Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[mikeslr]

Maybe it's what you're used to. But as I've posted several times I have LinuxMint on my computer and almost never boot into it. If you need an application someone hasn't already created for Puppy maybe the package manager of a major distro will make life easier than Puppy Package Manager. [I don't have sufficient experience with scottman's pkg-cli to compare it]. In all other respects, I don't think major distros offer any advantage to newbies.

LinuxMint is a highly rated and unquestionably solid distro which is why I chose it. But yesterday I decided to boot into it and bring it up to speed. It does provide an module notifying you that there are upgrades available. Nice feature. A new, and recommended, kernel upgrade was available. Under Puppies, I can manually change kernels in less than five minutes; and newer Puppies can use an app, LinuxMint took over 20 minutes, during which I sat around twiddling my thumbs as I didn't want to do anything that might interfere with the process. Of course, just in case something went wrong, before doing any upgrade I wanted to 'backup' my functioning system. Under Puppy's modular system changing kernels doesn't alter the rest of your system so a backup isn't necessary. But when a backup is prudent, that means backing up my SaveFile/Folder. Puppies backup applications can do that in a minute or two. LinuxMint has 'time-shift' which, if I understand it correctly, creates an image of your current system. If you haven't done that in a while during which there have been many changes --upgrades to applications or their components, etc.-- expect to twiddle your thumbs for quite a while.

If something went wrong under Puppy, you can boot 'pfix=ram", remove the bk-xxxx ending from the backup-SaveFile's name and reboot into your functioning system. I've yet to figure out what to do with the time-shifts I've created under LinuxMint.

The upgrade manager told me that about 10 other upgrades were available. Then it wasn't able to access the repos which supposedly had them (or the needed components were missing from my default repos). So I had to use synaptic to change my default repos. More time wasted.

Maybe all that is second nature if you're used to how a major distro works. But if your coming from Windows I think learning how to do things under recent Puppies would actually be easier.

Perhaps Puppies only other disadvantage are their use of rox. Rox has some unique ways of managing files. However, AFAIK, xfe can be installed into any Puppy, series 5 or above. It has little overhead and provides a stylish, easily understood file-manager. [Not that there's anything wrong with rox other than its learning curve. It's all I use].

[Colonel Panic]

I've just installed the latest version of Devuan, 2.1. The software is a bit behind the curve (it has LibreOffice 5.2.7.2, for example, and Palemoon needs to be the Debian 9 version in order to be able to install on it), but it still works well.

Devuan 2.1 offers you a choice of init system, either sysvinit or Open RC, when you install it. Worth considering for older computers in particular, or for anyone who wants to avoid using systemd.

[EDIT: one quirk it has though is that when it's booting up, the screen goes blank for at least a minute before displaying the login screen. The first time this happened, I switched the computer off because I was convinced something had gone wrong.]

[Colonel Panic]

Another good one for older computers; there's a new beta of the forthcoming edition of ELive, 3.8.1, which is free in the 32-bit version (though you have to wait two hours for a download link, which is emailed to you) and which I'm posting from now. I'm using it live because at the moment I don't have any space left on my hard drive to install it.

It uses the E16 version of Enlightenment for its window manager, and looks good for a distro designed to work on older computers though I had some difficulty getting it to find a suitable driver for my video card and had to make do with the "open" one (which seems to work well enough). There are some random clicks and noises whenever you move the cursor to certain areas of the desktop, which I find a bit disconcerting although there's probably a way to turn them off, and also a puffing sound whenever you click on the menus (which I quite like).

In summary, it's definitely worth a look if you've got an older computer and are willing to try something a bit different; it's clear that a lot of thought, time and effort have gone into it. There is also a 64-bit version, but you need to give a donation to get the download link for that one.