My overall impression of Puppy Linux

[bert07]

Barry started a great new idea way back when. Perhaps he got the idea from the old Damn Small Linux (DSL), but look at it now.
The puppies live and grow and multiply.
When I started fiddling around with Linux, I still had much to learn. Still do. I am no coder.

The first Linux system that was on my computer decades ago was an OpenSuse (5 - I think). The CD disk came to me as a compliment of a computer magazine. I didn't understand anything of what was going on with the system (I used Win95 osr2 at that time). So I removed it rather fast.

But Linux was free to use, and my wallet wasn't, so some years later I installed an early Ubuntu (6 - I think). Linux could not even read ntfs by than. But I started with fiddling around with it, and I spent lots of time on forums.
But removed it again. I just was not ready for the operating system. I did try a few others.

The final breakthrough (for me) was Ubuntu Lucid.
Now we were getting somewhere. It looked nice, and could do almost anything I wanted from a computer.
Still, I was a very pale newbie and I ran into many a trouble.
Thank god for all the forums on line!

But at the forums they couldn't always help me, because my computer didn't boot anymore, so I couldn't reach any forum or repair the files on the computer.

I was looking around very much for distributions, and somehow I found Barry's very early Puppies.: somewhat 46MB in size if I'm not mistaken.
I liked it right away, although ROX does take some time getting used to. Now I wouldn't have it any other way.

I learned very quickly that a puppy could access anything and everything, as long as it concerned the hard drives.
So: if I had made a configuration mistake in distribution X, I launched the puppy and went searching for the corrupt file, and changed it again to a working (bootable) state.

Not long after that, I always made a separate partition on every computer, to install a puppy on. To make puppy start up even faster.

Puppy has been my life-saver ever since, and I can not thank Barry enough for the litter of Puppies he showed to the world.

A Puppy is a must-have for every computer, also for those who do not use a Linux system.
eg.: If you cannot delete a file that gives you problems on a Windows machine > run puppy and delete the file.

No, we cannot thank Barry enough, and at the moment also all those volunteers, users, coders that are involved in the Puppy break-out.

At this moment I do not have any Puppy installed on this computer (my computer data appearing under posts are wrong and I should update it!) because I can not install a Puppy on a UEFI system, the way I did before on old MBR systems.

---+---

Also, most people who just browse the internet, receive mail, go to social websites, really do not need a 5 to 15GB system. Just a puppy, and you are all set. And you still can write text documents (geany) and letters
(AbiWord). And so many other things without even enhancing the original installation.

---+---

I do have some concerns though.

- I would like to be able to keep Puppy installing in full install: the reason being that it is very easy this way to copy files and folders from one distro to the other, witch doesn't work with a frugal install and when Puppy isn't running.
- Grub2: It would be wonderful if a full Puppy installation would be recognized as a Linux system in Grub2 so I do not have to install multiple bootloaders. (which I don't.)

---+---

But all in all: Puppy is a must have system. It's a life saver. It is cute. It's small. It's free.

And again:
We cannot thank Barry and all those involved enough for bringing these Puppies into the world for us to use!

Woof!

[wizard]

witch doesn't work with a frugal install and when Puppy isn't running.

If Puppy is installed on a Linux (ext) partition and you create a save folder
(not a save file) then your files are in ordinary directories and other Linux can read them

Grub2: It would be wonderful if a full Puppy installation would be recognized as a Linux system in Grub2

It does, you can do a frugal install to an existing patition or create a small separate (ext3)
partition just for Puppy. You can then edit the existing grub2 grub.cfg file and add an entry for Pup.

wizard

[April]

Don't understand the grub2 bit but the Save Folder is indispensable .
With the Save Directory I think this is what he means.
I have a 320 Gig hard drive and do it this way . My Folder is 57 Gig and my savefile is 9 Gig atm
My hard disk is NTFS

SavsDirectory.jpg (72.85 KiB) Viewed 856 times

[Phoenix]

Regarding accessing files off a frugal install (savefile) you'll need to inform the mount utility via terminal to use a loop device. This is only needed if your file manager cannot do this. This is how puppy is capable of reading and using a file.

Code: Select all

mount -o loop path/to/filesystem/file mount/point

[Clarity]

HI @bert07,

Access to PUP files
Save yourself a set of headaches which traditionally result in savefile use. The PUP developers, over Puppy's history, taught PUPs to save your PUP's data folders and files in a Linux folder. This is known as save folder ... NOT save file.

From the account you have shared, you are probably accustomed to Linux filesystems (aka ext2, ext3, ext4, f2fs, etc.). And the developer changes will offer saving your Linux data in the session folder for you. This brings an added benefit in speed, as well as your ability to access PUP data from any other Linux distro you might boot because EVERY Linux distro can read data from any Linux filesystem's folders. Thus, your systems files are available from other distro as well as other PUP distro without ANY need for some utility to expand/contract your PUPs Linux data.

The Advice here, given by an earlier member on this thread, is when using any PUP, be sure at shutdown to save your PUP system (session) to a "folder" when offered and avoid use of saving in files. Its very good advice.

All of the modern WoofCE PUPs and modern DOGs on this forum use GRUB2. And several of the DOGs (FATDOG being just one of the severals) will register its OS on your UEFI PC so that the UEFI will recognize it for booting.

GRUB2
GRUB2, as available, has offered these modern distros on this forum many additional advantages too numerous to mention in this post for booting.

Enjoy!

[amethyst]

Best way to operate Puppy in my view:
- Instead of installing stuff, use sfs-addons.
- If you are going to use a savefile, keep it extremely small, just to save system configurations. I save my system configurations to an adrv and don't bother with either a savefile or savefolder. But users seem to love their mega sized savefiles and folders. A savefolder does appear to be the better option than a savefile but you still sit with a read/write saving mechanism so things can become corrupted

[Grey]

But users seem to love their mega sized savefiles and folders.

Mega? It's not solid. Only giga The economic crisis in the World will never end, so we need to live (and posh) here and now. My folder in compressed xz form weighs about 35 gigabytes

[Feek]

A savefolder does appear to be the better option than a savefile but you still sit with a read/write saving mechanism so things can become corrupted

If you decide to use a savefolder, you do not have to worry about its corruption.

The savefolder can be (regularly) backed up.
If you do, you will be able to restore it in a few moments if necessary.

[amethyst]

But users seem to love their mega sized savefiles and folders.

Mega? It's not solid. Only giga The economic crisis in the World will never end, so we need to live (and posh) here and now. My folder in compressed xz form weighs about 35 gigabytes

[amethyst]

A savefolder does appear to be the better option than a savefile but you still sit with a read/write saving mechanism so things can become corrupted

If you decide to use a savefolder, you do not have to worry about its corruption.

The savefolder can be (regularly) backed up.
If you do, you will be able to restore it in a few moments if necessary.

Good luck with your regular giga bytes backups...and the stuff that became corrupted since your last backup

[Feek]

A savefolder does appear to be the better option than a savefile but you still sit with a read/write saving mechanism so things can become corrupted

If you decide to use a savefolder, you do not have to worry about its corruption.

The savefolder can be (regularly) backed up.
If you do, you will be able to restore it in a few moments if necessary.

Good luck with your regular giga bytes backups...and the stuff that became corrupted since your last backup

My savefolder for Fossapup64 has approx. 600 Mb.
There are only settings and some additional apps that I use regularly in it.
I use the save button very rarely. There is no reason for "some stuff that became corrupted since last backup".

I have enough space, so why not to backup if the possibility is there?
In addition, the backup can be compressed.

But I agree with you: if the savefolder is extremely large combined with a lack of space, the backup will be problematic .

[rockedge]

I have one Bionic64-9.5 that is set up as a dual webserver. Equipped with Hiawatha 11+ and Apache 2.4.7, PHP7.4 and mariaDB. I can choose to run either Hiawatha (most of the time) or Apache. All of the work on the forums and other Puppy Linux internet presence is done on this machine prior to being released into the world. This machine also does a daily compile and build of ZoneMinder from source on the master branch on Github for testing purposes.

Also onboard is a full Python 2.7 AND Python 3 setup with many bells and whistles (for ZoneMinder object detection / face recognition). Also a full PERL set up adding many modules for PERL that are not included in the devx SFS which is loaded full time.

Then there is Darknet object detection, opencv and many developer tools. 6 browsers for testing web site developement and a /root/Web-Server absolutely loaded with all kinds of web software and websites in every stage of development.

This save folder weighs in at 111 Gigs and the system loads 6 SFS files on boot. This Bionic64 is the best development machine I have ever had. I have no idea how to best back up the 111 Gig save folder, it's almost a third of a terabyte between the the save folder and it's backup.

Good news is other systems (there are close to 200 different versions of Puppy, Dogs and KLV in various stages of completion, customization and experimentation) mostly either run with no saves or very small ones.

My KLV-Airedale's save folders are usually around 1-2 gigs but also are able to run very nicely with very small save folders and using all SFS and portable apps.

That 111 Gig stuns even myself......but the thing runs solid....forgot to mention there is also Zoom, Skype and Jitsi, 4 different markdown editors, plus a several code editors including VisualStudio (latest version)

It is probably time to learn how to best use Puppy Linux's file/folder backup utilities.......

[amethyst]

You guys are definitely users in quite another league than yours truly. I only use basic, small applications. My biggest application is the browser by far. Browsers are becoming a huge problem for this old 2gb Ram laptop. Sites like youtube, linkedin, facebook are pushing it to the brink. But then I have never used a swap file either, maybe should try it to see if things get better.

[rockedge]

@amethyst The swap file/partition will help. Maybe not in noticeable speed improvements but for sure in system stability when under taxing loads created by the mainstream browsers.

[Grey]

how to best back up the 111 Gig save folder

If not often, then in principle it is acceptable to squeeze in xz sometimes. Modern archivers have learned to use all the RAM, which speeds up the process. But it's still better to pack when you go to dinner or sleep On the other hand, it may be better to throw out a copy to an external hard drive once and use any program that copies not everything, but only the changes.

[amethyst]

@amethyst The swap file/partition will help. Maybe not in noticeable speed improvements but for sure in system stability when under taxing loads created by the mainstream browsers.

Not really seeing the point of the swapfile. Created one and it's activated but the system is not using it.

[rockedge]

@amethyst That is a really good sign! The swap file/partition is like the Railroad using iron bridge superstructures as emergency grounds if something goes "poof" and they need to dump 40,000 volts from the electrified track or overhead cables.

The swap is there if there is suddenly no more RAM, all of it taxed out, so instead of the system hanging up or crashing totally, the swap is used as sort of buffer to off-load memory blocks to make room enough in RAM to insure the further basic operations of the system.

I think you are more likely to be interested in ZRAM. Virtual RAM disk. Perhaps with your hardware this might be the way to go to improve performance and perform the same safety feature as the swap.

[mikeslr]

Getting back to bert07's concerns:
bert07, what operating systems do you currently have available? What computer will you be running Puppy from?

I always recommend that newbies try out a couple recent Puppys --not necessarily the latest-- by first burning them to a USB-Key; then pick the one or ones you like best to locate on your hard-drive. [Puppys may have come a long way since you last used them. Still easy to run, but may have new tricks you aren't yet familiar with. So for now, consider yourself a newbie].

Every recent Puppy will have builtin (or can install) applications to re-structure your hard-drive (gparted, the same but newer, application you're probably familiar with from older Puppys); and applications to create boot-loaders which will enable you to boot into Puppy(s), Windows and most Linux Operating systems. Both gyrog and shinobar have developed grub2 boot-loader systems for Puppy. You may recall that shinobar published versions of grub4dos. His grub2config works almost the same way but recognizes gpt drives and can handle UEFI boot-mechanisms. But if you already have a Linux you can boot into, it's current boot-loader can be customized to boot puppies.
With the development of the SaveFolder, 'Full Installs' became tantamount to obsolete. The only justification I've read for ever using a Full Install is if you intend to compile applications. A SaveFolder starts as a small folder but will expand automatically to, if necessary, the entire available space on the partition on which it is located. That partition can be the one on which you already have another Linux Installed.

But you can still use a SaveFile. For example if you have Windows setup and don't want to shrink any partition in order to create the Linux formatted partition required by a SaveFolder. You really don't need a large SaveFile even if you want many applications or have a lot of datafiles. Remember, Puppys can access anything. What you can do is create a folder 'outside' of 'Puppy Space' and create a symbolic link/short-cut to it within 'Puppy Space'.

For example, create a folder on /mnt/home --the partition where Puppy is located-- named "my-videos". Open two Rox-Windows: one so that you can see that folder; the 2nd to /root. Left-Press, HOLD, then drag "my-videos" into /root and select Link(relative). Puppy will automatically offer to open files in "my-videos" and save files to it. But the files will be created, edited, or opened from /mnt/home/my-videos which is not in 'Puppy Space". Those files will also be available to other operating systems. And it doesn't matter to Puppys if the 'my-videos' folder is on a Fat32, ntfs or Linux formatted partition.

To keep your SaveFile or even SaveFolder small, Puppys can still use SFSes, loaded and unloaded as and when. But now Puppys can also use portable-applications and AppImages. All of those are kept outside of 'Puppy Space'.

I've only recently began to use SaveFolders. My SaveFiles never exceeded 4Gbs because, other than customizations and settings, the only thing in them are applications I'm testing as 'installs' because they wouldn't run as SFSes, portables or AppImages. When I'm satisfied, I'll remaster or create a read-only adrv.sfs or ydrv.sfs. There's a relatively new application to do that: it captures the contents of your SaveFile/Folder and things in RAM not yet Saved. With an adrv/ydrv, you can move/delete you SaveFile/Folder and boot without using one or (optionally) start creating a new one as you find new applications and things of interest.
But to get you there, we first have to know where you currently are. Hence, the questions I posed at the beginning. See also: viewtopic.php?t=218

[amethyst]

@amethyst That is a really good sign! The swap file/partition is like the Railroad using iron bridge superstructures as emergency grounds if something goes "poof" and they need to dump 40,000 volts from the electrified track or overhead cables.

The swap is there if there is suddenly no more RAM, all of it taxed out, so instead of the system hanging up or crashing totally, the swap is used as sort of buffer to off-load memory blocks to make room enough in RAM to insure the further basic operations of the system.

I think you are more likely to be interested in ZRAM. Virtual RAM disk. Perhaps with your hardware this might be the way to go to improve performance and perform the same safety feature as the swap.

Well, after hours of heavy use and the machine clearly struggling, the swapfile is still not operational. Going to delete the swapfile, does not seem to work for me. I'm starting to wonder if this is not rather related to processing power. All these brand spanking new sites have so much crap running in the background. So the zram is related to new kernels? If so, not good for me because all new kernels hang on this machine at bootup. A laptop with "only" 2GB Ram and 2GHz processing power seems to be scraping the barrel these days.

[mikewalsh]

@rockedge :-

111 GB...?? Wheeeeew! And I used to get flak for having a 16 GB save-file back when I ran ETP's original 'Chrome-book' Pup (v1) ( and from what I recall, Nic was one of my most vocal critics at the time, after I 'shared' that tidbit of info... )

(*Luv ya really, Nic!*)

ATM, the entire kennels - 6 'working' Puppies & a couple of 32-bit 'testers' (UPupBB and Tahrpup) for helping folk out with 'issues', occupies just under 41 GB. Then I have the old SSD out of ye anciente Dell lappie, currently with KLV "Airedale" and a re-worked, modernised spin of Slacko 5.6.0 (one of my favourite Pups ever).....these two are using around 7 GB between them. All have, however, access to hundreds of GBs of portables & external stuff, along with a couple of chroots.

Ya know, I don't think there's any such beast as a 'standard' Puppy system..!! (And I am really finding that 32 GB RAM ultra-useful, along with the Crucial MX500 SSD......and so many TB of storage I have to stop & think to account for it all...) It's nice to NOT have to be 'careful' for a change, yet you'd never persuade me to use anything other than Puppy, or Puppy-inspired/derived spins/projects.

I still have a 48 GB 'lump' of swap, because the BIOS on this HP insists on 'mirroring' the entire 32GB of RAM in a single location when suspending/hibernating, regardless of how much or how little is in use.

(*shrug*)

Mike.

[amethyst]

Nic was one of my most vocal critics at the time, after I 'shared' that tidbit of info...

Hmmm, not really criticism. Let's just say it was sort of a "wow" moment for me...still is

[mikewalsh]

@amethyst :-

Nic was one of my most vocal critics at the time, after I 'shared' that tidbit of info...

Hmmm, not really criticism. Let's just say it was sort of a "wow" moment for me...still is

Ah. Yes. "Incredulous" is, I think, the term we want here..!

Heh. I've had my own fair share of those over the years. A "Huh? What..??Jee-zus..." type of moment. The sort of occasion when your jaw drops open, involuntarily, because you simply CANNOT believe what you've just heard (or read...or been told).

Yep. Been there.....done that. (And got the T-shirt, if I'm honest, 'cos sometimes I can't believe just how many idiots there are on this ball of dirt we all inhabit..!)

(It's an inherent part of human nature. I think we're all guilty - to a greater or lesser degree - of the same behaviour. Viz, we all have a tendency to judge other people by our own experience & perceptions.....after all, who else do we really know better?)

Mike.

[amethyst]

@amethyst That is a really good sign! The swap file/partition is like the Railroad using iron bridge superstructures as emergency grounds if something goes "poof" and they need to dump 40,000 volts from the electrified track or overhead cables.

The swap is there if there is suddenly no more RAM, all of it taxed out, so instead of the system hanging up or crashing totally, the swap is used as sort of buffer to off-load memory blocks to make room enough in RAM to insure the further basic operations of the system.

I think you are more likely to be interested in ZRAM. Virtual RAM disk. Perhaps with your hardware this might be the way to go to improve performance and perform the same safety feature as the swap.

Well, after hours of heavy use and the machine clearly struggling, the swapfile is still not operational. Going to delete the swapfile, does not seem to work for me. I'm starting to wonder if this is not rather related to processing power. All these brand spanking new sites have so much crap running in the background. So the zram is related to new kernels? If so, not good for me because all new kernels hang on this machine at bootup. A laptop with "only" 2GB Ram and 2GHz processing power seems to be scraping the barrel these days.

Follow up on this. I've deleted the swapfile and am now clearing the memory caches. Seems to be beneficial (especially when watching high resolution videos for a prolonged time). Got a script set to do this every 15 minutes.

[wiak]

This save folder weighs in at 111 Gigs

I didn't realise before that you were crazy rockedge...
Nothing wrong with being crazy of course.

[rockedge]

I didn't realize before that you were crazy rockedge...

As they say around my town......"Gone's-ville", "wacked", "Inovative", "unique" or a simple:

"that guy's out there"

[bert07]

@@mikeslr
Sorry for the late reply.
As most of the computer fiddlers, I have several computers and several systems. The computer I am on now, has Debian Bookworm, Mageia, Manjaro and Win11 on it. Not yet a puppy. This is a AMD Ryzen 5 system, with 3 HDDs and 1 SSD, 30 partitions (about 17 of them are Windows partitions.
The only reason that there is no Puppy on this one, is because of UEFI and GRUB2. GRUB-legacy was very easy to edit, to add or to remove systems to the boot menu. With GRUB2 I do not even know where to start. And even GRUB-customizer messes up the GRUB2 boot menu. It used to be so simple with GRUB Legacy.
And as you know, also GRUB4DOS does not work any more on this machine. So I'm searching for a different bootloader, which is easy to manipulate (edit) and boots all of my systems on a UEFI system.

2 other computers still have MBR and de legacy BIOS. On both those systems I use GRUB4DOS. 1 has (at the moment) FossaFriendly64, ImpischPup64, the latest Slacko64, Linux Lite, Sparky Linux and the upcoming Ubuntu Mate LTS. All works fine.
Another computer has Win7 32bit (I need it for something), FatDog64 and FossaPup64. Again with the GRUB4DOS bootloader.
And finally my base laptop (als a AMD RYZEN 5) has a Win11 system, and sometimes I boot a puppy (when installed) from there with the LICK bootloader, which also works fine.

As I (sort of) mentioned in the original thread) I prefer a full install.

I also saw you mentioned a GRUB2config.
I can not check that out for the moment, but I surely will do so within a few days, and I'll probably will come pack to that later.
In the mean time: thank you for your response.

[mikewalsh]

The only reason that there is no Puppy on this one, is because of UEFI and GRUB2. GRUB-legacy was very easy to edit, to add or to remove systems to the boot menu. With GRUB2 I do not even know where to start. And even GRUB-customizer messes up the GRUB2 boot menu. It used to be so simple with GRUB Legacy.
And as you know, also GRUB4DOS does not work any more on this machine. So I'm searching for a different bootloader, which is easy to manipulate (edit) and boots all of my systems on a UEFI system.

@bert07 :-

Um....huh??

This 2-year old HP Pavilion rig is pure UEFI, through & through. Yet I run a whole raft of Puppies on it, booting WITH Grub4DOS, by the simple expedient of running in 'Legacy Mode', with all the SecureBoot/FastBoot rubbish turned OFF.

(Mind you, I've been "Puppy-only" for several years now. My distro-hopping days are long over; I came to Puppy to get away from all the GRUB2 shenanigans & 'sudo' nonsense; can't do this, mustn't do that, not allowed to do X, Y or Z. Pathetic. It's MY machine, and I'm the only one who uses it. Why the hell should I need to give myself permission to use my own system?)

It's perfectly possible to boot mainstream distros with GRUB2.....though I'll admit, I'm none too sure how it works. Much the easiest method is to give each distro its own drive, install the native, preferred bootloader to that, then chain-load to each one from Grub4DOS.....

Question: why on earth do you have 17 Windows partitions? Do you have each of the successive Win10 releases running in each one? Just curious.....

Mike.

[bert07]

@mikewalsh
Windows partitions: Documents, website, back-ups, music, music back-ups, media, zip files and programs etc. Not to forget the systems 3 partitions. Grin.
I do not like to put everything at the same place. Using different partitions makes it way easier to backup specific data. And to restore it when necessary.
I once (in my early years on the PC) lost EVERYTHING in a split second I did not even had a back-up at that time.. That won't happen to me twice any more.

[bert07]

@mikewalsh
Also, I use image back-ups (Acronis True Image), so every partition or system can be restored in a matter of 3 to 5 minutes, except for the Windows system back-up, that takes a little longer.

[mikewalsh]

@bert07 :-

Well, I'm with you all the way when it comes to backups. As for external data, I have several large external partitions which store all kinds of stuff.....though I haven't gone so far as to dedicate a separate partition for each subject. Most of mine contain at least a few directories for different items. Puppies get backed-up weekly to a dedicated internal partition.

And once a month, every Pup gets backed-up to an external USB 1 TB hard drive as well, along with syncing the differences for my personal data; videos, pictures, music, documents, etc., etc. I know too many folks who think that sounds like a heap of hard work.....though, in reality, once you get your routine set-up and automated it takes no time at all. Ya just hit the 'GO' button, and head off to do something else while it gets on with it.

You can always replace an operating system. But decades of often irreplaceable personal data are something I will not risk.....some of which date back well over 30 years.

Mike.