Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

bigpup wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:27 am

other non-Puppy OS's only provide fatty foods!

This was an answer to a joke!

I complained to my doctor that there was something wrong with my body, it didn't handle fatty foods well any more.
His response, "Well, don't eat fatty foods."

But if you need an example:
About 2.3 GB of fat compared to Puppy Linux.
.
Screenshot(7).jpg

Maintaining a reliable repository is the foundation of any distro. Puppy Linux relies on Ubuntu for several of its distros, as do most all distros discussed on this forum. 'Jokes' can come across as snide remarks when targeting the helpful work of others and 'other-than-Puppy' distros, But dubious jokes aside, 2.3GB is simply download size, which only actually effects hard disk storage size - that in itself is not what could reasonably be termed 'fat'; rather it includes what full distro Ubuntu feels a user might want to have available out-of-the-box.

Ubuntu themselves also support less full-on minimised Ubuntu distros of their own, such as Lubuntu. On this forum there is traditionally a preference to provide a relatively functional distro (but leave 'other' app install to user discretion) but I doubt most users limit themselves to what an initially downloaded Puppy provides, so the fat comparisons are actually useless and prove nothing whatsoever.

In terms of my own preference, I certainly use far more applications than Puppy provides by default, but less than full-on Ubuntu - main thing is that I want a slimmer desktop manager since experiments on my machines long ago proved to me that slimmer desktop environments use far less computer resources and allows my old machines to run faster - nothing to do with download size or what the distro installs to my hard disk - I could easily use full Ubuntu and simply not use full Gnome desktop and turn off a few services and get same performance as I can get with Puppy Linux... My own distro, WeeDogLinux, is primary delivered simply as a build system that is specially designed to allow its users to build a much smaller distro than a typical Puppy or a fuller distro such as my build config that uses upstream Arch Linux for its repositories - that one currently has a download size of 1.5 GB, but runs at least as efficiently on even my oldest computers as my Puppy Linux install does; I could easily enough modify what the build config installs and provide a Puppy-sized download, but then I lose the advantage of specially pre-configured larger apps, so I'd have all that extra app configuration work to do to get the overall facility I actually want to have. Configuring apps to work as we prefer is extremely time-consuming so not a good thing at all overall (no wonder so many hours are lost on this forum in endlessly re-configuring systems to get things working...).

But certainly, sometimes, I like to have an absolutely minimised (as small as I can get it) distro for a specialised purpose (or for fun adding stuff too) - I have that choice and think neither 'size' of distro superior to the other. Main thing is, at present I could not create any WeeDogLinux distro without the huge repository work done by upstream Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, Void Linux, Slackware and so on - I would be very unhappy indeed if upstream slimmed down their repositories to bare minimum mtpaint, Gnumeric, geany and so on, and ended up having to compile all the other apps I want to have. So it is a big thankyou from me to Ubuntu, Void Linux, Arch Linux and so on - WeeDogLinux depends entirely on their existence, but so do most all Puppy Linux distros - download size ain't much to do with anything (not when max is only 2.5GB when our hard disks are increasing capable of storing hundreds of GB and even TB in some cases!).

So what is the key difference to upstream. Arguable, but I'd say that usually it is the frugal install capabilities we develop to provide sfs module addon and save persistence handling via our own initrd/init designs. Puppy uses aufs to provide its file system layering in its current mainstream releases, WeeDogLinux has always used overlayfs (and Puppy nowadays also experiments with using overlayfs since overlayfs is officially adopted by the Linux kernel team and aufs is not - but there are advantages and disadvantages to both - choice is a great thing IMO). Per tinycorelinux approach you can also use symlinks and, for example, tinycorelinux dcore versions pretty much uses a symlinked form of portable application package as the basis of its assembly - let's not pretend Puppy is now inventing that either.

The main difference technically between distros is thus not download size anyway, overall we all use the same apps in the end (according to individual choice - but nothing wrong with having any pre-configured app stored on our often huge hard disks for optional use when we want...) - and usually per the good will of upstream distro repositories. Main design difference is how we provide overall system flexibility via layering systems (including use of portable app sfs creations and symlinks) and containers and so on - the main component of difference is usually thus to be found in the initrd/init along with the other system support mechanism, be that sysVinit scripts, systemd or runit unit files, or whatever the system designers uses (such as /usr/sbin/wait4usb shell script in previous to current Pups).

WeeDogLinux is certainly an example of a "non-Puppy OS" (not only that full 2.5GB official Ubuntu distro you now give as an example) - WeeDogLinux is not based on Puppy design at all (though variations could be used to create a look-and-feel like Puppy if someone wants that - I prefer a fuller distro and more standardised system, including either runit or systemd services for my own use, but that is not a comment against what Puppy provides, which is fine for others for sure). WeeDog initrd/init was designed from scratch by myself, based on first principles that are the foundations of Linux. Of course a new system designer 'could' base their alternative design on some other system init (such as Puppy) - I didn't (though we all read the same online stackexchange and official documentations and so on - still acknowledgement of the work of others on this forum and the inspirations collaboration provides is always important). More likely by far, I 'might' have based my scripts on those provided by Debian Live (or a major-modified Porteus init per the DebianDogs since I long enjoyed using the DDs and still have that as my often still used second go-to system), but I choose not to take that approach either (maybe because I was too lazy to bother working out how these init scripts worked - init scripts are quite complex and I just build WeeDogLinux init in tiny steps - each to implement some function/facility I wanted to implement - I could already write relatively fluently in shell script and know most Linux fundamentals reasonably well (since my profession was in that domain) so most of the design was a matter of my studying how overlayfs worked and in them choosing how best to use the facilities that kernel ability provides.

I am absolutely fine with the ongoing discussion about whether any non-Puppy OS (in appropriate forum discussion thread), such as FatDog, EasyOS, the DebianDogs, the WeeDogLinux variations, CorePup and so on, should be allowed space on this forum. I have my opinion on that and voice it - but I leave the decision on that up to the community as a whole and in particular the person who runs this forum - used to be the late John Murga (I can't remember anyone challenging his decision rights) - now rockedge (Erik). The forum was not started by woof-CE stewards, but my understanding is that everyone who is a registered member of the forum have a right to their say on the matter.

'Jokes' that are derogatory form part of a negative discourse that acts to persuade readers that one distro is better than the other. Your 'joke' was not 'innocent' nor harmless.