Puppy Linux 4.1 - Absolutely Stunning!

Hi all,

I have decided to give Puppy Linux another go almost a year and a half since I've written the first review.

The distro is absolutely amazing. In under 100MB, you get anything you can think of, wireless support, mp3 playback, flash playback, backup and partitioning software, samba sharing out of the box, blogging software, html editor, and much, much more.

Even the F-Prot anti-virus, with GUI, if you want to scan Windows shares or remote machines.

All this from a live CD - which you can easily "transfer" to a bootale USB. You must try Puppy!

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/puppy-revisited.html

Comments are welcome.

Mrk

 

Agree
I've been banging on about this for a few days ( in my own shy way)
The v4.1 releases are super tight, light years ahead of earlier rels.

 

Yes it is really an awesome distro...less than 100MB!

Mrk your site has grown at a substantial rate recently.
OT, have you thought about doing something on file analysis or forensic tools, on dedoimedo?..mac-robber, sleuthkit(TSK) comes to mind, or the tools that you use everyday.

 

Hello,

The interesting tools - including wireshark, arping, arpwatch, nagios, kdump, cscope, all sorts of servers etc - they will mainly feature in the books I'm writing. The problem is, there's only sooooo little time for everything.

I still have to complete the lpi 2 second exam, then do ubuntu professional, plus hack the living daylights out of kernel at work, now that I'm linuxing both for fun and cash ... Time ... time ... no time ...

Not sure if dedoimedo is the platform for that kind of stuff ... maybe ... not a bad idea, but it will appeal to only 0.00001% people. Even so my Apache chapter seems to be way too complex for most people.

Cheers,
Mrk

 

I have limited experience with Puppy Linux but I like it.

The other day I used it to copy files/folders (~10 GB) from a hard drive. The hard drive had Windows XP Pro installed on it. The motherboard had failed. So I built a new system and installed this hard drive as data backup storage for the new PC. I was pretty sure that I had backed up all of my data already to my RAID1 Server but I decided to copy the data again to the new hard drive. When I tried to access the MyDocuments folder of the old hard drive I got an error something like "Access Denied". So whipped out the latest Puppy Linux and booted as a Live CD and copied the data from the old hard drive to the new one.

I have also used Puppy for web surfing from time to time.

 

Mrkvonic, excellent review as usual, sadly no x64 yet. Also those with multi core CPUs which are now commonplace should get the SMP version.

 

Puppy is TEH beast. It's definitely one of the more useful distros created. The potential is simply mind-boggling.

Arup, if you consider Puppy as your portable treasure island, to use when you hop from one machine to another, then the lack of 64x support should be less of a worry.

Mrk

 

Very good point, I intend to carry it on my USB to demo Linux to non Linux users. This is a very good way to get people into Linux. I still want a x64 for me.

 

Tried PC Linux 2007 the other day and that's all I have to say about that experience.

Just now tried Puppy Linux from the live cd.

Booted no probs but do you think I could get a connection.

Remind never to try another linux distro ever again!

 

Very good presentation!

 

Very Nice Mrk once again.IMO its really nice to see linux being talked about more as of late and the different distros.Like a kid here with new toys Fun Fun Fun.

 

Strange, if on DHCP, Linix distros are the fastest to find your active connection, if on static IP, then all you need to do is enter the numbers after boot and you are all ready set to go. Never faced network issues with Linux.

 

What is that? Link?

@stapp:

No, yes, vast difference btwn Puppy@~100mb and Ubuntu/Mint (mmm...lol.. debian runs on a toaster)
Puppy may require some 'priming' as it doesn't always offer oob for 'everything', what did you try ?

 

Try http://www.openprinting.org/printer_list.cgi

 

Simply Awesome! Finally they got the drivers for my soundcard lol. Things open so quick 1 click and BOOM! Pretty freaky as I'm not a linux fan but amazing heh!
This distro is so automatic its too much of a no brainer........I LIKE!

 

Hello Arup, why the fascination with 64bit ?

Another fine job Mrkvonic, Puppy is my # 2 most used Linux distro

 

I also love it and would, even more so, if I could install it like a normal linux on the HDD. I get a bit tired having to go through all the motions of setting up the internet and email etc. each time I boot from the CD. At present I am running Ubuntu.
John

 

Then check the main sites FAQ and "hard" Puppy pages John.

 

Re: Puppy Linux 4.1 - Absolutely NOT Stunning!

Hi All

"Absolutely Stunning"

A comment made by one of the posters.

I cannot get my Voyager 105 Modem to work with Puppy Linux. Not only that I cannot find any repository with information that might help me set it up.

For the much maligned Win XP of course its easy to do with bags of information.

So why is Linux so good?

Any help gratefully received so that I can try this "Absolutely Stunning Distro"

Thank you for allowing me my say

Terry

 

Hello,

When you install Windows (XP), do you have do install drivers, for ... everything? Yes. So, you get one issue with one piece of hardware and it's the end of the world.

Does windows come with flash preinstalled? No.
Does windows come with mp3 codecs preinstalled? No.
Does windows come with sharing software for linux file systems? No.
Does windows come with blogging software? No.
Does windows come with ability to create bootable usb? No.
Does windows come with anti-virus? No.

All above is yes for this tiny, fabulous distro. And this is only a scratch. Instant messaging software, digital camera software etc ...

Size of Windows? Minimum: 1GB install footprint. Live CD? No.
Size of Puppy? 100MB. Live CD? Yes.

So how is this not amazing?

Mrk

 

Hi mrkvonic

To answer you question.

Yes you do have to do all the things you outlined with Windows. No dispute.

Its stunning if it works. Its not stunning if it doesn't work (with Linux), as in my case.

The key difference here, is, and I would have thought you knew this, it is virtually impossible to get USB modems to work with linux distributions. I am aware that one or two technically very competent individuals have succeeded. But its not for the faint hearted. Either way, with Windows its easy to set up USB modems. With Linux it is not and there is neither the information nor patches nor drivers for the majority of modems. So for all the hype about Linux there are issues with it as I outline here.

I have tried a number of times to get my system to work with linux and I cannot. I am simply told get a router. An alternative might be for less linux distributions and for the developers to work together to produce a more user friendly product.

If I am wrong someone will be willing to prove me wrong and show me how to do it simply - Watch this Space!

Terry

 

Hey Terry,
Why dont you ring up BT and ask for a bt home hub?
my dad managed to get one for free.
sorts out the problem and also gives you a hardware firewall.