Newbies - Puppy needs YOUR help too!

[RetroTechGuy]

Hi Zen

Thanks, and welcome!

Pizzasgood has a multiuser puppy if you want to try it

http://www.puppylinux.org/news/puplets/ ... tiuseriso/

Or, if you are running a Frugal system (and don't mind booting up each time, for a user change), you can just make multiple pupsave files, one for each user (while there are redundant programs, you can still operate quite nicely in a pupsave of 512MB... -- in fact, mine is still smaller than this...)

Puppy is small enough and fast enough that doing a shutdown at the end of a session isn't a big deal. My old, slow machines, running an early version of Debian took tens of minutes to boot...so you didn't shutdown unless necessary -- however, I shut Puppy down when I'm not using it (save energy and protect my system better).

Also, this sort of setup makes "backing up" the operating system pretty easy (make a copy of the pupsave, and store it somewhere safe) -- just make sure you that aren't mounted on the pupsave that you are copying.

[RetroTechGuy]

The one thing that I have read already is the fact that your pc is quite secure on linux because of it's super/root user system, admin per se. I noticed that puppy logs you straight in with no form of log in and i have not seen a situation where i would need some line of authentication to proceed. Of course I have only been using it for three days so far and the OS does have a firewall, but i wonder how much security it really has.

If you are running from a pupsave (either booting from CD and reading the pupsave, or the same via a Frugal install), you can password protect the pupsave itself (which would be a good idea if you were traveling, and using it on a flash key).

Sometime back I recall a thread about a package allowing you to change the pupsave password (basically regenerating the pupsave, with the new password) -- I suspect that package would allow you to add a password to your existing pupsave (i.e. create a new passworded copy).

Update on encryption! Found the link:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 25&t=34452

I would love to be able to delve deeper into the rabbit hole of the terminal and learn the language. Would someone be able to point me in the right direction? Who knows, maybe i can learn enough to help in on the programming side someday.

See:

"PuppyLinux Reference Card"
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=46435

[Unregistered_Guest]

Newbies - Puppy is a brilliant distro for all sorts of people - but not yet for everyone (yet!). Some - hopefully just a few - don't get along with it. To make Puppy even better, we need to know WHY. If Puppy is not the answer to all your prayers, and especially if you are thinking of moving elsewhere, please pause and tell us what you didn't like, or what you would like to see get better, in this thread. Your views are very important - YOUR comments can really help to make good things happen.

Hi, first post. I love how Puppy is so compact as to fit on a single cd with room to spare.

I have so far run into a bit of a problem which is stopping me from using
it after the initial setup procedure. This is an older version, don't really
remember how long ago I downloaded / burned the image. It's version
1.08. My situation seems to be a lack of mouse support, and I don't know
if there is an equivalent to the M$ Windoze "Accessibility" or not.

Everything else works great. My gfx card works with Xvesa or Xorg, the
audio card is detected & seems to work properly during the setup test,
the liveCD generally boots faster than XP... I suppose it would help to
say what kind of mouse I have:
HP USB optical, model #MODGUO (Part #KY619AA)

Once the desktop is loaded, moving the mouse in any direction produces
random, jumpy movements + right-click type menus popping up

[Aitch]

Unregistered_Guest

Welcome to the forum
Thanks for your feedback, but what probably wasn't clear from dogle's opening post was, that if you want help with a specific problem, as you indicate, you are better off starting a new thread here

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/index.php?f=2

State what PC you have, make and model, and what the problem is, either with that early OS, or the later one....they merit separate threads, as different problems...no shortage of room
Someone will be there....
A name change might be useful...

Aitch

[looseSCREWorTWO]

G'day UnregisteredGuest,
The version of Puppy you're currently using is pretty old and my suggestion is that you try a couple of newer versions of Puppy Linux, specifically Puppy 4.2.1 and Puppy 4.2.1 Retro.

They are available as free downloads from here:

http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/di ... monkey.iso

http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/di ... monkey.iso

I have installed these on heaps of older computers and I find that one or the other will usually work.

As always, you should download the md5sum file for each version of Puppy from here:

http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/puppylinux/

Run the md5sum program to ensure you've got an error-free download, then burn each Puppy ISO to a CD. Try Booting your computer from the CDs first and when you've found a Puppy version that works with your computer you might consider installing it to the Hard Drive.

[noryb009]

Hi! I got Puppy yesterday, and I think it is amazing! I have a few things I would like to see a popup that opens the first time you open the file manager telling you about the setup of the linux file drives, folders and what they mean (I still have no idea)

[dogle]

Welcome, noryb009, and many thanks for your suggestion.

I don't think it is going to be adopted, however, because

what they mean (I still have no idea)

- not many people do!

The point is that everyone is unfamiliar with unix-type structures to start with, and Puppy is intended to make life easy for the newcomer who doesn't really want to do the heavy study stuff. My suggestion is that for now you just spend some time getting to know the Rox file manager, when you feel like it, and learn to make it sing and dance the way you want (and don't neglect to explore all the resources linked from the Jumping-off page). (The links could be clearer I know, hope this will be improved soon).

Many users never feel they need to go in deeper, but if after a few weeks or months you really, really want get into the geeky stuff you could take a look at
http://rute.2038bug.com/node20.html.gz
or even
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html

The most important thing, enjoy your Puppy!

[Aitch]

noryb009/dogle

To help understand the file system, try midnight commander, for an 'explorer' type file manager

Bruce B has posted a .pet here

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=44123

plus he gives lots of useful tips for bash/CLI

Aitch

[topher4096]

I'm a computer veteran that informally does a lot of IT related tasks at my company (usually out of necessity). I found Puppy while looking for an alternative OS for a 12 year old Compaq Presario that runs great but was slow and crash prone even with a fresh install of Windows 98. It wouldn't run any newer Windows OS.

I tried Xubuntu, Mepis (AntiX actually) and a few others before finding Puppy, and I couldn't get several of those to boot after installation, and the others wouldn't run correctly. At that point I was resigned that this computer was ready to be retired. But then I found an article about lightweight distros for old hardware that highely recommended Puppy Linux.

Puppy sounded like the best choice of the 3 in the review (DSL and Vector Linux were the others) and the official 4.3.1 Puppy installed in 5 minutes, booted up first time and recognized and configured every single piece of hardware correctly on the first try. It took me a little while longer to network this computer with our newer laptop, and still longer to configure Samba so the laptop could see and share files with Puppy, but the majority of "issues" were on the Windows side and not issues with Puppy.

I was quite literally astonished at the speed and stability of 4.3.1, and while I'm still struggling with the file system and vastly different file structure compared to all flavors of Windows, I've found working on it to be pretty seamless.

After getting everything working in 4.3.1, I naturally started experimenting with the various derivitaves, first trying several TeenPups, XP_Puppy, MacPuppy (several of them), Stardust, and finally Lighthouse Pup. There are probably a few others I tried but didn't like or couldn't get to install (BrunoPup comes to mind). I also tried various versions on our laptop as well as several different PCs at work, from decades old PCs that were otherwise discarded, to fairly recent systems.

The installs worked flawlessly probably 95% of the time, while installing Xubuntu, Ubuntu and other distros (on the work PCs) was either cumbersome, frustrating, or sometimes impossible.

The only things I have trouble with are the filesystem, which doesn't seem to be consistent on every distro (could be my imagination), to little things like the mouse pointer not indicating that it's "working" once it's clicked.

I've shown Puppy to colleagues at work and my wife, and those are the two areas that frustrated them. They would sit and click repeatedly on an icon or menu item because without seeing an hourglass or some sort of animation, they didn't think it had been initiated. And they were totally lost when it came to saving, finding or organizing files.

I'm sure spending a little time learning the Linux filesystem would solve that issue, but they were also frustrated by all the different file managers and their various "looks" as well.

For me...this distro is amazing and these small annoyances don't really bother me. The stability of this operating system is amazing. I've had exactly one system lockup on the old desktop computer in the 3 weeks I've had Puppy on the system...and that was while trying to get Open Office installed. Come to find out, it's just too darn slow (same as it was on Windows 98), for this computer...so it was probably Open Office that crashed it and not Puppy.

And this forum is FANTASTIC. I belong to and contribute to many forums in my industry (marketing, advertising and video production). And this is the most helpful, polite and non judgemental forum I've ever seen. The patience and acceptance of "newbies" is amazing. On most industry forums, newbies are treated like crap...but not here.

Sorry for the long post, but Puppy has made my old desktop computer usable again, and has opened my eyes to the possibilities of implementing Linux based systems in my business. I'm not sure if I could ever get employees to embrace Linux or Puppy, but from the various distros I've tried, it comes the closest to providing a full-featured, single install solution that is easy to install and stable.

[rjbrewer]

topher 4096;

Go to setup>puppy package manager.
Click puppy4 button>desktop
Click cursor themes......many to choose from

Nice post.....welcome aboard

[topher4096]

That half-fixed the problem. I get the "working" animation when I click buttons or tasks within programs, but where colleagues and my wife were struggling is when they click to open a program either from the start menu or from a desktop icon. I'm using Puppy Lighthouse most of the time and when you click the icons in the wbar on the desktop, the mouse doesn't react while the program is loading. Same thing if you start a program from the menu.

It's not so bad for quick loading programs, but if you open a program like Konquerer or Firefox...it takes about 5-10 seconds to open on this old PC...so it messes with their minds.

Are there settings somewhere to change this? Again...not a big deal for me at all, but it's something that multiple Linux virgins struggled with coming from Windows OS systems.

[rjbrewer]

Sorry, I've never tried Lighthouse;
I usually stick with official releases.

Maybe posting in the derivatives section (lighthouse) threads
might help.

[Sylvander]

One way to see whether a program has begun loading...
Is to look at the CPU usage display [Cud].
The Cud display on BoxPup is particularly good.
You would see immediately that CPU usage has jumped to MAX.

Lots of other Puppies don't have such a good Cud display as Boxpup does down at bottom right in the taskbar.
In such cases it's possible to install PWidgets, and enable the CPU graph display.
I use this in Lighthouse-4.43f and it displays great detail.

[RetroTechGuy]

One way to see whether a program has begun loading...
Is to look at the CPU usage display [Cud].

The other thing is that some packages assume that you already have all the required libraries and dependencies (some people have added more software, and thus have a more "mature" collection of libraries than a brand new installation). When running from the GUI, you don't get to see the missing lib error messages. What I do is, if a program doesn't look like it's loading correctly, I open a terminal and run it from the command line. Write down all the missing libs, load them, and then try again...

[topher4096]

Thanks...all that's fine for me since I'm an experienced computer user that doesn't mind tinkering and looking for stuff like that (the CPU indicator), but Windows users are stumped when it comes to that stuff and telling them to look at a CPU load icon will produce blank stares from them.

For me it's a small thing but for Linux newbies that aren't particularly computer saavy to begin with, it's a real issue. Just tonight my 6 year old daughter (who's actually VERY savvy when it comes to computers considering her age), clicked the Seamonkey icon over and over on this computer until she ended up with about 9 instances of Seamonkey open on the desktop. She never does that on our Windows XP laptop.

That aside, Puppy is a great OS and I've found an answer to just about every issue I've encountered right here on this forum without even asking a single question during my first 3 weeks of use.

[diacad]

I sucessfully installed 4.3.1 on one old computer (P2-350 128 Mb) and tried it on another (P3-1Ghz 256 Mb). Puppy ran fine off the CD, but when I attempted to install it to HD (20 Gb no partition defined) it stalled within the utility that was to create the partition (GParted). There was no error message, just "1 operation pending" forever. There was no lock-up, I was able to cancel the operation and reboot. I tried this three times, so it was no fluke. This is a machine that has passed hardware diagnostics, and all devices seem to be properly recognized by Puppy. It previously was running XP with no problems. Is puppy THAT fickle, or is there something else I should be aware of or problem areas to look for?

[Jim1911]

Did you go to Edit > Apply All Operations?

[babaguy]

Dear All -
I must agree with topher 4096 (sic?) that this forum is *SO* welcoming, quick to reply, and NO put-downs that I can see...I have been wanting to use a Linux OS for *years* - like, more than a decade! I've been buying Linux magazines with their free DVDs all this time, reading the hype, totally ready to give up Windows - (I got a Mac Mini in 2008 and this has been great, but I've still been longing for *something* about Linux...)
Back in 2006 I tried to install Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu onto a used "tower" computer and just encountered so many problems with them - I joined my local Linux User Group (LUG) but very quickly got "RTFM!" 'd to the point that I was scared off posting questions or comments!
(Note to Newbies: RTFM = "Read The F&*%ing Manual!")
I got my hands on a BIG Toshiba Equium laptop and put Ubuntu on that last year - when Linux Format magazine dedicated one special issue to the Big U - and this (finally) worked very well - EXCEPT that I have had REAL problems with WiFi recognition - Ubuntu keeps asking for the log-in passwords for networks and then simply gives up trying. Ethernet works fine.
But I'll tell you what made me love Puppy from the first glance at the desktop...THE BIG CLOCK ! I *love* it !
I downloaded "Gdesklets" from the Ubuntu repository for my big Toshiba laptop, but because I'm hopeless (so far) at coding, I can't figure out what "argument" to write to ensure that the clock in "Gdesklets" loads automatically at boot on that machine...!
Then I boot the CD of Puppy 4.2 (K 2.6.21.7 - the "Retro" version?) onto an old HP Omnibook XE2 laptop that had been mouldering around the house for a few years (bad battery, Windows 98, P III processor) and what do I see...? A BIG CLOCK !
I know it sounds weak and weeny-esque, but by jingo! I *knew* I'd finally found a Linux that really *IS* for humans, and isn't afraid of know-nothings (like, um....me!)
I received some very good advice today & yesterday about setting up partitions and GRUB for a full install on this old HP Omnibook XE2, but was also able to figure out what needed to be done all by myself (one old pup learning - finally - some new tricks !) and I simply want to say how much I'm enjoying working with Puppy and how happy I am with this forum - THANK YOU ! Onward !

[TheSlider]

Did you go to Edit > Apply All Operations?

XD
So true ! I got stuck there for a few minutes too.
Gparted has a weird user interface where you actually can do everything directly on it with left and right clicks but have to go through a menu to apply all changes.
At least, that is until you resize the window and discover the Apply button...
The GUI buttons should be smaller and the apply bouton should be present on every roll-down menu as it's an important function.
note : Pressing F1 doesn't show the manual.

[pa_mcclamrock]

To help understand the file system, try midnight commander, for an 'explorer' type file manager

OK, time for me to start keeping up with this thread! Less than two months late, let me add this link about "Filesystems and File Management in Puppy Linux" (http://www.pa-mcclamrock.com/getstart.html#filesystems), which I think should help to clarify at least a few things.