Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I bought a Asus eeePc 701 at 2009.Its configuration is celeron M 900MHZ NonPAE,512M ram,4G HD,It is a very old laptop.
I'v refered to the post :viewtopic.php?p=44971&i=1
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I want to find a suitable puppyLinux for the PC CPU: 32bit,non PAE.
when I start using BP32,it doesn't occur bootloader screen,and prompt the cpu not support PAE. How can I input "forcepae--".
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I tried many distribution , antiX-17.4,it go into bootload,I input "quiet forcepae--",but it going on and staying at “fatal error:not find antiX/linuxFS”,the file exists on USB stick.I think it fail at mounting dev/sdb1 to antiX kernel.I guess antiX-17.4 distro is not suitable for eeePC too.

I am flasher to linux,I don;t know how to modify puppyLinux kernel to run at specify enviroment .If there is a disto ISO for the PC I say,it is very helpful .
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thanks for Any reply .

I suggest you try this Puppy version:
This is a Puppy version that is setup to use on Asus Eee PC 701
viewtopic.php?t=4704

Yesterday I put the wrong SD card in my eeepc 701 4G (2 Gb RAM) and booted BP32 by mistake. I expected the boot to fail because of missing PAE support in the Celeron M, instead it booted just fine and everything seem to work great (audio, network and so on). The screen does feel somewhat cramped, maybe I'll experiment with 915-resolution and xrandr.

eeepc 701 4G (2 Gb RAM)

PAE allows a 32 bit OS to use more than 4 GB of ram.

For example, if you have 8GB of ram,
without PAE, Puppy will only see and use 4GB of ram.
With PAE, Puppy can see and use all 8GB.

If you have less than 4GB, you don't need PAE.

If you do not need PAE, you also do not need forcepae.

If you see on the internet something about adding forcepae -- forcepae
you do not need the -- forcepae part, Puppy will ignore it.
-- force is an instruction to the Ubuntu program that installs and configures the boot loader.
Puppy does not have that Ubuntu boot loader installer,
so Puppy (and every other Linux distro) will ignore -- forcepae and everything after --
So you only need forcepae you do not need forcepae -- forcepae

If you have less than 4GB of ram,
You do not need PAE or forcepae or forcepae -- forcepae

Puppy should boot with or without PAE.
It just won't see and use more that 4GB of ram.

And of course, 64 bit OS and hardware does not need PAE.

Hi Stingwan,

I've tried out a pile of non-PAE Linux distributions lately, looking for one that would work with an AMD K6 (the OS sees it as a fast i486).

Without wanting to get into a big discussion about the rationale, I've found that modern Linux is close to abandoning really old hardware (something beyond 20-25 years).

There are a few exceptions, but most of the few remaining modern Linux distros that still support 32-bit CPUs require PAE. Typically when one of these loads the kernel, it asks the CPU, "Hey, do you have PAE?" If the CPU says no, it prints an error message saying that you should get a kernel suited to your processor, and halts.

Puppy doesn't seem to give a PAE error message. There may be a couple of puplet exceptions, but most pups I tried just forged ahead regardless, and then threw a kernel panic.

In your case, it's likely that your Celeron supports PAE, even though it may lie to the kernel that it doesn't.

So, I suggest just trying Bionic. Make up a thumb drive and boot it.

You shouldn't need a kernel argument, but I don't think it will hurt to hit ESC at the boot menu and then enter puppy forcepae at the boot prompt.

If it works, great; if it kernel-panics, just try something else.

Slax, Porteus, and antiX have current release non-PAE (i586) versions. There are a few others, but those are the lightest ones I've found.

FWIW, mainstream Bionic 32 runs fine on my EEE PC-901 with an Atom processor.

You can also still try the 'stripped' version of Busterpup for which I provided a link at the bottom of this post, viewtopic.php?p=4070#p4070.

Someday I'll both remember and find the time to fulfill my intention to remove it.

Sorry to dredge this up after 10 weeks, but there is Slxcko-7.0 32bit. This has been working great here, on my non-PAE Atom N270 system. Even the remaster works right. What remains is to select a Browser, FF78.15 esr is what I chose. Its rather new, but libc 2.23 is OK.

Regards
8Geee