Say Goodbye to Windows XP - StartUbuntu Project

[Alex Eagle]

I've just discovered the latest version of Puppy Linux; 'Tahrpup' 6.0. I tried out this little gem about a fortnight ago; my God, what a revelation...! With my current set-up, boot-up times are, well.....'quick' is an understatement. It runs from a flash drive, this being the way Puppy has worked for years, and it runs entirely in RAM, the installed size being somewhere in the region of 160 MB. I timed it from selecting 'Boot from USB', to the desktop being up-and-running this morning; 14 seconds..... Say 20-25 from powering up to being ready to use.....that IS impressive!

I've no sooner clicked on, say, Chrome's icon on the desktop, than it's open and ready. The same goes for every application I've got installed, plus all the pre-installed stuff that comes with Puppy as standard; how they get nearly 200 apps into 160MB I will NEVER know.....but the net result is an OS/machine combination that will beat the pants off just about anything else on the market for speed & responsiveness; including some very high-end stuff.

faster than my brother's top-end iMac, and my Mum's 3-yr old Dell Inspiron 15R, with a quad-core i5 & 6 GB of DDR3, plus a 750 GB HDD.

Now why on EARTH would I want to throw that away?

Yo Mike! Well said buddy. It makes me wonder how well Ubuntu (or Tahrpup) would run on something like a Mac Pro or an Alienware (damn! I shiver at the name! power packed or what. It's like a laptop Iron Man.)

Do you think I could try Tahrpup? Given my current speed probs because of having to use the vesa driver...

Regards,

Al.

[Mike_Walsh]

Hey, Alex.

I don't see any reason at all why you shouldn't give Tahrpup a go; gotta be worth a try, mate. Here's the download link:-

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux...pup%20-6.0-CE/

You want the first of the bottom 4 entries.....tahr_6.0_CE_PAE.iso. No need to worry about 32- or 64-bit; Puppies are ALL 32-bit.....so they'll run on ANYTHING. Burn it to a CD.

I'll give you a tip (and this was learnt over many repeated installation attempts of earlier Puppies); load it in (the entire OS sits in RAM, so it is FAST!).....and before you do ANYthing else, find the Puppy Installer in the menu, and get it installed to a flashdrive. The instructions are real easy to follow, but if you get stuck, give us a shout.

As soon as you've done that, shutdown straight away, and create your 'save-file'; Puppy saves your changes at shutdown, and at half-hourly intervals while you're using it; cuts down on the read/write cycles to your flash drive.....which is what wears them out sooner or later.

Having done that, you can then boot from your flashdrive, and check that the install procedure worked properly. Another little tip; I've discovered that a 'Puppy' flashdrive doesn't like sharing space on my USB hub with any other USB installs, of ANY kind! Make sure it's the ONLY thing you've got plugged in ( at least until it's booted); after that, it's quite happy.

Give it a try, & let us know how you get on.

Regards,

Mike.

[Alex Eagle]

Paraphrase:

Burn it to a CD.

load it in, find the Puppy Installer in the menu, and get it installed to a flashdrive.

As soon as you've done that, shutdown straight away, and create your 'save-file'; Puppy saves your changes at shutdown, and at half-hourly intervals while you're using it; cuts down on the read/write cycles to your flash drive.....which is what wears them out sooner or later.

Having done that, you can then boot from your flashdrive

Can you PM me the instructions a bit more detailed? Sorry but I'm not quite with you. Load what, and where? What menu? By get it installed I presume you mean the installer. Create the save file on another PC or reboot and do it on this one? And what save file?

Sorry about this dude!

[mörgæs]

Please don't use personal messages. We prefer to have everything in the open to benefit all users.

[Mike_Walsh]

Hello, morgaes.


Originally posted by morgaes:-

Please don't use personal messages. We prefer to have everything in the open to benefit all users.

Understood, and appreciated; but this IS a forum for Ubuntu and ITS derivatives.....I don't think the membership really want to know about 'Puppy Linux'... (Or perhaps they WOULD be interested; I wouldn't like to say..!)

Be that as it may, 'Puppy Linux' does have its own forums.

I suppose you COULD say, in a very roundabout fashion, that the Puppies ARE 'buntu derivatives.....they all seem to be based on Ubuntu releases, anyway.

Regards,

Mike.

[mörgæs]

Yes, perhaps a better option is to open a thread in one of these fora:
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=446

[Alex Eagle]

Or perhaps a still better option is to quickly metion what Mike sent me?

Morning, young'un,

Sorry if that was confusing; I'll try and explain it a bit more carefully for you.

Firstly, you have to know that all versions of Puppy Linux were designed to run from a flash drive, right from the first one.....back in, I think, 2004. They were always intended to be carried around in your pocket, from one place to another.

Obviously, your first move is to burn that .iso file to a CD (as slowly as possible; important for any install disk, really). Once you've done that, arrange things so you can boot from the CD, just like using an Ubuntu 'Live Session. You'll be quite surprised how quick Puppy boots; the first time is slower, because nothing's setup yet, but....anyway. When it first starts, you get a 'setup' screen; DO select the firewall, and select 'Run internet apps as Spot' (I'll try and explain about 'Spot' later...) THIS assumes, of course, that your screen is behaving itself; this setup screen is where you get to select different video drivers'n'stuff, I believe, although that isn't something I've needed to do.....mine runs fine with the standard AMD driver.

Then go to the Menu button (bottom left, just like Windows), and select 'Setup'; then down near the bottom of the sub-menu, 'Puppy Installer'. I can't really talk you through this next bit, because there are SO many windows, but really, Alex, a blind man couldn't get lost.....the instructions are so easy, and self explanatory.

Once you've got it installed, the very next thing to do is to shut it down! Doesn't make sense, probably, but this is where Puppy creates your personal 'save-file'. This is all your changes, alterations, anything you save or download, etc. Again, follow the instructions. When you select 'Shutdown', select 'Save' on the yellow window that appears STRAIGHT AWAY; if you don't, it disappears within about 20 seconds, and the shut down 'save' procedure is aborted. There's a lot of small print to read on some of these windows, and you don't get all that long to read it.

Puppy used to create a fixed size save-file, but it now creates a folder, or 'directory' as Puppy calls it, which can expand to the capacity of your flashdrive. DO make sure you know the location (sdx.x whatever) of your flashdrive, so you get the right place; it wants to be on the same flashdrive as you've just installed it to, obviously, so that you have a completely self-contained system that you can put in your pocket.

I hope this is making sense; I'm not sure as I CAN explain it MUCH more simply.

Puppy consists of just 4 files; initrd.gz, vm.linuz, a .sfs file (squash file system), which contains the bulk of the OS, including kernel and everything else.....and your personal 'save-file', which is created on the very first shutdown.

Really, that's it. Once Puppy has shut down, boot it up FROM the flashdrive.....and see whether it's installed correctly.
Mike.

Good?

P.S: Mike; Please help! This craptop is lapsing into it's crappy days again... It keeps on going through slow patches. I have installed Wine so that might be something because I seem to hae some Win apps that I've not installed so there might be a bunch of bloatware type extras I don't need. If you could help me out with this on th LTS thread I'd appreciate it.

[Mike_Walsh]

Hey, Alex.

Will do, if I can. Just for your information, if you want to go ahead with the 'Puppy' install, here's the link to the 'Puppy' forums:-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/ind...f65577c1a72286

They should be able to answer any further questions, probably better than I can; some of these guys have been using 'Puppy' ever since it first appeared! I doubt there's anything about the O/S they DON'T know.

And don't forget; this shouldn't slow your 'crap-top' down one whit; the entire thing runs in RAM, so it is blazingly fast.....it's a real lesson in the meaning of a 'minimal' installation, even though at the same time, it's surprisingly full-featured for its footprint!

Regards,

Mike.

[oldrocker99]

I bought, for $50, a 2007 Lenovo 3000 N100, with a 32-bit Intel Core Duo T2300E / 1.66 GHz, which would run like the proverbial dog on Windows 7 (not to mention being a paperweight with Windows 8 ), but with 32-bit Ubuntu MATE 14.04.1 (now available!), it runs like a top.

Another aging PC brought back to useful life with Linux!

[amjjawad]

Hi everyone,

I have wrote this post just now and thought to share it here:
http://amjjawad.net/startubuntu-leadership/

Thank you!