Specific older browser onto Bionic/Tahr? (Solved)

[venn]

Being new to Linux, I can only give the background info that I believe to be correct to ask my questions. So if something sounds screwy, I probably got it wrong – so please correct. Here’s the story: I have a few turn of the century computers that I’m determined to get the use out of. After consulting the following:

https://linuxhint.com/best-old-laptop-l ... ributions/
https://fossbytes.com/best-lightweight-linux-distros/
https://distrowatch.com/search.php?cate ... ers#simple

I tried out a bunch of 32bit distros, including all the Pups (from Tahr to Bionic), TinyCore, AntiX 19.b3, FreeBSD, Sparky 6.3, Emmabuntus DE4, MX 21.1, Bodhi 5.1, and KolibriOS. I narrowed the search to either Bionic or TahrPup for a Thinkpad laptop with Pentium 3 (700 Mhz), both of which run fine from a DVD b/c the computer doesn’t recognize my USB flash drive.

Here’s the issue: I could’ve simply not asked anything on this forum as TahrPup gets me everything I would need easily by simply running the DVD/ (I assume) doing the install eventually to wipe out Windows XP that is currently on it: a word processor, a spreadsheet, and the Opera web browser (which I’ve determined works the best). However, because Bionic also runs perfectly well via DVD, except for the web browsers (b/c I’m sure they are all newer versions that are SSE2, which won’t run on this computer as it’s probably only SSE or SSE1 at best), I’m interested in it as well. So I’m interested in doing 1 of the following options (listed in order of preference):

A) Using Bionicpup b/c it’s the latest Pup that will run on this computer, but I need to get a SSE/1 browser for it

OR
B) Using TahrPup + get the latest Opera browser version that is SSE/1 for it. It comes with the simple install of such an old version of Firefox (32.0.2 or 32.0.3) that I assume Opera is also an old version (I couldn’t find the version #) that could stand to be up-versioned.

OR
C) Using TahrPup, as is right out of the box

Based off Joet BERNARD’s reply on the below discussion:
https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=42720
I’d like to get Opera 20.0.1387.91 or 12.18 for Bionic or Tahr.

Obviously Option A is the preferable one, as Tahr has reached it EOL already. However, b/c Tahr is still readily being offered on Puppy’s official site + it’s such the easy way to go, I’d be fine with it for the light web surfing I do. But I’m such a curious kitty, I wanted to ask – is there a way to get a specific version of a web browser onto Bionic? It seems it must be through the terminal (b/c I can’t get to the web via any of the browsers that did install onto Bionic, but just don’t work), but the only instructions I can find are about getting the latest version of a browser, which makes sense but not useful to me. Similarly, if I do go w/ TahrPup, is it possible to get Opera 20.0.1387.91 or 12.18 for it (I can’t find a download for them)? Or should I give up the goose chase + just go with TahrPup b/c it works right out of the box?

Here’s the other question I can’t figure out: Why are all these 32bit distros being packaged with SSE2 browsers? If you are running on a 32bit processor computer, wouldn’t it stand to reason that you would only be able to run a SSE/1 browser? Clearly I’m lacking in some computer knowledge to explain this seemingly regular pairing of 32bit distros with SSE2 browsers. I guess there was some period of time when there was an overlap where this pairing worked?

Please submit your vote as to which option above I should go with. Or if you know of a distro that will work on this computer, via a simple install, please suggest. Thanks so much for your consideration!

[stevie pup]

Hi and welcome. For a start it would perhaps be a good idea if you can give some more spec of the machine in question, such as how much RAM does it have? I'm afraid I can't answer your question regarding browsers (I'm certainly no expert) but I'm curious about the other distros you've tried.

I can understand why you dispensed with TinyCore, being the bare bones thing that it is, and I can see why you've ditched Emmabuntus, probably too heavyweight and the ISO file is well over 3Gb. MX is also perhaps a little too heavy, the devs themselves don't even refer to it as a lightweight but a midweight. I've seen a lot of reviews about supposedly lightweight distros, and all I can say is that some people appear to have a strange conception of what constitutes lightweight, because some of the distros listed are anything but.

Free BSD and Kolibri I know nothing about as I've never had anything to do with either, but I'm interested as to why you dismissed Antix, Sparky and Bodhi? If you can give us some info on that, as well as more info on the machine, people will be better placed to answer your questions. I've no doubt there's a "browser expert" somewhere on this forum.

[wizard]

Why are all these 32bit distros being packaged with SSE2 browsers? If you are running on a 32bit processor computer, wouldn’t it stand to reason that you would only be able to run a SSE/1 browser?

Nope, lots of 32bit cpu's out there that support sse2.

wizard

[xenial]

Majority of my different flavours of pup are running on a 32bit computer and have no issues with browsers.I have fossapup 64bit running also thanks to the insight from mike walsh who very graciously informed me i could run a 64bit puppy on here and i have done for a substantial time.

[mikewalsh]

Hallo, @venn . And to the "kennels".

Here’s the other question I can’t figure out: Why are all these 32bit distros being packaged with SSE2 browsers? If you are running on a 32bit processor computer, wouldn’t it stand to reason that you would only be able to run a SSE/1 browser? Clearly I’m lacking in some computer knowledge to explain this seemingly regular pairing of 32bit distros with SSE2 browsers. I guess there was some period of time when there was an overlap where this pairing worked?

Well, as wizard has commented, many 32-bit machines will run modern browsers OK. It all depends on your CPU, and what instruction sets it supports.

You're right in assuming you would need an SSE-only browser; the Pentium III does indeed support only SSEs.....not SSE2 or SSE3. My own 2002 Dell Inspiron 1100 will run recent browsers; it's like watching paint dry, mind you, but she will just about handle it. The Pentium 4 she runs with was the first-ever CPU to support SSE2.

Re; Tahrpup, well.....it came with Pale Moon OOTB. Around version 25, I think; perhaps late 24-series? It was the first Puppy I ever used some 8 years ago, because the Dell - my only machine at the time - would run it without any video issues of any kind, and would boot all the way to a working desktop.....so I have something of a soft spot for it.

With regard to Opera 12; I wouldn't bother. Oh, it's date-related, and was 'current' when Tahrpup was released.....but the internet and browsers in general are a very fast-moving "target". Opera 12.16 is so far out of date it's positively dangerous to use, and most websites will refuse to connect.

What you need, for a PIII, is an SSE-only browser. You're in luck, as it happens...

------------------------------------------------------

XP users - of which there are still quite a number, even all these years after EOL! - are all familiar with a guy called Feodor2. This fella re-compiles PaleMoon source code into a browser called MyPal, and optimizes it specifically for Windows XP. It's the only browser for XP that is still safe to use on that ancient OS.

Someone called "Fenyo" joined the Forum late last year, and, without being asked, promptly offered up some fairly recent SSE-only Linux builds of Pale Moon, which he's called "NewMoon". These are early to mid 29-series; previously, the only SSE-only build we had was a late 27-series PaleMoon.

I'm convinced that "Fenyo" and "Feodor2" are the same individual, due to certain other info he let slip at the time. The point being, we now have four different SSE-only builds of Pale Moon to offer users of older hardware.

----------------------------------------------------

I package a lot of stuff for the community, mostly into self-contained, 'portable' builds. I have a 'portable' version of the newest SSE-only "NewMoon" build - v29.4.1 - packaged together with an upgraded glibc (the general 'C' library, against which everything in a given distro will be built. It's supposed to be backwards-compatible, but many apps bitch like a good'un if they can't find the version they're built to expect).

You're very welcome to give it a try. It works fine in Tahrpup on ye anciente Dell lappie, and should even work okay under 32-bit Bionic.

If you're interested, you can obtain the tarball from my MEGA.nz a/c, here:-

https://mega.nz/folder/2GR22bhD#k-jrkegAtcPCMVuyHFY72Q

Help yourself. There's the tarball itself, and an MD5 checksum for download verification if required.

-----------------------------------------------------

Once you've downloaded it:-

• Unzip the tarball with your favourite archiver

• Locate the 'portable' NewMoon directory. Move this anywhere you like; normally, we would recommend /mnt/home, but if you're running from a Live session on optical disc, and haven't created a save-file, then this doesn't yet exist!

  This isn't a real problem, because these portable browsers will happily run from a flash drive.....although it must be formatted to a Linux file-system. FAT32 won't work properly.

• Click to enter the directory.

• Now, click the 'LAUNCH' script to fire it up.

So long as you always start it via the 'LAUNCH' script, it will create its profile within the portable directory, and it will always use this profile.

Entirely your choice.

Mike.

[bigpup]

Get your head out of the idea that you need the latest version of anything and you need to have a newer version of Puppy Linux.

Web browsers seem to constantly change and demand more and more.
But you can still use what works even if it is not the latest version.
Mikewalsh gives you a good one to use.

Your issue is what supports the hardware best.

Tahrpup is a very good version of Puppy, so use it, and be happy it works.

Bionicpup is really not providing much different that your hardware will support.

Sure the newer versions of Puppy have improvements, different software, updates, etc......
But your hardware is not going to support a lot of it.
Most improvements are dealing with support for newer or newest hardware and what it is able to now do.
There are still core Puppy programs being used that have not changed for many years.

There is a lot of software on the old forum that was developed/compiled for Tahrpup.
So adding software is not going to be hard as long as you understand it may not be the latest version or maybe the latest version will work.
https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/

Here is some info on adding software:
viewtopic.php?t=1819

[mikeslr]

Ditto what Mike Walsh and bigpup wrote. In fact, I think I'm stealing a quote from bigpup: "Newer Puppys for newer computers; older Puppys for older computers."

With the exception of Web-browsers, the only thing newer applications offer that older applications lack is some 'Bells & Whistles"; in other words slightly easier ways of accomplishing a task. But you get that 'ease' at the expense of requiring more RAM and a more powerful-and-hungry CPU.

The reason Web-browsers are the exception is the upward-demanding cycle of their need to provide the richer graphics offered by websites and meet the security requirement websites have to impose in an attempt to thwart increasingly prevalent and sophisticated malware.

Unfortunately, with the SE limitation of your computer, only the palemoon Mike Walsh suggested falls within the limitation of your computer and the demands of websites. But don't sell palemoon short. One of its strong points is that it still employs the technology firefox perfected over the years and only abandoned a couple years ago. I believe that the built-for-SE version of palemoon can install the ca-archive from here, https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/r ... /tag/2.0.3. Once installed, you'll have access to the many of addons that were published for that technology. One you might find useful is netvideohunter. It's an application for downloading videos. Even if your computer lacks the resources to stream videos, you may be able to download them and then play them with a video-player. [Not all of the thousands of versions of specific addons can be use. You may have to do some hunting and testing].

Searching the forum --or asking-- will result in you're learning about alternatives to that technique.

I'm would be surprised, however, that as your computer can run tahr and bionic it not be able to run xenialpup-32 bit, viewtopic.php?p=578#p578. xenialpup's built-in browser might not work. But the palemoon-portable should.

It's been a while since I ran tahrpup. But my recollection is that xenialpup32 requires only a little more 'overhead' while the software that will run under it OOTB is more extensive and more up-to-today's standards.

[JASpup]

I am in Bionic atm but for screen clarity I do not recommend it to myself. I thought it might be an issue with gtk, but for some reason Bionic on my laptops seems to share Openbox/LXDE qualities and appear blurry.

I am here to look at Ptheme (normal habit of booting a distro for a specific feature).

Bionic uses the /home directory causing browser compatibility issues, so you kind of have to know what you are doing.

I like that it is compressed smaller than Xenial.

If you do not care for Xenial I would use Tahr before Bionic. It really depends on your needs.

Say, if you want to run any browser on an old computer, and other features and quirks are insignificant, then you can choose by whim. /home can present complications running as spot (Bionic).

There is also a truth in 32-land that if you go new enough, you lose backwards compatibility. Opera is a case and it ended long ago.

I've had the best luck with old and new browsers in Xenial.

Pale Moon 28.17 SSE standalone still in the Browsers forum?

I think I usually run a .sfs for newer hardware, but I know that's a solid version and more current than Opera 45.

[williams2]

for some reason Bionic on my laptops seems to share Openbox/LXDE qualities and appear blurry.

If you find the OS blurry, try disabling anti-aliasing.

In the font manger ( /usr/sbin/fontmanager ) uncheck the boxes for Antialiasing and Hinting and Automatic Hinting.

You might prefer it that way.

fontmanager.jpg (37.67 KiB) Viewed 3647 times

[JASpup]

If you find the OS blurry, try disabling anti-aliasing.

I appreciate the consistency, but you have given me this advice before on the same subject.

I suspect peabee is the only one who can answer this dilemma, but Bionic simply does not render the same as Tahr and Xenial.

It's slight but enough to cause intolerable eye strain.

I went so far as to make my custom Bionic look just like my custom Xenial for contrast.

So it's back to the feature merry-go-round and distro compromises.

I should just get a new device and commit to 64-bit distros where this is not a problem. It's only 32-Bionic which has it's unique features worth booting.

[amethyst]

It's only 32-Bionic which has it's unique features worth booting.

I would like to know more about these unique features of Bionic you are talking about.

[venn]

OK, so I wanted to answer some of your inquiries before I try mikewalsh’s suggestions.

Stevie Pup:
Thanks for the welcome + to your point about providing more specs – Sorry I didn’t think anymore was needed, as it appeared to me my browser problem all centered around the processor being SSE/1 (SSE apparently, based on mikewalsh’s reply). So here are the computers that I’m attempting to bring online (in order of youngest to oldest):
Laptop Make + model: IBM ThinkPad
OS Version currently running: Windows XP Pro, Version 2002, SP3
Hard drive size (GB): 11.2
Processor (MHz): Not entirely sure - BIOS says 700MHz, under System Info. Manager says "x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 3 Intel ~547Mhz", under My Computer + right click to Properties says 426MHz. What I know for sure - it has the Pentium 3 logo sticker w/ a 2nd sticker saying the computer was designed for Windows 98|2000.
RAM/Installed Physical Memory (MB): 348
BIOS Version: 12/1999

Desktop Make + model: Compaq Deskpro EN Series
OS Version currently running: Windows 2000 Professional, Version 5.0.2195, SP 4 (but I think it can make the jump to XP)
Hard drive size (GB): 8.47
Processor (M/GHz): under BIOS says 550MHz, under System Info. Manager and My Computer + right click to Properties says "x86 Family 6 Model 7 Stepping 3 Intel ~547Mhz". What I know for sure - it has the Pentium 3 logo sticker.
RAM/Installed Physical Memory): 130,608 KB/128MB
BIOS Version: 7/1999

Desktop Make + model: Compaq Deskpro
OS Version currently running: Windows 98
Processor: Pentium 2
Note: I haven’t turned this 1 on in many yrs + it’s stuck in a corner w/ a bunch of stuff on top. I won’t dig this 1 out until I figure out what to do w/ the younger computers, so this is all the info I know for sure. I figure if I can't figure something out for the younger machines, there's probably no hope for this 1 other than to relegate it to offline use only.

Additionally, I have a slightly more modern Toshiba laptop running Zorin 16, which I plan to be the main laptop for my file storage + more data sensitive online usage, paired alongside 1 of the above older machines for general info research use.

RE: the results on different distros
MX + Bodhi: Booted to the desktop, but hung on some process so long that it basically froze the computer. Bodhi esp. took a long time to even boot, so when that happened I kinda knew it was going to struggle too much.

FreeBSD, Emmabuntus, Sparky: Wouldn’t boot. Emmabuntus + Sparky gave me the same error message of “no working init found”. Emmabuntus was particularly disappointing, as I had the most amt of hope for it b/c it said its mission was to give people in 3rd world countries accessible computer usage on their old equipment. So people in 3rd world countries are apparently using better computers than I'm attempting - makes one question what the heck am I doing?! Nevertheless, I press on.

KolibriOS, AntiX, TinyCore: Booted to desktop, but in Kolibri + Tiny I couldn’t figure out how to get internet at all. TinyCore also doesn't look like it can be installed, it's like I HAVE to run it on DVD (surely that’s not correct, but too much of a hassle to figure out). AntiX got internet (tho outdated browser), but didn’t see any word processor/Spreadsheet + it’s boot/shutdown process are so slow it makes you think it’ll never finish – shutdown takes so long that I give up + just press the power button.

Simply swapping the DVD out to Tahr easily solved all these problems. I had tried Tahr 1st, but wanted to try others to compare. So when Tahr worked so much quicker/easier than all that followed, I decided I'd join Puppy's forum to solve the 1 problem I had with it (the SSE browser issue). I haven’t totally dismissed the distros in the last group, I’ll still give ‘em a go for the P2 computer if need be.

Mikeslr:
The order I tried Puppy: Tahr, Slacko, Bionic, Xenial – I only created the savefile for Tahr + Bionic as they seemed to hold the most promise. Xenial ran fine, but had the same browser problem, but a step beyond Bionic. Where Bionic would at least complete the download + install all readily available browsers (showing them in the Menu, but clicking them doesn’t do anything), Xenial’s Quickpet went thru the rigamarole of the download process, only to then tell me at the end it “failed to install”. However, with your insights on Xenial vs Tahr coupled with the new-to-me knowledge that there is another browser option for Puppy in NewMoon (if I understand this correctly) – I will certainly give Xenial another look.

Mikewalsh:
Thank you for your welcome as well + for narrowing down to the SSE, so I no longer need consider SSE1 browsers. Based on your reply, below I summarized what I now think my options are, to make sure I understand the situation correctly (again, in order of my preference):
A) Use the package you put together w/ the NewMoon v29.4.1 browser to run on any Puppy of my choice
Or
B) Run on XP using the MyPal browser
Or
C) If I can’t get the above to work: Take my chances with Tahr OOTB, with the limited websites I can see with it. I finally found QuickPet fetches Opera 12.15 (last resort option, so I’ll put it aside here)

RE: "It was the first Puppy I ever used some 8 years ago, because the Dell..." Yes, I can see now, that's when I really should've worked on getting these computers to run, ah well at least I still have Tahr as an option for limited use, if nothing else (which is fine if it comes to that).

RE: XP
I did consider running it on XP. In contemplating/researching, I did come across https://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/2022/05 ... 1.html?m=1
linked from
https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=42720

which I don't know if that's what you were referring to in Feodor2's MyPal or if the above is another XP weekly update (b/c it doesn't mention any Feodor2 on this page). So I had heard of NewMoon prior to you mentioning it, but didn't bother w/ downloading anything from this site b/c it seemed like everything was probably geared towards XP, even tho the heading "New NewMoon 27 Build!" doesn't particularly mention XP like the other headings.

The problem with the idea of running on XP is the ISP setup I have (I think). I have DSL service from my phone company, which was set up in 2014, getting me a router that stipulates Windows 7/above, which I plan to run on until a fiber optic company enters my neighborhood in the next couple of years. I did attempt to connect to the internet via the Ethernet cable, just to test, but it indeed will not connect. Tahr gets around this issue, I can run the Toshiba + the ThinkPad side-by-side on this router (Toshiba via Zorin on wireless, ThinkPad via Puppy on the Ethernet cable). Due to the ease this setup, I'm reluctant to mess with it (i.e. attempting to track down a router that will accommodate XP for my ISP or reverting back to dialup internet). So while doing a simple download of MyPal for XP seems like the simplest solution on the surface, I think Puppy will ultimately win the easy-peasy setup race. Granted, the DSL is so slow, at times I could swear it’s basically running the same as dialup anyway.

Unless, you mean that this MyPal browser works on Puppy, even if it's specifically designed for XP (similarily NewMoon works on XP)? I’m confused by the statement “we now have four different SSE-only builds of Pale Moon to offer users of older hardware.” What are the 4, b/c I can only see 2 based on your reply (XP=MyPal; Linux=NewMoon 29.4.1 …Are the other builds NewMoon 27 +28 for Linux? Or something called Basilisk?)

Or are you saying the only way to get these old machines to work, with the most security in place, is to run them as XP w/ this MyPal broswer + give up the idea of using Tahr b/c it comes with such old browser versions (of course begs the question as to why Tahr is still readily available on Puppy's official downloads)? If XP is realistically the only way to get secure internet use out of the old computers, maybe I will consider looking into an old router that will work with my ISP (but I feel that's going to be tough to find).

OK, I’m off to see if I can get this NewMoon thingy to work on Puppy.

[mikewalsh]

@venn :-

Let me see if I can clarify a few things. SSE is 'SSE1'. The 'basic' CPU instruction sets - most of which have been developed over the years by Intel - ran thus:-

• MMX

• MMX+

• SSE (1)

• SSE2

• SSE3

• SSSE3 (Supplemental SSE3)

• SSE4.1

• SSE4.2

.....which is about where we are now. There's also a ton of other stuff they've added, most of which are to do with all the security stuff MyCrudSoft demands, but the above are the basic 'building-blocks' that do all the grunt work.

------------------------------------------

Why I say there's 4 different SSE-only browsers is this:- An SSE-only build of Pale Moon v27.9.4 has been available for the community since about 2017. "Fenyo" appeared on the forums around the end of last year, and almost immediately offered up SSE-only builds of "NewMoon" v28.17.0 & v29.1.0. Then, a few days later, he added v29.4.1, which is the most up-to-date build we have for these.....and this is the one I've recommended.

----------------------------------------

I think your biggest stumbling block for these old clunkers is going to be the lack of RAM. With such a small amount of memory, the use of a 'swap' partition becomes a must-have.....and for this kind of limited resources a 'full' Puppy install is usually recommended, though it's a LOT harder to 'fix' when the invariable newbie-type 'f*ck-ups' occur. The usual frugal install simply won't have enough RAM to load itself fully into memory, so will need some bodger-type 'workarounds'.....which never really work properly, IMO.

My old Dell lappie came with just 128 MB of RAM when we first bought it back in 2002. I'd been using 'puters for years before this, but I was green as grass regarding the hardware side of them, and didn't know the first thing about what made 'em tick. 128 MB sounded like a lot to me in those distant, far-off days, though this was back in the days when Dell sold direct to the public via magazine adverts & the like.......before they entered the retail side of things, selling in 'big-box' stores, etc. You had to know what you wanted before you ordered, and I ended up specifying about the most basic machine they offered!

Originally, she came with a Celeron processor, and a humungous 20 GB hard drive! As I learnt more about what went on under the hood, I found you could up the performance a bit by replacing the 'Celly' with a 'proper' Pentium 4, so I located one on Ebay for the massive sum of around GBP 6.00.

I also discovered that the chipset in the Dell would support all the way up to 2 GB of RAM, so I maxed that out, too. Which made the biggest difference to performance.....along with replacing the slow 20GB Hitachi HDD with a 64GB IDE/PATA-spec SSD from Transcend. And that speeded-up boot times tremendously.

You CAN 'pep-up' older hardware by doing some basic research, maxing your RAM, installing better storage solutions, and, where possible, upgrading the CPU. The Dell's performance is never going to be fast, held back as it is by the P4's SSE2s and the chipset's limitations, but it's usable (if a bit slow). She was also pretty much the first of Dell's then-current line-up to come with the then-new USB 2.0 standard ports. I use a pair of 'nano'-sized 256 GB SanDisk USB 3.2-gen flashdrives in these, giving me a massive 1/2 TB of 'external' storage. Curiously, the USB 3.2 standard drives run faster in the USB 2.0 ports than purely USB 2.0 drives do!

----------------------------------

Tahrpup is entirely practical as a 'daily driver', even today. It was the first of the 'modular' Woof-CE built Puppies, meaning kernel upgrades are easy to perform (amongst other things). Apart from browsers, most other applications don't NEED 'upgrading'; if they work, they will continue to work satisfactorily.

MyPal enables XP users to still run XP sort of 'safely', but I would never recommend anyone to actually use it as their sole OS. It simply isn't safe enough for that, as hardly any vendors of AV support it any more. And for Windows of ANY generation, AV is a definite 'must-have'. By all means, run it 'off-line' for old, favourite applications, but run something like a lightweight Linux OS for web-facing stuff.

--------------------------------

In respect of Kolibri & TinyCore, heh. Kolibri is entirely constructed directly from machine-code itself - the binary language that CPUs talk with - and trying to 'install' anything is a waste of time. Apparently, the Russian guy who now maintains it cut his teeth programming assembly language into one-armed bandits & arcade machines, which probably explains why KolibriOS is mostly 1990s arcade-style games. It's more a showcase of what's possible to fit into 10 MB of space than it is an actual usable OS. The built-in browser doesn't DO anything at all; to me, the best bit about it is that big pair of 'googly' eyes that follow your cursor around the desktop!

TinyCore, hmm.... It's the spiritual descendant of DamnSmallLinux, and is more a re-incarnation of how Linux used to be in the early to mid 90s. They've got a half-way usable package-management system, though it IS unique to TinyCore, and doesn't work like anything else on the market. And their forums are - or were - very anti-newbies. At the time when I looked at it, the mods & senior members all followed the original Linux geek practice of snarling "RTFM!" (Read The F*cking Manual!) at any request for help, so I made a mental note to myself to never return . And I never have.

Zorin OS. Yeah. Y'know, it's one of the only 'mainstream' distros I've ever had any time for. I've had a copy of one Zorin release or another on an external HDD for the last 8-9 years. You must remember with this one, that brothers Artyom & Kyrill - who live in the Republic of Ireland - started Zorin as a 'project' when they were still at secondary school.....and for a couple of guys who began at such a young age, they've made a bloody good showing thus far. I like the fact that they've gone out of their way to make it as easy to use as possible, so it's not surprising that it attracts so many Windoze 'refugees'..!

Have a read here if you're interested:- https://itsfoss.com/zorin-os-interview/

-----------------------------------

So far as Puppy goes, we'll bend over backwards to try & help you get a working Puppy set-up, if we can. We LOVE 'problem-solving', and we have some very knowledgeable lads'n'lasses in our community. If anyone can get Puppy to resurrect these old boxes, they can. Just bear in mind that for some, though, even Puppy may be too much.....I don't think any current Puppies will support the Pentium II any more.

Mike.

[bigpup]

A frugal install of Puppy can boot using less memory than it normally would.

Select the boot option pfix=nocopy do not copy .sfs to RAM

It will basically work the same as a full install for RAM usage.

Just like a full install, it will take longer for a selected program to startup and run.
This is because the program is not already loaded into RAM, as in a normally booted frugal install.

[mikeslr]

T'other Mike's mention of TinyCore reminded me of wanderer's projects, corepup, https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=254#p254 and dcorepup. https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=185.

IIRC, I was able to bootup and do some things with corepup and had a fleeting interest in dcore-stretch. I didn’t pursue these because (a) they managed some activities differently than Puppys and I was reluctant to memorize the differences as (b) corepup and dcorepup are designed for low resource systems while each replacement of my then current ‘medium range resource’ systems would have even more resources. Their still available ISOs, https://www.smokey01.com/wanderer/ can give you some idea of just how tiny these operating systems initially are. Either should be easier to 'flesh out' than tiny core, itself.

The very reason I didn’t explore them may be a reason for you to. But I have no idea whether they would function on your computers, nor whether the web-browsers functional in tahrpup could be coaxed into working under them.

Let us know if they’ve peeked your interest. Unfortunately, my systems are too powerful to actually run them: it’s a timing thing. But I can hunt up discussions on the ‘old forum’ if the threads on this forum, https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewforum. ... 41f01c1b83 leave some questions unanswered.

[venn]

Mikeslr:
YET ANOTHER thing I can try!! Yes, this has definitely piqued my interest + willing to give this a whirl.

Mikewalsh:
Thanks for clarification on the SSE/1 thing.

RE: speeding the machine up
I did bump up the RAM on 1 of the desktops, but it was so long ago (c. 2005) I can’t remember which 1. This was back in the days when Radio Shack was around. Now that we are in the days of online catalog shopping, where if I buy the wrong part I can't simply just take it back to the store to get my money back, I don't want to start down the road of trying to swap parts. The whole reason I'm looking for an OS that will run on the equipment that I have is just that - getting the use out of the hardware I have. Once I step onto the path of changing out parts, I'd just get another modern day computer. I'm sort of an all or nothing person. As it stands, I’m alright with the speed of the laptop. Granted, it has a bit more RAM than the desktops. Once I attempt to run Puppy on the desktops, maybe I'll revisit the hardware issue.

RE: Results of my attempt to get NewMoon to work on Tahr
I think I followed the instructions about getting NewMoon onto the computer properly (unzipped it down to the folders/files; copied to a DVD; after popping out the Tahr DVD, popped in the just-made DVD of NewMoon; copied the files into /mnt/home – Note: there were 2 “errors” in coping), which worked, but didn't fully.

I see the files I copied from the NewMoon DVD in /mnt/home, EVEN the 1s the computer said there were errors in coping:
1) Under dictionaries folder: en-US.dic
2) Under fonts folder: TwemojiMozilla.ttf

I went into the directory in /mnt/home to click LAUNCH, but nothing happened. I clicked on Menu-Add, thinking “Oh, maybe I need to add it to the menu for it to work.” Going ahead with the X Restart request, I then see “Palemoon SSE-portable” in the menu. Clicking that doesn’t do anything (much like the browsers I added in Bionic). I see the difference in clicking FF, Opera, or Seamonkey vs. NewMoon – the 1st 3 immediately engage the hard drive + I can tell they are working on displaying, while clicking on NewMoon elicits nothing from the computer.

Other oddity: I see the palemoon.png in the DATA folder, but there is no logo next to “Palemoon SSE-portable” in the menu; it’s just a blank space.

None of these odd “errors” strike me as being critical to making NewMoon work, but that’s all I can report back on the situation. Obviously I don’t have the slightest clue as to what is going on. The only thing I can think of is that I did this all while running Tahr straight from the DVD, do I need to go ahead with an installation to make it work?

RE: installation – If I don’t like the frugal/full installation, can I switch to the other (simply by sticking the DVD back in to redo the installation)?

[mikewalsh]

@venn :-

Um.....you've lost me. I don't understand why you're trying to copy the portable NewMoon to a DVD..?

The Menu-entry won't work properly if you're running from a 'LiveCD', anyway. You also won't have a /mnt/home until you create a save-file or save-folder! You'd be better off copying the portable browser to a suitably-formatted USB flash drive, then running it from there directly via the 'LAUNCH' script.

I would explain all this in detail, but Friday is NOT a good night for me; I have too much else on.

---------------------------

Guys, can anyone do Uncle Mike a favour, and explain to venn:-

a ) How to format a flash drive to ext3 under Puppy?
b ) How to copy the 'portable' NewMoon directory across to that flash drive?
c ) How to then run NewMoon from that flash drive?

I would happily explain everything, plus what to check for & be aware of, but I just don't have the time to spare tonight... Cheers!

Mike.

[venn]

I didn't use a flash drive b/c the computer doesn't recognize mine, so I was trying to avoid using it. I kinda thought 1 of the big selling points of Puppy was that it runs in all sorts of formats - CD/DVD, floppy, flash drive, or installed on the hard drive (with the CD/DVD way immediately running on the RAM, allowing one to take out the DVD once booted to desktop, to allow other data to be accessed on another CD/DVD). So I thought I could attempt to set it up via DVD format to make sure it worked before committing to install. The Menu-Add script seemed to work, for the most part, other than the logo not showing up.

It just seemed to me the USB was simply the medium to transfer the NewMoon files into the /mnt/home directory, which I thought a DVD could be used as a transfer medium just the same as a USB drive. But if running it on the DVD is the problem, I'll give reformatting the USB to a linux format to see if a linux system will recognize it (much like Linux is able to connect to internet thru my ISP's router when XP can't). So before anyone takes the time to write out all the instructions above that mikewalsh was suggesting - let me give another run at it. Also, I did create the savefile, so I do have access to the /mnt/home.

[bigpup]

I went into the directory in /mnt/home to click LAUNCH, but nothing happened.

Anytime something does not run when you click on the file that is suppose to make it run.

Open a console/terminal and try running it from there.
If something is wrong it will usually tell you what it is.

Example:
In the console/terminal enter LAUNCH (If LAUNCH is the file name, Must use correct upper/lower case font)
Press enter key on keyboard.

Note:
If the file location is not in the filesystem path.
Will have to navigate to the file location in Rox file manager.
Right click in an open area of the Rox display.
Select Window -> terminal here

[stevie pup]

Assuming you get these old machines up and running successfully I suggest you put some thought into what you intend to use them for, as this can make all the difference as to what you can and can't get away with. The thing with browsers is that as soon as they're mentioned a number of people immediately assume you're going to be doing online banking or something equally critical, whereas this may well not be the case.

I have a work colleague that quite proudly tells people that he still uses a Windows 2000 desktop with no security whatsoever, not even a firewall. He does this entirely deliberately just to test people's reactions and to see the looks on their faces. What he doesn't tell them of course is he only boots this thing up occasionally, and purely for the purpose of running some vintage computer games. The thing isn't even connected to the internet, so where's the problem? Obviously there isn't one, but it's a great example of jumping to conclusions before the facts have been established.

So do you need the latest in-thing, with all the security and latest updates just to go online and check the weather forecast? I would say not, but that's just my opinion, in much the same way that you don't need 16Gb of RAM to type a letter. I can understand things in cases where somebody has only one laptop, and it has to be suitable for everything, but when you've got a few machines to choose from you can allocate different tasks to different machines.

Regarding your earlier comments regarding Emmabuntus, if you look at the details it does say "refurbishment of computers up to 15 years old" so I'm afraid the answer's yes, you are trying to use something older than what they use in deepest Africa.

[venn]

Stevie Pup: Dang fine print, gets ya every time. I just read the little blurb on Distrowatch + headed straight for the download page. Could’ve saved myself a DVD had I seen it. Oh well. But this does make me wonder how Distrowatch comes up with its categories.

Given what you've told me about Emmabutus being for computers 15yrs/less, I see it is most comparable to Zorin Lite (having the same stipulation). So Zorin + Emmabutus should be coming up in the same "Distribution category", but don't. I can only think it's that Zorin Lite isn't listed as a separate distro like the main Zorin is, which Zorin main product isn't geared towards old computers.

RE: NewMoon via USB flash drive

OK, I got the files transferred to a ext3 formatted USB that Puppy recognized (yet another thing Puppy can do on this computer that XP can't!! ) I tried 3 things:

1) Simply clicking on the LAUNCH file on the USB does nothing (the same as when I tried it on DVD). I tested the Menu-Add/Remove scripts - they still work fine (again, same as on DVD)

2) Following Bigpup's suggestion, I did the right click in the NewMoon folder to select Window>Terminal Here. This is where me not really knowing what I'm doing may have tripped me up:
At the Root # line I typed "LAUNCH" + hit the Return button. All that got me was a message saying "bash : LAUNCH : command not found". I tried "run LAUNCH", but that got me the same.

3)I tried right clicking on the LAUNCH file itself, which got me the option of "Run in Terminal". Selecting that got me a terminal window that said "Script completed hit RETURN to close window." Still the browser was a no show.

Based on this, I don't think there is anything wrong with the scripts. They seem to think they are working fine. It must be something to do with my specific computer. I guess I'll resign myself to just using Opera 12.15 + seeing what I can see, if I find Corepup doesn't work out.

[mikewalsh]

@venn :-

In step 2), you need to enter

Code: Select all

./LAUNCH

The "." tells Puppy that you want to open a file/whatever in the current directory. So, "./LAUNCH" means to run the 'LAUNCH' file in the directory where you opened the terminal.....OK?

Let us know what the readout is, please. To copy from the terminal, left-click->drag to highlight the text you want. To paste, middle-click in the location where you want it.....i.e., in your next post. (If you're on a laptop and don't have a middle mouse button, clicking left & right buttons simultaneously will emulate a middle-click.)

Once you've pasted it in, please highlight the section and use the button for 'code tags' ("</>"). That just keeps it all tidy.....and makes it easier for everybody to read.

Over to you....

Mike.

[venn]

Typing ./LAUNCH after the root# prompt only results in another blank root# line...no other output or reaction from the computer at all.

[Feek]

venn,
I may be wrong...

But whatever you want to be executable, it has to have permissions for it.

I would check it by right clicking on the executable file -> choose "properties" and look if the three boxes "Exec" are ticked.
If not, then tick them and click "refresh".

[venn]

Thanks for your input! Unfortunately I don't think that's it b/c all 3 Exec boxes were already checked. Nothing in the properties window looks out of sorts , to me at least.

[mikewalsh]

@venn :-

I'm not going into huge detail, with a full-length video exploring how you've gone wrong, and where you've gone wrong.....etc, etc. However; just to clarify my point and bigpup's (above) about running it from the terminal, just see if this short clip clears things up for you.....okay?

If you don't have all those same files inside the NewMoon-portable directory, then I really wouldn't like to say quite what you have been doing with my creation..!

Might help.....might not. Let us know one way or t'other, please. If there's anything at all missing, the terminal should tell you; AFAICT, after re-installing Tahrpup back onto the old Dell, all I did was to install the NewMoon-portable, and it fired-up straightaway.

Mike.

[venn]

Stevie Pup: Thought you might be interested -

After coming across this: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Light-weigh ... stribution

and https://techlog360.com/best-lightweight ... ributions/

and https://www.makeuseof.com/linux-distros ... t-support/

I checked out a few more distros, none of which were any real competition for Puppy. LXLE 12.04.5 + Porteus 4.0 XFCE both didn’t boot to a desktop; while Trisquel Mini 9.0.2 finally did boot, it was slow + the Midori browser didn’t show – probably the same RAM/SSE issue. Elive 3.0.6 stable, and the Torrent of the older versions, took 7+ hrs to download, both of which do not work properly - the iso wouldn't burn to a DVD (image file not valid), nor would Bittorrent deal with the torrent file (bencoding issue?).

Mikeslr: I tried Corepup 8 – it wouldn’t boot to a desktop. Might you recall which version you were able to get running?

On to the main issue -
Mikewalsh: I feel really bad that you have put so much time/effort into helping me. Sorry to say, I followed the steps in your video to the letter before you posted the video. As I said, I think the script is working fine + gets as far as it can go on my computer. It did create the profile folder, although there is nothing in it. I just don't think the ThinkPad T20 has enough RAM to complete the display of the browser.

The 1st website above also hints at the hardware being the reason NewMoon won’t show up. Looking at Slax’s entry – it says it needs 256MB w/o browser; BunsenLabs says 256MB for X + jumps all the way to 1GB for FF. As Puppy seems to need at least 256MB just to get up + running (as of 2017, then there's this 2021 link saying Puppy needs 300MB https://linuxhint.com/best-old-laptop-l ... ributions/), and then there's this saying I really should have a P4 w/ 768mb: viewtopic.php?t=175 , but there's this saying I should have a minimum of a P4 w/ 512mb: viewtopic.php?p=49101. I imagine this means it needs more for a browser to run. In reality, it appears, I should feel extremely grateful that Tahr runs on my P3 w/ 348mb at all (considering it appears it's running near comparable to a 2006-7 computer per https://wikka.puppylinux.com/WhatPuppyLinuxIsBestForYou - I'm impressed).

I've read a couple of pages (1 being a thread on here I think, can't find it again tho) that spoke about a certain amt of RAM usage at resting state, w/ no apps running, then jumping a lot (basically double, if not actually double) once the browser was used. Or just searching "knoppix linux system requirements" results in the top blurb saying it needs 512MB RAM, but 1GB for the browser. So it seems to me the web requires a lot of RAM above the resting state, no matter which OS is chosen. Given that I only have 348MB on the laptop, that only leaves me a maximum of 92MB for the browser in Puppy. While IDK that NewMoon would take as much as FF, I suspect 92MB simply isn't enough to run a browser.

That last link gave me the idea that I shoulld try ClassicPup 2.14x to see if it required fewer resources, maybe it would free up enough RAM to let NewMoon work - it didn't, not even the Menu-add script. This leads me to the question - is this NewMoon package set up to only run on modern Puppies? Is there some small tweeking that can be done to make it work on other some OS that requires less RAM, making more available to NewMoon?

I gave BigPup's suggestion a try (pg. 2 of this thread, about the pfix=nocopy way of booting) - NewMoon still didn't show. Although, I will say I don't think it made any work slower either - seemed very much on par with a regular boot. I checked another thing - using NewMoon under Bionic - interestingly the NewMoon logo appeared in Bionic's menu when it was absent in Tahr, although still didn't display the browser itself. In poking around about frugal vs. full installation, I came across this: viewtopic.php?t=3594 and decided I will try the full installation, mainly b/c it seems I've tried everything else. While gilles was working with more RAM than I am, I figured it's worth a try.

I also read: www.johnletcher.com/puppylinux.htm
His description of “frugal mode” is how I’ve been running Puppy from the beginning, since I burnt the DVD. So I’m now wondering is this “frugal mode” the same thing as what you all are calling “frugal install(ation)” or is a frugal “mode” something different than an “installation”?

For now I'm going to take it that I've been running Puppy as a frugal install this whole time, mainly b/c when I went into Gparted it said it detected many frugal puppies installed, which I take it's referring to the Bionic + Tahr savefiles I created. So now that I'm considering a full install, the question becomes how much of the 11.2GB hard drive do I allot Puppy in Gparted - what is the minimum I should give to Puppy so it works properly? Do I have/is it better to give over the whole drive to Puppy, wiping Windows XP off the computer? Currently, it has 2.45gb of the harddrive free. MS Office 2007 takes up 621kb of the hard drive, which I'd like to keep, but if I need to give it up to get full internet w/ Puppy - I'll gladly wipe XP off.

[williams2]

is it better to give over the whole drive to Puppy, wiping Windows XP off the computer?

No, Puppy can run on a WinXP partition quite nicely, without interfering with WinXP, and without WinXP interfering with Puppy.

pfix=nocopy should allow you to run Puppy with about the same free ram as a full install.
If Puppy has problems running with pfix=nocopy, then a full install is unlikely to be much better.
A full install is a desperate attempt to run Puppy when Puppy with pfix=nocopy barely runs at all.
Depending on your circumstances, if Puppy does not run well as a fugal install with pfix=nocopy, then it probably will not run much better with a full install.

[greengeek]

Defrag the XP partition, then shrink it to make free space - then add a new "SWAP" partition (2GB at least if you can get that much space off the XP partition).

Puppy will find the swap partition during boot and will use it wisely and effectively as a form of pseudo-RAM which will really improve the performance of pretty much any puppy.

This will allow the Puppy software to run really well - even if it is a bit slower than you would like it will avoid lockups and other problems. Once you have enough "RAM+pseudoRAM" you will find a lot more choice in terms of what each browser is capable of. (Won't eliminate SSE restrictions but will transform browser behaviour).

This is a great way to make the machine run well - even if you still have to do a slow-boot via CD.

[mikewalsh]

Defrag the XP partition, then shrink it to make free space - then add a new "SWAP" partition (2GB at least if you can get that much space off the XP partition).

Puppy will find the swap partition during boot and will use it wisely and effectively as a form of pseudo-RAM which will really improve the performance of pretty much any puppy.

This will allow the Puppy software to run really well - even if it is a bit slower than you would like it will avoid lockups and other problems. Once you have enough "RAM+pseudoRAM" you will find a lot more choice in terms of what each browser is capable of. (Won't eliminate SSE restrictions but will transform browser behaviour).

This is a great way to make the machine run well - even if you still have to do a slow-boot via CD.

Heh. Ian's absolutely right, y'know. For a low-RAM scenario, swap is an absolute "must-have".....and the more you can allocate, the better.

Despite having 32GB of RAM here, I have an assortment of swap partitions all over the place - including one of 48GB! - totalling around 62GB altogether. Why? you ask. With that much RAM, surely you don't need it?

I have it for one simple reason. The way the UEFI/BIOS stuff is set up on this HP rig, regardless of the amount actually in use, when suspending - which I do a LOT of - it insists on mirroring the entire 32GB of RAM to one contiguous location. It doesn't like "splitting" the RAM in use between various smaller locations. Won't have that at all, and "waking-up" from suspend goes totally & catastrophically wrong if you do things this way. With a single, giant swap-partition that's larger than the available RAM, suspend works beautifully.....despite what other Puppians have told me in the past about this NOT being how suspend works. For me, MY way "just works".....correct or not.

So I'll stick with it..!!

Mike.