"Tiny" "Lite" "Small" Puppy with basic apps?

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pidibit
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"Tiny" "Lite" "Small" Puppy with basic apps?

#1 Post by pidibit »

hello,
i am new in puppy world and after testing some official distros (tahr, slack) and derivates i find number of preinstalled software applications and ulitites unbearable ... in numbers its even worse than ubuntu -and what more almost everything is directly accessed in cramped menu :)

So the last two hours im trying to find (google and this forum derivates section) any recent "lite" "tiny" distros
but what i found is 2-5 years old experiments with no long-term support :(

ps. i know i can easy remaster iso and create new one but number of preinstaled packages is large so i want first try by someone else edited version

sorry for my "cramped" english :D
Last edited by pidibit on Tue 13 Jan 2015, 14:48, edited 1 time in total.

starhawk
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#2 Post by starhawk »

One of the ideas of Puppy, is that it has nearly everything you'll ever need, right "out of the box" (er, CD / flash drive) so that six months from now when you need to add something sort of basic, such as a word processor, it's there and you don't have to go chasing it down.

With MS Windows (aka Windblows... yes it does...) you get a couple primitive text editors, a mediocre music and video player, a truly horrendous "image editor" *shudder* and some card games.

With Puppy, you get the equivalent of --
- MS Windows (Puppy OS itself)
- Windows Media Player (pMusic and/or VLC Player and/or ... )
- MS Paint (mtPaint)
- MS Word (Abiword, not that great but it's OK)
- MS Excel (Gnumeric)
- Adobe Acrobat Reader (ePDFViewer)
- Firefox (SeaMonkey Browser)
- MS Outlook Express (Seamonkey Mail)
- Adobe Illustrator (Inkscape or Inkscape Lite aka Inklite)
- Roxio / Nero CD utilities (pBurn)

...not to mention a couple dozen supporting utilities, and a truly tremendous pile of drivers -- no, really, I could probably count the number of times I've had to install drivers on my fingers and toes, without taking my socks off!

If there's anything you don't need/want it's going to be Abiword and Gnumeric, Abiword has never had a truly-stable-and-not-full-of-bugs version AFAIK, and Gnumeric is superfluous once you install eg LibreOffice (which is awesome and you should use it).

Except for those two and Inkscape (I'm used to other software) I have needed and used literally every single program on that list at least once... along with a bunch that aren't on that list...

Trust me, you want to keep them handy. You'll get used to the clutter :)

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nic007
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#3 Post by nic007 »

Apart from Seamonkey, Abiword and Gnumeric all the other applications are so small in size that it's hardly worth getting rid of them with a remaster. Best to keep it.

pidibit
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#4 Post by pidibit »

75% of all regular preinstalled apps (documents graphic editors, media players, games ...) in puppy i not using...
it will be dozens of applications...

ps.
i tested remove abiword and new remastered puppy_slacko_5.7.0.sfs is smaller from 164 MB to 157
Last edited by pidibit on Tue 13 Jan 2015, 04:51, edited 1 time in total.

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Moat
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#5 Post by Moat »

nic007 wrote:... all the other applications are so small in size that it's hardly worth getting rid of them with a remaster. Best to keep it.
+1 Very useful applications, at that.

I suppose if one wanted to keep them from cluttering up the menu, their corresponding .desktop files could be moved from /usr/share/applications/ to a seperate directory (for safekeeping, and re-insertion later, if wanted).

Bob

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rg66
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#6 Post by rg66 »

You can just add "NoDisplay=true" to the .desktop files which will hide them from the menu.
X-slacko-5b1 - X-tahr-2.0 - X-precise-2.4
[url=http://smokey01.com/rg66/]X-series repo[/url]

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bigpup
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#7 Post by bigpup »

what i found is 2-5 years old experiments with no long-term support Sad
That is because what you are asking for is up to personal taste.
All you are going to find is what someone else felt it should look like at the time.

If you use Tahrpup 6.0 it has:
menu->Setup->Menu Manager
You can use that program to make the menu look the way you want it.

The programs are still installed, but you control what shows on the menu.

That really seems to be what you are looking for. A simple menu only listing the programs you want to use.

You deleting the programs you do not want and remastering is really the other choice.
Puppy the way you want it to be.

As already stated Puppy comes with a lot of useful programs, because that is what Puppy is designed to provide. All you need to have a full featured operating system.

Use the menu->Setup->Remove Builtin Packages program and make Puppy the way you want it.
Just be careful about what you remove.

Remaster if you want your own Puppy iso file version.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

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nic007
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#8 Post by nic007 »

pidibit wrote:75% of all regular preinstalled apps (documents graphic editors, media players, games ...) in puppy i not using...
it will be dozens of applications...

ps.
i tested remove abiword and new remastered puppy_slacko_5.7.0.sfs is smaller from 164 MB to 157
Well just remove applications and remaster to your hearts content. At the moment I'm using a customised version of puppy 412. The base file is 61MB (Seamonkey, Abiword, Gnumeric, Cups, Network sharing and all those little apps I'm not using removed). It's still functional just as stripped down as is and I can still play music and video (gxine) and browse the net with dillo, etc. I use SFS add-ons for greater functionality. So for instance I have an older WINE SFS file of 17MB which I load to use my favourite Windows programmes (which are all combined into another SFS file, 19MB in size and includes a word processor, spreadsheet, etc.), an Opera SFS file of 9MB, etc. All bases covered. The beauty of puppy is that it can easily be customised for your own taste and doing so is fun.

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666philb
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#9 Post by 666philb »

Bionicpup64 built with bionic beaver packages http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=114311
Xenialpup64, built with xenial xerus packages http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=107331

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nic007
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#10 Post by nic007 »

666philb wrote:you might be interested in this http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=96973
Nice one, thanks. I don't know why they still include ISOMaster in the main distro, PBurn has all those functions.

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Fossil
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#11 Post by Fossil »

-and what more almost everything is directly accessed in cramped menu...
As already noted the menu can be edited for content. Also, should you find the physical menu's text too small to easily read (a lot of us 'older' members have this problem! :lol: ), that too can easily be fixed by altering either font or size heading via a configuration file. This applies to JWM, Icewm, Fluxbox, Openbox, et-all.

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mikeb
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#12 Post by mikeb »

Agreed and cant say some of the default apps are that great... but hey ho.
Perhaps each puppy should have a bare bones version like there used to be so users can choose. Not about size so much as clutter and sorry but there are numerous items in there I have NEVER found a use for.

The best puppy is the one you make yourself...since you have remastered once sucessfully keep going and make it lean and mean and human friendly. Main thing to watch is if you start removing libraries...need ldd and patience for that one as sometimes you make boo boos :D but some of your unwanted apps will use certain libraries exclusively and abiword is one of them.

ISOmaster...is that still buggy...ie messes up case handling so grub cannot be used? ... ... especially if pburn can do the job now.


mike

pidibit
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#13 Post by pidibit »

thanks for answers ...specially to 666philb he is finally on the topic! :P

because i dont asking for hide menu items (it has little benefit), but completly stripping down whole "SFS" eventually for faster load to ram and boot also

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mikeb
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#14 Post by mikeb »

666philb is always on topic... always was ;)

He sees the needs and attempts to fill them.

I keep my pups and slax around the 100MB mark and slotting into ram quickly and neatly is indeed the main reason (not every machine has 1GB+ ram to play with and its nice to be able to unmount ALL drives)...at least for a base system that might be used for rescue or when out an about or to entertain small boys...

Happy minimalism

mike

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8Geee
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#15 Post by 8Geee »

I "rolled my own" for an EEE netbook. Has a modern browser, kernal , paint, but no office, flash or JVM. comes in at 152MB. Since posted about 30-40 people have D/L which I find surprising

If curious its here.
Linux user #498913 "Some people need to reimagine their thinking."
"Zuckerberg: a large city inhabited by mentally challenged people."

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mikeb
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#16 Post by mikeb »

Since posted about 30-40 people have D/L which I find surprising
some lead, some follow :)

mike

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Moose On The Loose
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#17 Post by Moose On The Loose »

starhawk wrote:
If there's anything you don't need/want it's going to be Abiword and Gnumeric, Abiword has never had a truly-stable-and-not-full-of-bugs version AFAIK, and Gnumeric is superfluous once you install eg LibreOffice (which is awesome and you should use it).
I still use gnumeric even though I do have LibreOffice. The handling of graphs in Gnumeric is hand over fist better than LibreOffice's and Gnumeric is way faster. My OpenOffice macros work in LibreOffice so I have to switch to Calc when I want to use them. Otherwise, I only use Gnumeric.

To communicate with co-workers, I tend to use plain text or HTML more than anything else. Plain text is easy to make into comments in source code. HTML is a standard so I know they can read the results.

Wognath
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#18 Post by Wognath »

pidibit, you might find these interesting:
barebones puppies http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=83841
Debian dog http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=93225

Trin20t
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Great out of the box

#19 Post by Trin20t »

I love puppy. I like that I dont have to boot from my aging small 15 gb hard disk anymore. I can boot from USB and save to USB too or the drive. And it boots faster than the old Windows XP my laptop came with. As for software I had to install Flash and a few games and things but other than that I adore it. Saved me money on a new computer,new hard drive,and new OS! :wink: :D

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rufwoof
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#20 Post by rufwoof »

Moose On The Loose wrote:
starhawk wrote: If there's anything you don't need/want it's going to be Abiword and Gnumeric, Abiword has never had a truly-stable-and-not-full-of-bugs version AFAIK, and Gnumeric is superfluous once you install eg LibreOffice (which is awesome and you should use it).
I still use gnumeric even though I do have LibreOffice. The handling of graphs in Gnumeric is hand over fist better than LibreOffice's and Gnumeric is way faster. My OpenOffice macros work in LibreOffice so I have to switch to Calc when I want to use them. Otherwise, I only use Gnumeric.
gNumeric, abiword and inkscape are memory bound i.e. part of core puppy. If you also make Libre memory bound its as quick. Personally I find the graphing functions of Libre calc to be superior to gnumeric for instance you can incorporate call-outs/images etc easily into Libre charts. Puppy's abiword, inkscape and gnumeric are all cut down versions - and part of that size reduction results in loss of functionality and potential errors. Compare like for like full blown abiword, gnumeric and inkscape with Libre office - either fully memory bound or disk bound and they're similar for speed - whilst Libre has the edge in better integration between the different apps ... and more functionality (presenter, formula etc.)

I suspect swap files in more modern day PC's running Puppy are more of a bottleneck that instill delays - giving the impression of Libre being slower than inbuilt abiword, gnumeric ...etc. Personally I've deleted my swapfile and load Libre to taskbar - so its in effect memory bound and find that full blown Libre works very well.

With say 2GB of RAM (i.e. modest/small in present day terms) and no swap file, puppy will in effect use half of ram for swap, half for memory. A modest/large sized puppy and libre will fit within that 1GB swap space and still leave 1GB of front end memory for general working - which for most is more than enough. Whilst some try to compress down their puppy and sfs's I've moved in the opposite direction and find that using low or no compression to be faster/better. With 4GB and 4 core based systems (and rising), the efficiencies of Puppy are much much less of a issue than they were when running with i386, 64MB RAM, 100MB disk technology that was the driver for the choice of in-built cut-down word processor, draw and spreadsheet apps.

In short it all depends upon your set-up and preferences. As like for like setups/arrangements (memory bound or disk bound etc) compare equally it boils down to whichever apps your more comfortable/familiar with. Personally I found Puppy based abiword to be buggy and shifted over to uninstalling that and installing Libre. At first having come from a XP Excel arrangement I found it uncomfortable at first in not being familiar with Libre, but after a while find it to be as good as Excel.

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