Puppy Linux |
Puppy Linux is a LiveCD Linux distribution started by Barry Kauler. Puppy is very small, reliable, easy to use and fully featured. The distribution is regularly updated and is well supported and documented. The entire operating system and all the applications run from RAM, making Puppy a very fast system, and allowing the boot medium to be removed after the operating system starts. Included are applications such as Mozilla Application Suite, AbiWord, Sodipodi, Gnumeric, OpenOffice.org (with Chubby Puppy) and Gxine/Xine. The distribution is independently developed from scratch. Puppy is considered useful for working on old computers, as an emergency rescue system, as a Linux demonstration system, or as a complete general purpose operating system. It can boot from:
Installing a version of Puppy on hard disk, USB disk, Zip disk, etc. can be done from live-Puppy or another existing installation.
The default window manager is JWM (Joe s Window Manager), which provides an interface akin to Windows 95 with a modern looking appearance. Dotpup packages of the IceWM desktop, Fluxbox and former desktop FVWM95 are also available off a link on the [http://www.goosee.com/puppy/wikka/PuppyLinuxMainPage Puppy Linux Wiki].
When the system boots, everything uncompresses into a RAM area - the ramdisk . The PC needs to have at least 128M RAM (with no more than 8M shared video) for all of Puppy to load into the ramdisk, however it is possible for it to run on a PC with only about 48M RAM, because part of the system can be kept on the hard drive, or in the worst case, left on the CD.
Puppy is fairly full featured for a system that runs entirely in a ramdisk, but applications were chosen that met various constraints; size in particular. Puppy GUI applications are considered functional and fast. One of the aims of the distribution is to be extremely easy to set up, and so there are a number of wizard (software)s that take the user through the process of a range of common tasks.
Version 1.0.5 is the latest version of the distribution and uses a developer release of the Mozilla Application Suite 1.8. There are different editions of Puppy Linux that differ in their size. The standard edition uses Mozilla as the web browser and AbiWord as the word processor and is about 60 MB.
Older versions of the operating system will run comfortably on very dated hardware. For newer systems, the USB keydrive version might be better (although if USB device booting is not directly supported in the BIOS the Puppy floppy boot disk can be used to kick-start it). It is also possible to [http://www.freeveda.org/linux/puppy/index.html run Puppy Linux with Windows 9 x /ME]. Effectively you can have an operating system and a wealth of software up and running on a computer that needs no hard disk, and then remove the media from which you booted it so that there is no trace of its ever having being there!
==Multi-session==
Along with Morphix, Puppy Linux is one of the only Linux LiveCD distributions able to save files to the LiveCD itself, allowing users to carry data, and more importantly, added programs and customized settings, along with them.
=See also=
*List of Linux distributions *Comparison of Linux distributions
=External links=
*[http://www.goosee.com/puppy/ Puppy Web Site] *[http://www.goosee.com/puppy/wikka/ScreenShots Screenshots of Puppy Linux] ([http://www.goosee.com/puppy/wikka/PedigreePuppy more]) *[http://www.goosee.com/puppy/wikka PuppyLinuxWiki] - Puppy dedicated wiki * *[http://peace.wikicities.com/wiki/Tmxxine_Linux Linux Tmxxine] - a distribution based on Puppy *[http://www.goosee.com/puppy/multi-puppy.htm Puppy Linux multi-session page] *[http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT6545156120.html Getting to know Puppy Linux]|
|