fredx181 wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 3:43 pm
Ubuntu minimal requirement is 4GB ram, for Puppy it should be much less IMO, otherwise where would be the Puppy "philosophy" of being able to run on "older" computers !?
Asking myself the question: why would new people visit Puppy Linux forum it would seem to me that the biggest such potential audience will have an older machine they want to find something that can still run on it and in such a way that it doesn't feel too crippled or slow. Then they would look for small Linux variants and Puppy is always on such lists and usually with blurb that suggests it uses less RAM and CPU and is good on older machines... Hence I suspect most new users come looking to try Puppy for that purpose. Actually they could equally try various DebianDogs and KL distros for same purpose, but the outside forum blurb doesn't usually mention that so traditional Puppy Linux is the likely target audience.
Funnily enough, many seasoned forum members have probably long ago relegated their much 'older' machines for occasional usage only and tend to work on newer (less than say 12 year old machines) that will easily run even well known larger distros reasonably well. Some of may stick to using Puppy on new or newish machines for the simple reason that Puppy is what they are familiar with and thus comfortable with and often with detailed experience and knowledge about using it, but less familiar with alternatives. Over time, however, Puppy is almost being forced into closer compliance with upstream distros; after all it uses upstream repos and sub-system developments such as pulseaudio, pipewire, Wayland and more, do not stand still and since repo support is heavily involved there Puppy is even moving to using official upstream package managers to handle these upstream repos more correctly.
Nevertheless, in my view, old computers (being lower resourced) is indeed the likeliest reason new people come to this forum to find something that works on their older machines. Having said that, the really old machines Puppy distros like Puppy 2.17 and 4.12 and even the likes of Tahr were originally designed for (older than, say, 12 years old machines) are fading away entirely (you'll find them under the dust in your cupboards or garage still maybe). Such low-resourced machines typically used more electricity than they are worth - could save a hundred dollars a year maybe using a low-powered modern machine (<12 years old) that can be bought for $50 and without all the slowness and software restrictions involved in working with old bricks. The expensive back then brand new machine of 2010 and so on, is the old machine of today - don't need traditional old Puppy to run that well. In fact, you run the risk of limiting your own development as a modern Linux user - restricted in what you understand and do - that's why Puppy needs to change over time, like everything does. Nostalgia is usually falsely romantic in its view of the past really. The 'Philosophy' can stay the same, but the target machines and the resources they provide and modern facilities they support change over time - you need to move with the times whether you keep that original philosophy or not (well, as an individual or small group, you don't need to change over time, but new people to this forum are a different matter on the whole).
There is a common sense reason why you should do most of your computing on your newer machine if you also have an older machine - it's not going to stay new/newish, so you might as well enjoy it whilst it is... and you only have one pair of eyes and set of hands so most of the time you are only going to be using one computer at a time and might as well enjoy the most flexible and powerful instead of messing around just trying to get pretty simple things to even work... Different if you don't have a newer/better/more-efficient and flexible machine though, or if you are giving an older computer to someone else who doesn't.
)
Especially those with their new gear looking for something special or alternative to what is already in the market. Food for thought...
