For those who yearn for the days of Puppy Linux or similar small distros being used most or all of the time as main desktop by general users, I believe that is more and more unlikely despite some of these smallish distros being fantastic (especially because of the frugal install facilities offered). The fact is, I myself have continued to use a now pretty old laptop as my main computer - my 2008 HP Elitebook 2530p 14" screen, sometimes 2 and sometimes 4GB RAM machine that has old but useful core2duo Intel processor inside. I do suffer with limited hard drive space as a result though - often only a couple of GB left for dev work!!! (though the hard drive could be easily upgraded of course - at 'relatively' small cost, but my whole computer only cost me around thirty dollars...).
However, soon my partner is upgrading to a modernish PC for her business needs (the 32GB RAM type of computer...). That means I will inherit something newer (haven't checked, but has at least 8GB RAM, I think 16GB, and a large SSD drive). Actually it already runs WDL_Arch64 as its main distro - all nicely tuned for the business needs, so I will likely continue with that as my main distro, but I also jump back and forth between that and KLV-Airedale (every day) and, occasionally, VoidPup64. KLV-Airedale has all the 'new' tricks and it works great to the extent that I never miss not being on WDL_Arch64 (I already use the new WDL initrd on WDL_Arch64 but haven't yet copied across the mainly fredx181-provided save2flash and so on user-scripts). Fact is though, that I will not be limited in space on the coming new machine, so no problem for me any longer to try out the various WeeDogged distros provided via weedogit.sh (in fact that is one raison d'etre for me creating weedogit.sh really). Fast fibre is also changing the landscape and download size becoming irrelevant - dialup days are gone and ADSL vanishing over time. Since the result continues to use WDL initrd then I continue to get all the frugal install advantages, so it is perfectly possible I will end up adopting (modifying) an upstream read-made-and-supported distro (though most don't interest me for other reasons). WDL and more general KL-related developments remain vitally important to me even then.
In general, I suspect, therefore, that the increased resource power of 'modern' machines (basically anything less than ten years old...) makes it unimportant how big the initial installation media is so the hole in the market that the likes of Puppy used to fill becomes non-existent really. Even usb sticks are huge nowadays (days of CD and DVD also all but gone). That doesn't make Pups or Pup-sized frugal install distros of no importance any more - there remains that advantage of being able to easily customise our distro if we choose to run with one of the distros discussed on this forum, but the weedogit.sh installed distros do muddy that water somewhat. For some of us it is 'nice' though to be able to run sometimes very slim distros and add ONLY what we really want - and more so if we like to run several distros at the same time in a network of virtual machines (though at the end of the day the per-distro result is sometimes surprisingly HUGE anyway...), so the build mechanism is really what is most important here (and of course the all-important very-flexible overlay functionality provided by the initrd.gz). That is why WeeDogLinux development continues to be something I do - I can build very specialized distros (as small or large as desired) via its build system in conjunction with its WDL skeleton initrd.gz. I certainly do not see the point of developing a less-flexible boot init mechanism and consider that a dead-end longterm (what would be its attraction?) - but (maybe with some luck) the existing WDL initrd.gz does provide some really flexible options that make the likes of KLV-Airedale very nice to work with. But still, I do think even some Puppy stalwards are, perhaps secretly, often running bigger distros as their main desktop nowadays, and I imagine that is why some old familiar faces no longer take part very often, not only in some threads here but also on the forum at all.
Point is, I feel that the reason for developing distros of Puppy-like frugal facilities has changed to a large extent. The market for Puppy is smaller in a general sense - old machines are indeed now going to landfill and no use to keep them anyway (they are often power-hungry anyway). So this forum needs a different market, which to me is those in the Linux community that actually want great flexibility in the Linux they can build and great functionality in the frugal install facilities these distro provide. It is indeed also an interesting hobby from a technical/developer point of view.
Nevertheless, these needs/interests provide only a limited market for of potential users nowadays, for sure, and yes the word 'tinkerers' come to mind - it is like a computer 'club' of sorts, but those who remain in it certainly get lots of advantages (and fun, tinkering, be that with system level components or the likes of portable app creations), and even those who run weedogit.sh WeeDogged bigger distros also have their place here since the flexibility and utility apps developed to benefit from that will then work for these user's chosen distros too. In fact, that could be the biggest market at the end of the day since none of these bigger distros provide much flexibility themselves (as yet anyway) in their use of live systems (most just provide minimum live system support that is just enough, and no more, to boot the distro for later full installation - WeeDog them and it becomes a different ballgame).
I hear some people deriding any non-Puppy as if somehow the result is just another boring distro, as if Puppy itself is some special case that is less-boring. Really that kind of negative propaganda is just nonsense. There is nothing particularly 'exciting' at sticking with Puppy just because it reminds the older cronies of the early 2000's when Puppy was in its heyday in the world of the lesser Damn Small Linux and Slitaz. Puppy has to keep being developed to meet the needs of the types of computer we all gradually come to own nowadays, and if its package manager isn't as good as those of other distros then users simply wouldn't bother with installing it. Cute to provide a distro with many functional apps in a tiny size (like a demo of what can be done with so little resources), but the days of anyone wanting Inkscape lite are probably over - we want Inkscape full or forget it. But, yes, the portable apps addon concept is one solution to that, which some may prefer (others may simply want reliable package management), so both methods are valid and attractive overall.
) But I'd understand that you have priorities (like everybody), is it because this is so different from a "real" Puppy ?
))
