Puppy Linux Lucid 5.2.8

Looking for a fast OS with a very small footprint Puppy Linux has been everything they said it was/is. 129 MB runs in RAM and remembers your settings, all in a 4 GB flash drive, you can get by with a smaller flash drive but i wanted to give it extra room if needed. I'm trying the Enlightenment 17 window manager as well. If you haven't tried Linux or if your looking for an all around "small" Linux distro you may want to give it a test drive..

Puppy Linux Lucid..

http://puppylinuxnews.org/puplets/lucid-puppy-528-released-as-finlandia/

Enlightenment 17..

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=71058

Enjoy..

 

The most ignored distro ....

I have been using LucidPuppy 5.2.8 on a USB for several years. I originally downloaded it to use on my laptop at WIFI hotspots as I found it to be the most secure way to browse, email and download stuff on an open network. As I do not use a VPN service, Lucid's isolation of the PC's OS and HDD provided the best solution out there for this purpose.

Version 5.2.8 is a stable distro, however it has not been updated in years (2010). All the programs have .pet as the extension and they too are old. Just wondering if development has stopped altogether. I see I can get Puppy Precise which was released in Aug 2013, but not sure if it has all the isolation capabilities that Lucid has. I am indeed a novice on UNIX and get all my guidance from here and on the Dedoimedo site. Lucid Puppy is not a hot topic, in fact I would categorize it as 'ignored'.

 

Ignored is a good word and its too bad that its turned out that way. Lucid Puppy is miniature XP in the way it handles the OS its everything you say it is and more and it would be more if they'd update it from time to time. That in my opinion is where Microsoft got ahead of itself, instead of continuing to upgrade XP "their best OS" they start working on a "new and improved" versions..

 

No easy way to configure trackpoint sensitivity = big no no for me. Too bad cause the OS looks quite decent.

 

The Fluxbox window manager makes things interesting..

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/FluxBox

 

O.k. since i started this thread back in October I've had a chance to try several Linux Distro's on a USB stick some worked some didn't some were faster than others.. There was a time when i thought Linux Mint would be my #1 that was until Puppy Linux got my attention, if you haven't tried Puppy Linux Lucid 5.2.8 you don't know what your missing.. Its extremely fast and has a very small footprint 133 MB if i remember correctly. Using Windows i downloaded the Puppy Linux Lucid ISO..

http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/Operating-Systems/Linux-Distributions/Puppy-Linux-1996.shtml

then the Universal USB Installer..

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/

Then load it into a USB stick of your choice, i started with a 1 GB stick then worked my way up.. just depends on how well you like it and how much you want to add on

Enjoy!

 

If you've decided to try Puppy Linux you might want to have this list of software made available in what they call pet packages. I've scanned the link with urlvoid.com and it came up clean.. As with anything we download its always a good idea to check these links just before downloading.. i had one the other day i had used before but i checked it first, good thing i did it had been reported a few days previous..

http://www.smokey01.com/OscarTalks/

 

Tried installing Puppy Lucid 5.2.8 in Virtualbox (4.3.4) – and man, did I have some fun! I still don't know how I set the boot flag – nor how I setup the lupusave.userfs file! I just kept clicking until I got there.

I was unable to install Guest Additions – (gcc and kernel header not found!) I tried apt-get install dkms build-essential linux-headers-generic and install gcc dkms kernel-devel but neither were recognized by Puppy. I eventually managed to install Guest Additions by following one suggestion I found on the net – this involved downloading 2 .sfs files - lupu_devx_528-4.sfs and kernel_src_L4-2.6.33.2-patched.sfs and running them via Setup -> Setup Puppy -> SFS-load on-the fly to install them both.

Following this, Puppy seemed to be up and running and even the mouse cursor worked OK (more on that issue in a moment!) However, my win on this was short lived!
On the next restart - Puppy went catatonic! It had hung and I had to terminate the VM via Machine\Close. Puppy never recovered from this – it would pass the boot\Grub screen – run a short routine and stop with lines of error messages (can't recall what they were now)

But the biggest killer for me was the behaviour of my mouse! (I use a WiFi mouse) Never had an issue with any other distro – but Puppy just didn't like my mouse. Trying to navigate the screen was a lesson in frustration because the damn cursor kept hitting invisible barriers – had to continuously capture\un-capture the cursor to reach all parts of the screen – even this would only work for a few seconds!
This behaviour continually plagued me when using Puppy!

After 2 days – I decided I was getting nowhere and promptly retired Puppy! Needless to say – my opinion of Puppy is not 'up there' – I found Puppy Lucid as clear as mud and akin to a 3 legged dog!
May try again one day - when I'm feeling lucky and adventurous!

 

After trying several distros Puppy Linux wins out as the fastest one of the bunch.. so far they've been on flash drives, i may be getting an older computer where i can start putting them on a hard drive.. I'm thinking that should boost the performance somewhat..