Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I've been using Puppy Linux of one variety or another since 2008 or so. If memory serves, my first distro was 4.2.0 . This has been my trend of running sort-of-current distros on aging machines. Fast-forward to 2021 and my Windows 8-era Lenovo laptop running Bionicpup32, is barely adequate(memory bottleneck, I'm already maxxed out}.

I just picked up a five year old "desktop" hp machine (2.2 GHz quad core, 8 GB memory, 1 TB drive). It's basically a laptop's guts slid into a big empty box, powered by a an external laptop-type charger.

So my question is, do people still get media(cd or usb flash),boot, setup, partition hard drive, install, logout and save in a savefile/folder and reboot, or are people running some kind of virtual machine in Windows? Any downsides to a virtual machine?

Most of my past machines had multiple OSes available, selected at boot (lilo, GRUB, rEFInd, etc.). I had included a line in menu.lst to a folder for a experimental OS that I could quickly swap out without formally installing it, a "cheat frugal" kind of "install". Is that still done?

Just curious as to how people are using Puppy in their "contemporary" machines.

Thanks, HJ.

Hi HJ,
The answer to all your questions is - yes. Puppy users are doing all of those things. My personal computers (many), are all dual/multiple boot with Windows and Puppy frugal installs. They all use mbr and grub4dos since I find that to be easier to setup and customize . So here are things you need to determine and decide:

-current OS (probably came with W10) and do you want to keep it
-do you want puppy to run from the internal hd
-is bios set up for mbr or uefi
-do you want puppy to have its own partition or let it install in the windows partition

Your HP "desklap" specs should be able to run about anything you want.

wizard

running some kind of virtual machine in Windows?

A good way to just test a Puppy version, to see if you like it.
But if you are going to use it.
Why would you want the Windows OS, running in the background, overhead?
Do a frugal install of Puppy and boot using it, to run the computer.

Wizard,
Thanks for the reply. The Lenovo laptop came with UEFI and I left the 8(!) Win8 partitions that it took and carved out a ninth for Puppy. Intially it was Fatdog64 but currently is Bionicpup32, since for some reason the newer 64 bit Puppies made the already underpowered CPU run at half speed! Also, since it was my first UEFI machine, I didn't want to risk bricking it with a complete wipe of the hard drive.

The "desklap"(I like it!) doesn't seem to have UEFI, since I just updated the BIOS, so has mbr(?). Was UEFI a passing fad by the manufacturers, or something else? I'm inclined to leave Win10 on, but in a much smaller partition, you know, just in case!

Update: By updating the BIOS it changed the login for Win10 or something and I can't get in. I'm going to have to find/make a Hiren's disk. Ya, I'm more serious about wiping the partition now! Hello, dban! (Does anyone still use Darik's Boot and Nuke anymore?)

bigpup,
You're right, not having used Windows in quite a while, I had forgotten how painful an experience it was. Just a little taste the last couple days set me straight!

HJ

Uefi is a more modern bios, but more complex to deal with, required if you want drives larger than 2tb.

Skip the dban. Download the fossa64 9.5 iso and make a bootable usb from that. Boot it and run gparted to set up the hd, suggest you use ext3 partitions. When that is done you can do a frugal install & then setup grub4dos.

That's the short explanation, I'm making assumptions about your skill level, so ask questions if you get stuck.

wizard

Fossapup is my go to OS on a 10 year old Dell laptop. Also have xenial and Windows 10 partitions. I boot and install my pups with Lick. Its crazy fast and easy to use. The Dell is old but over speced for the job. 250 gig solid state hard drive and 8 gigs of RAM.

Hello @heywoodj

I encourage you to take a look at this. FossaPUP64 is within that prepared solution.

It allows a Frugal world while saving the installation headaches that usually occur on old/new PCs. Merely download to make the USB and boot it. NOTHING is installed on your HDD. And yet, if you choose, you can save-sessions as you have on all PUPs/DOGs just you the same as in the past; no changes. it will work OOTB on your platforms.

If it takes more than 10 minutes to build and test; Please post there to let us know why, please.

I recently bought a mini pc from Amazon on sale for less than $100.
Generic Chinese 2.+ Ghz multicore CPU , 8 Gbytes RAM, 128G SSD fanless.
First thing , I installed Fossapup64 frugal USB EFI boot ( did not touch SSD). Works fine.
One day, I tried the installed Windows 10 and I like it. Not the slow unreliable unfriendly beast I remember.
I had stopped using M* Windows and switched to Linux 20 years ago. Very early Slackware and Puppy user.
Now I am spending most of my time using Windows 10. Mostly watching Streaming services, Email, Web Browsing with Edge.