A "ziprelease" archive contains a frugal install of Puppy, that you "unzip" onto an empty fat32 usb stick.
Using a "ziprelease" archive file:
Start with an empty ordinary fat32 usb stick, with an "msdos" partition table, at least 1GiB, i.e. an ordinary usb stick.
(An empty usb stick is recommended only to avoid any possible doubt as to the source of any files on the resultant usb stick.)
Download the Puppy ".zip" file.
"unzip" it into the root of the usb stick.
(On Windows, right-click the ".zip" file and select "Extract All...".)
Reboot using a uefi-boot.
On some machines that will be enough, (it is on mine),
but on others, you may need to define the fat32 partition as bootable;
On Linux set the "boot" flag using "gparted";
On Windows "Set partition active" in "Disk Management".
If this is a Windows machine, you might want to consider executing the '/win-util/Turn_Off_Fast_Startup.bat' file on the usb stick with "administrator" privileges, just to be sure that you can't cause any problems with Windows "Fast Startup" by Puppy accessing the Windows "C:" drive.
The advantage of this method is that it's simple, does not require any 3rd party utility, all files on the usb stick are known to be Puppy appropriate,
it doesn't muckup the existing fat32 filesystem on the stick (which then needs to be "fixed"), and has minimal impact on the previously installed Operating System.
It requires some disk space, and a utility to "unzip" the archive.
Of course it doesn't have to be a usb stick, it could be a bootable fat32 partition on any device.
Running a Puppy frugal install from a single fat32 partition is not the most efficient, but it can be used as a first step.
Once you have a running Puppy you can use any of it's internal installers to install the Puppy you want, in the way you want.
Note: FrugalPup can install a Puppy from a ".zip" release file just as well as from a ".iso" release file.
------------Some background as to why the zip is the way it is:
If you install Puppy to a fat32 usb stick using 'StickPup' then archive the contents of the stick using "zip",
you could then "unzip" that archive onto another usb stick.
But there are 2 difficulties with this:
1. There may not be any "mbr" on the new stick, or it could historically contain the wrong "mbr".
The "mbr" of the original stick is not a file, so it is not transferred via an ordinary "zip" archive.
There are 2 solutions to this issue:
a. Include utilities in the archive that can be executed on the new stick to install the appropriate "mbr".
(This is the approach taken by "gparted-live" and "clonezilla-live" ".zip" files.)
b. Since uefi-boots do not require an "mbr", only non-uefi boots do, drop support for non-uefi booting via the archive file.
This is the approach I have taken, of course this also means that no non-uefi grub2 files need be included in the archive.
2. The boot-entry in the Grub2 config file ('grub.cfg') generated by 'StickPup' contains references to the UUID and possibly the Volume Label of the original usb stick.
If you attempt to boot the new stick, Grub2 will not find the referenced partition.
So the 'grub.cfg' file in the archive is modified, to dynamically "probe" for the Volunme Label or UUID of the booting device.
------------Original uploaded files:
I have uploaded 'iso2zip.gz' to https://www.mediafire.com/folder/eto6n8 ... ziprelease.
This is a Puppy utility to convert a ".iso" release into a ".zip" release.
'iso2zip.gz' depends on FrugalPup V20 (or greater) being installed.
I have also uploaded 'fossapup64_9.5+ie.zip' to https://www.mediafire.com/folder/eto6n8 ... ziprelease.
An example Puppy "ziprelease" that can be tried to see that the concept works.
Note: 'fossapup64_9.5+ie.zip' is also a slightly "patched" version of "fossapup64_9.5" with the changes from the 'init-experiment' branch of woof-ce.
On first-shutdown, if you select "SAVE", there will be no more dialogs, it will archive the current session as a ".tar.gz" file on the usb stick,
which will be reinstated during the next boot, (it's called pupmode=66).
This means any configuring you do, can be remembered for subsequent boots.
It also containns FrugalPup v28.
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