Anyway, I booted Puppy 3.00 on the $0 Laptop (I haven't done the upgrade to 3.01 on the Gateway yet).

One of the bigger changes recently in Puppy Linux has been the dropping of the lightweight Dillo browser in favor of NetSurf, which looks like a similarly lightweight browser based on Mozilla. I can't be sure of its origins, but it seems to work pretty well, is just as fast as Dillo, and -- most importantly -- seems to be currently in development. Work on Dillo has pretty much stalled, or so it appears. So I think of this as a good choice for Puppy Linux -- the lightweight browser is needed, especially for the lower-spec computers than many of us use to run Puppy.

I thought Puppy also had a text-only browser, but I don't see it in the Puppy 3.00 menu. I'd like to see Lynx or Elinks in the Puppy base. If you must have a text Web browser, Elinks is available as an easy-to-add PET package in the Puppy Package Manager. Even Dillo can be restored via a PET package.

The main browser in Puppy continues to be Seamonkey, which also functions as a mail client and HTML editor. I've always liked Seamonkey, and I continue to see it as an application that fits Puppy very well.

I have one nagging problem: One of the Web sites I work on: LA.com has way too much Flash on it for its own good, and while that may or may not be the cause, the home page crashes Seamonkey every time. I'm generally anti-Flash -- it hogs resources and should only be used when you need to show an actual video (and then only after a link is clicked), but I've accepted that today's Web designers have gone Flash-crazy.

Most of these developers also think that everybody runs browsers with Flash and that they have Flash enabled. I suppose it's true for 95 percent of users, but I don't have Flash activated on this very laptop's Debian partition. In Ubuntu, I do have it, and Puppy ships with Flash implemented in Seamonkey, but the ability to easily turn Flash on and off in Firefox would be welcomed by me. More welcome is the new Gnash open-source clone of Flash. I haven't tried it yet, but it's definitely on my to-do list.

$0 Laptop-and-Puppy update: Puppy runs so well on this Gateway Solo 1450, it should be noted. Since I got the fan under control via a cron job (long explanation of this STILL forthcoming -- I promise), Puppy 3.00 has performed very, very well. I've been running it from the live CD (all the better for impending and frequent upgrades, as well as ease in booting) and have a 1.2 GB pup_save in my Debian Etch partition. I've also had good luck with Knoppix 5.1.1 on this laptop, but not so much with Damn Small Linux, which has problems with the X configuration. And with 256 MB of RAM, Puppy is a much better fit than Knoppix.

I continue to warn against dual- and triple-booting, even as I continue to do it with this laptop (still, avoid pain and DON'T dual-boot -- I'm telling you). But I encourage the use of live CDs on computers with existing Linux (and even Windows) installs. It gives you a nice option and is not likely to screw anything up.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

But back to the second Thin Puppy Torture Test. The box has been chugging along, no problem.

Today I had somebody ask me to grab a bunch of photos off of two SD Flash memory cards. I plugged my card reader into the remaining USB port, used the Puppy Drive Mounter to mount and open it, and then I dragged a bunch of images to the My-Documents folder, which if you've used Puppy before, is owned by root.

And in Puppy, you run as root, not in a normal user account. There have been all kinds of arguments about the wisdom of running as root -- and it's many people's main complaint about Puppy, that running as root is not safe. Damn Small Linux creates a user account when you boot the live CD, and you can go multiuser and create named accounts if you want. I believe the GrafPup spin of Puppy also allows the use of user accounts. ... And Puppy allows you to create any number of pup_save files, booting into whichever one you wish (and also encrypting and password-protecting them if you want), allowing for multiple users on the same computer (but still running as root).

I'm not really qualified to comment on the root vs. user debate, but I've never had any problems, and I understand that especially in the live CD environment, it doesn't matter as much. Again, I leave it to the experts.

But back to the photos. There were quite a few of them, and I only have a 256 MB Flash drive connected to the Thin Puppy box, so I didn't/couldn't transfer them all to Puppy's filesystem.

Still, after I transferred some and then later deleted them, my Puppy "free RAM" indicator dropped from 111 MB to 89.9 MB and stayed there. I've been told that this indicator is not a true picture of free RAM on the system, but it's curious that it drops and, at this point at least, doesn't rebound after files are deleted.

I pulled the card reader before unmounting the Flash card, and I got a warning message from Puppy. Remember to unmount your media!! The message suggested that I reboot, but since this is the Thin Puppy Torture Test II, I ignored that warning.

The system is still running fine, and I got the chance to use MtPaint and GTKSee as image viewers. MtPaint isn't really designed to look at images in a "slide show" fashion, but one good thing is that you can open an image in a directory, use ctrl-mouse wheel to shrink it so it fits in the window, and then retain that image size when viewing all the other images in the directory, opening them up as needed.

But GTKSee is better for doing a slide show. Just open the application (under Graphics), navigate to the proper directory, and start the slide show under the Tools menu (or by typing ctrl-S).

P.S. Since I didn't have enough memory in the Thin Puppy to burn a CD with all those images, I started up Puppy 2.17 (it was the first Puppy CD I found) on my Windows box, mounted the SD chip and threw everything into a directory on the Windows drive. I got the usual warnings about writing to NTFS partitions, but I ignored them. I got a warning the next time I booted into Windows, but everything was there, and everything was fine. (I burned my CD in Windows, not Puppy because I had work to do with the proprietary publishing software that I need for my "real" job).

I'll have to experiment with Puppy's CD burning applications later.

But one thing I always forget is that Puppy runs GREAT on my 3 GHz Pentium 4 Dell. I'm not used to running Linux of any kind on such a "powerful" machine. I'd love to run all my Linux distros on something so "good" (its 512 MB RAM is twice what I have on any other box).

One thing about low-spec Linux distros like Puppy. As well as they run on old, old hardware, if you can get everything configured, they really fly on "modern" PCs.

Pup_save thoughts: The pup_save in Puppy Linux has a predetermined size. Usually the largest you can make is 1.25 GB. There is a warning message that crops up (I can't remember where) that says you can make a pup_save up to 1.83 GB, but that is the largest tested configuration. I don't know if there is a limit on the size of a "save" file in Damn Small Linux or Knoppix (both of which use the same "save" technology, I think -- but don't quote me), and having a limit on how big the pup_save can be is somewhat of a limitation in Puppy. I suggest having additional storage space outside of the pup_save on which to store large files -- and large amounts of files, for that matter.

On this Thin Puppy, unless I add another Flash drive, I'm stuck with the 256 MB on the primary USB Flash drive.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nothing much to report today, except that the monitor does go into power-saving mode when idle. It just takes awhile.

Everything is running great. I almost forgot how much I like using Seamonkey as a Web browser. I haven't yet set up the mail-client portion yet, but I do plan to.

I still think Geany is one of the best text editors out there. And despite it's lack of typographical, "smart" quotes, AbiWord is a model of how light yet powerful a word-processing application can and should be. And MtPaint continues to get the job done when it comes to preparing images for the Web (although I'd just about kill for a Linux-compatible photo editor that didn't obliterate and even allowed editing of the Photoshop-implanted IPTC info embedded in JPEG images).

Today's "free memory" in the Puppy Memory Applet: 113 MB.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The most fun I had writing these entries was during the month of the original Thin Puppy Torture Test, in which the converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client ran on Puppy Linux (I think I was using 2.14 at the time) for a month with no hard drive -- in fact, no storage at all except the onboard RAM.

Since then, I've been able to create and access a pup_save file on an attached USB flash drive, and I thought it would be a good time for a second Thin Puppy Torture Test. This time, I burned a fresh Puppy Linux 3.01 CD, booted the thin client, and "upgraded" an existing pup_save file on the flash drive.

I've been planning to get a 2 GB or 4 GB Compact Flash module on which I can dual-boot Puppy and Damn Small Linux with frugal installs (copying the few and huge CD files over to the flash drive and making it bootable) and no spinning drives of any kind attached whatsoever, but in the interim, I'm doing this new rendition of the torture test.

One of the reasons I'm going back to a long-term Puppy test is the nagging feeling that running Puppy and/or Damn Small Linux from live CDs -- or going all-out and doing the same with Knoppix or Wolvix on a 1 GB RAM box -- is a very viable alternative to traditionally installed Linuxes for desktop computer users.

Having a recent Ubuntu Gutsy install go bad on me (twice!) didn't exactly endear me to traditional Linux installs, and from my use of all the live CDs mentioned -- all of which are designed to be used as live CDs rather than as sludgy demos of what a traditionally installed system will do much quicker -- running a live CD completely in RAM, with no spinning hard drives or whirring CD drives, is a refreshing change.

I originally wanted to do a Damn Small Linux Torture test, but I couldn't get DSL 4.0 (or any previous version; I have CDs for 3.2 and 3.3) to boot from CD without a hard drive connected.

So before I begin the torture, I'll give DSL another try with the USB flash drive connected ... but even as I close out this entry, I know that Puppy, out of the box, has more of the apps I want (AbiWord, MtPaint) even while DSL seems lighter on overall resources. (Note: since the original writing, Damn Small Linux has added MtPaint).

Final thought: The mere fact that you can run Linux in a traditional install, frugal install, as a live CD, and make it even quicker by running completely in RAM, illustrates the wonderful freedom of choice we have with a fully open and modifiable operating system.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As one of the ways to keep track of my journey through the world of Linux and BSD distributions, on every CD I try to write the date I burned it. I can't remember how I found out about my first Linux live CD, Knoppix 5.1.1 (some Web story must've gone on about how great it was to run a full Linux without doing a hard-drive install), but the date I wrote on the case is Jan. 29, 2007 -- soon after the 5.1.1 release came out. And it wasn't just my first live CD, it was also the first Linux CD of any kind I made -- and my first experience with a Unix-like operating system since leaving adm3a and VT-100 terminals behind after my college days in the 1980s.

I remember running that Knoppix CD on my Dell box. I didn't know what Debian was. I had no idea that KDE was Knoppix's desktop environment -- or that there were many alternatives. I didn't know why the Web browser that looked like Firefox was called Iceweasel.

Since then I've spent considerable time running Puppy and Damn Small Linux from live CDs (and in hard-drive installs, usually of the three-or-so-file "frugal" variety).

I recently burned both Puppy Linux 3.0 and Damn Small Linux 4.0. On the one hand, I'm thinking about doing reviews of both. On the other, I think it's time to replace the Debian setup on the $15 Laptop, a Compaq Armada 7770dmt. I've been running it for months with a very basic Debian Etch install. I started with the "standard" install, then added X and Fluxbox, along with the apps I wanted. It's been running fairly well, but the problems with various applications have been piling up. I know that if I use Puppy or DSL, the apps I want should work perfectly from the get-go. Of course I could also do a fuller Debian install -- say the Xfce version -- which would include many more applications ...

So before I dive back into live CDs, here's what's been troubling me with my Debian Etch install. The laptop is so old (probably circa '98) that it doesn't have USB ports. I have my trusty Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA wireless card installed -- it works with just about every Linux distro out there -- and I have the CD drive plugged in. The floppy drive is dead, but who needs it? I have the original 3 GB hard drive, and it's pretty full, even though I've got nowhere near the full Debian install on it. I really should buy a new hard drive that's way bigger and less prone to failure.

Anyhow, the 233 MHz, 64 MB system probably could run Xfce, but I've been conservative, running both the console and Fluxbox as needed. Maximum memory for the Compaq is 144 MB, but I've been too lazy and cheap to buy the RAM. The CMOS battery is dead, and I've really been too lazy to crack the case (TORX screws aplenty) and see how to switch it out. I have the network time server app installed, and that resets the clock at each boot.

I originally wanted to handle my work e-mail over IMAP with Mutt and MSMTP. Never mind that to get a Mutt setup seems to be the height of geek competence (a height to which I do not reach), but since my original push to get the .muttrc and .msmtprc files just right, something changed and I can no longer send mail. I could never figure out how to handle multiple mail accounts over IMAP (POP is easier, since you can POP all the mail down and filter it ... and by "easier," I mean harder but doable).

So I installed Sylpheed, which I figured would be light enough for the 233 MHz box. I've always liked Sylpheed, although I've migrated over to Evolution and Thunderbird on my other boxes.

On first launch of Sylpheed, I got an error message that some parameter in some file (I confess, I didn't recognize any of it) was missing. So I went ahead and configured Sylpheed. It didn't work.

I have AbiWord installed -- my go-to lightweight word processor -- but the graphics of the laptop just can't keep up. I type, and the letters appear seconds later. Ted might work better, but it's broken in Etch. You can neither create a new file nor open an old one.

On the brighter side, the Dillo browser works great (although the fonts are better in Damn Small Linux and Vector), and I also have had no problem with Iceweasel (aka Firefox), Lynx or my favorite light image editor, MtPaint (which should be an official Debian package available via apt-get but for some reason can only be found at Sourceforge and on other distros like Vector and Zenwalk). I've also been very pleased with Mousepad as a text editor, with Nano and Vi as backups. (I'm more of a Nano users because I just don't spend a lot of time in console editors and have ragged Vi chops).

So I'm able to get my work done in Etch, but I have a feeling that I'd be better off -- especially at 64 MB of RAM -- with Damn Small Linux.

And with the release of version 4.0, what better time to re-evaluate the distro, which has been in or near the Distrowatch top 10 for quite some time.

So I pulled the CDs for Puppy 3.00, DSL 4.0 and Knoppix 5.1.1. I'm not ready to break out the Compaq laptop just yet, so I used my main test box, the converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client that runs a VIA C3 Samuel 1 GHz processor and 256 MB of RAM.

I plugged in a USB drive, with my hope being that I could then unplug the hard drive, boot from CD and then have no drives whirring for the duration.

That worked with Knoppix, Puppy, even with a Vector SOHO live CD I burned a week ago (and let me say that just as Vector excels with the Xfce desktop, it also does remarkably well in KDE).

But Damn Small Linux? No, it wouldn't boot with the hard drive disconnected. I tried versions 3.3 and 3.2 as well. No go for any of them.

My USB key is a little unsual. It was a freebie, and has a CD advertising image (detected almost always as drive sr0) as well as a 256 MB flash memory. Puppy found the flash just fine (I've always had great luck with hardware detection, especially of drives, with Puppy), and I was able to boot without a hard drive, run entirely in RAM, and save my settings and files to the pup_save on the USB drive. Brilliant, as usual.

Neither Knoppix nor DSL could find the USB flash drive, but I suspect with a "pure" USB drive the results would be different.

Even so, I've done quite a few Puppy reviews, and I wanted to start out with Damn Small Linux. So I plugged in a hard drive, booted DSL (using the dsl toram boot code that loads the whole distro into RAM) and was off.

Quickly, things that are better in DSL 4.0: network configuration is smoother than ever. Once I entered my static IP, DSL guessed the rest of the info pretty darn well. I entered my local name servers, but the gateway and broadcast addresses were correct without me doing anything. I was able to get printing working with apsfilter (I could never replicate my success in Etch, by the way).

The default window manager in DSL is now JWM, and the thing I miss most is the menu that used to come up with a right mouse click. It's easy enough, however, to change window managers to the old DSL's Fluxbox, and then everything is the way I like it. But I'm getting used to JWM (Joe's Window Manager) in DSL, and I like the clickable folders on the desktop -- it's easier and more intuitive than using the file manager.

Anyhow ... I'm not ready yet for a full DSL review, so let me just tell you that to me -- and many others, I suspect -- Puppy, DSL and Knoppix are VERY important distros in the Linux universe. Going from Windows or Mac to the world of Linux might not have happened for many of us if we didn't have live CDs that actually work that way with which to experiment.

And in many cases, working with a live CD or frugal install that allows files and parameters to be saved, either on the hard drive or on removable media, can be an easy, secure and preferable way to use a PC. Especially when it comes to DSL and Puppy, upgrading can be as easy as downloading and burning the latest ISO. And if you don't want to upgrade? No problem -- just use the version you want.

I did spend at least half a day running Knoppix with no hard drive. As I said above, Knoppix didn't find my USB drive (a situation that might be remedied with a more standard flash drive). As the king of live CDs, Knoppix, which is not one of those distros that is continually coming out with new releases, runs very, very well. Even when not running it in RAM, Knoppix is surprisingly quick, even with KDE. And if you do have 1 GB of RAM, I highly recommend running it with the toram boot option. I definitely plan to get the book "Knoppix Hacks," which has a new release slated for this month, as well as the new Damn Small Linux book.

And this thought has crossed my mind: I just might hack together a PC with 2 GB of RAM, and either a Compact Flash card or USB flash drive for storage, with no hard drive at all, to run Knoppix entirely in RAM.

(By the way, Puppy seems to know when it has enough memory to run in RAM -- I don't think you have to pass that information in a boot code).

And while the live CDs of Ubuntu, Mepis and others are helpful in terms of evaluating hardware detection, they're not designed to be used day-to-day in that manner. But DSL, Puppy and Knopix are -- and they all can be installed to the hard drive if you wish.

Before I wrap up this entry, I want to say that everybody should try Puppy, DSL and Knoppix. Download the ISOs, burn the CDs and start experimenting with all the boxes you can find. I've had more fun with live CDs than in anything else I've done with Linux. After a few months in Debian, Slackware and Ubuntu, it's a nice change of pace (and yes, I've tried Slax -- which I like -- and I plan to give Wolvix a spin soon).

So burn yourself some live CDs -- and make a half-dozen or so extras to hand out at will. It's the best way to get people started on exploring the non-Windows world of computing.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in the days before the Thin Puppy's CF card died, I was running my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client with flash memory instead of a conventional hard drive. And since Puppy Linux takes great care NOT to write to flash very often, the media is supposed to last virtually forever. Why mine died is a mystery, but it wasn't due to wear (more likely I killed it with static electricity).

Now that I'm running Puppy 2.16 (new to me this week!), I've been thinking about going back to flash for this thin-client box -- I'm booting from CD and also have a regular-sized 14 GB hard drive connected outside the box (yes, I truly am thinking outside the box -- or my PC is).

But the conventional wisdom is that for "normal" operating systems that don't use RAM disks, you'll kill flash quickly with the constant writes required by the OS.

But today on Low End Mac, that question didn't come up for these guys who are running their Mac laptops from flash memory. That link was to the letters about this original article, which, in turn, refers to this article about doing it with a Powerbook 1400 (one of which I have ... but which is too frustrating at this point to even contemplate using for my everyday computing for reasons that have nothing to do with flash). This final article -- filled with woe about flash cards that didn't work with the 1400 -- does address longevity of the flash media, saying it should work for "years and years."

I'm going to try it again (maybe even with Debian), but I'm also going to back up all my data ...

And again, if you want to boot from flash but are nervous, give the new Puppy 2.16 a try. I'm in my first full day of use, but so far all is going very, very well.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I spent the day upgrading my new Xubuntu 6.10 (Edgy) installation to Xubuntu 7.04 (Feisty), and since Xubuntu is derived from Ubuntu, far and away the most popular Linux distribution for the desktop, I expected -- and still expect -- a lot more from it.

During my nearly month-long Thin Puppy Torture Test (chronicled extensively in this blog), I managed to get quite a bit of work done with my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client (1 GHz VIA processor, 256 MB RAM, no disk drives at all), most of it related to producing this and other Daily News blogs. From extensive Web surfing to light photo editing, heavy writing and use of Movable Type for Web publishing, Puppy Linux 2.14 performed admirably, even if, along the way, I lost the ability to mount external drives and couldn't really deal with large audio files due to the lack of available memory. But for the basics, Puppy did the job, day in and day out.

With Xubuntu, I hooked up a 14.4 GB hard drive and a 32x CD-RW drive. And by the time I installed Xubuntu, I expected to get even more real work done. This time I seek to up the ante, doing work for Dailynews.com, which entails working with larger photo files (downloaded from services such as GettyImages.com and WireImage.com, although the latter offers a choice of smaller images to begin with).

And eventually, it means, installing some version of Wine (allowing use of Windows programs without the Windows OS installed), with Internet Explorer 6 running, because the Daily News Web publishing system requires IE. (And for the love of God, WHY??)

As far as text editors go, I can use just about anything. Even the anemic Mousepad editor that comes with Xubuntu would be OK, even though I prefer Geany, and even EditPad for Windows. And since Xubuntu's word processor, AbiWord is so light on resources and quick-loading, that could really serve as a text editor for my purposes.

And when it came to image editing, Xubuntu offers the GIMP, which though part of the GNOME office suite (featuring the loosely tied-together AbiWord, Gnumeric for spreadsheets and the GIMP), is a true resource hog, taking a full minute to load in Xubuntu on my 1 GHz box. For my purposes at least, I'm very familiar with the GIMP, as I've been using the Windows version for at least a year (and never having used Photoshop, had nothing to "unlearn"). So already the GIMP is a mismatch for Xubuntu, if indeed one is running it on "low-spec" hardware. I missed mtPaint from Puppy (which I just might install for Xubuntu, if I can figure it out), but I didn't miss the paint program that comes with Damn Small Linux, which doesn't do nearly what I need.

Long story short, I did work on about five photos for Dailynews.com, but the times required to save them in the GIMP really had me thinking about whether or not Xubuntu on this platform could handle this level of work. But I had to stop myself. I don't recall working with original images this big in Puppy 2.14. I mostly took images already sized for the Web and then made them even smaller. Even the GIMP in Xubuntu could make relatively quick work of that. And as far as general Web work with Firefox in Xubuntu, it went smoothly. I was even able to add the Flash plug-in for Firefox without working up a geekish sweat (translation: no command line needed, no Synaptic Package Manager, just clicking in the bar on Firefox to get the needed plug-in -- it was positively Windows-like).

When I write my full-length review of Xubuntu, I'll recount my odyssey of getting network printing working. Yes, it did take me most of the day, and yes, I'm surprised at how unintuitive Xubuntu's printer-configuration utility actually is (I gave up and used the CUPS interface), and I'm shocked that I got printing working much, much easier in both Puppy and DSL (and MepisLite ... and Slax and Knoppix and even standard Ubuntu Dapper). But that's another battle to recount on another day.

Suffice it to say that my first full day with Xubuntu Feisty was maybe a bit less bumpy than expected, especially given the high expectations I have for something that's billed as a speedier version of the hottest desktop Linux distribution on the planet -- however dubious such a distinction may be.

But in my search for answers on whether or not Xubuntu and its Xfce desktop interface is truly ready for real work (or at least for what it is that I do to put out Web pages and newspapers), I'm going to have to compare it to Zenwalk 4.4.1, which features the same interface but is built upon Slackware, as opposed to Ubuntu/Xubuntu's base of Debian. And I'll have to do a traditional hard-drive install of Puppy to see how it performs in that kind of traditional install (and whether that kind of setup allows me to deal with the kinds of large files that I do, in fact, have to process during the course of my day).

And last ... and only least if you think of it that way ... I will do a standard Windows 2000 install on the 1 GHz thin client (because I've got a 2000 disc and not one with XP on it) ... load it up with the requisite open-source apps (Open Office, AbiWord, the GIMP, Avast antivirus, Firefox, even SeaMonkey) to have a truly well-played field on the same hardware before drawing any definite conclusions in the battle for OS supremacy on my low-spec desktop. And honestly, as I work on this entry at home on an iBook G4 1 GHz/384MB laptop with OS X 10.3.9, and seeing how well it runs, I can't leave Apple and its BSD-derived operating system out of the equation.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

Given how similar Puppy 2.14 was to 2.13, I was wholly unprepared for how different the latest Puppy release, 2.15CE (community edition), is from its predecessors.

First of all, it looks completely different. That's because IceWM is the default window manager for Puppy 2.15, although the old standby JWM (Joe's Window Manager) is still available. And aside from the radical change in GUI, the desktop background is darker (and less "puppy" themed) than in distros past. Still, the Menu key on the bottom left does have a paw print.

Under Settings-Themes in the main Puppy menu (accessible, as always, by right-clicking anywhere on the screen), you can alter the look of your desktop very easily.

Under IceWM, Puppy remains lightning-fast -- it sure was on my Dell 3 GHz Optiplex GX520 with 512 MB RAM.

All my configuration information from the previous Puppy version was picked up from my pup_save.2fs file when I booted 2.15 for the first time, so my networking, screen resolution and printing were already set up.

When I brought up a Web page, the fonts in the SeaMonkey browser looked "funny," or at least different. The change was due to SeaMonkey being configured to use a serif font instead of the usual sans-serif. Pages looked strange to me, but everything is displaying normally enough. It's nothing that can't be fixed, though, because it's easy to change to sans-serif under the SeaMonkey Edit menu (go to Preferences, then Appearance, then Fonts, then pick sans-serif for whatever seems appropriate. I did just that, and everything then looked like it was "supposed to."

Despite the SeaMonkey change, other apps in the new Puppy, like AbiWord, look terrific with the new window manager. The fonts appear crisper, and as I said, it's just as quick in IceWM as in JWM.

But here's the big "secret" in Puppy 2.15: Restart with JWM (from the Shutdown manager) and you are back in the old Puppy window manager -- and when you do, it looks like you have about TWICE AS MANY APPS in the menus. Open Office, yep. Scribus, yes; the Gimp, Blender ... but none of these apps actually run until you download the proper packages (I haven't gotten to that yet). I assume that they will be accessible from both window managers at that point. (Note: these apps are characteristic of the GrafPup package.)

The Puppy Software Installer (a new utility) is where these packages seem to be, and it looks easy to use. The PETget package manager is still there, and it appears to duplicate the work of the PSI, albeit with fewer apps. I think the PETget packages are more "official," while the PSI contains the old "dotpup" applications. I've heard about apps availabe as .SFS "squash files," especially the ones that crop up in the JWM menus so that's something else I'll have to look into.

When you first load the SeaMonkey Web browser, it tells you all about 2.15CE's downloadable Expansion Packs -- just click on what you want (from Open Office to the GIMP, Opera, Audacity, even KDE, and follow the instructions (or at least that's what I'm led to believe).

Also new -- and on the Seamonkey home page -- are "online applications" -- things you can do via the browser for word processing, presentation, spreadsheets, image editing, office suite, chess and more. I plan to check these out, sinc I have a great insterest in apps delivered over the Web.

There is also 3DCC (under System) to "install drm-modules to enable accelleration for your kernel," Open GL for 3d apps, and the Nvidia drivers for those who have monitors that require them.

The many configuration Wizards under the Setup menu are one of the best parts of Puppy. They make setting up a system easier than any other Linux distribution I've tried. A new Wizard -- the Defaults Wizard -- enables you to see the "default" program that will run for 15 separate tasks, from Web browsing to word processing, drawing, spreadsheet, contacts and more. And it makes it easy to change those apps. For instance, if you want your "write" icon on the desktop to load AbiWord, that's the default, but if you have installed Ted or even Open Office Write, you can make those the go-to app when you click that "write" icon. A great tool.

For some reason, the "free ram" counter did not show up in JWM, as it does in previous Puppies. But it's there in the default IceWM desktop environment.

Another new thing in Puppy 2.15: When you're in ROX-Filer, photo-file icons now feature minature images (like in Windows XP) -- a very welcome addition.

The Shutdown menu from 2.13/2.14 is missing in the IceWM version of Puppy 2.15. In the new GUI, i can quit X from the menu (or ctrl-alt-backspace from the keyboard), go down to a shell prompt and then poweroff or reboot (text instructions are on the screen), but I miss the elegance of directly rebooting and shutting down from the GUI. I know itn's not Unix-geeky enolug, but I like the way it worked before.

Luckily when running JWM, the old Shutdown menu is right there. It all boils down to what you're used to -- and I'm the kind of peroson who doesn't like to change things unless there's a good reason ... call me conservative, but hey, I'm running Linux, not Windows 2000 or XP, so I've got a little daredevil in me, right?

Curiously -- at the prompt, xwin or startx will start IceWM. Some systems will only start a window manager with startx, and it's nice to see Puppy allow for both commands.

Flash video still works great -- Puppy being one of the select distros to provide Macromedia Flash right out of the box. Sure, it's not open source, but Macromedia Flash has pretty much crushed Java and all the other streaming-video technologies in its YouTube-propelled wake. At least it's better than Windows Media, right? (YES, right.)

At one point, I tried the "Change window manager" command in the menu, but instead of going from JWM to IceWM, I got a blank screen. Ctrl-alt-backspace wouldn't kill X at this point, but ctrl-alt-del did shut it down. I didn't do a whole lot of "change window manager" type stuff in 2.13 and 2.14, being a big JWM fan, so this could've been a problem in previous Puppies -- I'll have to look into it further.

Another thing that seemed to change in Puppy 2.15CE is the location of my SATA hard drive in the directory tree. In previous versions, it used to be under /mnt, but in 2.15 it is under /initrd/mnt and is called dev_save instead of sda1. It also was auto-mounted -- something that didn't happen in previous Puppies, in which you have to mount drives you're not booting from. It's an interesting change. Some people don't like drives to be auto-mounted, but I'm on the fence with this one. Still, Puppy's Mounting Utility Tool (a.k.a. MUT) remains easy to use if you want to check and change the status of other drives in your system.

And despite the different look, all the apps I've grown accustomed to using in Puppy are there: the AbiWord word processor, the Geany text editor, the SeaMonkey browser/e-mail/html editor suite, the light Dillo browser, the Gaim instant-messaging program, the ROX-Filer and the mtPaint image editor.

My overall impression of Puppy 2.15CE is a good one. But I wish all the packages I see on the JWM menus were included on the CD, along with clear instructions on how to either install or enable them. And from a quick perusal, it appears that adding the packages while using Puppy 2.15 as a live CD is one thing, but adding them to a hard-disk install is another. If it hasn't been worked out already, I expect it will at some time soon. In Puppy, problems tend to get solved quickly, and the online community at the Puppy Forums is second to none in its ability to help users.

Still, I'm not prepared to give up Puppy 2.14, which I've been running for 22 days straight now on the Thin Puppy (a Maxspeed Maxterm 1 GHz thin client with 256 MB RAM and, since it died, no Compact Flash storage, nor a hard drive or CD drive). I'm used to it. And that's the beauty of Puppy and other distros that are designed primarily to be used as live CDs. You can have a stack of them, with the option of booting any version that works for you -- for your hardware and the work you're trying to do.

The Puppy developers have been issuing new versions at a very quick pace. Looking at Distrowatch, between Sept. 14, 2006 (Puppy 2.10) and April 6, 2007 (Puppy 2.15), there have been six Puppy releases in under eight months -- quite a pace.

One of the neatest features of Puppy is the pup_save.2fs file. When you are running from the live CD, you have the option of creating such a file when you shut down the system. I think it's limited to 512 MB in size, but contained in that file are your downloaded applications and files. And when running from CD, you can keep the pup_save.2fs file on a USB flash drive. Or it can live on your system's main hard drive, even if you're not using that drive as a boot device. As for me, I like to keep a separate pup_save file on each box I run Puppy on. That way I have the settings unique to that computing environment saved.

As far as files go, I prefer to keep them on a USB flash drive so I can take them wherever I need them -- and since Puppy plays well with both NTFS and FAT file systems, I generally format the drives as FAT so they can be read on a Windows system (and so I can work in any environment). The other advantage of keeping files on an external drive is that Puppy's own file system, after booting, is contained entirely in RAM. That's great for speed, but when you download anything large (like giant audio or video files), it all eats away at your free RAM and can really affect the system. But if you store your files on any other drive, be it flash or traditional hard disk, your memory stays fairly intact (except for things such as browser cache) and the whole computing experience under Puppy goes much better.

And if you do run Puppy with a traditional hard-drive install, it's probably a good idea to either partition your drive and save your files on the partition, or use an external flash drive to keep those files portable. That's because even when booting from hard disk, Puppy still keeps its file system in RAM. Again, it's fast, but you run the risk of losing some of your work if you put the available RAM under too much stress. It's not as much of a problem on machines with 512 MB or even 1 GB of RAM, but with 256 MB it's essential, with 128 MB mandatory.

That said, if you've got some free memory left, saving standard text and image files (which is what I do generally) doesn't even dent the free memory, and it's OK to keep those in the RAM-based file system -- Puppy even has a "My Documents" folder to make Windows types feel better. It's probably a good idea, since in Puppy you're always logged on as root, and there are no "user" files characteristic of a "normal" Linux system. There's a bit of a debate about this on the Puppy forums, but those who program the system generally have a reason for it, and if I knew more about it, I'd delve further. As it is, I'm content to use the system as is.

And while many people do install Puppy to their hard drives, the majority probably run it from live CD with a pup_save file on the hard drive or an external USB flash drive. That's probably the best-case use of Puppy. Your file system is easily backed up (just copy the pup_save.2fs file to another drive). And one of the benefits of Puppy running its file system in RAM is that writes to your flash media are kept to an absolute minimum, extending the life of your flash memory indefinitely.

But remember, if you want to download a 600 MB ISO file, you're gonna have to put it on another drive or partition, or you'll soon be in memory trouble. As long as you keep this in mind, Puppy is ultra-stable and is just so plain usable and fun, it remains my go-to distro.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

Yesterday I took the Thin Puppy -- the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client now running Puppy Linux 2.14 -- to the brink. This thin client -- with no storage other than RAM memory (I booted it from CD and then disconnected that drive; I lost the ability to mount the external USB flash drive on day 8), has been running with about 41 MB of free RAM for storage. And as I learned before the Thin Puppy Torture Test, when I only had 128 MB of RAM (I'm now at the maximum for this motherboard, 256 MB), Puppy doesn't like it when you get really low on RAM.

I downloaded a podcast -- about 35 MB, I think, and that took RAM very low. It was "Linux Action Show's" interview with Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu (and I encourage you to listen to the show, since it's very well-done).

Well, downloads to the RAM-based filesystem take away from ... free RAM, and as I dipped below 8 MB free, the system didn't exactly cooperate. I couldn't run Gxine to listen to the podcast in OGG format -- it just wouldn't run, and there are two processes that I can't seem to kill out of memory.

Eventually I downloaded the .mp3 version and played it with madplayer, which can't be stopped or paused, but which does play .mp3s without skipping on this audio-challenged thin client.

So the Thin Puppy is now on its 18th day. I've been testing the new version of Puppy Linux (2.15CE) on my other box, and it's quite a radical departure from previous versions. First of all, IceWM is the default desktop, and there are many other differences and enhancements. A full review is forthcoming.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's Day 11. That's how long Puppy Linux 2.14 has been running on the Thin Puppy. To recap, the Thin Puppy is a Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, with the internal CF card removed (and with the Puppy-loaded replacement since fried). It's based on a mini-ITX motherboard of undetermined origin, running a Via C3 Samuel 1 GHz processor, VT133 chipset, with what look like s proprietary (to Maxspeed) CF-to-IDE adapter and fanless power supply.

The box has a fan, but it only runs when the client is tilted about 70 or 80-degrees in either direction. Otherwise, the unusual heat sink on the CPU seems to be working. It has copper pipes going from the top of the CPU to additional heat sink material bolted to the metal case.

The box has 256 MB of PC133 RAM installed.

Since the CF card died, I hooked up a CD drive and loaded Puppy, then disconnected the drive and sealed up the case. So the Thin Puppy is running totally in RAM, with no boot device attached. I used to have a USB flash drive connected, but since then the MUT utility that mounts drives in Puppy has flaked out, and I can't mount anything, nor can I seem to kill out the processes that keep me from doing so.

But the Thin Puppy continues to run, and I have been using it heavily these past 11 days. It has given me a good appreciation of this minimal hardware platform and of Puppy Linux as an OS and distribution. I even gave away my Puppy 2.14 disc away since then to somebody who was interested in it. I'll have to burn a new one, although I've got a couple of 2.13 discs for booting my other computers.

Like I've said before, Puppy is the first Linux distro on which I've been able to configure EVERYTHING ... except wireless. But I think my $9 Airlink AWLH3026 wireless card from Fry's is cursed and won't run in any Linux distro.

But other than that, Puppy has been as good as ... yes, OS gold. It wasn't so good with 128 MB of RAM, but ever since I doubled that, it's been running great.

And I expect I'll eventually get a new CF card and turn the Thin Puppy off. But not yet.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Slax is a live CD that I've been very anxious to try. Any distro that claims to be light on hardware -- yet features the KDE desktop -- is something I've got to try. I'm beginning to think KDE gets a bad rap. It runs pretty darn well in this distro, as well as in MepisLite. And I think KOffice is a terrific package, with KWrite being one of the best programs out there for writers.

First things first. Slax is a cutdown version of Slackware, one of the first Linux distributions, and one that remains wildly popular (it's No. 10 on Distrowatch). And it's not Debian, if that means anything. I guess I mention that because so many distros use Debian as their base, it's nice to try something different.

The boot process is pretty good. The script displayed on the screen asks you to log on as root with password "toor" And there are on-screen hints, such as startx to get KDE running, flux to use Fluxbox instead, mc to run Midnight Commander and xconf to autoconfigure the graphics adapter. Startx didn't work for me -- my display didn't cooperate, so I killed X and used xconf, which did work. I got the message, "creating /etc/corg.conf ... all done. Run startx now. If you get black screen, hit Ctrl+Alt+Plus. But all was well, and I was off and running. Later, I changed resolutions in KDE, and the screen looked absolutely terrific in all its 1280 x 1024 majesty. Thanks, KDE!

And if you want to put Slax on your hard drive, slax-install will do just that. Configsave and configrestore will save and restore your file systems,
fileswap will create a swap file. Pretty simple.

Once Slax KillBill goes into KDE, you see a yellow desktop and samurai sword that means you're in KillBill -- named because Wine is included and you can run Windows apps without Win being installed (hence the "Kill Bill" -- as in Gates -- reference).

On the menu, in addition to the KDE button that can launch just about everything, there is a console button, Konqueror, JuK (music), KPlayer (video??) and K3B for CD and DVD burning.

I easily configured my ethernet card for static IP with KDE -- it was as clear and easy as any other distro I've used.

While KillBill has Wine installed, I couldn't manage to get any Win apps to run. Perhaps I'm missing something? I'll try again later.

Another thing: The version of KWord in Slax killbill is 1.5.2, with KDE 3.5.4. I some trouble getting "smart" quotes working -- it just wouldn't do it. I didn't have this problem in MepisLite, the distro in which I fell in love with KWord. The "current" version of KWord is 1.6.2, so maybe this is a bug that got squashed.

The KDE desktop in Slax killbill is surprisingly responsive. Menus appear immediately (this being a 3 GHz Dell, I expect that, but I don't always get it).

And I got a nice surprise: Many printers on my network were automatically configured and usable without me doing anything. I was able to print to one immediately ... I wasn't able to configure an additional printer, but I didn't spend a lot of time on it, since I could print elsewhere.

KDE is such a nice desktop -- the screen resize and rotate button on the lower right allowed me to immediately pick my favored resolution -- 1280 x 1024, and as I said above, it looks terrific.

I still love KWord. It's my favorite Linux word processor by far. It's much lighter on resources than Open Office, and I've read that it's even lighter than Abiword.

KDE's Konquerer browser responds fast and displays pages well. There was no Flash player installed, though.

Sound worked fine. I had to tweak it with ALSA Mixer in a terminal window, but that's normal for my PC.

At this stage, the sticking points are the smart quotes in Kword, and for the killbill edition, figuring out how Wine works. (Wine remains a mystery to me. The only time I could do anything with Wine was when I installed IEs4Linux in Xubuntu -- that worked. Now I see why Codeweavers has a business.)

Maybe I need to run Winecfg or something. The reason I burned the KillBill version of Slax first was because one of my goals in running Linux is to port over the two Windows apps that I need at the Daily News -- Internet Explorer (because our in-house Web system requires it -- and no, Firefox won't work) and the Hermes publishing system from Unisys, which is our main software for putting out the paper. I'm not against giving $40 to Codeweavers to make it happen, but I figured that a distro with Wine in it already would somehow be easier to use.

Still, my first impression of Slax is a favorable one. I've already burned CDs of the plain Slax and the smaller Popcorn edition, meant to install on 128 MB flash media. I'll try these in the Dell, and hopefully soon in the Thin Puppy (the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client I'm using to write this post). If it works, will I have to rename that machine Thin Slax? Yes, I will.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I had a little problem with the MUT -- Puppy Linux's Mounting Utility Tool -- and I can't seem to mount my USB flash drive (or any drive, for that matter -- the CD drive is not connected, but it still appeared as a possible mounting choice). So I did something I haven't done in the eight days previous -- I killed X Windows, which took me down to a shell prompt, and restarted the window manager.

It didn't help, nor did trying to kill out some of the errant processes with KP. This isn't enough to end the Thin Puppy Torture Test, but since I can't mount any external drives, it does mean that the test may not go on much longer. I have the network unplugged at the moment, but I'll replug and try to post this. If I continue to have IP coming through, then enough of the system is working to keep the Torture Test running. I can still save to the file system in RAM, and I've got 40.7 MB of space left.

So at the moment I've got a bunch of processes running that I can't get rid of ... but I do have networking, and I am able to post on Movable Type. So the Torture Test goes on ...

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I know what you're saying: Big freakin' deal. I leave my PC running all the time, all week, all month, all year, yadda, yadda -- what's so special about you leaving the Thin Puppy running for a full week?

A good question.

The difference is that the Thin Puppy is a thin client (a Maxspeed Maxterm) -- 13 1/8 inches tall, 2 1/8 inches wide and 10 1/2 inches deep, and weighs maybe 5 pounds (I can't disconnect it to drop on the scale, so that's an estimate) -- an as a thin client consists of a features-challenged motherboard, small fanless power supply AND little else. I stuffed it with 256 MB of RAM (there's only one PC133 RAM slot, and the maximum the VIA-powered motherboard will address is 256 MB), and there's only one IDE input. As a thin client, the OS (which in this case might've been Windows CD) is on a Compact Flash card plugged into a CF-to-IDE adapter.

The client came with no memory or CF card, both of which I added. I originally put Puppy Linux 2.14 on the CF card (via the Puppy Universal Installer, which allows for installation of the OS on a CF card via a USB card reader, with the CF to later function as an IDE hard drive via the adapter. But either I killed the CF chip, or it died a premature death on its own.

To get the Thin Puppy running again, I connected a CD-R drive to the IDE header (the CF-to-IDE adapter is powered by a floppy power plug, and there's an extra hard-drive power plug that I used for the CD drive). I loaded Puppy from the CD -- the entire program goes into RAM -- and disconnected the drive. So now Puppy is running entirely in RAM. I've since even disconnected the USB flash drive I was using for downloaded files.

The Thin Puppy does have a fan, but it only works when the box is held at a 75-or-so degree angle (why, I don't know). The Via C3 Samuel 1 GHz processor has a unique heat sink, with pipes going from it to additional heat-sink material that's connected to the metal case for additional heat dissipation. So far the CPU and chipset seems to be running OK. If I could figure out what the actual CPU temp was, I would.

AND ... Puppy Linux isn't generally considered an OS that you boot and leave running for weeks at a time. First of all, it works great as a live CD, and since it runs in RAM, lots of things could be lost if it crashes before a proper shutdown. But since I've upped the RAM from 128 MB to 256, there have been no crashes ... and all has worked perfectly through this -- day 8.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's Day 3 of the Thin Puppy torture test, in which the Thin Puppy -- a Maxspeed Maxterm thin client repurposed to run Puppy Linux 2.14 -- will run continuously to test the hardware and OS ... and also because since the Compact Flash memory died, I booted the machine with a CD drive, then disconnected said drive. So the Thin Puppy is running totally in RAM (I have a 256 MB USB flash drive connected in case I want to save anything big, but there's no OS or apps on it), and it can't be rebooted without me cracking the case open and re-plugging the CD drive, or inserting a pre-programmed CF module in the back (the only "disk" this thin client is wired for is the CF, via an IDE adapter that plugs into the motherboard and a floppy power connector.

Again, the Maxspeed Maxterm, which I bought on eBay, is running a Via C3 1 GHz processor with special heatsink that pipes to two auxiliary heatsinks bolted to the metal case; a VT133 chipset, 256 MB of PC133 RAM, all on a Mini-ITX motherboard of undetermined origin (I don't think Via made it, and it could be PC Chips, but I can't confirm that either), plus a small, fanless power supply, also in the case, fed by an external 12 V laptop-style adapter, and the previously mentioned CF-to-IDE adapter with access through the back of the case.

One thing that Puppy Linux offers is a running tally of how much free memory you have for data. I'm currently at 45.2 MB. The computing session began on March 26, with 49.5 MB and has fluctuated all the while. Much of that is taken up in cache for the SeaMonkey browser; emptying the cache restores some of the memory. But as long as things stay at an acceptable level and nothing else crashes the system, the Thin Puppy should keep going.

The system only achieved its current stability when I swapped in the 256 MB RAM stick -- it would buckle on Flash animation elements of Web pages with 128 MB of RAM because Puppy only had about 5 MB of free RAM for data (it's not ALL the free RAM, just that set aside for data -- caches, added programs, downloads NOT made to the USB flash drive and such).

I used the Dillo browser for most of the day. It's much lighter and faster than SeaMonkey, which itself isn't that slow. But Dillo loads instantly and displays pages almost as fast. The way it achieves that speed is, in some part, because it doesn't use CSS style sheets, Java, or any of that other stuff that makes most browsers work hard. For general Web browsing in which you don't have to fill out forms and do other complex things (or need Flash), it's a great app to have on hand. And while SeaMonkey is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS, Dillo is a Linux-only application, as far as I can tell.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Before I pulled the CD-R drive, I did boot the Thin Puppy with Zen Walk 4.2, another of the Linux distributions that are supposed to run well on lower-spec computers. I did it before I boosted the memory from 128 MB to 256 MB, so it all looked pretty good until I loaded up Firefox, at which point the CPU went crazy and killed X. Then, when I tried to shut down, it wouldn't do it all the way. Maybe things will be different with 256 MB. It made a helluva difference for Puppy Linux.

By the way, Zen Walk is based on Slackware, and it ran, while Xubuntu, based on Debian would not boot.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I thought that it was the power drain from the CD-R drive that made the Thin Puppy's fan turn on, but it turns out that the fan's sudden spin to life had nothing to do with the added drive. I confirmed this by pulling the drive out from the Thin Puppy, which was lying on its side to accomodate the short cables. Once I removed the CD-R, the fan stayed on. When I stood the Thin Puppy upright, the fan went off. Put back on its side again, the fan starts up. Strange. Is there a short in the wiring that somehow resolves itself when the thing is turned at a 90-degree angle? I can't worry about it too much because the Thin Puppy (Maxspeed Maxterm thin client) never gets all that hot. The VT133 portion of the chipset gets the hottest, but the Via C3 1 GHz CPU never gets that hot -- and it's got a heatsink that's piped and connected to the metal case for maximum heat transfer, so there's really nothing to worry about.

I'm disappointed that I couldn't boot any Debian-derived CDs with the CD-R drive hooked up, but I'm happy that Puppy Linux is comfortable with 256 MB of RAM. I pulled the CD-R drive while the thin client was running, so now it'll stay running as long as it doesn't crash ... or I get a new CF card and reboot it ... or ????

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally got around to stuffing the Thin Puppy (Maxspeed Maxterm thin client) with 256 MB of PC133 RAM, and now I can even load dailynews.com, with all its various Flash animation components, WITHOUT killing the Thin Puppy. With the new memory, there's about 48 MB of RAM left over for Puppy Linux 2.14 to play with. I'd love to see how Damn Small Linux works with this setup, but it -- and all other Debian-based Linuxes I have on CD -- won't even boot. Something about a disk error. Well, whatever's in error there is not with Puppy, which is running fine right now.

I suspect that if I loaded those other Debians on a hard drive (or even Compact Flash), I'd be able to boot them on the Thin Puppy, but now with Puppy Linux itself booting and actually working, I couldn't be happier (for the minute, at least).

Hardware note: Now that the CD-R drive is hooked up, the fan runs continuously on the Thin Puppy, whereas it never ran at all before. Therefore it must be responding to the increased load on the power supply (this is a pretty small DC supply to run actual physical drives, as opposed to a measly CF card).

So I can say now, with some certainty, that Puppy Linux is a bit uncomfortable with 128 MB RAM, but comfortable enough with 256 MB (the maximum the Thin Puppy can address, by the way). Since boosting an old PC to 156 MB is a fairly cheap proposition (you ARE buying your memory on the used market, aren't you?), then Puppy is a very viable system with which to rescue said PCs for productive use.

Memory addendum: In Puppy Linux, downloading to the "My Documents" file stores your data in memory until you exit Puppy, but downloading to an extermal drive -- in this case a USB flash drive -- does NOT ding your RAM, so it is possible to work with big files in Puppy and not bring your system to its knees. Goooood dog.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now that the Thin Puppy is out of commission due to the dead CF card, I booted Puppy LInux 2.14 on the Dell (3 GHz, 512 MB RAM), and it ran like a champ. Video looks GREAT. I opened up a bunch of Web pages in SeaMonkey, and all displayed perfectly, even the Flash animation classified ads at DailyNews.com that brought the Thin Puppy to its knees.

I needed to get a bunch of pictures off of an SD card, and the card reader wasn't working in Windows XP, so I fired up Puppy again, and it was extremely easy to get the photos off of the SD card and into a directory on my hard drive. Puppy just makes it so easy to find drives, mount them and navigate with the Rox filer.

So sorry, Puppy, it could be that the Masxpeed MaxTerm thin client's design isn't conducive to working with a full-fledged OS ... or it could be the memory. More testing is needed, but if you have the kind of power that this Dell has, your Puppy Linux experience will be a good one.

It just underscores the rule that one OS doesn't fit all computers or computer users, and it pays to check out an operating system on many different kinds of hardware to determine the proper fit. Yep, it's like shoes. You don't know how good they are until you've walked that proverbial mile.

That said, the next step is to get a CD-ROM drive hooked up to the Thin Puppy and start pumping other OSes into it, everything from Damn Small Linux to the bigger DSL-n, Puppy from CD, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Zen Walk, Mepis Lite, and probably more.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While trying to prepare the Thin Puppy to dual-boot from Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux, the whole thing crashed, with the aftermath being a dead CF card. It has soured me on the use of flash RAM as a boot medium ... and now the Thin Puppy has a heart, but not a brain.

Next for the Thin Puppy: Pulling the spare CD-ROM drive from This Old PC, running MANY Linux distros that way ... or stuffing a 3.5-inch hard drive in there -- there's space for it.

One thing this experiment has done is dampen my enthusiasm for Puppy Linux. Performance with 128 MB of RAM is less than satisfactory. I had a lot of crashes. Downloading large files wreaked havoc with available RAM and made the system unstable. Working entirely in RAM, nothing saves to physical drives until the computing session is finished, meaning data loss in the event of a crash.

Streaming audio and video was choppy -- I expected that from an older VIA-powered board, but -- on the plus side -- Puppy used a very light program that played MP3s downloaded to the system without trouble (something Gxine couldn't do).

Still, configuration of the system has been easier in Puppy than in any other Linux I've tried. Networking, sound, printing, mounting drives, installing a bootable OS -- all goes smoothly in Puppy. And as a live CD, working entirely in RAM is more palatable -- everything saves to your pup_save file when you power down. And it makes the live CD environment work quickly. But with 128 MB of memory, when stress on the system climbs, Puppy starts accessing the drive like mad -- swapping, perhaps? -- and with a CF, that can't be good, especially for a system that is billed as being easy on flash memory. That's true when you work from CD and write to pup_save on flash, but not so true in a HD installation. I don't think Puppy is really meant for that. Like Knoppix, Puppy Linux is designed as a live CD and while it can be installed to HD, I'm not recommending it at this point.

The crashes with 128 MB of RAM are troubling. The Thin Puppy's motherboard maxes out at 256 MB, and once you get to 512 MB of RAM, you can pretty much run any Linux distro. Generally "light" means light on RAM and CPU speed, not just one or the other. Still, I'll have to try Puppy on This Old PC, a traditional box which I can run with 128 MB or 256 MB to compare performance.

Again, to sum up, Puppy is designed to run from a live CD and be shut down and restarted daily. It isn't designed to be installed to a hard drive or flash medium, although it's easy to do so. I really love the working environment of Puppy, but doing everything in RAM memory presents its problems, and I've experienced them.

Question: Is it the Thin Puppy itself, or its RAM (the amount) that's causing the trouble?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Thin Puppy (Maxspeed MaxTerm 1 GHz thin client converted to stand-alone Compact Flash-driven Puppy Linux box with 128 MB RAM) is behaving today.

I've done a bunch of Yahoo! e-mail, posted blog entries, edited photos -- and there have been no problems. Oh, and I haven't gone to Dailynews.com, which has a bunch of embedded videos that brought the Thin Puppy to its knees yesterday. Nor did I try to install any new, giant applications, another deal-breaker with 128 MB RAM Puppy (I hear you need 192 MB to successfully download and install bigger packages).

I think part of my problem is that I am running Puppy installed on a hard drive -- even if it's a CF chip acting like a hard drive. If I was running from CD, I think the whole thing would work that much better. It's something I plan to try out, since I do have a spare CD-ROM drive; if only I could pry it out of This Old PC (a screw head broke off, leaving it in there for the duration).

Soon the 512 MB experiment will begin. I feel that I have to write more -- and more -- about Linux, Windows AND Mac OS in regard to memory. I think 512 MB is the minimum for Windows XP. We're running something like 384 MB with OS X 10.3.9, and I know it would run better with more RAM. Windows Vista needs 1 GB minimum. Going back to Windows 2000, it runs pretty good with 256 MB, and I suspect it could handle 128 MB, though I haven't done a real-world test. Windows 98 can run in 32 MB, but it crashes all the time; 128 MB gives 98 the room it needs to run, but I wouldn't recommend anybody actually use it -- 2000 is that much better, as is XP.

For Linux, you have a choice of window managers, everything from Fluxbox to JWM, to IceWm, GNOME, KDE ... so there is a flexibility that you don't have with Windows or Mac OS (although there's noise out there that KDE will be available soon for the Unix-based Mac OS X). There are distros out there that work with low-RAM machines -- Damn Small Linux and DeLi Linux among them. At the DeLi site, they say the test box is a 486 laptop with 16 MB RAM, but they recommend 32 MB. With more RAM, you can run more stuff, like Firefox and Gnumeric. Mannn ... I have a DeLi CD, but it's not a live disc, so you need to do an install. (For those who want to know, DeLi uses the Fluxbox or IceWM window managers, with Abiword for word processing, Dillo for Web browsing, See, that's the difference between a "lite" system with less functionality and a "lite" system that works on hardware that will choke on most of the Linux distros out there. DSL can also run with 16 MB ... but runs entirely in RAM with 128 MB. I believe it. But it's too hard to make a bootable CF. I'll try again, but the Puppy Universal Installer is a gift from the Linux gods that I .

Xubuntu is said to run with 64 MB RAM, but I can't believe it can do well even with 128 MB. Something to test. I couldn't even get the live CD to boot on This Old PC with 262 MB ... so that one will have to wait for a new hard drive and the "alternate install" disc. Zen Walk, which is also for lower-power machines, recommends 128 MB RAM as a minimum.

MepisLite (the small version of SimplyMepis) which hasn't reached release 1.0 yet but is pretty stable in my testing of it, is one of the most intriguing "lite" distributions, since it includes the KDE desktop and KOffice. That one's going to get a major workout vs. Xubuntu and Zen Walk in my experimental future.

So depending on what day it is, Puppy is performing well with 128 MB RAM. When the going gets tough, the system starts swapping, and as I've learned, swapping to Compact Flash is a recipe for disaster. Yesterday I had a couple of loops running and hogging the CPU. I could've just killed X and restarted it, but I instead ran KP and slowly waited for the mouse to work its way through all the processes that were causing the trouble. And that means 24 hours of uptime for the Thin Puppy at this point. As I've also said, I think these problems are minimized or eliminated when running Puppy from CD -- the system isn't really using your hard drive -- in fact, it doesn't even need one -- so there's no swapping. What I have to do is get This Old PC hooked up to the Internet so I can replicate these conditions and see how a 333 MHz box deals with it.

I guess the bottom line is that when you get to low RAM, you have three choices: add more RAM, run an older Windows OS, or run a slighter Linux than the main distros. I think the answer, for me at this point, is dual booting.

In reference to today's work with the Thin Puppy, I'm happy to report that mtPaint, the included image editor in the Puppy Linux distribution, works quickly and easily -- and I even was able to put a border around a photo. Who needs the GIMP? By the way, mtPaint uses the GTK+ toolkit and runs in both Linux and Windows.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That's the question I'm asking myself at this very moment. Running Puppy Linux 2.14 on the Thin Puppy -- the repurposed Maxspeed MaxTerm thin client -- is a mixed bag at this point in the testing process.

The thin client -- with Puppy on a Compact Flash card -- is built around a Via motherboard with a 1 GHz Via Samuel processor, with a slowish 133 MHz front side bus and equally slowish SDRAM memory. It's spec'd for PC133 memory, but I've got a 128 MB stick of PC100 in there. Previously I've said that Puppy runs OK with 128 MB, but I have rethought that position, and I'm saying now that you need at least 256 MB to be comfortable with Puppy.

One of the features of Puppy is that it's designed to be run from CD-ROM but can be installed to a hard drive, bootable USB flash drive or, in the case of the Thin Puppy, a bootable CF chip plugged into a CF-to-IDE adapter so the motherboard sees it as a standard IDE hard drive. And Puppy is also designed to save to disk only once per computing session -- when you shut down. But with 128 MB, when the processes involved in displaying a complex Web page or streaming video are brought to bear, the CPU starts to strain, the amount of free memory can drop, and Puppy Linux starts accessing the hard drive -- in this case the CF chip -- using a swap file, I presume. That can't be good for the life of the CF chip, nor the computing experience as a whole, since swapping to flash is much, much slower than doing the same operation with a standard hard disk.

And that 133 MHz FSB can't be helping either. While a 1 GHz processor is plenty fast for most pedestrian uses, a quicker FSB with faster memory -- such as today's DDR and DDR2 -- can really make a system work faster.

The dilemma. Puppy is supposedly designed to run well on older systems with less memory. But at 128 MB, you can't even download and install any "major" add-on packages, such as Open Office or Wine -- there just isn't enough memory to do it. And once you get to 512 MB of system memory, Puppy will obey, but you could probably run ANY distribution of Linux out there, like Ubuntu, Mepis, Fedora, OpernSUSE or what have you. If you have the memory but not the CPU speed, the lower-spec'd Xubuntu, MepisLite or Zen Walk distributions might meld well with your hardware.

But on a fast system, Puppy will indeed fly. With less memory, the swapping can really gum things up. Damn Small Linux is designed to work on even lower-spec'd hardware -- down to even 32 MB of RAM, I've heard. It's also designed to be a live CD but can be installed to become a more traditional Debian.

Since it's a thin client, the Thin Puppy isn't awash in peripherals -- or even places to plug them in. I could remove the CF adapter and install a 3.5-inch hard drive, but I doubt that I could hook up a CD-ROM drive, even temporarily, unless both drives could share a single IDE header (as there is only one). I'll have to look into it. Luckily the CF chips can be prepared for Puppy on another computer via a card reader -- the Puppy Universal installer takes care of that. I haven't yet figured out how to make a bootable Damn Small Linux CF chip or USB drive -- and the Thin Puppy won't boot from USB. I wonder if a USB-connected CD-ROM drive would even boot this $75 box. Probably not.

But as it stands now, I'm going to try to stuff the Thin Puppy with more memory at some point and see how she runs. Barring that, I've got to reassemble This Old PC (which has 262 MB of addressable memory) and get that connected to Ethernet to compare and contrast with the Thin Puppy.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now I have TED. The Ted Word Processor, a Linux/Unix-only application that saves in Rich Text Format, which can be read by Microsoft Word and just about every other word-processing program out there.

I'm getting a little flicker as I type this, but the letters look good. The one thing I hate about Ted and Abiword is that there's no easy way from the keyboard to change the case of letters. In Ted, ctrl-U underlines type. Same for Abiword, which also underlines when ctrl-shift-u is pressed.

Again, since these word processors were created by and for geeks, who feel more comfortable using text editors rather than word processors, the functions that writers and editors take for granted (directional quotes, the ability to easily change the case of letters ...) are just not present. At least in Abiword you can change the case of words and letters by highlighting a word, clicking the Format menu, clicking Change Case, then choosing the appropriate case change, then clicking OK. That's a lot of steps to do what in WordPad (one of my very favorite shareware apps) is done with ctrl-shift-u or -l on any highlighted word or passage.

Now that I'm done griping, I do like Ted. Like Abiword, it's blazingly fast and looks pretty good on screen, too. And now that one of the developers of KOffice told me that saving in Word-compatible .doc format is often just saving in RTF with a .doc suffix, I'm a lot better about using Ted and KWord, the latter of which blows these smaller programs out of the water.

I can't run KOffice on this box, which under Puppy Linux is using Joe's Window Manager (JWM) and not KDE. And with 128 MB of memory, Puppy Linux can't run Open Office , so for the moment it's a shootout between Ted and Abiword for supremacy on this desktop. I pretty much know Abiword is going to win, but I do like Ted. Both are, as I've probably over-mentioned, blazing fast. And that's the best thing a program can be.

(Warning: I couldn't copy and paste from Ted into the SeaMonkey Web browser. I had to save my Ted document, open it with Abiword, then copy and paste into Movable Type. Abiword wins. Over and out.)

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You'd think with a 1 GHz processor and a super-fast Internet connection, the Thin Puppy would handle streaming video and audio reasonably well. Not so. It's jerky, and frequently the machine just slows down as Puppy Linux begins accessing the CF drive -- creating a swap file, I presume.

So is it the motherboard's video and audio hardware ... or is it the 128 MB of system memory? I'm betting on the latter. Anything that keeps the system from creating swap space is bound to speed things up considerably, because creating swap files and writing to them is slow, all the slower when your storage medium is flash memory -- which in Puppy isn't supposed to be written to at all during the computing session.

All I know is that when I downloaded a 50 MB ISO image and tried to actually ... work with it .. . the available memory went down by .... 50 MB -- and that's out of 73 MB available after the OS is loaded into RAM. That's one of the weak points of this box -- the FSB (front side bus) runs at 133 MHz ... that's why I can use slow PC-133 memory (and am trying to get by with PC-100) ... but it's gotta hit the performance. ...

So the moral of this story is -- front side bus speed matters (that's why it's listed in all the Fry's ads), fast memory matters, and having a lot of memory also matters. If I can find a 512 MB stick of PC-133 RAM, I bet things get better, even for streaming audio and video.

But at 128 MB, the Thin Puppy is doing very, very well for tasks that don't involve those two resource-intensive tasks.

And this leads me to the entry that will, at some point, be on top of this ...

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)