Pet the Puppy

My tour through the world of Linux distributions
bootable from CD has taught me one thing. There are
about 100 different flavors of Linux that are bootable
from CD (I will give the link later to a list of just
about that many).

I tried Damn Small Linux yesterday (couldn't get
network services established) and was set to try
DSL-n, which is bigger and presumably has more
flexibility in drivers, but I stumbled across href="http://puppylinux.com/">Puppy, another
small, CD- and USB-drive-bootable version of Linux.
The best thing about it (and yes, I am using it right
now) is that once it boots from CD, the entire OS and
all apps load into RAM (assuming you have enough,
which is somewhere around 200 MB, I think).

That means no accessing the CD every time you load an
app (like Ubuntu
and Knoppix). I
wanted to try Abiword, the lighter (than Open Office)
word processor that produces Word-compatible files. I
wasn't prepared for it to start in under a second. But
it did. Running everything in RAM. It's like starting
every program you're going to use and having it in
your taskbar, or whatever it is they are calling that
thing at the bottom of the screen.

To keep Puppy small, it uses the SeaMonkey Web
browser, which is working great. I'm not sure what the
GUI is, but it looks great. And supposedly it's easier
to make a bootable USB drive out of Puppy than it is
from DSL (a task at which I didn't succeed yesterday).
I plan to try it.

Another thing about Puppy. You can burn an "open" CD
or DVD and save your work on the disc for as long as
you have free space. Or you can create space on your
system's hard drive, save to a plugged-in USB drive
... or to a ZIP drive (something that excites me since
I've got about a half-dozen of them in various states
of usability). You can even boot off of a ZIP disk.

But running everything in memory is brilliant. Now you
are giving up some things to do this. No GIMP, like in
Knoppix and Ubuntu. That might be hard to give up, as
I do a lot of photo editing for the Web. But maybe
there's something good enough in Puppy. This little
Linux can also be installed to the hard drive, and
then additional software can be added, so if I feel
like I need to use this Linux distribution, I can run
it like any regular HD-based OS.

I had to answer a few questions about my display
preferences while Puppy booted, but configuring the
network services was easy. I'm not quite sure how to
get a printer hooked up over the network. I think you
have to choose the model of printer and then select
from a list of available printers on the network.
Since there are about 200 or so printers hooked up
around here, I guess I'll have to do a walk-around and
see what's available. Ubuntu and Knoppix were very
smooth when it came to printer config.

And I am having one glitch in the SeaMonkey browser.
It does automatic Web links just fine, but when trying
to create a new category, a blank window opens, never
to be filled. Puppy also offers the Dillo browser, so
maybe that will work better. I'll try to upload a
photo and see how that goes.
But this running in RAM, apps available nearly
instantly. I could really get used to this. And while
the fatter Linuxes are sometimes billed as able to
resurrect older PCs, a distribution like this really
can do that. Breaking the chain to the hard drive and
running light apps is key to maximizing limited PC
resources.

Now pet the Puppy.