computer looks pretty now! did you crack and install ubuntu?

nope... shockingly pretty! downloaded the extra themes aaahhh so nice desktop. works out of the box. Of all the puppies I have tried I like this one the best.

Its easy on the eyes, works out of the box.

I have been trying to think of a puppy I could give to friends for them to try out as I know a fair few who are complaining there computers are slow ect... will get a few usb sticks made up and smooch around.

As it stands I would say you can do pretty much anything you want with this pup, its easy enough to explain to someone over a lunch break, has lots of apps, themes.

Now you might be thinking 'why didn't he run around with the precise puppy usb..' well I did consider this, but i had this premonition/vision of getting constant phone calls 'how do i do this... why won't this work... can you come over and show me...' Nope, I like my friends but there is a line man lol...

Macpup for what these cats use there pc for will require minimal if any support. (lets face it they are not going to be compiling kernels ect... just simple browsing and word processing for the most part.)

I never thought I would be in the position to recommend a linux distro to a non-geek user. Stunning.