Puppy Linux Appears To Be Generating Popularity.

[qldit]

Good Morning Everyone, I just came across this, there must be some reason for this kind of spontenaety with Linux interested persons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDTLJYDHX3g

Cheers, qldit.

[mommalina]

Good Morning Everyone, I just came across this, there must be some reason for this kind of spontenaety with Linux interested persons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDTLJYDHX3g


Lawrence, did you check out the other two Linux videos on that site?
Tortanick would really love the 3d one down called Linux song. It's only 12 seconds long! .. :)

Lina

[qldit]

Good Afternoon Momma, I got quite a surprise to see people making these kinds of videos, there seem to be quite a few dealing with different operating systems, it certainly indicates a level of intelligence in the way that they are made!!! LOL!!!!
Cheers, Lawrence.

[PeteF]

Good Morning Everyone, I just came across this, there must be some reason for this kind of spontenaety with Linux interested persons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDTLJYDHX3g

Cheers, qldit.

Today I delivered 2 CDs to a customer who owns an older DELL PC.
1.) Freespire Linux v1.0.13
2.) Puppy Linux v2.13

I bascially showed him how to boot from the CDs on both versions,
but while I was there for only about 20 minutes, we did not get the
Internet connection working. I basically showed him how to
experiment with the network wizard in Puppy Linux and I left him
on his own to play with it.

A few hours later I received an
Email from him as follows:

Pete:
I got this Internet happening. Best bargin in town.
Now I was able to use the Puppy Version yet I chose
the more integrated setup and it found the Internet
connection. I have sent off a biz plan and
resumes..... Wheew!!!! Thanks...

[jcampi]

Lina, I don't know if I'd reach that conclusion from the youtube video you reference. I viewed it and it seems like nothing more than a advertisement for Linux. Remember, four of the top ten software programs are made by Adobe. All four Adobe programs are not available for use on Linux operated computers. There isn't really a top notch office suit available for the Linux Os either. Add this to the driver issues for Linux and you'll understand why windows has more than 90% of the market. I know this post will bring out the ire of certain users. :-)

[qldit]

Good Afternoon Pete, yes it is quite amazing how easy those wizards make things, and the Seamonkey suite complements the system so well.
In so many cases it is three mouse clicks to be on a booted desktop, and another four to be online, it is incredible, I demonstrated to a group of hardline windows chaps recently and they were open-mouthed!
No keyloggers, or viral stuff of note, and simple operation.
Just a little bit of relearning and away they go!!

I must checkout the freespire you mentioned, I am currently running Puppy Ver 2.14 Alpha but I feel the Ver 2.13 is better.
The Gparted program is removed from this 2.14A and I was often using it for setting up drives for multi-booting system partitioning, it retains the CFdisk program and an ordinary Fdisk but after using Gparted you get spoiled!!

It is quite amazing how many people that get introduced to these systems suddenly develop an interest where the need to know ever-more exists, one chap mentioned he used to love working in DOS, I showed him some of the Linux / unix commands and haven't heard from him since, his wife mentioned he had gone goo-ga and hadn't left his keyboard since.

There are so many of these people that loved command-line power that are amazed to see Linux power makes MS Dos look like kiddies toyland.
Any hi-tech person that needs some brain activity to prevent vegetation really will find this system enjoyable to play with.
Personally I can only remember the commands till the time I need to use them!!! LOL!!

Explaining that drives need to be mounted before they can be used (in some systems) did bring some critiscism, but when it was pointed out that you might be doing something in windows and place a CD in your drive and suddenly your entire train of thought was interupted with odd things happening to your machine, which you might not want to happen, really after a period was a definite negative effect, so having things happen as you wan't them to (as in Puppy Linux) isn't a negative aspect at all, you are in control.
Windows operators have learned to live with things that are not neccessarily helpful and in many cases are a pain!!

My regards to your progressive friend and compliments to you for assisting him.
Cheers, Lawrence.

[PeteF]

I must checkout the freespire you mentioned, I am currently running Puppy Ver 2.14 Alpha but I feel the Ver 2.13 is better.
The Gparted program is removed from this 2.14A and I was often using it for setting up drives for multi-booting system partitioning, it retains the CFdisk program and an ordinary Fdisk but after using Gparted you get spoiled!!


qldit, there is so much wisdom in your entire post. I totally agree.
I'll just comment on the above items.

If you try Freespire, get the latest version which I'm sure will have
some needed fixes. I would say you need a more modern PC as
opposed to an old P-III or the slowest P4.

Gparted is great!
I've used it succeessfully to create and modify Windows partitions
as well as Linux type parttitions. Very easy to use and it's totally
FREE.

What amazes me most about the Windows world versus the Linux
world is that the Windows world often requires overly priced 3rd party
software and the Linux world provides most everything for FREE.

I'm hoping in the future when the two worlds kind of merge as
Linux becomes more mainstream, that software prices come
down dramatically. For example, I always thought that Partitioing
software selling for $40 to $60 was so overly priced. In the Linux
world it's FREE, so maybe a good compromise would be $9.95.
After all, it only does one thing.

Another example is the Linux OS versus the Windows OS. Linux
will NEVER overtake Windows by marketing their commercial OS
at prices moderately below Windows prices. Linux must offer a
substancialy lower price of 50% or more of what Windows costs.
Once they do that, people will see a great benefit and be more
willing to make a change. The end result will be that all OS's
will be more reasonably priced.

Considering that MS has the market share on hundreds of
millions of computers globaly, only a greedy pig would
have the nerve to ask up to $400 for a single PC license.
This is one reason why people detest Bill Gates and M$.

Linux to the rescue!

---pete---

[Freehold Fred]

Lawrence,

I capitulated and went to a Linux Workshop on Knoppix tonight. What are the major differences between Puppy and Knoppix from your perspective? I know that Knoppix runs in RAM right off of a CD. And yes, your HDs are not accessible unless you want them to be.

We could open a Word File in Open Office; however, we had a problem giving the HD write permissions! Is it because our HDs were NTFS??? Does Puppy Write to NTFS drives??? We couldn't give Knoppix any write permission even though the choice was NOT grey out!




Explaining that drives need to be mounted before they can be used (in some systems) did bring some critiscism, but when it was pointed out that you might be doing something in windows and place a CD in your drive and suddenly your entire train of thought was interupted with odd things happening to your machine, which you might not want to happen, really after a period was a definite negative effect, so having things happen as you wan't them to (as in Puppy Linux) isn't a negative aspect at all, you are in control.
Windows operators have learned to live with things that are not neccessarily helpful and in many cases are a pain!!

My regards to your progressive friend and compliments to you for assisting him.
Cheers, Lawrence.

[Tortanick]

Lina, I don't know if I'd reach that conclusion from the youtube video you reference. I viewed it and it seems like nothing more than a advertisement for Linux. Remember, four of the top ten software programs are made by Adobe. All four Adobe programs are not available for use on Linux operated computers. There isn't really a top notch office suit available for the Linux Os either. Add this to the driver issues for Linux and you'll understand why windows has more than 90% of the market. I know this post will bring out the ire of certain users. :-)

Adobe reader / writer: why would a linux user want those? We have lots of reader replacements and a writer replacement is built into the print system so anything that can print can make PDFs

Adobe Flash: this is avalible for linux, works great too.

Adobe Photoshop: can work in a compatability layer.

There's a forth?

I'm hoping in the future when the two worlds kind of merge as
Linux becomes more mainstream, that software prices come
down dramatically. For example, I always thought that Partitioing
software selling for $40 to $60 was so overly priced. In the Linux
world it's FREE, so maybe a good compromise would be $9.95.
After all, it only does one thing.

Speek for yourself, I like the fact you pay for it with forum tech support, or bugreports/fixes, or documentation, not money.


Another example is the Linux OS versus the Windows OS. Linux
will NEVER overtake Windows by marketing their commercial OS
at prices moderately below Windows prices. Linux must offer a
substancialy lower price of 50% or more of what Windows costs.
Once they do that, people will see a great benefit and be more
willing to make a change. The end result will be that all OS's
will be more reasonably priced.

Most linuxes are published as free ISOs, thats not going to change :)



I capitulated and went to a Linux Workshop on Knoppix tonight. What are the major differences between Puppy and Knoppix from your perspective? I know that Knoppix runs in RAM right off of a CD. And yes, your HDs are not accessible unless you want them to be.


Knoppix uses larger applications with mroe features, Puppy uses smaller applications that run faster, and puppy puts everything in the RAM if you have the room while Knoppix will leave programs on the CD untill you want to use them

[qldit]

Good evening everyone, well Pete I D/Led that Freespire / Linspire and it has certainly moved forward since the last version I tried, but it still appears to really need a reasonable processor speed and memory to make it dance.
Certainly appears to have a lot of nice programs in it, including the complete open office suite and the K3B burner program, that usually works very well. It is a top burning program.
I didn't load it to a hard drive just ran it as a live CD.

I found the Freespire / Linspire selection during the load intriguing and it certainly does not require any experience to get it up and running.
I think my bias toward Puppy because of it's substantial speed difference, simpler programs and more easy configging online is permanent though.
I do feel that the Abiword word processor in Puppy's ability to immediately save directly as PDF apart from word formats is also a substantial plus, although Open-office has the export ability.
That Abiword ability to make reports with images and other information then save as PDF and attach to email or whatever, is an incredible usable useful feature.

Good Evening Fred, actually the last Knoppix distro I tried was probably eighteen months ago, so I am not up to speed on the latest version.
I was extremely impressed with the Kanotix version which is based on the Knoppix system, these systems are all based on Debian Linux as far as I know, I am using the Easter 06 Version they only have minor differences in some of the programs and the arrangements, basically I found the Knoppix and the Kanotix to be extremely good distros, there was really no problem reading virtually any files or any drives as far as I could see, but I didn't get involved apart from a basic run with the knoppix. I did experiment retrieving files from various windows systems with no apparent problem, these were simply moved to a flashdrive.
I really like running triple boot systems and I currently have two with various Windows systems, Kanotix and Puppy.
That is interesting hearing your comments on the opening or writing of files to or from an NTFS partition, there has been a fair bit of activity involving this area and reading and writing to NTFS partitions, you may be aware MS did not apparently release too much information about a lot of this kind of stuff and the Linux programmers have been groping somewhat to get these NTFS problems fixed.
Puppy seems to have got it right, you might give it a run, the latest version is 2.13 which will give you a surprise if you haven't seen it run previously, it is an 80 meg ISO file.
It is handy for rescuing files off damaged drives because often Linux will read drives that windows won't!

The Puppy chaps have spent a lot of time trying to overcome a lot of errors in this area as far as I understand.
One of the big advantages Puppy linux has, is that the excitement it has created has generated a large global following of interest and a lot of these are top programmers, so it has that impetus which is very marked, you will appreciate this if you give it a whirl.
Typically that utube puppy song appears to be from an ecstatic adherent, that rarely happens with MS stuff!!
I can imagine someone singing about MS Windows being treated in a padded cell!!! LOL!!
You might try using Puppy Linux writing to and from NTFS partitions, it seems to work pretty well whether it is loaded to a hard drive or running as a CD ad-hoc load. (But remember you are memory limited running from a CD)

The Abiword processor is pretty good the way it reads files and has excellent ability but I would suggest mounting the subject NTFS drive with the PMount drive mounting tool, in Puppy, then minimising it ready to use to unmount the drive when you complete that activity, it seems more reliable to me than the MUT drive mounting tool but the MUT mount is quicker and the icon is on the desktop.
You need to have any data drive mounted before it can be read and then navigate to the appropriate directory with the Abiword program or whatever, simple clicking on files may otherwise invoke other reading programs that are undesirable.
So it becomes logical that you need to understand the type of file you wish to open you use the appropriate program.
Abiword has an auto file determination with good type ability but it needs to be directed to the subject file.

Normal audio files on a CD can be read without using the mount tools, simply place a CD in the machine and use the Gxine multimedia program, it has a dropdown in it's menubar that will simply play standard music CD's or movie DVD's.
This is probably the only program and items that can read drives without having them otherwise mounted.
It is interesting having multiple booting systems because you may D/L some significant program off the net and when that D/L has completed, simply copy it to the respective place you might wish, so you might have a large windows file and then copy it to the Desktop in a W-XP account or whatever from that point. (or a flashdrive or whatever)
So your windows system is not exposed online.
The beauty of the right-click capacity in Puppy makes it quite easy to achieve this, with a few quickly learned pointers but simple dragging and dropping between opened windows whilst holding the control key pressed usually works pretty well.
The major difference between Puppy Linux and Knoppix as far as I know is that Puppy and all it's programs entirely are loaded to Ram as Ramdrive whereas knoppix requires the CD to be left in the CDROM to access "bits and pieces" thus doesn't have that substantial speed ability. You spend time watching bouncing icons waiting for something to open.
Conversely quite often programs are open and running in Puppy before the mouse button is released with a standard mouse click on it's initiating icon! When they say "blindingly fast" it is not an exaggeration.

There is a consideration needed using this system if you like to have a lot of programs and directories and do large d/loads you can easily bloat your Puppy, which is not really a good idea.
So to get the best out of this sytem I find having a gig of swap space additional to what memory you actually have, so in this case if your system is memory challenged, you still maintain excellent operation with good flexibility and can still download large files without needing to go outside your normal directory. The minimum suggested Ram is 128 Megs, but some systems may have shared memory so this needs consideration beforehand.
The system will operate quite well on older machines with as little as 16 megs of ram but it does need a swap space on the drive to successfully do that.
Of course you could have a separate drive partition or media for placing those large downloads, but if you appreciate this condition, you simply work to that arrangement.
To allow easy operation Puppy has an available memory numeric indicator on the taskbar, this changes colour as memory becomes desperate. Having a decent swap space obviates this condition, it is only used after the actual memory is filled.
Where this kind of thing becomes interesting is when you are working with large files.

On a modern laptop this system is really exceptional, it has to be seen to be appreciated.

Good Evening Tortanick what is actually happening with Kanotix, the forum still seems active and have you tried that Sabayon, my D/L died.
(Nice to see your cricketers on the Up and Up, everyone here has been barracking for them!!!)

Cheers, Lawrence.

[jcampi]

I'm amused with those that seem to gravitate to Linux or other software mainly for the free aspect. Computing has creating millions of jobs and boosted the economy worldwide. I wonder it there wasn't a buck to be made do you really think people would have been motivated to develop the pc and software programs? I understand the attractiveness of Linux and other freeware. They all have their niche to fill. When you are the big guy in town like Microsoft everyone is always trying to bring you down. I look at the world of computing as an ever changing and evolving science. If we depended on free products in general I don't think we would go very far as a society and progress (This always seems to beckon reminders of Karl Marx and communism to me. Communism might seem ok on paper, but doesn't work in the real world where people have different goals and abilities.). People need to make a living and the pc industry should be commended for giving a much needed spark to the world economy over the last few decades.

[Tortanick]

Reasons aside Open Source has proven that they are motivated, buck or no buck.

And we live in a free market based on compertition, if Open Source takes over from Propritory >$0 software then so be it, otherwise you may as well ban cars entirely to protect jobs at the railway.

[jcampi]

Free Market doesn't always mean a product is for free. Many of us work for a living. It would be a little difficult for me to support my family if I worked to provide products for free. I know we have a real difference of opinion, but people do tend to be more motivated when positive reinforcement is used (this usually comes in the form of $$$$$$). It's hard to make a living for volunteer work.

[Tortanick]

Free Market doesn't always mean a product is for free. Many of us work for a living.

I'm an A grade ecconomics student, I think I know what a free market is! My point was that if Open Source is ever good enough to put software that costs money out of buissness then it should be aloud to do so under the principles of the free market.

It would be a little difficult for me to support my family if I worked to provide products for free.Duh, of course it would, Open Source developers useually work in their spair time as a hobby, some are paid to work on it though

I know we have a real difference of opinion, but people do tend to be more motivated when positive reinforcement is used (this usually comes in the form of $$$$$$). It's hard to make a living for volunteer work.

True money is the primary motivator to work in todays world, but you can argue it however you want the facts are clear: There is enough motivation to make Open Source projects like Linux and Wikipedia (and I mean writing the articles, not the database behind it) work

[qldit]

Good Morning All, it seems that a point being missed here is that progress finds it's own way regardless of impediments.
Parrallel thinking has phenomenal power, and natural talent can be directed in various spheres benefitting everyone.

There is enormous reward involved for experienced computer persons in so many areas, but I feel that persons having one horse may find themselves walking behind.

I do feel also that the point of system integrity in computer areas is paramount.
In this age having easily corruptable systems doesn't make much sense, cost effectivity is exponentially negative, especially when regular re-tooling is required.

Here is another classic example of talent, slightly mis-directed. (Botnets threaten the Internet's future)
http://www.bullguard.com/news/
This particular story rather confirms the point of view that poor integrity systems are dangerous.
There is the other odd story or two also included that kind of supports my views somewhat!

Financially driven engineering may not be the best, the world is full of very clever people that simply have a propensity to "give" without receiving any direct reward, Linux development is crowded with such people, it is utterly amazing!
Most often there are hidden benefits in these kinds of situations much more profitable in the long term for those involved.

The experience and learning with it's satisfaction has a way of being a greater asset than any simple financial on the spot income.

In many cases this is a separation from pure capitalist understanding, it may be a form of communism, but generally I feel it is more human intelligence progress related where the satisfaction of achievement is supreme.
It remains competetively driven where various universities and intellect pools also strive for natural improvement but often the best developments come from regular hobbyists.
In the linux community information is passed freely, everything is additive.
This exemplifies the Age Of Aquarious traits and also promotes global unification technically.

To me, simply being able to obtain and run all these incredible systems with their collective ongoing ideas and clever innovative programs is incredibly exciting.
And the cost of having this enjoyment is virtually nil.

Some people like to look at cars, and lift the bonnet and marvel at that kind of thing, but these things are all tools of one type or another.
Can you imagine two cavemen looking at a piece of sharp stone and one saying , "You know, a wooden handle on that could make it more useful" then of course sometime later the second caveman would say "yes but it would need to be a strong piece of wood to make it a better tool"!
I do feel that computers need a better "handle"!

Cheers, Lawrence.

[Freehold Fred]

More on Linux mounting and writing to NTFS drives from my computer club buddies...

[CL] tried the Knoppix CD at home and right clicking on a drive gave him choices of mounting/unmounting and of changing the read/write mode - which we did not see on the laptop. Maybe it was the NTFS problem.

[DM] reports ...

You can now reliably read and write NTFS volumes, at least from some Linux distributions. The key packages you must add are ntfs-3g and ntfsprogs. Both are available in the Red Hat repository, but so far I've found only only the latter for Ubuntu. I haven't investigated other distributions.

ntfs-3g acts like the mount command, but opens NTFS volumes for reading and writing. ntfsprogs is a collection of commands that manipulate NTFS volumes, but its ntfsmount command is far less reliable in NTFS writing than is ntfs-3g, although its NTFS reads work well. See the man pages for more information.

ntfs-3g is quite new, and I expect its function will be incorporated into the standard mount command, and ntfs-3g will disappear soon afterward. In the meantime, it gives those of us with dual-boot XP/Linux machines full access to NTFS volumes. Windows, of course, continues to be befuddled by ext2 and ext3 volumes.

[qldit]

[QUOTE=Freehold Fred;24586]More on Linux mounting and writing to NTFS drives from my computer club buddies...etc.

Good Morning Fred, it sounds like you are right into this stuff, I am having a chuckle here!!! LOL!!
As you learn more about this Linux stuff you will also learn more about MS windows stuff, especially with dependencies and smoke and mirrors involved in it, not neccessarily complimentry kind of stuff .
The accellerated progress of Linux systems is currently so rapid that new widgets and ingenious ideas are appearing virtually daily.
A typical example would be "ndiswrapper" this was a little program that allowed wireless W-XP drivers to be used in Linux.
This was so recent that it most likely would not be present in distributions older than six-months.

The NTFS file reading abilities and other complex activities become quite technically involved because of dependencies and different kernel versions and compiling needed to get things to work together including permisions etc.
The modules you mentioned for working with NTFS are typical, but would probably be a little more complex than you might suspect coming from a MS system kind of background.

So it makes it quite interesting to consider just getting a file or module and expecting it to function by adding it to another system.

This is the main reason that I keep getting the latest distros and seeing where they are at!!!

Puppy Linux has a new version release virtually every three weeks, and all those complex programming problem things have usually been addressed by these really clever fellows, so it pays to keep checking what these different versions can actually achieve.
There is a massive following been generated with Puppy Linux, and as it progresses, more clever programmers have become involved snowball fashion.
It's think tank is really mind boggling the way different people address different areas collectively.
There are so many tutorials suddenly appearing for it on some of the sites and these have all been made by excited individuals trying to help.

Typically larger distros do not have that throbbing excitement and may have a newer version release every six months or so at best, this really means that any distro more than a year or so old is history, even though it may work perfectly for general use.

Some of the geniuses behind some of these distributions become frustrated and move to other areas, this is more or less currently apparent with Kanotix, so although this is a delightful system from my point of view, it may have no future.
If you look at Ibiblio or those Linux repository FTP sites, just scanning down the distro dates will give a good idea of which systems are likely destined for the scrapheap, of course many of these are directly part of University base learning tools so may remain that way purposely.
The incredible momentum that is happening, not only with more technical geniuses becoming involved, but also with ordinary people wanting to try something different is really incredible.
The most amazing part of it is that everybody steals everyone elses ingenious ideas and the best are placed in their own systems. There is usually not much involved in copyright apart from an acknowledgement kind of thing.
As you experience this accumulation of intelligence you will appreciate what I mean.
This is an incredible example of parrallel thought, "all for one and one for all".
There could be thousands of technical people working on odd problems simultaneously and there is no secrecy whatsoever.
Security holes are rapidly addressed.
I cannot think of anything that could be more progressive, that is why I find it so exciting to follow.

You will also catch the bug once you get involved and appreciate the potential, believe me!!! LOL!!

If ever you are in a group and begin talking about Linux Systems, you watch how many people suddenly become attentive, so many are dying to try but haven't quite got the courage to give it a whirl. I find it quite amusing.

My compliments to you on your venture into it, you will not regret it!

Cheers, Lawrence.

[Pi rules]

All four Adobe programs are not available for use on Linux operated computers. There isn't really a top notch office suit available for the Linux Os either. Add this to the driver issues for Linux and you'll understand why windows has more than 90% of the market. I know this post will bring out the ire of certain users. :-)
Actually, I have Adobe Reader installed on most of the Linux distros I use most often. Flash Player has also recently gained support for Linux. I'm assuming the other two are CS2 and Premiere, but there are alternatives for Linux that do not cost several hundred dollars.

people do tend to be more motivated when positive reinforcement is used (this usually comes in the form of $$$$$$)...It's hard to make a living for volunteer work.
Financially yes, but doesn't volunteering make you feel like a better person than when you are working? I'd say from experience that when volunteers do a task they will have more motivation to excel in that task. If they don't want to do something, they won't. In a job, if you don't do something you risk losing your job. I'm certainly not bashing Windows. In fact, I'm using Vista RC1 right now and have beta tested it for months giving MS feedback. I plan to buy it soon, but I will continue to use Linux and FreeBSD.

I suggest ordering some free Ubuntu CDs and trying them out; You don't have to install anything, and they even ship it to you for free! There is no risk whatsoever. If you encounter any problems e-mail me or contact Tortanick, qldit, or any other members here who use Linux and we will be happy to help. Ubuntu also has a very large forum where you can find help with Ubuntu and Kubuntu.