Why Do You Use Puppy Linux?

[8Geee]

The OP might like Ubuntu, but the ISO image of Slacko 5.7 derivitives is more than 10x smaller. In fact, 3 of them fit on a CD.
Most of Puppy's strength is that size matters, bloat and 'be-all' does not. What we have, Ubuntu has. There's a breed of Puppy for most if not all Ubuntu users. It depends on the hardware/CPU in the machine, and what browser one wants. Chances are the OP has not configured the browser for security/privacy, as most people tend/trend. Theres an add-on for that, and an upgrade every two to four weeks to fix it.

But hey... you like what you got, and I like what I got. Its just that you got more of it even if you don't want it or need it.
and then there's /root/.packages/builtin_files ... adjust when you update.

Regards
8Geee

[bigpup]

Because I can not find Horse Linux!

[jm03]

Wow, it's great to see this thread still going, and there's been some really good posts.

As I am using Puppy Linux more, I am becoming more addicted to it.

I am now using FossaPup, and it's significantly better than Puppy Tahr.

I'm also using a "frugal" install now, whereas with Tahr I was using a "full" install.

[puddlemoon]

@jm03
thus it begins...
Frugal install IS puppy in the most critical sense. full install has all the clever and cute apps but not the magic that is squash filesystem. I would say, and I'm sure most agree, that this the heart of what makes puppy, puppy. So if you want to get to know this critter, keep it frugal for sure.
Glad you're feeling the love. It is addicting. Be warned

[jm03]

@jm03
thus it begins...
Frugal install IS puppy in the most critical sense. full install has all the clever and cute apps but not the magic that is squash filesystem. I would say, and I'm sure most agree, that this the heart of what makes puppy, puppy. So if you want to get to know this critter, keep it frugal for sure.
Glad you're feeling the love. It is addicting. Be warned

Thanks for that, puddlemoon.

Yes, it is addictive. Very.

[JASpup]

I was driven here by Xenial Mint and the system resource issue.

I was driven to Mint by Bill Gates' wealth, specifically a lack of access to the Windows 7 installed on a computer I bought by both by MSFT and Acer. I'm not completely comfortable on torrents.

I hacked Windows off a recovery partition (there was no installation utility), but by that point I was so angry I resolved to ween off Windows.

Now I'm behind a barrage of choice and the learning curve, but it's welcome.

[taersh]

I have my own Woof-CE built of Bionic64 and it's pretty well setup as an Audio, Graphics and Video Studio
besides all the stuff like Office and Internet etc.pp.

is your build downloadable in the internet? link?

No, it's not published. I had a previous version at archive.org, but removed it as there was some problems.
In German forum there's the 32bit remastered version from peebee's 32bit bionic to download.

[taersh]

I still cannot mount my NFS shares.

Wow, it's great to see this thread still going, and there's been some really good posts.

As I am using Puppy Linux more, I am becoming more addicted to it.

I am now using FossaPup, and it's significantly better than Puppy Tahr.

I'm also using a "frugal" install now, whereas with Tahr I was using a "full" install.

I still cannot mount my NFS shares.

Is the NFS shares now working?

[Trobin]

I've used Puppy Linux on and off for years. It may not be as polished as th big name linuxes but it works. And that is all that I need from any OS.

Spilling coffee on my laptop is what brought me back. Only 3 or four keys were effected so the keyboard wasn't completely destroyed. Just enough to make it unuseable. Using a usb keyboard works, but, due to sight problems, I want the screen too far away. So I put it on top of the original, whech pressed down on the keys beneath. Windows became too frustrating. I don't have that problem with Puppy.

[mikewalsh]

to enjoy the simple and the easy and the fast and the plenty
to learn a little
to do what I want
to be the boss of my machine
to be boss of any machine
to play a little
to mess up a little
to mess up big without harm
to begin all over anew with no fuss
...

We are Puppy!
Resistance is futile!

This^^
and @cobaka I really hear the deeper "philisophical" motivation. For me it is at least half of the reason I use puppy. It IS a revolution (or an aspect of).
I found puppy as a way to make old hardware wok well. Impressive enough for sure when xp offers such a bleak outlook. But when I found that the old gear running puppy was faster and more "free" than (almost) any new gear/os combo.... the deal was sealed. puppy on new gear is like a ninja.
And now, some years on I still shrug at the bloat and over regulation of the mainline os's while puppy just gets more and more "polished". I still use buntu and arch at times but not for long.

bottom line... puppy is empowerment!! (and a cyberninja) (and a brilliant and generous community that I am honored to be part of)

Oh, YES. Could not agree more....

For a long while I was using a 2004-vintage Compaq desktop; fairly limited resource-wise, though it eventually got transformed as far as was possible with various bits of newer hardware, including a CPU upgrade.

Windows became a slow, grinding torture to use. At XP's EOL, I looked around for 'free operating systems'.....and was amazed by what I found.

I started with Ubuntu. Yes, it was a steep learning curve, but nothing a curious, enquiring mind couldn't handle. What eventually drove me to try Puppy - at the recommendation of an acquaintance on the Ubuntu forums - was Canonical's habit of constantly re-building the kernel to 'remove' support for older hardware, Shuttleworth having decided that Ubuntu would emulate Windows, and cater for all the brand-new hardware that was constantly flooding the market. All of a sudden, they decided, quite arbitrarily, to drop support for my perfectly good ATI Radeon graphics chip.....and Ubuntu became pretty much unusable.

So I switched to Puppy, and it was like a switch had been thrown. Everything worked again! I was "hooked"....

I must agree with Puddlemoon, though. Puppy does indeed make older hardware seem like new again; often giving much newer, more powerful machines a good run for their money. But when you move to powerful modern hardware with Puppy.....my God! Puppy suddenly becomes insanely fast.....much more so than before. You only have to think about doing summat, and Pup's completed the task, and is sitting there, wagging its tail, looking around for something else to do..!

Un-be-lievable. I don't even look at anything else these days. I adapt as many things as I can to run under Puppy, and when the "going gets tough", usually refer to the ArchLinux wiki.....one of the best sources anywhere on-line for Linux resources in general. It's helped to solve many an issue.....

Root for ever! Puppy roolz!

Mike.

[FatMan]

Hi all... Like most on here I started on Windows (95, 98, 2000, XP, the proverbial cesspit that was Vista, 7, 8/8.1 and finally 10). Each version got more bloated and more things got broke then fixed on every update etc. After all the years, all the stress and frustrations it was finally time to leave Windows behind and move on to find pastures new.

I took the plunge to try Linux over a year ago and spent it Distro hopping but couldn't find one I was 100 percent happy with, most of the "big boy" distros are over bloated with features and functions that aren't really necessary from the get go that just resource hog, feel that they have lost the meaning of what Linux was designed for and are chasing to make it more "Windows friendly with similar windows workflow and usability" for people switching over but I'm digressing here.

So two weeks ago I decided to try Puppy Linux and picked DPupBuster64 from random and I've got to say I'm really happy and impressed with Puppy Linux. For something with such a small footprint it packs a big bite, thanks for everyone's hard work and dedication on improving and making it better I just wished I encountered Puppy sooner

I'm looking forward to grabbing the lead and taking more puppies on a walk to stretch their legs

[mikewalsh]

@FatMan :-

Glad ya like it, and, er..... to the "kennels"!

Stick around, why don'tcha? There's always plenty going on.....and the community is a very friendly one, trust me. There's not a lot the "big boys" can do that Puppy can't.....

Mike.

[user1111]

This recent Teamviewer repo 'bug'

https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/teamviewer- ... urity.html

System updates are run with full root system privileges. The vulnerabilities enables an attacker the ability to execute and persistently install software with full system privileges. An attacked system must be considered fully and irrecoverably compromised after this vulnerability had been exploited.

Such issues are relatively frequent across the wide range of programs available. Persistent rw systems only have to encounter one, brief hole to potentially establish longer term presence. Virus scanners only identify known cases, not the entire universe. Frugal booting (in the right manner) goes a long way to lower the persistent penetration attack vectors.

[Jafadmin]

I use puppy linux because of all the re-usable code. As micro-code pollution in our water systems and food chains explodes with the proliferation of personal computers, it's a great way to recycle code that would also otherwise pollute the digital stream, the information superhighway, and more frightening as of late, The Cloud

Be a better netizen. Re-use code! (It will make you virtuous)

[FatMan]

@FatMan :-

Glad ya like it, and, er..... to the "kennels"!

Stick around, why don'tcha? There's always plenty going on.....and the community is a very friendly one, trust me. There's not a lot the "big boys" can do that Puppy can't.....

Mike.

@mikewalsh thanks for the warm welcome

I will be sticking around although I'm fairly knowledgeable about all aspects of computers I've still got a lot to learn about puppy and how it works. I've got a few very old laptops I would like to recycle and puppy is ideal for the task, so I will be searching the forum for a very lightweight puppy for the task. But my ultimate goal is to be able to make my own custom woof-ce at some point in the near future.

[user1111]

my ultimate goal is to be able to make my own custom woof-ce at some point in the near future.

Barry retired from Puppy and handed it over to the community (woofCE), but he's still active somewhat separately with his EasyOS line. https://bkhome.org/news/202001/easypup- ... -past.html I've used that even when using a Frugal boot, just make sure you download/run it on a HDD (with lots of free space), and be prepared for a all-night run time. Puppy/EasyOS tend to 'borrow' pre-built programs from other distros + additional (Puppy scripts).

Fatdog is based on Linux From Scratch, everything self compiled. This is a old version link but still applicable when applied to recent versions http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=105329

Personally, having used both of the above, nowadays I just build my own minimal kernel (using Fatdog as the build tool), highly refined to my hardware (laptop) such that its just 5MB in size (boots to busybox cli), and add whatever on top of that (self compiled or 'borrowed'). That 5MB boot for instance can wifi net connect, has ssh ...etc. and more recently now includes the option to boot a iso using kvm/qemu (i.e. into a full gui desktop of whichever iso I opt to boot). Often however I'll just boot to cli and vnc into a server (a desktop PC that we have connected to the TV) for a full gui desktop.

[davidresponde]

My Windows 10 spoiled...and I got tired it...
I tried Lubuntu
I tried Mint
But I love really Puppy Linux, faster, complete and challenger.
And easy backup in USB.
This week upgraded to FossaPup

[radames]

I use Puppy Linux because it gives me real control over my system, it is very easy to use and customize. It's simple, fast, works well and with JWM. What more can I ask for?

[JASpup]

As I am using Puppy Linux more, I am becoming more addicted to it.

Empathy. It's taking up a lot of my headspace.

I am now using FossaPup, and it's significantly better than Puppy Tahr.

How so?

I'm also using a "frugal" install now, whereas with Tahr I was using a "full" install.

Each new trial demands a commitment. When I try something new I like to have a reason and idea of what I'm getting into, and in Puppy that seems to require a pretty strong command of how it works.

[mikewalsh]

I am now using FossaPup, and it's significantly better than Puppy Tahr.

How so?

Because for many, many people, the very newest of something is automatically always "the best"..... I'll always give the newest versions of many things a "look", but it's rare that I'll end up using them full-time - at least, not until they've been around for a while, and had time to become 'stable'..!

(shrug)

We even have one member here who will openly berate you for not supporting our devs and always using the very newest Pups.....

Mike.

[FatMan]

Barry retired from Puppy and handed it over to the community (woofCE), but he's still active somewhat separately with his EasyOS line. https://bkhome.org/news/202001/easypup- ... -past.html I've used that even when using a Frugal boot, just make sure you download/run it on a HDD (with lots of free space), and be prepared for a all-night run time. Puppy/EasyOS tend to 'borrow' pre-built programs from other distros + additional (Puppy scripts).

Fatdog is based on Linux From Scratch, everything self compiled. This is a old version link but still applicable when applied to recent versions http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=105329

Personally, having used both of the above, nowadays I just build my own minimal kernel (using Fatdog as the build tool), highly refined to my hardware (laptop) such that its just 5MB in size (boots to busybox cli), and add whatever on top of that (self compiled or 'borrowed'). That 5MB boot for instance can wifi net connect, has ssh ...etc. and more recently now includes the option to boot a iso using kvm/qemu (i.e. into a full gui desktop of whichever iso I opt to boot). Often however I'll just boot to cli and vnc into a server (a desktop PC that we have connected to the TV) for a full gui desktop.

Many thanks rufwoof for the informative insight on Puppy/EasyOS and Fatdog, especially on how you build and refine your own versions. It's really much appreciated, I've bookmarked the links for a future guide to further recite, research and help me learn and use (I'm currently trying to absorb as much information as possible without overloading the old grey matter )

[JASpup]

@mikewalsh Tahr is excellent; it's just a matter of compatibility. I'd compare to XP (minus Clippy).

[wiak]

I started using Puppy in around 2007 with Puppy version 2.17, which was a great BarryK (non-woof-CE) creation. I kept looking for alternatives, or even equals... (so had many an install of TinyCoreLinux and Slitaz) but, truth is, nothing could match Puppy. My only gripe with Puppy was that it was not a fully multi-user system (though for most of my home use that was irrelevant). So I used Puppy as my main desktop for years (despite having been using Linux since 1991 and being very familiar with large Linux distros such as RedHat and Ubuntu), because Puppy is and was small to download, and FAST, and could be tweaked to do most anything (aside from multi-user...).

It wasn't until 2011 that a Puppy-like alternative (Pussy) appeared on the murga forum (similar size, similar frugal install capability, but with inherent multi-user capability). That was started by murga Puppy forum member 'sickgut' (whose last post on the forum and that thread was in April 2013)
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 589#539589

Murga Puppy forum member 'saintless', who had contributed to sickgut's Pussy Linux developments, effectively took over where sickgut had left off and started the first thread of what we now know as the 'Debian Dogs' in December 2013.

The first of the DebianDogs were developed in tandem at that time: one using Debian live Squeeze and the other using Debian live Wheezy (and like Puppy, utilizing JWM or icewm and Rox and providing load/unload sfs capability and ability to run most murga forum member created gtkdialog-based Puppy apps).

Quite a number of murga Puppy forum members took an interest, including Fred (fredx181) and sklimkin (who also contributed a great deal as part of Puppy Russian team):
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 005#743005
Fred quickly introduced some core Puppy components to make the first Dogs more pup-like (including gtkdialog, desktop_drive_icons+pup_volume_monitor and obshutdown) and shortly after developed and posted early modified versions that used Openbox and tint2 plus thunor and/or pcmanfm (+Rox). At the same stage Fred also provided an alternative boot method using modified Porteus initrd (which provides the changes=exit methodology probably most DebianDog users now use).
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 523#744523
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 684#747107

Saintless and Fred basically shared most of the main development effort thereafter and when saintless left the forum Fred continued his openbox-based side of things, producing many variants along the way (including some build-script variants starting with DebianDog Stretch). Sklimkin was however actually the first to mention creation of Dogs via debootstrap via chroot mechanism rather than cutting down existing live-iso versions the way saintless and Fred originally were. I believe Sklimkin also helped with porteus boot and sfs load/unload development.

Funnily enough, during these early DebianDog development days, I myself had almost no interest in main distro system-level development since my enjoyment tended at that time to come from hacking away at various bash/gtkdialog-type apps. However, as mcewanw, I had the somewhat contradictory feeling that gtkdialog as the principal Puppy/Dog utility creator should be ditched once and for all (and still do... which makes me question why I ended up spending so much complex time creating my gtkwialog fork of gtkdialog... sigh. Actually, I would not have done so had Pup/Dog distro creators not insisted on continuing to keep gtkdialog in):

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 289#750289
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 290#750290

Back to Puppy itself: I have to say that, following some work I did on a simple woof-CE frontend for myself, called makepup, I came to the conclusion that Puppy development, in terms of future innovation, had somewhat dried up with the woof-CE, its not exactly modular..., template build system. Furthermore, despite the original Puppy Package Manager being a clever piece of work, it was showing its age and many weaknesses. However, sc0ttman has since time come along with his Pkg package manager, which is an incredible effort that has definitely breathed new life into the perhaps becoming-tired Pup. Overall, Puppy, thanks to the excellent work done by its various version creators (such as 666philb, peebee, 01micko and more) certainly remains one of the most user-friendly wee installations to install (better than the Dogs in that user friendly installation area for sure) and I also learned tons over the years using it (and more so because of its excellent/most-helpful Puppy Linux forum).

Recently I've become increasingly optimistic that Puppy has entered a new area of innovation (though I'm still secretly hoping woof-CE will end up ditched and a new more modular build system created that allows flexible addons for different package manager choices and desktop managers without the hard job of hacking hard-coded internals of somewhat monolithic build scripts to include new code... Anyway, I believe that it is not current woof-CE that ultimately dictates Puppy Linux future development (though Pkg is now at least incorporated into woof-CE), it is the Puppy Forum and its members, so Puppy Linux itself should always have a bright future (and collaborations between projects helps to guarantee that).

It is not I think just Puppy lookalike alternatives that will be introduced via this forum from time to time, but probably, one day, that alternative to woof-CE build system that Puppy do-ocracy will surely one day result in. Woof-CE Puppy is great and fine for now (particularly with Pkg now growing in importance and use) but I look forward to 'New' Puppy coming one day soon (I hope)!

wiak

[mikewalsh]

@mikewalsh Tahr is excellent; it's just a matter of compatibility. I'd compare to XP (minus Clippy).

That I will agree with. Tahr was my very first 'permanent' Pup, which I used for well over a year.....before I began to experiment with multi-booting, 'sharing' applications, VMs and all the rest of it. I believe it was the first Woof-CE built "official" Puppy release, and was absolutely rock-solid in use.

Mike.

[JASpup]

@mikewalsh I've a couple old 32 notebooks and between them I'm noticing strange system performance. The one I thought was faster seems slower now under Xenial, so it's running Tahr at the moment. I started running more Xenial 32 on the other noticing no slower performance than Tahr so thought it'd be the same on the machine I thought was faster.

I'd always be happy to upgrade if system integrity and compatibility is maintained and it's no greater a resource hog, but that's not reality.

This is still much better than software driving hardware in the capital model. They want to be so wasteful for profit.

I just wish it didn't take so many resources to run a browser these days.

[wiak]

I just wish it didn't take so many resources to run a browser these days.

An interesting wish, that gets me pondering whether modern GUI browsers really need to take so many resources. We talk about heavy webpages/websites being the cause, because they use lots of web technologies/protocols/whatever, but why should these new technologies/protocols/whatever not be capable of less-resource-intensive processing? Perhaps it is inevitable, but I can't help but wonder if the processing mechanisms being used are unnecessarily bloated, using too many high level code abstractions that sacrifice code/resource efficiency for ease of implementation. Software has a history of becoming bloated over time; then someone comes along and writes some implementation that 'crunchies all the numbers' in some direct less-abstracted manner that results in resource savings or speed improvements of many orders of magnitude. We can but hope.

[mikewalsh]

@wiak :-

Will;

I still maintain that if someone would resurrect the QTWeb project, bring the certificate-handling/TLS stuff up to date, and just 'tweak' maybe a couple of other items, that there would be a superbly lightweight graphical browser.....which would handle 99% of stuff that most folks need on a daily basis.

'Tis but a pipe-dream, I suspect!

Mike.

[Moose On The Loose]

I am interspersing my comments.

I just wish it didn't take so many resources to run a browser these days.

An interesting wish, that gets me pondering whether modern GUI browsers really need to take so many resources.

Clearly they don't need to.
Netsurf (for example) has a smaller per page footprint than Chrome.

We talk about heavy webpages/websites being the cause,

"Heavy" web pages are their own problem.
I have seen cases where almost all of the loading time it is taken up by downloading a zillion "tools" from about a zillion different places to display a page that I could have done with HTML and one CSS.
I think part of the problem is that the "web developers" feel like it is their job to make sure as many of those assets as possible are loaded in.
This may be because the web page for hire folks are getting kickbacks.

because they use lots of web technologies/protocols/whatever, but why should these new technologies/protocols/whatever not be capable of less-resource-intensive processing?

I think many of these "whatevers" are created by people with a "the machine is mine, mine I tell you" opinion about RAM usage.
They simply don't care that some of your RAM may be needed for other things.
Right at the moment I have a spice model going in the background.
No web thing designer considers that most of my RAM is tied up on that huge computing effort.

Perhaps it is inevitable, but I can't help but wonder if the processing mechanisms being used are unnecessarily bloated,

Wonder no more.
They are more bloated than needed.
Now the question is "can anything be done".

using too many high level code abstractions that sacrifice code/resource efficiency for ease of implementation.

It is interesting that as compiler makers etc continue, the results of their work seem to be getting worse with time.
Early object oriented stuff could be very efficient about memory and CPU usage.
An object was just a structure with an extra 4 byte entry to point to the Virtual Method Table.
The VMT had a 4 byte entry for each "virtual method" and perhaps one more 4 Byte thing
The number of VMTs would be a number a mere mortal can count.

[/quote]
Software has a history of becoming bloated over time; then someone comes along and writes some implementation that 'crunchies all the numbers' in some direct less-abstracted manner that results in resource savings or speed improvements of many orders of magnitude. We can but hope.
[/quote]

On web stuff, perhaps the best would be if somehow it started costing to do the wrong things.
People who make improvements in systems are often driven by a cost of some sort.

[666philb]

@wiak :-

Will;

I still maintain that if someone would resurrect the QTWeb project, bring the certificate-handling/TLS stuff up to date, and just 'tweak' maybe a couple of other items, that there would be a superbly lightweight graphical browser.....which would handle 99% of stuff that most folks need on a daily basis.

'Tis but a pipe-dream, I suspect!

Mike.

didn't that develop into this https://www.falkon.org/about/

quite a big install but very fast. in fact it was beating the chrome browsers in webgl tests when i tried it

[r96chase]

Because it's lightweight, fast, and easy to use. Probably the most obvious answer, but it's really what I can come up with after finally getting it right today. I'll admit it's not as user-friendly as most beginner-based Linux distros, but it's pretty cool imo...and I've been using it for past couple of hours or so.

Anyway, I hope you can enjoy Puppy Linux as much as I did.

Note: I'm using Raspup 8.2.1.