Puppy Linux, a small, light and mini Linux has released the version 4.1. As described on its release notes, Puppy 4.00 was a major upgrade from 3.01, with just about everything overhauled and updated.
Now, the version 4.1 continues the hectic pace of development, with ground-breaking new applications and under-the-hood architectural improvements over 4.00. Ground-breaking apps include our new Psip VOIP and PPLOG personal blog. Under-the-hood includes faster boot times, much better hardware detection, and new 'pup_event' architecture (including desktop drive icons).
The live-CD file is 'puppy-4.1-k2.6.25.16-seamonkey.iso' at 94.1MB and 'puppy-4.1retro-k2.6.21.7-seamonkey.iso' at 94.6MB. The latter is a more conservative kernel that perhaps suits older systems.
You can get this new version of Puppy Linux at Here.
The development team of Puppy Linux has announced availability of new release of Puppy Linux, a major updated of the minimalist desktop distribution. Its the 4.00 version.
For who don't know, Puppy Linux is yet another Linux distribution. What's different here is that Puppy is extraordinarily small, yet quite full featured. Puppy boots into a 64MB ram disk, and that's it, the whole caboodle runs in RAM.
Unlike live CD distributions that have to keep pulling stuff off the CD, Puppy in its entirety loads into RAM. This means that all applications start in the blink of an eye and respond to user input instantly. Puppy Linux has the ability to boot off a flash card or any USB memory device, CDROM, Zip disk or LS/120/240 Superdisk, floppy disks, internal hard drive. It can even use a multi session formatted CD-R/DVD-R to save everything back to the CD/DVD with no hard drive required at all!
Now, this Puppy has all drivers built-in for scanning, digital camera, printing (Gutenprint), audio recording/editing/conversion, making it a complete multimedia environment ...yet is only 87.1 MB!!! Of course this is in addition to being a complete office environment, in addition to having a huge collection of useful utilities, in addition to anything else you can think of...
Alternative 4.00 live-CD with 2.6.25 kernel
The 'standard' build of Puppy 4.00 is file puppy-4.00-k2.6.21.7-seamonkey.iso, which is 87.1MB, compare that with Puppy 3.01 'standard' (with much less functionality) which is 98.6MB!
The team have also built puppy-4.00-k2.6.25-seamonkey.iso, using the latest Linux kernel. This may not be quite as mature for wireless network connectivity though. Choose this one if you want support for a dual-core CPU (but the 'standard' build with mono-core 2.6.21.7 kernel works on dual-core systems). Also, strangely enough, we have more success booting older PCs with the 2.6.23 and later kernels, so try this one if Puppy fails to boot.
The 2.6.25 kernel is configured with the unified /dev/sd* and /dev/sr* drive naming, which may cause some difficulty if you need to configure GRUB.
For more information about Puppy Linux can be reached on its site. Btw, you can download ISO of this new Puppy Linux (only 87 MB) at here.
ChurchPup is a Puppy Linux derivative for Christians. It focuses on Bible study, office applications, Internet, and email, but also includes applications for multimedia presentation, audio and video editing, and musical notation.
ChurchPup is based on Puppy 3.01 and the development team involved in the project acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Barry Kauler and all the members of the Puppy Linux community for doing all the really hard work.
They first expressed a desire to work on a Christian Puppy derivative that focuses on Bible study, office applications, internet, and email, but also includes applications for multimedia presentations, audio and video editing, and musical notation. It is based on an unleashed puppy 3.01 but many packages were left out to simplify the menu and save space. (It's a BIG Puppy!)
ChurchPup contains many linux apps like the other distros such as Gimp, OpenOffice, Firefox with Bible Fox Theme, and Procon Latte for content filter, Thunderbird, Acrobat Reader, Audacity, Denemo, Kino, MPlayer, CDmio, XTris, Timidity, plus Bible Desktop 1.0.8, a front end for Jsword, a very versatile Bible study tool written in Java. You can also have four HTML Bibles, the King James Bible, the American Standard Bible, the NET Bible, and the WEB Bible.
Btw, you can download ChurchPup at here.
TEENpup is based on Puppy Linux and if you've ever tried Puppy Linux
You can experiment with a Puppy base system any way you like. Of course you will break a Puppy base system like any other Linux Operating System, but if most of your experimenting is while running from a Live CD
Now back to TEENpup, if you're like me and have found Puppy to be too old looking and wishing that Puppy came a good selection of the better apps from KDE or Gnome, Looked as good as the other bigger Distro's, but retained that ease of use for those new to Linux that Puppy gives, then TEENpup might just be for you.
How does a Live / install Distro that comes with Flash, Java, Realmedia and a whole lot more codecs sound, what about being able to play those encrypted DVD's other Distro's complain about and won't let you play your favourite movies, due to missing codecs, no problem here.
What about quick boot times. I run TEENpup 2.14 installed to Hard Drive on a 5 year old run of the mill PC and it takes about 33 seconds to boot up and about 7 seconds to shutdown. One thing I can't stand anymore is slow boot / shutdown times.
Feel free to download TEENpup from here, here or here. Please be aware that demand on the server's hosting TEENpup 2.14 might require you to try again latter.
Puppy Linux, the light, small and mini Linux is faster load distro nowadays for comparing to the other mini or small distros. I just visited the Ubuntu Forum and read people talked there about Puppy Linux. Here are some of the copy paste what they said:All I can say is wow. I've been running Puppy on the eMachine below for 2 days now, and it's the most functional desktop environment for low-end PC's I've ever seen.. in fact, I turned off my laptop running Ubuntu hours ago, and I haven't even wanted to use it for a while! It's PERFECT for low end, extremely fast and very easy to install. I recommend you guys give it a shot, the iso is only 70 megs!
The whole idea behind Puppy is to counter all the bloated "full feature" Linux distros (yes, like our beloved Ubuntu) so that older pc's can run them instead of outdated and crappy versions of Windows. This distro is bloody fantastic though, it even runs GIMPShop really well. Wait times for firefox to load are about 3 seconds, Abiword about the same. I'm just exstatic about this little distro.
matt_risiHit Ebay, you can get some darn cheap old PCs there. I recently got a little Compaq iPaq C700 form factor PC for £30, and 512 MB of RAM for £20. Works great! Even usable for flash video, which is something many slow machines strugle with.
I'm giving the live CD a go on my lil Celeron 700. It is very fast, specially considering it is a live CD.
I normally run Debian Etch on this machine, I don't think I'll be switching. But it is a very impressive desktop!!!
cunawarityou can run puppy as a live cd, or pen drive (without having to install it).
fusciaWrong. Puppy formerly was custom. Now it is based on T2 Linux, which is good, by the way, especially on PowerPC, far better than Ubuntu, largely because T2 keeps up with its package maintenance, so e.g. bluez is the very latest 3.10 not Feisty's 3.9.
I don't know whether Puppy will ever ship for PowerPC but you can always use T2 for that, directly.
Puppy is a nice little distro - the problem has always been the customized package system, making for small selection. Combining with T2 widens that a good bit and the ability to use .deb's is of course the max. But then Debian is not exactly famous for up-to-date packages...
powerpc64thoroughly recommend puppy, it loads straight to ram so is really fast, it also has it's own installer to install to usb flash drive, definately worth a try.
smoker
Very impressed with it.
You also have to enable the internet connection as DHCP or dial-up. Great distro.
kazuyaThe only problem (and I mean only) is that it doesn't work with my wireless (which can be easily remedied by Auntie LAN Cable and Uncle Hub) - I love the ability to keep my data/apps on even a CD-R. Wouldn't have been able to rescue my Ubuntu system when I crapped it up without my Puppy Live CD. Fast, stable, small footprint (or should I say... pawprint?), lots of features, etc.
CyvrosPuppy was really fast when I tried it on my 1Ghz, 128MB computer. However it did not let me easily connect to the internet through dialup. And that woof woof at the beginning!
A friend of mine, who knows only about Ubuntu, when he came over the other day, saw it running and he was like, "Puppy? What's that? Linux for dogs?". Haha, I thought that was pretty funny. In any case, Puppy is the fastest I've seen a Linux system run and that's off the OS. Athene (not in xserver mode) was the only thing faster that I've tried.
argieI love Puppy Linux! It is small, fast, light and does everything I need it to (except play games, but I have an XP PC dedicated to that). It is also the only one that was easy to set up my WPA wireless on. Makes an old clunker run like a champ! I'm definitely keeping it around!
Stew2Puppy running on my pentium D 930 is what you call quick, and it runs fine on the dual core..
Such an amazing little creature, I have run it as a live cd, installed and installed on my thumb drive..
mikeymouseI tried out the live cd today and like it. I wonder if i install to a thumb drive, can i take this to school, reboot the pc and take my notes on puppy and save them in abiword, then when i come home just plug this in and copy over my notes to my main pc? I use evilwm and gentoo as my file manager, would the thumb drive show up in gentoo? This seems like a super cheap way to use linux instead of windows at school, still access their internet, and be easier then carrying a laptop around.
jseiserI tried out the Puppy Linux live cd and it blew my mind. Setting up my wireless card was effortless--it is a lot of fun to use. Do yourself a favor and give it a go!
sw1995Puppy runs on my old Pentium 133MHz with 32MB ram, dual booting with win98 (not even SE) on a 2 GB hard drive. I created a 128 MB swap partition for Puppy to use using a text-only distro called HAL91, and then Puppy boots and runs pretty quick on that old clunker.
I can't really run sea-monkey, its just way too slow --- Dillo is the preferred way to go!!!! If only someone would make an i18n version of dillo...
goatflyerIt is very good, I even managed to get desktop shadows working on my laptop
It seems a lot faster and more stable than Ubuntu with the KDE translucency/shadow effects too.
Although I wasn't able to get hardware accelleration working, so no Enemy Territory
kvonb
What about you?
Puppy version 3.01 released. Puppy 3.01 is a bug-fix upgrade of 3.00. If you are currently using 3.00 (or have tried to use 3.00 and have encountered a show-stopper bug), please read the blog first to find out if your particular problem has been addressed -- if not, it may be addressed in 3.02.
The purpose of 3.01 is simply to fix the most urgent bugs and niggles in 3.00, not apply any major changes or package upgrades."This Puppy (3.00 and 3.01) is a massive upgrade from the previous (v2.17.1). I decided to aim for close binary compatibility with Slackware 12, with the objective of being able to install Slackware packages and have all or most of the required dependencies already in place. To that end, I used all the building block packages from Slackware 12, such as glibc 2.5, GCC 4.1.2 and GTK+ 2.10.13. Most of the libraries in Puppy are now from Slackware."
True flushing to Flash drive
If you install Puppy to a USB Flash drive, Puppy will run in RAM and save periodically (every 30 minutes) to the 'pup_save' file. This batch saving is to limit writes and thus prolong the life of the Flash drive.
The saving is copy-down meaning that the RAM does not get flushed -- so if you have a PC with say only 128MB RAM, no swap partition or swap file, and say a 512MB 'pup_save' file, you can only fill up the free RAM space, then you have to reboot -- at shutdown the RAM is flushed to the 'pup_save'. The free space is shown in the taskbar so you will always know when space is running low.
However, Puppy 3.00 and 3.01 have something new. PETget, the PET package manager installs packages direct to the 'pup_save' file, not into RAM. Thus, you can install big packages and they will not chew up RAM space and you won't have to reboot.
Other package installation systems (such as for DotPup packages) do not yet have this feature.
Upgrading from earlier version of Puppy
No problem. If you run Puppy from live-CD, just boot the new CD and Puppy will automatically perform any required upgrading of your personal storage file/partition (usually pup_save.2fs file).
For USB or frugal-hd installations, just copy the latest files (vmlinuz, initrd.gz, pup_301.sfs and zdrv_301.sfs) to the USB or hd boot media.
For who don't know Puppy, here are some its features:
- Easily install to USB, Zip or hard drive media.
- Booting from CD (or DVD), the CD drive is then free for other purposes.
- Booting from CD (or DVD), save everything back to the CD.
- Booting from USB Flash drive, minimise writes to extend the life indefinitely.
- Extremely friendly for Linux newbies.
- Boot up and run extraordinarily fast.
- Have all the applications needed for daily use.
- Will just work, no hassles.
- Will breathe new life into old PCs
- Load and run totally in RAM for diskless thin stations
Download
If you want to obtain the latest Puppy live-CD, or the "devx" module, that turns Puppy into a complete C/C++ compiler environment, or the patched 2.6.21.7 kernel source, please go to the Puppy download page.
Puppy and Windows show the correct time only when your hardware clock is set to local time, not UTC time. Many other distros of linux and unix correctly handle the time when the hardware clock is set to either UTC or local time.
If you are dual-booting another distro, eg Ubuntu, and have set the the hardware clock to store the time in UTC, you need to change this to localtime, so Puppy (and Windows) can co-exist on the computer.
(Actually there is almost no point in storing the time in the hardware clock in UTC. Change it to localtime. You can still move the machine around the world, and simply tell each installed system which timezone you are in as you move, and that system will always show the correct time for whereever you are.)
To change the hardware clock: (under Ubuntu)
Set the hardware clock to UTC and update /etc/adjtime accordingly, by running the command:
hwclock --localtime --set --date="`date`"
Make sure Ubuntu keeps the hardware clock in local time at startup/shutdown, by editing /etc/defaults/rc.S, setting "UTC=no".
Further considerations
If you set up a new machine to dual/multi-boot Windows and linuxes, the best order of installation is:
- Install Windows. This will set the hardware clock to localtime.
- Install eg Ubuntu, (and others?) and tell them that the hardware clock is set to localtime. Also install grub in the MBR, when you install the first distro, so you can dual/multi-boot Windows and other linux distros.
- Install Puppy. It only works correctly with localtime, as described above, unless you like hacking. Add the following to /etc/grub/menu.lst to add Puppy into the multi-boot.
title Puppy Linux - Boot into a New Setup
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/puppy/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=93952 psubdir=/boot/puppy pfix=ram
initrd /boot/puppy/initrd.gz
title Puppy Linux - Normal Boot
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/puppy/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=93952 psubdir=/boot/puppy PMEDIA=idehd
initrd /boot/puppy/initrd.gz
The above assumes you have installed Puppy files into the first partition of your first hard disk "(hd0,0)", which in my case is the / partition of Ubuntu. The files to put into there are:
/pup_216.sfsI got a good refresher of how time works on the computer via these manual pages from in Ubuntu:
/zdrv_216.sfs
/boot/puppy/initrd.gz
/boot/puppy/vmlinuz
man hwclock
man adjtime
Notes: All the above assumes Windows 2000 or XP, probably NT and possibly Win98 too. I have no idea (nor interest) in what havoc Microsoft has done with this aspect of interoperability under Vista. Based on their past record, I can only expect the worst!
If you want to install Puppy Linux 2.17.1 on a VMware image by your own, just follow the instructions:
Tested Puppy Release: Puppy Linux 2.17.1.
Step 1 - Preparation
Download and install VMware Player on your computer
Download and extract the LiveCD Virtual Appliance
Delete livecd.iso (it's an empty file)
Download the Live iso image from Puppy Linux. (I have used puppy-2.17.1-nolzma-seamonkey-fulldrivers.iso)
Rename the .iso file to livecd.iso
Step 2 - Install Puppy Linux by using the Live CD iso
Boot the Live CD by using the .vmx file and the VMware Player. During the first boot of the Live CD select your keyboard layout and select the X server I have selected german keyboard layout (because I have a german keyboard) and the Xvesa, because Xorg didn't work. Select 800x600x16 (x24 didn't work). x16 means 16-bit color which is 65,546 colors. Prepare the disk with cfdisk, mkfs and partedCheck with the program called parted whether everything is ok, enter 'print' followed by 'quit'. Parameters should be Type: primary, File system: ext2, Flags: boot
Open the console and create a partition with the GNU cfdisk 1.0: cfdisk /dev/hda Commands: New, Primary, Beginning, Size: 2147MB, ext2 Flags, [x] boot (hit Enter and Esc) Make FS, (use it?) Yes, (continue?) Yes Commit, (continue?) Yes Quit The cfdisk parameters should look like this: Number Flags Part Type Filesystem Label Size 1 Bootable Primary ext2 2147MB Format the partition with mkfs /dev/hda1
Select Menu/Setup/Puppy universal installer Select "IDE (ATA) internal hard drive" Select "hda VMware Virtual IDE Hard Drive, size 2 GiB" Select Install Puppy to hda1 Click OK Select Normal Install Wait until the Grub install dialog appears, select "Install Grub" Click OK Accept the defaults (simple, standard, /dev/hda1), except at the Grub Destination Question. Select "MBR, Install to Master Boot Record (probably unsave)" Click OK Click No (installation finished)
Exit the Live CD by selecting Menu -> Shutdown -> Power-off computer Select "Do not Save" at the last dialog. Wait until the VMware Player is entirely closed.Step 3 - Configure the installed Puppy Linux
Edit the .vmx file replace ide1:0.present = "TRUE" with ide1:0.present = "FALSE" Remove the livecd.iso file Start the .vmx file At the GNU GRUB menu, select the first entry called Linux (on /dev/hda1) and hit Enter. Select the Xserver (Xvesa), keyboard layout and the resolution/color depth (800x600x16) again as you did it already at the steps above.Step 4 - Optimize the VMware image (optional)
Do any configuration you like (configure the network for example with Menu/Setup/Network Wizard)
Boot Puppy Linux again and copy vmshrink from Ken Kato to the VMware image http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vmtools.html#vmw Change the permission of the file to make it executable chmod 755 vmshrink Fill the disk with zeros, remove them again and run vmshrink cat /dev/zero > /fill; sync; sleep 1; sync; rm /fill; sync; vmshrink
It works very well....and the result is a real treat for anyone who wants to use a vmware verrsion. I have 1.6 gig of space left, it sees my network card that connects to the router, and I can access my usb drives.
Source: Dipl.-Inf. (FH) Johann N. Loefflmann
Release notes for Puppy Linux version 3.00 This Puppy is a massive upgrade from the previous (v2.17.1). I decided to aim for close binary compatibility with Slackware 12, with the objective of being able to install Slackware packages and have all or most of the required dependencies already in place. To that end, I used all the building block packages from Slackware 12, such as glibc 2.5, gcc 4.1.2 and gtk 2.10.13.
Most of the libraries in Puppy are now from Slackware. Note, though, this does not in any way make Puppy a clone of Slackware -- apart from aiming for binary compatibility, Puppy is fundamentally unique from the foundations upward. Another major thing that I have done is totally rewritten the key scripts that control how Puppy boots up, is configured, and shuts down.
This covers such things as pup_save file custom naming, frugal install into a subdirectory, pup_save file resizing and correct recognition of multiple pup_save files at bootup. Then there are some major breakthroughs, such as finally getting periodic flushing of RAM to Flash drive working properly -- this is part of a mechanism that constrains writes to Flash drives so that they don't burn out.
If you install Puppy to a USB Flash drive, Puppy will run in RAM and save periodically (every 30 minutes) to the 'pup_save' file. This batch saving is to limit writes and thus prolong the life of the Flash drive. The saving is copy-down meaning that the RAM does not get flushed -- so if you have a PC with say only 128MB RAM, no swap partition or swap file, and say a 512MB 'pup_save' file, you can only fill up the free RAM space, then you have to reboot -- at shutdown the RAM is flushed to the 'pup_save'.
The free space is shown in the taskbar so you will always know when space is running low. However, Puppy 3.00 has something new. PETget, the PET package manager installs packages direct to the 'pup_save' file, not into RAM. Thus, you can install big packages and they will not chew up RAM space and you won't have to reboot. Other package installation systems (such as for DotPup packages) do not yet have this feature.
Note, kirk is developing a Gslapt package manager package for Puppy, see this link: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=21908. This is also supporting direct flushing to Flash drive. You are welcome to experiment with this package and help kirk with its development.
More informations about Puppy can be reached on its blog, and you can download this new release of Puppy here.
Grafpup is a compact distribution containing the Linux kernel and various Open Source and freeware programs. It is especially well suited towards graphic artists and other imaging proffessionals but has many other tools available as well. Grafpup has been loosely based upon Puppy Linux, which is a creation of Barry Kauler. However, there are a lot of unique features which set it apart both from it's parent and most other Linux distributions.
Grafpup strives to provide a complete workflow for the digital artist, from beginning to end. As such along with the major graphics applications like Gimp and Inkscape you will also find a variety of support programs and extra features. Color management is enabled for all applications that support it, and there is a basic selection of color profiles included in the standard install. For those doing photographic work there is almost complete support for raw image formats via both dcraw and the ufraw plugin (both Gimp and Cinepaint), as well as the gtkam utility for directly connecting a wide variety of cameras. Scribus and Abiword take care of publishing needs, and Gutenprint provides a wide range of printer drivers.
Desktop
One of the big problems with a lot of mainstream Linux distributions is that they have become quite bloated and slow. The prevailing mood seems to be that in order for a desktop to be functional and good looking it must also be huge, ponderous, and slow. Grafpup aims to shatter that myth with an extremely efficient yet good looking desktop based around the Openbox window manager and the Lxpanel desktop panel/taskbar. A slightly customized ROX-Filer makes file management easy and provides desktop icons. Tyinh all of these disparate elements together is a full suite of custom configuration tools, wizards, and other gadgets. Most of these are graphical, too, and better yet most of them use the gtk+ toolkit for a nice uniform look. Most file formats should open right up in an appropriate application just by clicking on them in a filer window.
At this point a few people will probably be thinking "Hey, gtk+ is really slow. This guy doesn't know what he's talking about!". But then most distros aren't small enough to run fully in RAM and still leave plenty of free memory for your applications! That's right, in most cases Grafpup loads totally into memory, and all of the applications will open within a couple seconds and respond instantly to your input. The base distro is distributed as a live cd that weighs in slightly more than 100MB. But Grafpup can also be installed quite easily to a usb pendrive, ide flash, a "frugal" install on your hard drive, or in a conventional manner with all the files decompressed onto your hard drive. Even in this last case it will only take up @2-300MB, depending on what extra applications are installed. Even if you just want to run the live cd though, you will still be able to save your files to a hard drive, flash media, or even back to the disk itself.
Extension
Speaking of extra packages, Grafpup comes with a pretty good package manager that resolves dependencies, and there are well over a thousand applications in the repository (and growing). These range from basic command line utilities to full office suites, audio and video production tools, and Java. Both KDE and XFCE desktops are available too.
In addition to conventional packages Grafpup is also able to load compressed modules (they have the .sfs extension) very much like Slax does. This capability is used to package very large applications like OpenOffice, or the full development environment. Just place one of these where you have your save file located and it will be found the next time you boot up. Coming soon there will be a tool to add them in on the fly (we already had this, in a limited fashion, in Grafpup-104).
Security
Most people are aware that Windows has a teriible track record with security. Maybe that is why you are investigating Linux in the first place. Being based on a very recent Linux kernel Grafpup is by it's very nature more secure than Ms Windows. However, some live distros (Puppy Linux included) compromise security somewhat by running all graphical applications as the system administrator. Grafpup is a big departure in this regard and runs a full multi-user environment, just like a conventional *nix is supposed to do. Now it's probably not the world's most secure OS (if you want that run OpenBSD) but the philosify is that things should be secured from the ground up. That means instead of nagging you with passwords and extra security "features" (which are really just ugly patches on a broken system) you have a hardy system which allows you to get your work done. Need to configure something or install a few software packages? Just give the admin password once and do what you need to do. Nothing too difficult here.
Download here or here and try it.
Go to the Puppy download page and download live-Puppy (file puppy-xxxx.iso, where "xxxx" is version number plus some options), that boots off a CD. Bootup Puppy, and in the "Setup" menu you will find an entry called "Puppy Universal Installer". Select that, and follow the simple instructions. It's that simple, however you will of course need a PC with a CD burner to be able to burn the ISO file to CD. If you don't have a CD burner, you will have to use an "iso buster" program (see some links on the Puppy download page) to extract the files out of the ISO file, then follow the manual installation instructions given below.
You can run Puppy on any bootable USB storage media, such as flash memory, USB-Zip drive and USB-hard-drive. Note, we have developed the habit of referring to a Flash-drive-installed Puppy as "flash-Puppy".
My "first take" with installing Puppy was on a tiny USB Compact Flash (CF) card (plugged into a USB-CF-reader interface), as I really like the idea of having all my personal data and the operating system in something that I can carry in a shirt pocket or wallet. In theory, I can then boot Puppy on any PC with a USB socket.
Simple as anything to go into the BIOS setup during power-up and change the second boot device to "USB ZIP" (Award BIOS) or whatever works for your BIOS.
A warning: Some USB Flash drives are difficult to boot off, and some PCs have BIOSes that do not boot from USB or have peculiar restrictions:I have a motherboard that I purchased in 2004, and I have a friend with a laptop also purchased new in 2004, and both have one thing in common: the BIOS does not even have an option to boot from USB -- today, that is really pathetic, so do check before purchasing. Bring your Puppy usb pen-drive into the computer shop and see if it boots!
These days USB pen drives have the "standard USB mass storage interface", so will work on any PC running Windows or Linux without needing a special driver. Ditto for many digital cameras and mp3 players (in fact, Puppy can be installed to these!). However, there are some USB memory/camera/mp3-player that do not have a standard mass storage interface, and these will not work with Linux -- make sure before buying and if you find one for sale, be sure to tell the saleperson that it's crap.
How to obtain and install flash-Puppy
Puppy Linux Release 2.17.1 has released!
Another wonderful new Puppy! The 'standard' release is puppy-2.17.1-seamonkey-fulldrivers.iso live-CD and is 82.6MB. There is one thing that stands out from reading the release notes, and that is the major advances with hardware support -- which astounds even me, considering that version 2.16 was released barely 2 months ago. Yes, everything listed below is in that 82.6MB!
Release notes:
Dialup modem detection and setup
If you have a hardware modem, it should work fine. If you have a soft-modem, which is most modern internal modem cards or on-motherboard modems, then Puppy will auto-detect if it is potentially usable by Puppy. When you start PupDial, there is a message whether a modem was detected or not -- if your modem was detected then it is potentially usable, otherwise it probably isn't. I use the word "potentially" because getting it to actually work can be very difficult with some soft-modems.
Puppy does try to auto-configure, but may not get it right, and so far only a few testers have worked on this -- see my news blog and the forum for success/fail reports so far.
An example of one fail report is an 'mwave' modem in an IBM Thinkpad. Puppy has the driver and all firmware and executables to get this going, and there is a startup script in /etc/init.d, but I don't have the hardware to test it. This is an example where someone is needed to dig in and find out what needs to be fixed for it to work.
When we do get a fix, we can put it permanently into Puppy.
Note, you may get lucky -- I have an ESS modem that worked out-of-the-box. Another person reported the same immediate success with a Trust MD1100 internal modem (these are currently available, so if you're looking for a Linux-compatible PCI modem, this one looks like a goer). Somone else reported that he just had to uncheck the "Check dialtone" checkbox in PupDial and his modem worked.
So, testers wanted, and we'll turn this pup into the best distro for dialup users!
Upgrading from earlier version of Puppy
No problem. If you run Puppy from live-CD, just boot the new CD and Puppy will automatically perform any required upgrading of your personal storage file/partition (usually pup_save.2fs file).
For USB or frugal-hd installations, just copy the latest files (vmlinuz, initrd.gz, pup_217.sfs and zdrv_217.sfs) to the USB or hd boot media.
If you have already tested an earlier experimental, alpha or beta of v2.17, it is extremely important that you get rid of any old pup_217.sfs and zdrv_217.sfs files that may be found alongside the "pup_save" file on the hard drive (in /mnt/home).
I strongly recommend that you boot an old version of Puppy or a different operating system to do this -- or, you can boot the new CD with the boot parameter "puppy pfix=ram". After you have removed these old files, boot Puppy 2.17 live-CD and type the boot parameter "puppy pfix=clean" , so that a proper upgrade of the latest version will occur. If you want to be extra cautious, make a backup of the pup_save.2fs file before upgrading!
Download
If you want to obtain the latest Puppy live-CD, or the "devx" module, that turns Puppy into a complete C/C++ compiler environment, or the patched 2.6.21.5 kernel source, please go to the Puppy download page.
Note, file 'devx_217.sfs' is what we call a SFS module, which is a "combo-pack" of applications in a single file. It can be loaded at bootup and you instantly have all the apps "installed". Or, not load it at bootup and all the apps are immediately "uninstalled". Normally, you just download a SFS file to /mnt/home then reboot Puppy, and it automatically loads.
A note on the kernel source: If you want to compile a module, or a package that needs to reference the kernel source, we have the kernel source available as an SFS file. Download 'devx_217.sfs' and 'kernel-src_217.sfs' to /mnt/home then reboot Puppy and you're in business (that's how simple SFS files are to use, but note you can manage loading of SFS files by running the BootManager (System menu)). Get the official SFS files from here.
Source: Puppy Linux News
Puppy Linux is one of small Linux distros. What's different here is that Puppy is extraordinarily small, yet quite full featured. Puppy boots into a 64MB ramdisk, and that's it, the whole caboodle runs in RAM. Unlike live CD distributions that have to keep pulling stuff off the CD, Puppy in its entirety loads into RAM. This means that all applications start in the blink of an eye and respond to user input instantly.
Puppy Linux has the ability to boot off a flash card or any USB memory device, CDROM, Zip disk or LS/120/240 Superdisk, floppy disks, internal hard drive. Even it can use a multisession formatted CD-R/DVD-R to save everything back to the CD/DVD with no hard drive required at all.
You can download it's ISO here.
