The Save file is NOT compressed.

[williams2]

In IMPORTANT Information Before Installing Puppy Linux is written:

User Data Storage: When you create new documents or make changes, download files, add programs, etc. these changes are not saved to the read-only base OS, but saved into another compressed file (or folder, as an option), called a Puppy savefile, (or a Puppy save folder)

The save file is not compressed.

The file systems in sfs (squash file system) files are usually compressed and read-only.

The file systems in 2fs, 3fs and 4fs save files are usually NOT compressed.
AFAIK save files usable by Puppy have never been compressed.
Save files can be compressed by zip or gzip for example, for backups,
but a running Puppy uses save files that are not compressed.

The file system in a save file can be saved as a read-only sfs file,
(the way I am running now with the writable layer as a tmpfs file system in ram)

Basically, the operating system files are in sfs files, which are compressed and read-only.
The save files contain ext2/3/4 file systems which are NOT compressed and are writable.

another compressed file is not really true.

another uncompressed file is true.

another file is also true, but it does not explicitly say that the save file is uncompressed.

A small error like this can be a source of confusion.

[rockedge]

@williams2 Yes that needs to be adjusted. Should I just insert what you've written or could there be a finished version I can make the changes with?

[williams2]

I think newbies really don't need a lot of extraneous background information.

It's just that the save file/folder is not compressed,
so saying that it is compressed could be confusing.

Making minimal changes to the text
changing the text another compressed file
to another uncompressed file
or maybe another writable and not compressed file
should be less confusing.

[greengeek]

Where is mikeb these days? He tried to explain this to me once but I couldn't get my head around the idea of a pupsave not being compressed. (So I stopped using savefiles )

[user1234]

Where is mikeb these days? He tried to explain this to me once but I couldn't get my head around the idea of a pupsave not being compressed. (So I stopped using savefiles )

Maybe because uncompressing of savefile is slow (most oftenly savefiles grow more than several GBs-TBs)?

[amethyst]

Where is mikeb these days? He tried to explain this to me once but I couldn't get my head around the idea of a pupsave not being compressed. (So I stopped using savefiles )

Smart people don't use save files/folders anyway. Miss mikeb too, wonder whatever happened to him. He helped me a lot the first time I used Puppy (and Linux for that matter) many years ago. Knew his stuff.

[williams2]

In a file system like ISO9660. each file is contiguous and not fragmented and each file is concatinated one after the other.
To delete or add or modify a file somewhere in the middle of the file system
would require half of the file system to be moved to properly fit the modified file in the file system.
If that is not done, It would no longer be a valid ISO9660 file system.
Or at least it would be a broken ISO9660 file system.

i think there is an ISO9960 file system that is writable, I don't remember where.
It would make an ISO file copied to a usb flash drive writable.
But I think you would need the driver installed to use it.

Also, there is a version of the ISO9660 file system
in which all the files are compressed.
Linux has support for this file system built in.
When mounted, all the files look like they are not compressed.
It works well with Gutenberg.org books as text files.
You can get a lot more books on a cd when they are compressed.
MS Windows does not support this transparent file system, it only sees the compressed files.
but a MS Windows executable is included which can unzip each file one at a time.

There is a compressed ext3 file system (on sourceforge I think named something like extcmp or maybe ext3cmp?)
The last time I looked, the latest update was in 2008.

And, of course, there is zram.

AFAIK, Puppy save files have never been compressed.
(in a running system, as opposed to a backup of a save file/folder.)

[Clarity]

Couple observations of this thread's content that might be appreciated:

• Remove the word compressed and you have a accurate statement, from OP:

  User Data Storage: ... into another file (or folder ...

• ISO9660 is NOT writable by architecture. BUT, there is allowances that a utilty contained in @fatdog distros that would adjust a USB stick that has a ISO9660 partition.

FYI