Precise Puppy 5.7.1 Is Out

[login123]

Download links and information here: 

http://puppylinux.org/main/Long-Term-Supported%20Puppy.htm

Just downloaded it and made a live CD.  Nice distro. 

Didn't try it on the win 7 machine yet but it runs fine on the old xp box. 

Loads faster than earlier versions, and runs in RAM so its fast.  

Didn't get to experiment much, but it seems quite full featured. 

The downloads are 156 mb or 201 mb.

So for the cost of a CD or a tiny cheap USB stick you have a portable OS. 

 

Have fun with it. 

 

 

 

[DennisD]

Not a bad size at 156MB and I might just try the other version with Opera pre-installed.

 

Gave up on the pills by the way. New Years resolution.  

 

 

 

EDIT: D/L'ing the 201mb version and the "there" download link is significantly quicker than the "here" link.

 

Just thought I'd mention that.

[Derek891]

logon123 - Thanks for the link.  I've always meant to try Puppy, am burning it to USB as I type. Should run very well on my Lenovo.

[login123]

You're welcome, Derek.  Its a fun little distro. 

Hazelnut was the first person to mention it here, I've been hooked ever since. 

 

Dennis, I have given up on the Downloadaholics Anonymous meetings, also the anti download pills. 

Resistance is futile . . .

[hazelnut]

Puppy is one of the best little distros that there is without a doubt

 

However my favourite distro of the last few months has definitely been Linux Lite, beautiful, simple, functional and has the best help file I've seen on a livecd

 

 https://www.linuxliteos.com/

[DennisD]

My first install of the ISO to USB wouldn't boot so I'll try a different USB installer.

 

I'll have to try Linux Lite as well. Thanks for the link hazel.

[login123]

On the way over there now . . .

 

edit:  Downloading the iso at a blistering 65.5 kb / sec. 

 

Gonna have to talk to those AT&T folks, this is a DSL line.   

[login123]

Puppy is one of the best little distros that there is without a doubt

 

However my favourite distro of the last few months has definitely been Linux Lite, beautiful, simple, functional and has the best help file I've seen on a livecd

 

 https://www.linuxliteos.com/

Must say it's very nice. 

On here now using Firefox in Linux Lite.

Right now running the latest 32 bit live DVD on old HAL the Haunted, win xp, fairly fast setup.

 

The Morse Code translator works OK.  Youtube plays OK. 

No luck installing it to a 4 gb USB stick using YUMI. 

Had hoped to use YUMI so I could have several Distros on that one USB but nogo so far.  

[Alan_B]

No luck installing it to a 4 gb USB stick using YUMI. 

Had hoped to use YUMI so I could have several Distros on that one USB but nogo so far.  

On this particular Flash Drive :-

Is this problem unique to this particular Distro, or does this Flash Drive have no success with other distro's ?

 

I have limited experience of this,

but in the past I found that utilities such as Macrium Reflect would create Bootable Recovery Flash Drives,

and some devices booted but others failed

It appeared to be a problem specific to the Flash Drive that I used,

and that some tools were able to "fix" the drive so that then Macrium could succeed.

 

Since than I have encountered SuperFloppy Flash Drive, and these I think are unbootable unless you convert them to conventional MBR style.

The "benefit" of a superfloppy format seems to be that almost all its cells are "available space" for user data,

whereas a conventional MBR format excludes from "available space" all of the fictional (and non-rotating) "Track Zero" reservation.

 

I have just Googled the term

 

super floppy flash

These results may give you further clues on what to do with an unbootable Flash Drive

http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/SGD_Howto_make

http://reboot.pro/topic/4560-tool-to-see-if-superfloppy-or-harddisk-usb/

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/27035

 

[login123]

  Is this problem unique to this particular Distro, or does this Flash Drive have no success with other distro's ?

Alan: 

The USB stick is an old 4 gb fat 32, not one of those "windows 8 certified" sticks, also not a super floppy.  The problem probably lies with YUMI, not sure yet.  Later today I'm going to try a distro that I know will work (Puppy 4.2.8), will report back what happens.   

 

A small alarm on the matter of YUMI:  After it failed to install Linux Lite to the USB stick the old win xp computer locked up tighter than a pit bull on a pot roast.  I restarted, and it immediately went into check disk for the D:\ partition, which is the factory recovery partition.  Powershadow had been running, so if YUMI tried to change the C:\ partition, it would have failed.  But something happened to the D:\ partition.  Check Disk reported everything OK.  No harm done.

 

On the matter of Linux Lite:  I ran the live dvd on the old win xp machine, everything worked fine.  But when I shut it down, it took 8 or 10 minutes.  A little gray scroll bar appeared at the bottom of the screen, then completed, then the screen just stopped.  Had to shut off with the power switch. Odd to say the least. No harm done. 

 

On the matter of Puppy 5.7.1, it works very well on the old win xp machine, but on the new win 7 machine (UEFI, GPT) it boots to a screen full of confetti and freezes.  However on the old machine, one problem is that Puppy 5.7.1 will not allow me to save anything to my external USB HDD, says it is read only.  Pops a message about needing drivers, I don't remember exactly.  Will investigate more later. 

 

Hazelnut, I fear that the good ole days where we could just boot up a linux distro and go with it are ending.  If microsoft and the OEMs do this through the BIOS and the hardware drivers, not even a highly skilled coder such as I will be able to work around it.  Still fun to play around with but not as easy as it has been. 

[Alan_B]

I have had two recent disasters.

 

1.

I Using a Linux Boot tool I "Secure ATA Erased" my SSD and rebooted into a WinPE Boot Recovery disk to restore a Macrium image,

and found that the "Available Space" had shrunk a bit.

I have since been advised that contrary to the on screen instructions I should NOT have rebooted from Linux but totally shut down so the SSD firmware could recuperate.

 

2.

Without any Boot recovery tools, I simply powered up from a cold start and hit DEL until I had BIOS control,

and simply sniffed around looking but making no changes,

and then I proceeded into Windows and Windows was horrible broken with both my HDD out of action.

My MBR style HDD was "offline"

and my GPT style HDD had been changed to MBR style with the first two partitions destroyed and RAW,

and all the others were "Unallocated Space".

In this case all my drives have different "Drive Ready" delays from power on,

and a cold boot always had "Disk Numbers" allocated in one sequence.

and a Reboot delivered another sequence because the disks never stopped rotating.

I guess that my brief detour in the BIOS almost allowed a different sequence - but the end result was a race hazard and Windows mixed up Disk identities.

 

The common feature of both disasters is that I did not have a repeatable and clean transition from powered down to launch of Windows.