Revive an old computer with Puppy Linux
There’s no doubt Canonical’s popular Ubuntu Linux distribution gets the majority of attention in the Linux world these days, but there are myriad others equally worthy of consideration.
I looked at Linux Mint long ago, as well as a few key Ubuntu derivatives, but today I’d like to focus on Puppy Linux, a new version of which was just recently released.
Puppy Linux began life as a really cool small-sized Linux distribution designed primarily for lower specification hardware while still providing most of the amenities that make Linux fun and usable. It included lots of original utilities and tools for completing tasks and configurations without a lot of resource overhead. Best of all, it was blazing fast. Well, the little puppy has grown up some and branched out, but is still that same light-weight wonder in spirit.
The latest release, 5.2, codenamed Lucid Puppy, is a result of branching out of the project in new directions. In late 2008 Puppy developers designed a new build system, Woof, that can take binaries of other popular distributions and incorporate them into new Puppy builds. One of the most commonly used, and probably most popular, is Ubuntu. Underneath, the foundation is still the independent Puppy we know and love, but many components come from Ubuntu such as shared libraries and some applications. As a result, Puppy Linux 5.2 is compatible with many other Ubuntu packages. Whether this has increased Puppy’s popularity could be debated, but according to Distrowatch.com‘s Page Hit Ranking, Puppy has been moving up the chart each year with the biggest jumps seen since Woof has been used to make Ubuntu compatible versions.
Small and fast
Puppy Linux’s primary distinguishing feature is that it’s tiny, taking up roughly 100MB of space. Also remarkable about it is that it loads into RAM, making it extraordinarily fast. Boot time is 30 to 40 seconds on most systems.
Similar in some ways to Damn Small Linux (DSL), Puppy is ideally suited both for older hardware and for usage situations where minimal resources are available. Whereas most LiveCD versions of Linux must go back and forth to the CD, Puppy’s RAM-loadable size means that applications are lightning fast to start and to respond to user input.
The full-featured but free Linux distribution can boot off LiveCD or DVDs, floppy disks, internal hard drive, zip disk, LS/120/240 Superdisk, flash drives or any USB memory device. In fact, it can even use a multisession formatted CD-RW/DVD-RW to save everything back to the CD/DVD with no hard drive required at all.
Booting from DVD or CD, Puppy can save all work back to the same medium. Booting from USB drive or other flash media, Puppy will minimise writes to extend its life.
In short, if you have a PC with a broken hard disk or that will no longer work with newer technology, Puppy Linux on a CD or USB is a way to keep that PC productive. Not insignificantly, it’s also a perfect example of a Linux distribution that can be used to rescue a Windows PC infected with malware.
Compatible with Ubuntu 10.04
Like both Ubuntu and Linux Mint, Puppy is extremely easy to use, it automatically detects most hardware, for example. Included with it is also a wide range of applications for productivity and other purposes.
Lucid Puppy 5.2 adds to the popular Lucid Puppy 5.1.1 distribution with a raft of upgrades and improvements to all of the main programs as well as many of the other programs in the menu and system. Based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS “Lucid Lynx” binary packages, the latest Puppy is also compatible with Ubuntu 10.04 repositories.
Included in the latest release are QuickSet for point-and-click desktop configuration, QuickPet for updates, diagnostics and package installs and several alternative window managers available through the package manager, including Xfce and Fluxbox. The software features version 2.6.33.2 of the Linux kernel. Language packs are available for 11 different languages.
No commitment
A fuller list of the version’s features is available on the Puppy Linux site, where it’s also available for download as a 127MB .iso image file. Meanwhile, you can find a testing video of the release below on YouTube.
Perhaps the best part of all, of course, is that as with most Linux distributions there’s no commitment involved in trying it out. Particularly if you have old hardware lying around, it will be worth your while to take Puppy Linux for a tour.
Specifications
- Compatible with Ubuntu packages
- QuickSet for point-and-click desktop configuration
- Quickpet for updates, diagnostics, and package installs
- Alternative window manager
- Language packs for 11 different languages
So if you have an old computer setting at home not being used, or know of someone tossing one out that is still usable, then try out Puppy Linux on it. You will be amazed on how fast it works. There is no good reason to toss out a 5-year old computer, just because it is slow from using Windows.
