Newbies - Puppy needs YOUR help too!

Booting, installing, newbie
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RetroTechGuy
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Re: newbie wants to help

#991 Post by RetroTechGuy »

deliberatus wrote:Neubie, novice at linux, weants to help. Managed to wipe XP off my aspire one netpbook with 800 Mhz Atom, got it honking fast with TahrPuppy full install. OPK, I do admit to RTFM a bit... So, can you use a FNG :shock: to help somehow?
:?:
Of course you can.

Poke around here a little, try some searches for past discussions -- use the "WellMinded Search" link in my sig.

And lastly come here and pick a title (click on the "New Topic" button below) that tells the reader what your question/problem is -- then fill in some more detail. This is probably one of the best user groups you are likely to find. These guys ROCK! :-)

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/index.php?f=2
[url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=58615]Add swapfile[/url]
[url=http://wellminded.net63.net/]WellMinded Search[/url]
[url=http://puppylinux.us/psearch.html]PuppyLinux.US Search[/url]

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Sweet Baby Jamie
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Do Puppies Expire?

#992 Post by Sweet Baby Jamie »

I am a newbie and grabbed the latest version (Tahr), but I see older versions - much older ones - still available for download. Don't they expire after some time? Like most distros, don't they reach end-of-life at some point? How are they updated?

And which Puppy to adopt with so many out there is a question too. I would suggest some sort of sticky or wiki to address that for those of us who are brand new.

Which Puppy to Adopt?

According to:
  • hardware compatibility,

    user's experience and background (new to Linux or kinda sorta experienced or expert),

    required applications,

    etc
I just chose Tahr because it uses Ubuntu repositories (so lots of software available) and because Ubuntu is somewhat familiar to me, and because it's the newest Puppy. But newest isn't always best. My computer has 512 RAM and TahrPup doesn't seem to mind so far. It's happy and seems to have plenty of room to run and play. I'm loving Puppy so far, but how to choose the right Puppy was the first question I had, and I've only guessed at it.

Precise looks like a nice healthy Puppy too, but will it expire when Ubuntu 12.04 reaches end-of-life? Which ones are Ubuntu-based? Which Puppies are Debian-based? Slackware based? Are there Fedora-based Puppies and SUSE-based Puppies? What are the differences?

Please make some kind of guide to help a newbie pick the right Puppy!

darry1966

#993 Post by darry1966 »

Short answer to older pups - no, because they are still of use on old computers.

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rufwoof
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#994 Post by rufwoof »

Upgrades can sometimes mean that some things stop working, or work in a different way to what you're used to, such that you spend more time focusing upon the tool than the job in hand.

Once you have a puppy that works well with your hardware and helps you do the jobs you need to do, then changing the tool (pup) is just inviting problems/difficulties.

I boot puppy frugally (ram) with no savefile. The exact same copy each and every time like it was a fresh install. If I need to preserve a change I remaster (which using my own remaster script takes seconds). Everything else, data, docs etc I store outside of puppy.

I'll 'upgrade' when my hardware is changed. Not that I don't also try out other pup's - for fun. But return to my preferred pup when work has to be done.

With a fixed core pup that boots the exact same each and every time, setup the way you like it, then corruption or a virus during any one session is undone by a simple reboot. Frugal, no save file rules IMO. The easiest way to get close to that with other pups is to frugal install (install grub4dos on HDD and setup the pup in that) adding the pmedia=ataflash boot parameter as that will add a 'save' icon to the desktop. Then inside pup navigate to menu, system, pup event manager and open the savefile tab and set the save interval to 0 (never autosave) and 'ask at shutdown' if that option is available as that way the only time a save occurs is whenever you click the desktop 'save' button (assuming you answer no to the save prompt if prompted when shutting down).

On other pups it might be something like adding pfix=ram pmedia=ataflash as the boot parameter and answering NO when shutting down, unless you want to actually preserve changes.

If you start mixing in data/docs inside puppy space then you force yourself to have to save, better IMO to separate the two and have pup read only (with the added benefit of that being easily changed if required).

darry1966

#995 Post by darry1966 »

Yes totally with Anitaos my 4.31/4.12 update I used a barebones iso and updated it and left the browser out so you could update Browser and keep same iso. As for other programs latest and the greatest is not necessary like mp3 players etc. Older versions work just as well. :D

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Deacon
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#996 Post by Deacon »

I consider myself a really old newbie (mostly because I'm really good at upgrading stuff I shouldn't without knowing how to fix it in a GUI) so I have tried about 50 puppies as a live, working full OS.

I have a few suggestions (though two are already solved largely in practice).

1) QUICKPET. BRING BACK QUICKPET! No idea how much easier that makes life, and to a newbie, PPM is kind of scary looking, reminiscent of Linux pacakge managers of 8-9 years ago (which is why I don't find them scary, BUT....) QuickPet, for all its faults, was a nice, easy program, much like the Flash updater most pups have now. I only used it a couple of times, but every person new to Puppy who adopted one later asks me where it is. Shoot, I started looking for it now and I can't find it.

2) A list of great directories, not necessarily a great list of programs. After using Puppy for a few years my wife took the plunge on one computer. But she hates looking for stuff in a forum-- so I just point her to some good directories, such as OscarTalks' directory and others. I think if people know where well-packaged, *generally* dependency-worry-free programs for the latest Pups are, there'd be no confusion.

3) Stuff on installing WM's and Desktop Environments. This is largely taken care of in the derivatives section (X-Slacko is getting really popular for good reason) but for someone trying to find the perfect DE there can be an issue.

4) The menu. Puppy has a lot of great software in one little package. It's amazing how much. The big problem is that a newb looks at the menu and just scrolling from "Desktop" to "Setup" sees over 30 programs. Which, at first, is cool-- but when you want to find "resize personal storage file" gets confusing. I don't know if JWM allows for more than one level of submenus (I read somewhere on the forum it does). Again, this problem is solved with the Derivatives-- XSlacko's Whisker Menu has taken all the searching out of it-- but if there was ever a way to add a wee couple of submenus to the submenus, it's a suggestion.

That said, I love Puppy. I've used it as a "life-saving backup" for years, and made it my own OS of choice for just under the last three or so. X-Slacko is downright impressive, but the vanilla flavors are amazing as well (currently using Slacko 6.0.7.4 and looking to simply build XFCE on top, hence #3).so most of the stuff above is from people I've shown it to going "um" a lot.

Now if you'll excuse me I am gonna go find XFCE again.

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L18L
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menu

#997 Post by L18L »

Deacon wrote:4) The menu. Puppy has a lot of great software in one little package. It's amazing how much. The big problem is that a newb looks at the menu and just scrolling from "Desktop" to "Setup" sees over 30 programs. Which, at first, is cool-- but when you want to find "resize personal storage file" gets confusing. I don't know if JWM allows for more than one level of submenus (I read somewhere on the forum it does). Again, this problem is solved with the Derivatives-- XSlacko's Whisker Menu has taken all the searching out of it-- but if there was ever a way to add a wee couple of submenus to the submenus, it's a suggestion.
No need to search in menus at all if you use
Find'N'Run
Try it (or the version forked by forum member step) and you will forget all menus.

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Deacon
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Re: menu

#998 Post by Deacon »

L18L wrote:
Deacon wrote:4) The menu. Puppy has a lot of great software in one little package. It's amazing how much. The big problem is that a newb looks at the menu and just scrolling from "Desktop" to "Setup" sees over 30 programs. Which, at first, is cool-- but when you want to find "resize personal storage file" gets confusing. I don't know if JWM allows for more than one level of submenus (I read somewhere on the forum it does). Again, this problem is solved with the Derivatives-- XSlacko's Whisker Menu has taken all the searching out of it-- but if there was ever a way to add a wee couple of submenus to the submenus, it's a suggestion.
No need to search in menus at all if you use
Find'N'Run
Try it (or the version forked by forum member step) and you will forget all menus.
That is nice! That's like the Whisker Menu. I was just relaying what I've heard folks say about the vanilla menu on that one.

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RetroTechGuy
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#999 Post by RetroTechGuy »

darry1966 wrote:Yes totally with Anitaos my 4.31/4.12 update I used a barebones iso and updated it and left the browser out so you could update Browser and keep same iso. As for other programs latest and the greatest is not necessary like mp3 players etc. Older versions work just as well. :D
I liked 4.11/4.12 Retro on my old (really old) laptop. I felt that 4.31 became a little "heavy" for some of my systems. The 5.x series seemed to recover a bit of that lighter touch on the hardware.

I'm currently running lupusuper 1 and 2 on my various machines... But the base model runs on my older hardware (including my PII 333 MHz laptop, with 512MB RAM).

"Lucid Puppy Revitalized as 5.2.8.7":

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=90461
[url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=58615]Add swapfile[/url]
[url=http://wellminded.net63.net/]WellMinded Search[/url]
[url=http://puppylinux.us/psearch.html]PuppyLinux.US Search[/url]

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RetroTechGuy
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Re: Do Puppies Expire?

#1000 Post by RetroTechGuy »

Sweet Baby Jamie wrote:Which Puppies are Debian-based? Slackware based? Are there Fedora-based Puppies and SUSE-based Puppies? What are the differences?

Please make some kind of guide to help a newbie pick the right Puppy!
Writing a guide could be a massive work in its own right... ;-)

Lupu is Debian based. But keep in mind that Ubuntu is Debian based -- so they typically have largely interchangeable packages. And Lupu has continuing support, as do most of the newer systems.

My current favorite is:

"Lucid Puppy Revitalized as 5.2.8.7":

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=90461

Slacko is Slackware based.

Some vague memory makes me want to say that SUSE was used as the base in a past version -- but I'm not at all confident on that. (or am I thinking of one of the Knoppix versions?)

And I don't recall if there was a Red Hat/Fedora version or not...

For really Retro hardware, ttuuxxx has his 2.14 system, which is under continual upgrades... (the problem I found was that the one system that could really benefit from that light system is an old laptop, and the keyboard mapping is completely goofed up from the get-go -- not worth the trouble to bother to work on it to install that system -- so many others that also work).

" Classic Pup 2.14X -- Updated 2 series":

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=42553

Puppy 3.x seems to still have a good following, and some support.

There are still quite a number of people running Puppy 4.x, but I'm not sure that there is a lot of support going on with it.

Edit: Here's a link to "412collection Updated"

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=98852

And here is a good cross section of available systems:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/

And then there is Barry's Wary/Quirky family (which I believe are also designed for old hardware):

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/

And those last 2 links are pretty much just the "official" releases... Then there are all of the special mods and custom builds... ;-)

One recommendation that pops up is to get a few CD-RW disks, so you don't waste media while playing with different systems (once I converge on a system or 4 that I like, I usually burn them so I have a permanent copy).
Last edited by RetroTechGuy on Tue 17 Nov 2015, 06:17, edited 1 time in total.
[url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=58615]Add swapfile[/url]
[url=http://wellminded.net63.net/]WellMinded Search[/url]
[url=http://puppylinux.us/psearch.html]PuppyLinux.US Search[/url]

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RetroTechGuy
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Re: Do Puppies Expire?

#1001 Post by RetroTechGuy »

Sweet Baby Jamie wrote:I just chose Tahr because it uses Ubuntu repositories (so lots of software available) and because Ubuntu is somewhat familiar to me, and because it's the newest Puppy.
I'm assuming that you run a frugal install (I prefer that).

One word of caution, when attempting a software install from Debian or Ubuntu, it's not a bad idea to back up your save file first...

You can boot your machine to ram:

Code: Select all

puppy pfix=ram
And then navigate to the location of your save file, and simply copy it to a new name (I usually copy to the date I made the copy, and sometimes change the extension to ".2fx" which will effectively hide it from the boot process -- if you leave it normal, you will be prompted which file to load on boot).

If all goes well, you don't need to do anything. If it completely corrupts your save file, you simply boot to RAM again, and copy your file back over the original (keep in mind that this will wipe out any files you saved internally -- you're essentially restoring to a previous point in time -- you can copy those files out).

The other thing I do, is once I get a system booting the way I want (whether from flash, or HDD), I add the option "fsck" to check the file on every boot (it doesn't take long, unless you crashed -- and then you want to repair the file). This will keep your save file healthy and strong for a long time...

For example, my menu.lst file contains:

Code: Select all

title Puppy Linux Super Lupu 1
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /Sulu/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=Sulu pfix=fsck
initrd /Sulu/initrd.gz
[url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=58615]Add swapfile[/url]
[url=http://wellminded.net63.net/]WellMinded Search[/url]
[url=http://puppylinux.us/psearch.html]PuppyLinux.US Search[/url]

M@d0g
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Tap time settings- touchpad

#1002 Post by M@d0g »

New to linux, first time using Puppy. I ran into a problem with my first install. I had mouse movement, and right click only on my touchpad. After hooking up a wired mouse, I played with settings a little and found the single finger tap time was set for zero. Bumping it up a little finally brought back the left tap. Just wanted to put this here for others. So far it seems I've found a good distro for this laptop

Using Lucid Puppy 5.5 Samsung laptop with 1GB ram, intel atom n270 @1.6GHz and a fried hard drive.

yobbocat
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun 20 Dec 2015, 02:56

Complete Newbie (almost)

#1003 Post by yobbocat »

Hi
Like subject says, i am a complete novice at linux. Ive been on windows since 3.1, and am just taking a break from win 10 to see what is happening over here.
My first problem is a really basic one, something that i would have to expect to go on a forum to find the answer. (Its to do with shutting down a window (eg Firefox) by clicking touchpad on laptop on the 'x' button on top right hand corner, without having to click on the left click button.)
What I like about Puppy, is that it was easy to install. It comes with a small file size. I was very impressed with how how there were several tools to get me online with wifi.
Also im very pleased to have found this forum straight away. And im confident that i will get a proper helpful reply. One of the things that drove me mad about Windows, is that when i post on the official Microsoft forum wanting help with a specific issue, that is often a known well documented problem, no solution is posted - such as the problem with the Luma 930 phone having to be rebooted to reconnect to home wifi when i return from going outside, etc.
A major factor in me beginning to wonder about Windows, is that they have followed in Apple's footsteps by wanting us to create a microsoft account, and this trend of wanting all devices to sync up, and wifi printing, blah blah blah, which leaves me wondering about the security implcations in an age of internet banking. With that in mind, for the first time, ive installed Linux on my hard drive of laptop.
I have very limited experience with DosLinux type distro when i needed to sort out resizing partitions, making them bootable, and so forth before XP arrived.
Im really looking forward to trying to install some packages on Puppy.

Euro240
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Joined: Fri 11 Mar 2016, 22:38

#1004 Post by Euro240 »

medicalystoned wrote:
Beuleuleu wrote:hi,



- in seamonkey i can't see all the web pages (like as the web page are too large for seamonkey), and i don't find how to resize.
I have the same issue, it's like looking at webpages on my PDA....
Have you tried CTRL and the + key?
This usually zooms the page in properly
(I personally use firefox, and this helps me.

you can also change the default zoom in firefox.
Unfortunately I don;t know enough about seamonkey.

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James186282
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Location: Minnesota

#1005 Post by James186282 »

I have nothing but praise for how easy it is to put a CD in a junk computer (Old and slow) and be connected to the web and running the browser of your choice and go WOW this computer is great again. Like when I bought it 8 years ago. I mean this is almost magic. Laptops that are just "trash" are good *Even great.

My only complaint and this is probably OCD talking is that getting down into the nity gritty things changing files that are the standard way to do something is other linux distros are sometimes overwritten by something in Puppy. I'm NOT saying make Puppy like every other Distro. I've had machines running a variety of distros and for me? They can't touch Puppy for being fast and easy to get rolling.

Let me take one example. xorg.conf seems straightforward and you can find all sorts of information on how changing this does that. The issue I have is that puppy overwrites this at odd times and it can be a real pain to understand what happened and why. JWM is another example. If I go to Joe's web site and read the doc its all fairly straightforward but its different on Puppy (*And confusing and a bit overwhelming as to the number of files that run and that whats in one can be overruled in 4 or 5 different places)

Doing everything behind the scene and making it idiot proof is probably the best for most of the users who just want something that works and requires little to no deep down fiddling without using a gui "tool" thats idiot proof.

I dunno. This probably sounds lame. I only mention it because I have written crib notes on so many things. "What really happens when the machine starts up, when audio is running or the window manager or whatever. They generally sound like this, First this file runs. Then this other file runs and can overule what the previous file does. This file is normally where your supposed to change this but in this case any changes can really screw things up." That type of thing.

I like to see whats going on and clearly a lot of the power users do as well because they are the ones writing gui based routines that change options etc in a way that makes it simple.

This is kind of the Steve Job idea that a computer should be as easy to operate as a blender and I've never been a fan of that when its taken too far.

The goods far outweigh my frustraitions. And yes I was that kid who had to take apart the clock to see how it worked. And the radio and nearly everything else. I drove my mother insane but dear old dad encouraged my interest.
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer.
Art is everything else we do.
[i]Donald Knuth [/i]

cokolo
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu 02 Jun 2016, 18:29
Location: Nigeria

internet connection

#1006 Post by cokolo »

pls.... how do i make my Huawei 3531 usb moderm work

cokolo
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu 02 Jun 2016, 18:29
Location: Nigeria

help

#1007 Post by cokolo »

Huawei usb modern not working
am using slacko 6.3

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LazY Puppy
Posts: 1934
Joined: Fri 21 Nov 2014, 18:14
Location: Germany

Re: help

#1008 Post by LazY Puppy »

cokolo wrote:Huawei usb modern not working
Welcome to the club! :wink:

Probably installing these packages will help?

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... h&id=97692
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... h&id=97691

Try it first without to use a save file (boot pfix=ram).
RSH

"you only wanted to work your Puppies in German", "you are a separatist in that you want Germany to secede from Europe" (musher0) :lol:

No, but I gave my old drum kit away for free to a music store collecting instruments for refugees! :wink:

cokolo
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu 02 Jun 2016, 18:29
Location: Nigeria

lazzy puppy

#1009 Post by cokolo »

i am using thar puppy 6.0.5 now
its working fine now.

how do i install a floating dock menu like mac installed
and i also want to learn how to program in c as a nonprogrammer
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cokolo
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu 02 Jun 2016, 18:29
Location: Nigeria

my puppy

#1010 Post by cokolo »

i just want my puppy to look cool too.
any ideas?

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