@xenial :-
Mm. Well, I guess part of the reason I don't seem to have problems with these things is because most of the time, I'm in Barry's old Quirky64 April 7.0.1. Barry used these things as experimental test-beds, and included a number of things you never used to get in the Puppies, OOTB. I'm pleasantly surprised so much modern stuff still works in it, given its vintage...!
On top of which, I've added so much other stuff myself, I couldn't even begin to catalogue what's 'extra' and what isn't.
What Puppy are you getting this issue in? If I can, I'll try a 'vanilla' boot into it and see if the problem is there for me. If I can duplicate it, I'll see if it's 'fixable'. If not, I'll just switch back to the tarball download instead. It's no skin off my nose...
A thought. What happens if you try to run the 'LAUNCH' script in the terminal? Any clues?
What's your readout look like?
Mike.