And they call it Puppy Love…
In the beginning. Part 1…
A couple of years ago, I was looking for an operating system for Chatwin and, after trying many others, came across Puppy Linux.
At first I thought that it was a joke, but then I investigated and found that that it wasn’t – far from it.
I’ll try to explain. Chatwin is a secondhand HP e-Vectra with a 600MHz processor and 256MB of RAM. She cost me all of 70 euros.
Nowadays, I wouldn’t be able to buy a machine with such a low spec but, if one did turn up in a yard sale, car boot sale or vide greniers (what we call a yard sale in France), I’d probably fork out 20 euros for one; 30 max!
In other words, she’s not a powerhouse. I bought her just so that I’d have another machine to do my writing on – a machine that didn’t have email and internet on, so I wouldn’t be distracted.
I realised that with her low spec, she wouldn’t be a screamer but I was also aware that there were a number of cutdown versions of Linux that I could try.
If all else failed, I had an old copy of Windows 98 which would work (although I really didn’t want to have to admit failure and use that).
I started off by downloading DSL-N. This is a larger version of Damn Small Linux which many people have raved about – sadly, I’m not one of them. It just didn’t deliver the goods for me.
I then tried a number of live distros but these all used KDE as a window manager and that took up too much of the limited memory.
I even installed Free BSD but had trouble getting a window manager to work – perhaps I should have persevered but…. life’s too short!
Finally, I downloaded a copy of the basic Debian distribution – I knew that I could make this work. It would have worked, as well, had I not been distracted by something that I stumbled upon on the internet – a review of Puppy Linux.
Puppy Linux is it!
I downloaded the CD image – it came to 72MB.
That’s right, an operating system with all the applications you are ever going to need for a basic home PC in 72MB. I cut a CD and booted Chatwin up. I couldn’t believe it – even running from a liveCD, Chatwin had been transformed from the 6 year old, 70 euro secondhand machine to the fastest machine that I had ever used (or seen).
I started looking round at what you get with Puppy.
Abiword – the word processor that, at the time, I used out of preference
Gnumeric – a useable spreadsheet
SeaMonkey – the Mozilla internet suite that handles browsing, email, newsgroups and web design. It also has an address book
Geany – a powerful text editor that I tried to learn to like (or, at least, learn to use)
And a host of small applications to provide internet connectivity, network connectivity, drawing, playing music and videos and loads of other stuff that I just never got round to playing with.
In other words, everything that I needed.
It also had a set of wizards that were so simple, I couldn’t believe that they were working.
They were though, and I set up my soundcard and network connectivity faster and easier than any other operating system that I have ever used.
How Puppy works
When you boot up off the CD, Puppy loads itself into RAM.
That’s why it’s do fast! It stores any changes you make in RAM until you log out. Then you are prompted to save to a file on your hard disk.
As long as you have space, it doesn’t matter what Operating System you are using (I believe that there are some difficulties with NTFS but there are workarounds as well.
Running Puppy off a CD is the standard way of doing things – even the developer works this way.
However, I decided to install it to my hard disk. It installed in about 5 minutes – compare that with Windows 98 (don’t even think about XP). It took another few minutes to set up networking and getting the soundcard working. After that, it has worked without any problems at all.
All the questions it asks when installing (or booting up from the CD) are simple to answer – even for a newcomer to PCs.
Its wizards and clear interface make it the ideal operating system for the most nervous of users.
What is interesting, though, is that so many power users are getting interested in it, as well. It’s the speed, you see.
What don’t I like about Puppy Linux
Umm…. I’m going to have to think about that – there must be something.
The interface
The interface is very clear and sensible. Thus, nice big icons which are sensibly labelled – Email is just that, not Outlook or Thunderbird; Wordprocessing is Write, not Abiword.
This has got to help new users. I, however, am not a new user and I prefer a more austere desktop. No problem there, there are other window managers that I can download and use. There are other icon sets, as well.
Even if it doesn’t suit me, I do have to say that the standard interface is better than anything Microsoft has ever created.
Running as root
With Linux (and Unix) systems, there is a privilleged user known as root. Root has power to do anything. Normally it is not a good idea to run as root.
With Puppy Linux, you don’t have any choice. However, having thought about this, I understand why.
If you are running off a live CD, you can’t delete any system files – they’re on the CD.
By not having multiple logins, Puppy doesn’t carry the weight of other systems and is thus, so fast.
Nothing major, it just goes against the grain to run as root – for me, at least.
It’s so fast!
Yes, I’m bitter about this. I’m bitter that I spent so much money on Mozart (my main machine) only to see it being trounced in speed stakes by something that cost a tenth of the price.
I bet that Microsoft are bitter, as well. I believe that, if someone brought out a supported version of Puppy Linux, they would clean up as all those Windows XP, non-power users are forced to upgrade both hardware and software, just so they can run Vista or Win7.
To the present day. Part 2….
I’ve persevered with Puppy since that very first day: I worked my way through various flavours from version 2.0 right up to the current 5.0 Lucid Puppy.
They’ve all worked find.
Puppy 5.0 however, is the icing on the cake!
Apart from all the great features that have present for the last four years, the Ubuntu Lucid repository (or maybe part of it?) is available for application downloads. I’m not sure if the whole repository is available because although I was able to install Nautilus and Gedit, I couldn’t find any reference to PyRoom.
More investigation on my part is required there.
Thunderbird, however, installed fine from the QuickPet application installer.
Summary
Puppy will run upon pretty much anything out there.
It gives you a blisteringly fast machine with a sensible selection of pre-installed applications.
If you need more choice of applications, it’s there with the integration of the Ubuntu repository.
You can run it perfectly well from the CD; perhaps using a USB key to hold your data files and to back up your configuration (when you log out, you’ll be asked if you want your configuration saved.)
This makes it the perfect machine independent Linux distribution that will run on any machine you can find.
You can, as I do, install to the hard drive, this doesn’t really improve performance; it just seems a tidier way for me to do things.
I’m going to write some more (maybe next week) about the 10 Reasons to Love Puppy but I hope that this little introduction has been interesting enough for you to try a download of Lucid Puppy 5.0 and give it a go.
All the best
17 Responses to “And they call it Puppy Love…”
If I could only figure out how make something start on this damned MSI machine, I’d certainly try this one as described, but…is it me, is it my machine….?
Wow – I’m downloading the latest version, and it’s 128MB’s!
I thought it was way shorter and smaller than that! Never mind, I” put it onto my key and await further instructions from the guu……!
Nice review Keith! I’m a huge fan of Puppy.
Actually the latest Puppy is 501, can be had here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/puppy-5.0.1/lupu-501.iso
I also love Puppy Linux and have been recommending it to friends and clients with older hardware and have yet to have one of them go back to MS Windows after trying it. I remember the first time I tried to convert a friend. His computer was a P2, with, if I remember correctly, 512MB of ram and what had to be the largest (depth wise) CRT monitor I had ever seen. I put the CD in and he asked if I wanted to go shoot a game of pool or something while we waited. I gave him a puzzled look and asked how long it normally took him to boot. He responded that he would turn on the computer first thing in the morning, then take a shower and have a coffee while reading the paper, then come back and have to wait 5 minutes or so while IE booted so he could check his email. About the time he was finishing hi sentence puppy finished booting behind me. I knew this from the look of utter shock on his face. He had never seen his computer do anything, anything, in less than 2-4 minutes. Puppy had just booted a complete and live desktop in about a minute and a half. From that moment on he was sold. He eventually bought a new Mac G5. After a little light hearted ribbing about his new purchase I asked him what he did with the old box. “Oh, it’s still down in the basement, I use it when I want to look up something real quick”
Puppy Linux is an amazing distro, and when you consider the size, it absolutely blows my mind.
[...] found myself about to install Puppy Linux for an article that I was writing for http://www.kmeckstein.com (And they call it Puppy Love…), I decided to give KVM a [...]
Nice review.
You link to Lucid Puppy Linux 5.00. You really should be linking to the bug fixed release 5.01 at:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/puppy-5.0.1/lupu-501.iso
Better still – refer to the directory because the they will find the md5 file to be able to check the download. Nothing worse than having users say Puppy doesn’t work but in reality they got a bad download or burnt the CD incorrectly!
I’ve just lost my internet connection (and I find it difficult to use the French keyboard at the local internet cafe) – I’ll update the links as soon as I get back on line. I have got a more in depth study of Puppy 5.0 ready for next week – it’s amazing how much work you can get done when you haven’t got the internet to distract you!
Thanks for all the comments – will reply when I manage to convince the Internet Cafe to let me use my own UK keyboard!
All the best
Keith
Puppy lupu 5.01 or Quirky 1.5 are stellar performers on older hardware and unbelievable on newer machines. Anyone looking for a fast, secure OS should look no further than Puppy Linux. Try It, you’ll Like It.
Puppy’s OK, but a Debian minimum install is better. Openoffice is better than Abiword and Gnumeric, and Iceweasel is better than Seamonkey. Puppy’s great if you really have very limited resources. Otherwise I would go with Debian. I also didn’t think that Puppy was faster than Debian.
A warning for some old hardware
Puupy LInux is based on Lycid binary packages. These have be compiled for i686 machines and not for i586. This means that it will not run on some Via C3 CPUs, even though the specs are around the same ~ 500MHz /256 MB RAM
I’m running Puppy on my old HP Pavilion 4540 433MHz CPU, 256 MB of RAM, and a 80 GB hard drive.
No Ethernet card. I’m using an old USB to Ethernet adapter, which is working just fine.
Good distro for older hardware!
People, puppy is a play thing for geeks to experiment with under powered hardware. What most people want (or may best use), is Ubuntu and hardware that will satisfy it’s requirements. Which isn’t that hard to find. Even for free, if you ask.
The argument is valid, that if you’re technical AND still want to play with older boxes, a Debian minimum install (and selective build up) is the way to go (if you have time). It’s more current, more flexible, more usable and dynamically (easily) software upgradeable. So that’s it’s not passed by, tomorrow.
Puppy is fascinating; but it’s underbelly and upkeep are not for anyone but experimenters. The end conclusion is there’s only so much older hardware can do. Not that anyone should have to put up with these near forced upgrades, in todays market. Still, faster hardware is faster hardware.
As for running puppy to get speed; on newer and faster hardware, it just isn’t better (overall) than Ubuntu. Not that Ubuntu is perfect, it’s just the least (and getting lesser) of ALL OS evils.
Sparky, Ubuntu is nice. Linux Mint 8 or 9 is nice too. http://www.linuxmint.com/. A debian minimum install is also a good way to go. I have used and like Puppy Linux 4.1.11 , 4.2.1 , 4.3, and played with Lucid Puppy 5.01 and my opinion is that Puppy Linux is for ordinary people who just want to use a computer. I am a truck driver now and have been a computer programmer / hardware engineer in 1982 (B1-B bomber) to NEC Electronics supporting WINCE on Vr Series MIPS 41xx microprocessor.
Puppy Linux just works easily. Gives you several methods to use it LIveCD, Frugal Install, Full Hard disk install, and USB Flash Disk Install. There are wizards to help the end user make selections for sound cards, graphics cards, internet connection Wired, Wireless, or dial-up. These additional setup wizards make installing puppy linux easy, because the shell script wizard contains the knowledge that the end user might not.
In my use of Puppy Linux I have been satisfied and still use the version 4.1.11 Puppy that I installed on the 2800Mhz AMD Athalon box. I have run PuppyLinux on a 500Mhz box and got work done, but see that faster hardware is faster hardware, therefore gets internet browsing done faster. I run many open windows, and a couple applications all at the same time.
What I like about Puppy Linux over Ubuntu or Mint is the size 128MegaBytes. I could easily install PuppyLinux to a 256MB USB Flash Drive and plug into any computer that can boot from USB.
Even a 1, 2, or 5 Gigabyte hard drive would work to make a computer useable.
PuppyLinux has the rough edges smoothed and rounded to make it easy to setup and install with out being a technical geek experimenter. It even has a forum that can be searched for answers or even ask your question with helpful people to answer your question.
http://www.wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html Search PuppyLinux forum to find answers.
I also like Tiny Core Linux http://www.tinycorelinux.com/ that would be a geek experimenters
fun place to spend time. Plus it seems to work fast too and is small.
WB7ODY Fred wb7odyfred at yahoo dot com
ps. we all have different opinions I value your comments, Sparky. Thanks
I am using Mint Linux 8 on this computer.
Please burn at x8 speed a copy of Lucid Puppy Linux 5.01 and try on your computer.
Give away to friends who need to save files from a MS WIN computer.
The cost is one CD and a little time to research something new. Puppy Linux does not change your computer.
One thing that I should mention is that I use Puppy on the loan machines that I lend out to clients if I have to take their machines away for a backup and rebuild.
I sometimes find it hard to get those loan machines back! The clients love them (and Puppy) so much!
[...] There were many other comments about last week’s post and you can read all of them at http://www.kmeckstein.com/linux/and-they-call-it-puppy-love/#comments [...]
>>>> Spanky said — “People, puppy is a play thing for geeks to experiment with under powered hardware.”
I disagree. If a geek installs Puppy for a user, then Puppy is sufficiently user-friendly for most. I’ve been refurbishing machines for several years with Puppy and have no user complaints.
On the other hand, if you’re the person installing and configuring Puppy, then I agree, you’d better be a hobbyist or geek.
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