Puppy Linux News

Josh on August 6, 2010 (3:36AM)

Hi, I just wanted to say THANK YOU to any of the great people who have had a hand in making puppy, promoting it, or writing guides on it. My wife's parent's computer recently broke down using XP. I struggled with the damn thing for 4 days trying to fix anything that I could think of to make it run. Ultimately I got it to run perfectly and then when I gave it back to her parents they performed a hard restart and the registry was fried. I had no idea how i was going to get their files off the hard drive but then i found puppy. All i can say is wow. I can now take everything i want off th hard drive and save all their files. Puppy is so easy for me to use. Since i'm a old school windows user i really appreciated how the puppys interface worked, it came like second nature to me. I'm now very excited to check out all the other OS's that linux has... I think I may be leaving windows very soon! Thank you!

Manuel Alderete on July 21, 2010 (7:47PM)

Puppy Linux was my intro to the world of Linux after using Windows since the 3.1 days. I've been using Puppy since Dec. 2009 and I run it on all my old computers!

My oldest computer is a 400 MHz Gateway with 256 MB RAM. With Puppy Linux 5.01, I can do the following with it:

* watch YouTube videos (albeit a bit sluggish, due to old hardware)
* wireless USB Internet adapter works flawlessly
* listen to ShoutCast.com streaming music (using Gxine default player or VLC Player)
* surf the Web with Opera 10.1, SeaMonkey, or Chromium
* check POP email accounts
* MP3 music & podcasts with VLC Player
* spreadsheets
* edit photos with mtPaint (awesome little program), or GIMP
* download torrents
* PM Yahoo Messenger friends using Attym
* type reports, essays, letters, etc with AbiWord or OpenOffice
* burn/rip DVDs and CDs
* pay bills online with less worry of viruses, malware, trojans than in Windows
* run old Windows games in "Stella" using WINE for Puppy
* read PDF e-books and convert files to PDF
* burn .ISO images to DVD/CD
* take screenshots of web sites and the desktop
* desktop widgets: clock, calendar, CPU meter, etc.

(only 1 bad thing: my Lexmark 3350 printer doesn't print with Puppy. It's an older printer anyway.)


Puppy Linux 5 has almost all the same programs that a typical Ubuntu Linux user would want:

* Chromium, Firefox, Opera browsers (with all extensions)
* Thunderbird email
* OpenOffice suite
* VLC Player
* Cinelerra video editor (think "Sony Vegas")
* WINE
* GIMP
* Skype
* Audacity
* Songbird
* Foxit PDF reader
* themes!

And Puppy Linux works like a race-dog on my 933 MHz computer!

Manuel in Los Angeles, CA
(written from 400 MHz comp while listening to ShoutCast)

Gardner on July 18, 2010 (10:25AM)

It took me *hours* of messing about to get Ubuntu (via a live CD) to go wireless with my Broadcom card on my old machine. And then to twist the knife when I finally did get online I found it wouldn't install Wine.

Then I tried Puppy . . . Did it get me online lickity split? Of course. Did it install Wine without a hitch? No problem.

This Linux flavour is the most intelligent bit of software that's come out since Firefox or alt.binz. And to see that it'll make *and* burn a live cd w/ my changes? Well this lad's gobsmacked! Linux really is worth something after all!

You're the best! Thanks much!

john f on May 19, 2010 (8:59AM)

awesome version. i am stunned at how fast this is. i use centos for server application, and have used linux mint for helping out friends and coworkers with problems, but i am stunned with what you have done with puppy. my p4 1.8 ghz FLIES! thank you.

Mike on May 19, 2010 (6:49AM)

I discovered Puppy Linux around two years ago. I use the OS for recovering data off the hard-drives of unbootable Windows and Linux machines, as well as other maintenance tasks. This is currently my favorite Linux distro, please keep up the good work :)

John P on May 6, 2010 (11:06PM)

You may not have experienced the very dubious experience of Windows 7, or the limitations of such media players as the Western Digital WD TV (and the later "live" version. These devices are hardly ideal for playing media. Even with the Windows 7 "Media Player" you cannot play a movie without minor, but greatly annoying, dropouts. The WD TV seems to be falling into the trap of not supporting the proliferating codecs we are being swamped with.


This Windows 7 machine is a quad core 64-bit machine with 4GB of memory. Yet it cannot perform one single near real-time task well.


On the other hand, the low hardware demands of the Woof family allow me to run it on older computers that are not suitable for more "modern" operating systems, including Ubuntu.


For my final accolade I have to mention my ASUS EeePC 901. This is a Linux version, not the lesser XP one. I like the basic computer. But not the fact that ASUS seem to have stopped all upgrades for it. Their native OS is hardly what I would call ideal - apart from other things, one wrong mouse click and it changes to Chinese. Unfortunately running Ubuntu on such a small screen is not ideal at all. The ability to use Puppy means I am assured of an OS path to the future for a powerful and robust hardware platform.


In short, I love Puppy, and so far I am equally loving Quirky.


All my thanks.
John P

Carrie J on May 2, 2010 (7:21PM)

I am an almost geek type, not quite but close. Actually I am an 80 year old retired Microwave engineer who finally reached the saturation point with MS in all of it's releases and began trying the Linux family. It soon became apparent that I was going to have to do my own version or just give up. On the advice of another "tired" old friend, I loaded the puppy and gained instant satisfaction. My original thought was to spend a lot of time gathering those pieces of linux that I wanted to use and put them in a small kernal that did not take all day to open and was stable. Puppy filled the bill and then some. I want to say thank you to all who have put this software together and maybe now we can all get to work using the darned computer the way god intended. Real good job guys!

Sam on May 2, 2010 (7:16PM)

I just thought you guys would like to know I think that Puppy linux is a wonderful O/S. Its amazing that that Puppy at 100Megs has more basic utils then Windows. It's actually sad. With this O/S I can take a computer that was ready for the trash and make it a fully functional computer. Your software is excellent and I hope you don't give up ever on it. It has a lot of potential.

Patrick on April 26, 2010 (9:42AM)

I just want to say what a pleasure it is to use Puppy Linux. I downloaded the pup-431.iso yesterday and burned it to a CD. I fired up my Toshiba laptop to take Puppy for a spin. I was blown away by how smoothly and easily everything worked without any tweaks at all on my part. My LAN was immediately recognized and the connection setup for the Internet was quick and super easy...both eth0 and wlan. The default script for the firewall really surprised me. The website grc.com reports complete stealth and all I had to do was select the "default" setup for the firewall. I visited hulu.com and the videos played smoothly at full screen. The basic work-related apps for word processing, etc, work effectively. So far, gxine has played every video file that I have thrown at it. My audio works without any problem. Basically, EVERYTHING just plain works beautifully! Thank you VERY much for all the effort that must have gone into creating this stellar O/S and for the ongoing effort that must currently be going on to maintain and improve Puppy for happy end users such as me. All the best to you!

tuxtoo on February 15, 2010 (3:22PM)

Been using Puppy Linux since v4.0 and liked it very much but thought it was lacking in certain places. However, I thought I would continue using PL until such time as I found my perfect distro. Some time and many distros later and I still haven't found my perfect distro. But wait, I'm now on Puppy Linux 4.31, perhaps I have just found my perfect distro. Many thanks to Barry and the developers for the perfect distro.

Stuart

North Yorkshire

netlinx on February 13, 2010 (9:08PM)

Now Available:
http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/lnx/lnx-4.31.iso

netlinx on February 12, 2010 (10:55AM)

Linux 4.31 with Firefox, Skype, Video.
Remastered and preconfigurated.

http://sites.google.com/site/lnx431/iso/lnx-4.31.part1.rar
http://sites.google.com/site/lnx431/iso/lnx-4.31.part2.rar
http://sites.google.com/site/lnx431/iso/lnx-4.31.part3.rar
http://sites.google.com/site/lnx431/iso/lnx-4.31.part4.rar
http://sites.google.com/site/lnx431/iso/lnx-4.31.part5.rar

John Rothfield on February 5, 2010 (6:14PM)

A quick note of thanks to the Puppy team. I'm a software engineer and have tried various versions of Linux, including Debian and Damn Small Linux. A while back I looked at Damn Small Linux to put on some ancient laptops. I had a slightly negative impression of Puppy as not being a serious engineering effort(maybe because of the puppy logo). Recently I looked again at using my 2000 era Sony laptop and tried Puppy on it. I was amazed at the speed and the fact that it picked up every piece of hardware, including internal and external modems, wireless card etc. Great job! I also appreciate the user-friendly scripts you've written for network configuration, modem configuration, etc.

Darren on January 25, 2010 (5:12PM)

First let me say Puppy Linux v4.3.1
has exceded ALL expectations I had for this computer.
I decided to try to make some use of this P3 700Mhz
Compaq Presario 1700 w/ 128 MB's Ram which orignally was a WinMe machine that I tried XP on but ran slow and VERY hot.
I tried many mini distros etc. (too many to list but you all know them I am sure) Then I stumbled on Puppy as I was playing w/ antiX-mepis v8.2 at the time and was amazed how it could run in 128 MB's ram that from cd so I set it up with a duel boot.
After finding a D-link wireless pc-card for it I tried with no luck to connect to a wireless network at any reasonable rate or connectivity with anti-X and moved on to Puppy. All I can say is WOW, not a single issue, not one (except for user malfunction of course).
So in closing this has been a lot of fun especially since I have been using "Jaunty" Ubuntu as my home machine for about 2 years now and looking forward to torturing the hell out of it now that the re-learning curve for is not as steep.
Thank You VERY much for the effort.

Sincerely, Darren
Victoria B.C. Canada

Neal Kuwabara on January 13, 2010 (7:40AM)

Thanks to everyone involved with the development of Puppy Linux and making it available for all. I do a bit of PC troubleshooting and have found the Puppy Linux OS to be an invaluable resource. I say this after I just recently discovered Puppy Linux. It has been a life saver, helping me to recover hard drive content in various situations where recovery looked to be either too much work or too costly. I know I have just touched upon Puppy Linux's capabilities and look forward to exploring it much more. I think the fact that I have barely gotten into its capabilities and already have found it to be a must have tool, says a lot. Again, my thanks to all.

MattE on January 6, 2010 (10:40PM)

ROCK SOLID After 3 Years of Abuse!

Three years ago I set up Puppy 2.16 on an old 667Mhz PC for my son to use in college. It's on a home network with other roommate's Windoze PCs. After several months, all the Win PCs in the house are horribly infested to the point the Puppy Linux PC is the only one left running. The Puppy 2.16 PC is still running today (1/6/10). No viruses, no trojans, no reloading the OS.

turbopuppy on December 29, 2009 (2:41AM)

"My only difficulty is that the laptop is not powerful enough to run Firefox."

Use Opera 10.1 - the browser of choice among Puppy Linux users.
Runs a lot faster and has much better features out-of-the-box than SeaMonkey.

Norm Meunier on December 22, 2009 (10:40AM)

OK, where do I start? I can't say enough good things about Puppy Linux! I came across this O/S in my search for software to clone hard drives. I am a POS Support person that maintains/preps 150 computer cash registers. About two-thirds of them are Flytech PC4s, and the other one third are Toshiba TEC units. Neither one of these computers are like standard PCs.

I had Seagate cloning software with the Flytech units, but the Toshiba TEC units had nothing (no diagnostics or anything to clone a drive with). I downloaded every kind of Windows or standalone cloning program out there, and nothing would work. More often than not, the video wasn't rendered properly (you either couldn't see anything on the screen or it was severely corrupted). I didn't have the time or inclination to install Windows XP and all the other accompanying software onto the Toshiba units, and was desperate to find a way to copy over a fully prepped hard drive.

Then, one day, the heavens parted and light shone through... I downloaded the Puppy .ISO and soon discovered that it booted in seconds with my external USB CD-ROM drive! Then, I realized the power of what was in front of me.

Most of my defective PCs are full of spyware and viruses. I can now safely recover sales files from them, and pass them on to our I.T. department without fear that I'll contaminate the network with malware.

I can now clone a 20GB Toshiba hard drive in about 20 minutes or so. (Most freeware and commercial products take over an hour and a half or longer!!!)

A MILLION THANKS TO THE DEVELOPER(S) OF PUPPY LINUX!!!

This has saved me countless hours of labor. I have been running Puppy for over 5 months on three computers at home (really old stuff, mostly). I have also convinced two Windows users to convert over.

I've tried just about every distro of Linux there is, and Puppy is by far the smartest, fastest one going. I look forward to many more years of fun using Puppy. :-)

Louis Farbstein on December 20, 2009 (8:42AM)

I'm writing this message on my 10 year-old (approx.) Compaq Presario 1200 laptop. It has an AMD K6-2 475 MHz processor and 192 MB of ram. I'm on-line with a linksys wireless G PCMCIA card.

I've installed Puppy Linux to my hard drive and have it set up with a high color screen and very good video resolution. Puppy permits me to tap the touchpad for mouse clicks and hide the taskbar.

The most impressive thing about Puppy is that it is the only Linux distro to find and install my wireless card. I've tried them all, and none of the other distros could see the card, let alone make it work! I configured it using the network wizard and was on-line in no time.

My only difficulty is that the laptop is not powerful enough to run Firefox. I tried installing it, but the system hung. So, I am using its older cousin, SeaMonkey. No problem there.

Thanks for a great distro that does everything it's advertised to do.

Louis Farbstein
12-22-2009

coincutter on December 14, 2009 (5:09PM)

December 14th, 2009

Running an old hp laptop 512k no hard drive. Two Sandisk cruisers and this puppy rocks. Everything worked - absolute no brainer to install and set up. I run Ubuntu 9.10 on my Sony Vaio as it's a snot for most every distro out there. Puppy would run but it wasn't happy with all the Sony bells and whistles.

This release does everything I could ask of it and more. I have only played with Puppy for a few days but needless to say I am impressed. So much power in such a little package. Now It's just a matter of learning all the tricks to get lots of goodies installed.

Thanks for your efforts. This will be my computer of choice for disaster field work.

Steve
Colorado