Sea Monkey

[jflan]

Using Sea Monkey in Puppy 2.13

While browsing I might get the typical warning that I'm leaving (or entering) a secure page. When I click on the window to get rid of it, sometimes Sea Monkey itself disappears.

I can see that it's still running but I can't bring it back up.
I end up killing it and then re-launching.
Does anyone know why this happens ?

[Tortanick]

not a clue sorry.

[qldit]

Good Evening jflan, that is interesting I haven't seen that happen.
There is one interesting thing that does happen and that is if you use a scrolling mouse sometimes the window will hide, but that leaves a bar across the top which when moused and the wheel is moved will unhide it. If you don't know about it, it is frustrating.
The item in the taskbar remains, but clicking on it should restore a normal window.
Maybe there is some kind of memory problem, you might try doing a memory test.

There is a memory test in Menu > Control Panel toward the bottom group from memory.

I normally run Memtest86 on machines before I get too far involved, that is a free program off the net and makes a bootable media.

Quite often odd problems are caused by a poor copy of the system, I always use a slowest burn speed to burn the ISO to avoid this, but I have seen bad ISO files also.

The problem you describe should not happen.

Cheers, Lawrence.

[qldit]

Good Evening Again jflan, I have just loaded and am currently running Ver 2.13 and notice it is different with the window hiding and the mouse scroll wheel.
If the seamonkey window is hidden, clicking on the taskbar item will only allow the window titlebar to reappear or disappear, rightclicking on the taskbar item and selecting unshade returns the window.

Could that possibly be what is happening to you?

I was initially puzzled when I struck this problem, but when you know about it, it is sometimes useful.

Cheers, Lawrence.

[jflan]

Thanks for the responses.
I don't think it's bad memory...the machine has been very stable (XP) for several years.
Although a Memtest checkup might not be a bad idea.

When I would "lose" Sea Monkey there was no taskbar item to click on.
I'll fiddle some more.
Maybe I'll try burning another copy using that iso-burning tool that I saw in the Puppy package.

[qldit]

Good Morning jflan, yes I have had a different odd problem previously and made another D/L of the ISO file that overcame it.

By the way, the Puppy Linux Ver 2.14 is about to be released

For burning ISO files I found the BurnCDCC program was the best, (in Windows) but I often use the one in Puppy also.
I have followed every version of Puppy for probably 2 years, it is quite amazing and exciting to apreciate the leaps and bounds it has with every new release, a couple were a bit buggy but that was very rapidly addressed.
Since it started to become popular the technical base has also increased, so the accelleration is really exciting, it certainly is an addictive system for basic operational use.

I usually install it on a hard drive and have multiboot ability.

It is ideal for the oldies or anyone that only want a basic no frills simple reliable system that isn't affected by malware and doesn't need antivirus kinds of programs, plus it runs quite well on anything better than an old P200. I have introduced a lot of seniors to it and they were very happy!

I feel this total ramdrive concept is going to become pretty big.
Cheers, Lawrence

[jflan]

Good Morning jflan, yes I have had a different odd problem previously and made another D/L of the ISO file that overcame it.

By the way, the Puppy Linux Ver 2.14 is about to be released

For burning ISO files I found the BurnCDCC program was the best, (in Windows) but I often use the one in Puppy also.
Yes, BurnCDCC is so easy. Some people like Nero for ISO burning but I think it's awkward compared to BurnCDCC.
I'll watch for 2.14, thanks.

I have followed every version of Puppy for probably 2 years, it is quite amazing and exciting to apreciate the leaps and bounds it has with every new release, a couple were a bit buggy but that was very rapidly addressed.
Since it started to become popular the technical base has also increased, so the accelleration is really exciting, it certainly is an addictive system for basic operational use.

I usually install it on a hard drive and have multiboot ability.

It is ideal for the oldies or anyone that only want a basic no frills simple reliable system that isn't affected by malware and doesn't need antivirus kinds of programs, plus it runs quite well on anything better than an old P200. I have introduced a lot of seniors to it and they were very happy!
It's amazing to think that an old Windows computer, ready for the recycle bin can be given a new lease on life with a distro like this.

I feel this total ramdrive concept is going to become pretty big.
Cheers, Lawrence
Yes, I believe it's a peek into the future.
I would think that the days are numbered for good ol' spinning disk technology.

Tell me qldit, are there any other lightweight distros that use ramdrive?

[qldit]

Good Afternoon jflan, oh yes, there have been quite a few, I think DSL (Damn Small Linux) Feather Linux, Peanut Linux, and I would have others here in the bottom of the stack.
There are also a lot of other distros that partially use ramdrive and the CDROM together, typically this new Knoppix distro 5.1.1 is a classic, it is around 700 megs or more but it requires the CD or DVD to remain in the drive and operates that way with only it's essentials in ramdrive.
But there are Mandriva, and loads of others getting on the bandwagon, I think even Ubuntu has a similar live distro.

I forget which one began as a similar entire ramdrive system (as Puppy) but has ended up as 700 megs now, I have a feeling it was Peanut!
Some of the others just didn't have anything included and by the time you had a few useful programs the thing was bloated.

But as your would be aware the speed of Puppy leaves everything else for dead, but in these other systems the benefit of having a lot of heavyweight programs including the entire open office suite and miles of other larger programs are their virtue.

If you wanted to have a comparitive play, Knoppix is definitely a great start.
I think it would load onto an old piece of wood!!!
It is pure magic!! LOL!!

There are so many of these live distros appearing now that you will lose count, but none that I have played with come anywhere near the puppy simple usability principle, versitility and speed.

That current blooming of Linux acceptance is causing more accellerated advancement everyday to the extent that much of other systems following is defecting to systems that are being maintained with the newer ideas as they happen, typically Puppy has a new release every few weeks and they are trying to really get the new ideas into circulation immediately, it is so exciting for me to compare to other systems continuously, of course in that the system is so small, it probably makes it easier to forge ahead.

Not only is this kind of technology portable and independent between machines and independent of a hard drive, but it also is significantly viral unaffected, virtually to the point of requiring no protective programs at all and no worries operation.
The main Puppy I use has been running daily for at least the last twelve months from a hard drive with no malware problems and no protection whatsoever.
The one before that had similar unnaffected operation.

I do feel that the MS principle of locking an operating system to a machine is going to be a problem for them. Time will tell!!

Have you considered loading Puppy to a hard drive yet? (as a full system, not just a save file)

Cheers, Lawrence.

[jflan]

Hello qldit,
Well, if Puppy is the fastest of the lightweight gang, perhaps I'll stick with it.
I had a look at Feather today and it seems that development has fallen off.
The freshest release that I could find was from 2005.

I've been looking for a Puppy version that is about 50MB or less for an old lappy that has 64MB of RAM.
Puppy Barebones rev. 2.01r2 seems to be the best choice and I've got it downloading as I type.
It's an old Texas Instruments machine that's in immaculate condition.
Seems a shame to toss it out.

As far as loading Puppy on a HD, I think at the moment I'm happy with SuSE and Kubuntu.
My first Linux successes were with SuSE so I'll always have a soft spot for that one. The day I saw that lizard it was love at first sight. :)

I think I'll burn an ISO.

[qldit]

Good Afternoon jflan, I had a play with that "Barebones Puppy" yesterday the same 2.01R2 46 Meg version, and although it has a lot of stuff in it, it is missing a word processor and a lot of the newer innovative wizard powers and modules are not present.

I suggest it has fallen by the wayside, I do believe they are going to rehash it shortly but my impression was that it is obsolete and a waste of time.

See what your impression is.

There is no real problem using your old laptop with the newer 80 meg version it will just need for you to make a swap partition on the hard drive.

When you have a swap partition it adds to the availabe RAM as though it were ordinary RAM.

I usually just use Gparted in puppy to pull back a bit of space from the end of the drive and make it a swap partition, when you reboot and reload it finds and uses it.

What do you have on it's hard drive? And what size is it?

I like to give a gig of swap space on those memory challenged machines that allows the large downlods without worries.

The last one I played with only had 16 megs of ram from memory and still functioned OK, just a little slower.

You will enjoy that exercise if some space on that drive is available.

It is nice to have the RAM readout on the taskbar it changes colour to red from blue when it gets desperate.

Cheers, Lawrence.

[jflan]

Good Afternoon jflan, I had a play with that "Barebones Puppy" yesterday the same 2.01R2 46 Meg version, and although it has a lot of stuff in it, it is missing a word processor and a lot of the newer innovative wizard powers and modules are not present.

I suggest it has fallen by the wayside, I do believe they are going to rehash it shortly but my impression was that it is obsolete and a waste of time.

See what your impression is.
I agree, Barebones is no match for v 2.13

There is no real problem using your old laptop with the newer 80 meg version it will just need for you to make a swap partition on the hard drive.

When you have a swap partition it adds to the availabe RAM as though it were ordinary RAM.

I usually just use Gparted in puppy to pull back a bit of space from the end of the drive and make it a swap partition, when you reboot and reload it finds and uses it.

What do you have on it's hard drive? And what size is it?
It's a tiny 2GB with W98 on it.
From the W95 era and it's still in FAT16.
On finishing the last session Puppy asked if I wanted to save the session's data and this time I said yes.
It then asked me to choose the size of the file space to set aside.
I had about 600MB available, so I said 256MB.

Ever since then, things went from slow to slow and clunky. It did not create a second partition and maybe that's the difference.

I like to give a gig of swap space on those memory challenged machines that allows the large downlods without worries.

The last one I played with only had 16 megs of ram from memory and still functioned OK, just a little slower.

You will enjoy that exercise if some space on that drive is available.
The other part of my problem is that the machine has only 32MB of memory and not the 64MB that I thought it had.
I need to find another stick of memory to give Puppy a fair chance.


It is nice to have the RAM readout on the taskbar it changes colour to red from blue when it gets desperate.
I'm in the red for sure. About 30MB is loading on the hard drive, the rest in RAM and it's paging like mad.
Ever since I created the file space, I don't get the request to save the session. It goes to command line (System Halted) and requires me to manually kill the power.

Another mystery is that on the last session's desktop, the console icon area said "ERROR" Console .

Question, what would Puppy name the file space that it created, I can't seem to find it, although Windows appears to have released it to Puppy?

Thanks

[qldit]

Good Mornig jflan, I just obtained and currently am running the new Puppy 2.14 Beta version, I am impressed!!!
The browser rendering is much faster and some other innovations are included, it gets more exciting!


It's a tiny 2GB with W98 on it.
From the W95 era and it's still in FAT16.
On finishing the last session Puppy asked if I wanted to save the session's data and this time I said yes.
It then asked me to choose the size of the file space to set aside.
I had about 600MB available, so I said 256MB.


Ever since then, things went from slow to slow and clunky. It did not create a second partition and maybe that's the difference.

When that option is used so far as I know it creates a file on the hard drive called something like Pup001 but I am not really sure about that actual name.
When this happens all session settings and saves go to that file.
As far as I know when you subsequently boot with the CD it finds that file and uses those presaved settings on all boots etc. (or modifies as each session is completed)
I have never used that idea so have no experience with it. Sorry.
I understand that file should be visible in windows and probably in the root directory.
If you can find it windows should be able to delete it


The other part of my problem is that the machine has only 32MB of memory and not the 64MB that I thought it had.
I need to find another stick of memory to give Puppy a fair chance.

It is likely that your current 32 MB of memory is also shared with your video system, so if that is the case you would have less usable RAM by that shared amount.


I'm in the red for sure. About 30MB is loading on the hard drive, the rest in RAM and it's paging like mad.
Ever since I created the file space, I don't get the request to save the session. It goes to command line (System Halted) and requires me to manually kill the power.

Yes, that paging can be a problem, using a swap partition is a little faster, I don't know how the comparison would be.
Your experiments are ahead of mine, it is interesting what you learn by doing things!
If it boots the CD with lesser RAM than optimum, in some cases so far as I recall it just won't allow the CD to be removed.

Another mystery is that on the last session's desktop, the console icon area said "ERROR" Console .

When you get those red error messages across where an icon is, it normally is an indication that that item can't load or can't be found, this could be for any reason.


Question, what would Puppy name the file space that it created, I can't seem to find it, although Windows appears to have released it to Puppy?

I think it is Pup001 but I am not sure, I will readvise if I confirm that filename.

By the way, I like the lizard also, I could not believe how sharp that image is, you can alsmost touch the animal. I have it on one of the machines in my toy-room, along with a few others.

Thanks

Is there any possibility you might obtain a slightly larger drive for that laptop, the problem with that would be expense I guess, and it's bios probably wouldn't support flashdrive booting. A slight time warp situation!

I am really enjoying this rendering speed increase in my browser here, it is like having a faster broadband connection.

Cheers, Lawrence.

[jflan]

Yes, I saw 2.14 at one of the mirrors, it was still in Alpha.
Is that what you are using, qldit ?

I found the pup_save files and deleted them.
Cured the console error and other woes.
One ver was using a .2fs and the other was a .3fs, maybe that's where the confusion was coming from.

Maybe I'll try creating a small partition and see what happens while I wait for my $7.00 memory sticks to arrive.
The machine has (as it turns out) 16MB soldered and a 16MB module.
The max is 32MB + 32MB + 16MB embedded for 80MB toatal.
Xorg works very well at 800x600x16 so I'll be curious to see what happens with more memory.

[qldit]

G'day jflan, I am using a Puppy 2.02 version on this particular machine presently, I usually don't update much, but spend a lot of time trying all different types of Linux Distros on a number of netted machines here.

The Puppy version I got last night was the 2.14 Beta version I think the only difference is the Seamonkey rendering speed, but wouldn't be sure.

Yes, I saw 2.14 at one of the mirrors, it was still in Alpha.
Is that what you are using, qldit ?

I found the pup_save files and deleted them.
Cured the console error and other woes.
One ver was using a .2fs and the other was a .3fs, maybe that's where the confusion was coming from.

Maybe I'll try creating a small partition and see what happens while I wait for my $7.00 memory sticks to arrive.
The machine has (as it turns out) 16MB soldered and a 16MB module.
The max is 32MB + 32MB + 16MB embedded for 80MB toatal.
Xorg works very well at 800x600x16 so I'll be curious to see what happens with more memory.

Gee, you can't beat those kinds of prices for memory!!!
The delivery is probably more expensive than the item cost! LOL!

You should really see a difference with that kind of memory increase!

That Puppy barebones 46.5 meg version is very useful for setting up drives and stuff, the Gparted program and a basic operating system is pretty big on it's own!
It is ideal for "pinching space" on a drive.
It is available on the net and I got it some time ago but odly enough the version included in Puppy was later and had no screen-size display problems!!
I would be interested in your findings when you do make a swap space.

With Gparted I usually just highlight the drive representation and click and drag a suitable amount back from the end. Then highlight and right click on the new partition and make it as swap. When all is well hit apply!

The live CD is organised to seek any available swap partitions and use them if needed.
The only problem I have found is that in some instances when you do this kind of thing the scandisk and format programs in windows (if it was on the drive) may not run.
Repeating the exercise using slightly different figures seems to fix that.
It doesn't affect Linux systems.
I don't know why this happens, probably something to do with cluster sizes.

Of course any drive to be operated on needs any existing system to be well defragged prior to beginning to play!

For a Puppy instal on a drive, I have played and found even having an ext2 FS partition of a gig (or even less) plus a swap space of significant size works very well, (remembering that the swap space consideration is different to other standard conventional Linux installations.
(If you may consider loading Puppy to a HD use ext2FS, there are some odd problems with the others involving Puppy's operation)
As you suggest that was most likely the problem you observed. Ext3FS has been causing a few problems with this system.

Yes the 800x600x16 certainly doesn't lack too much!!

With the system shutdown problem in installed boxes, it is normally only an ACPI setting but the easiest way to overcome that is simply placing the term acpi=force in one of the boot commands.
This is usually needed on older ATX machines to get them to completely shut-down rather than just unloading the system and remaining powered.

It is normal for a live CD version to simply unload and remain powered.

It certainly is good fun learning this stuff isn't it!!

Cheers, Lawrence.

[jflan]

Gee, you can't beat those kinds of prices for memory!!!
The delivery is probably more expensive than the item cost! LOL!
Yes, almost too good to be true. The shipping is free and the vendor checked out OK with reselleratings. We shall see.


That Puppy barebones 46.5 meg version is very useful for setting up drives and stuff, the Gparted program and a basic operating system is pretty big on it's own!
It is ideal for "pinching space" on a drive.
It is available on the net and I got it some time ago but odly enough the version included in Puppy was later and had no screen-size display problems!!
I grabbed a copy a while back from here:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

With Gparted I usually just highlight the drive representation and click and drag a suitable amount back from the end. Then highlight and right click on the new partition and make it as swap. When all is well hit apply!
Thanks for the tips !

It certainly is good fun learning this stuff isn't it!!
Yes, it certainly is !

[jflan]

Hello qldit,

I've got v2.14beta up and running.
The first thing that I noticed was it's wireless capability. I have honestly never connected wirelessly easier than I just did !
2.13 required me to do the typical manual install.
This was a scant few keystrokes and I was online.

With Sea Monkey running it's using a total of 206MB of my RAM.
I think I'll have a look around : )

[qldit]

Good Evening jflan, yes it certainly is exciting to see these newer innovative wigits.
They are fixing a few bugs in xcine and I reckon probably by wednesday we might see the release of 2.14
Sounds like you are catching the bug, I certainly see the future in this kind of system.

Can you imagine a PCI card with an embedded ROM!

No hard rives, virtual RAMdrive system. Complete versitility with good integrity.

So much for massive complex sytems.

The "one computer per child" movement is using an intereting system, see what you find on Google, it really sounds great. It uses Linux and an AMD chip, it is ingenious.
The actual operating system is online but I couldn't d/l it for some odd reason.

Cheers, qldit..

[jflan]

Hello qldit,
Yes, the $100 laptop isn't it, designed at M.I.T. ?
I didn't know the OS was available for download.
Have you seen this :
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6828123924.html

[qldit]

Hello qldit,
Yes, the $100 laptop isn't it, designed at M.I.T. ?
I didn't know the OS was available for download.
Have you seen this :
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6828123924.html

Good Morning jflan, thanks for the URL, well it had to happen, and I suspect will knock the stuffing out of the dumb-terminal sector, and the size is really micro!
Actually there was a laptop mentioned on the Puppy site eighteen months ago with a flash system running Puppy, and it was also quite cheap, so that movement is gravitating toward the ramdrive idea.
For general useaget it doesn't make sense not to go this way.
Can you imagine what would happen if a lot of this stuff was actually advertised!

I was surprised to see that machin mentioned at that url only had the 128 megs of ram, the large Puppy systems would run quite well with that but it wouldn't take much to get a low memory warning.
Thanks for the info.

With regard to the OCPC I think you are right I was so gobsmacked by the entire project I have forgotten the "nitty-gritty" bits!

I certainly would like to have one of those machines just for the pleasure of trying it!!!

It gets more exciting!!! (LOL)

Can you imagine what will happen as a greater migration to Linux systems happens, the skill-base will multiply, the demonstration of the power of parrallel thinking is already quite apparent, I suggest we are looking at an exponential "J" curve increasing and we are still near the bottom!

Cheers, qldit.

[Terry Hanushek]

Lawrence / jflan

I noticed that Sea Monkey fell by the wayside about 15 posts ago. The remaining discussion of light weight distros has been very interesting.

For some additional information on the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, check out Rob's post in Tech News. It primarily discusses the hardware aspects of the project but does mention Red Hat's involvement.

http://www.kickenhardware.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5995

BTW: I assume that it is purely coincidental that my spell checker tries to replace distros with destroys :)

Terry

[qldit]

Lawrence / jflan

I noticed that Sea Monkey fell by the wayside about 15 posts ago. The remaining discussion of light weight distros has been very interesting.

For some additional information on the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, check out Rob's post in Tech News. It primarily discusses the hardware aspects of the project but does mention Red Hat's involvement.

http://www.kickenhardware.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5995

BTW: I assume that it is purely coincidental that my spell checker tries to replace distros with destroys :)

Terry

Good Afternoon Terry, yes the Seamonkey problem was very likely due to a bad burn of the ISO os something in that area.
Normally the thing behaves exceedeingy well.

Yes the OLPC is an incredible interesting exercise, especially if the networked learing /education aspect were properly realised.

That is interesting about the spellchecker, I imagine it could be accurate in that a previous ingrained system ideology may be destroyed.

It is quite interesting to note that 12 months ago virtually no-one had really heard much about linux, but there is quite obviously a substantial movement to Linux system now, especially in government circles, we have just had one with some fifyeight thousand machines converting to it here and the NASA useage for vital machines had been quite outstanding.

One substantial point of interest is there is virtually no advertising about this stuff, it is purely by technical expertise word-of-mouth and performance / cost efficiency reports..

It seems jflan has similar interests to my own and I imagine many others are hovering as to whether to try these systems also.
.
Are we out of line diverging from the original subject on this matter?

Cheers, Lawrence.

[jflan]

My original Sea Monkey problem has vanished. Probably user error.
I do notice that while I'm trying to make my rounds in eBay some functionality is lost while I'm in Sea Monkey.
I'll work on that a little more and post back with more detail.

Terry, on that spell checker, definitely sounds like something that was hatched up in Redmond :)

[RAK]

Good evening, Lawrence and jflan. I too have had problems with browsers in Puppy, though mine were with attempting to replace Sea Monkey with Firefox. I experienced numerous crashes using both the Puppy Pro distro and 2.13. Puppy Pro comes with Firefox as the default browser, so I have ruled out incompatibility among the two Mozilla browsers as the culprit, and assumed it was a bug in Puppy or Firefox. But, Lo and Behold, I discovered a Pup derivative named "Pizza Pup" that had Firefox embedded that worked like a Charm! A youngster compiled this between breaks in their HOMEWORK! (Nothing like making an old geezer like myself feeling inadequate!).
I have since followed your advice and downloaded 2.14. and I am pleasantly surprised at the progress that this OS has undergone. I do wish, though, that the developer(s) would include CUPS in the default program list; this is the only printing program that I have found that works every time. The program included in Puppy is rather lame and confusing.
The Linux forum has become my favorite home to browse for new posts: It is reminiscent of an Alan Moore comic; as if your were on the edge of a new reality. John, you should lightenup a little: Linux has a commercial future; even if it is one that we cannot envision.
"There"s Something Happening Here
What is is ain't exactly clear"

to quote Steven Stills:)

[jflan]

Hello RAK,

I've seen that "Pizza Pup" in the download list.
It must be a fat pup with Firefox on board.
I'll have to take a look, I do like Firefox.

The wife and I were in one of those upscale, coffee/sandwich shops today.
Everyone is sprawled out with their lappys, coffee etc, all being very trendy and now.
My plan is to install my $7.00 memory modules in my old Win95 era lappy and then take it and Puppy over to that coffee shop.
Then sprawl out with my coffee and lappy (try to look trendy)

I then draw the lappy out of its old, but pristine cordura case like a pool shark unmasks his cue stick.

And then with the volume turned way up, and the screen facing a most beneficial direction, launch Puppy.
Woof, woof went the elderly lappy as it sprang into action in its new life.
Sounds like good clean fun to me!

I need counseling :clock:

[qldit]

Good Evening Gentlemen, you chaps would have a good laugh, this particular machine I am currently using is running one of the earlier versions of Puppy, I have several here online using different versions, most are triple boots.
(I also have the lizard on one)
This one has Seamonkey V 1.0 and I don't know what the status of the others is!! LOL!!

I actually prefer it to Firefox and the Email program is included. (integrated)
There were some notes about the reasoning on the Puppy site along the lines of the Seamonkey suite is less size than the Firefox and Thunderbird.
So size was the determining factor as they are separate programs and duplicate files aparently..

With printers I found googling the printer model and equivalent linux driver for that model, it is remarkable what comes up. I have a a canon i550 and I seem to recall the cannon 4000 module was the one for it. I had it operating perfectly but took the printer to another machine.

If you enter the news posts in the main Puppy site you can get a good idea of how problems are being addressed.
I suspect a more complete set of drivers will eventually be available for selecting the one you need and deleting those you don't.
It doesnt seem all that sensible having a load of stuff in a system that is unneccessary, especially when streamlining and minimising is the idea.

So you chaps are light years ahead of me with your operations.

I must have a look at that Puppy version you mention "Pizza Pup" .

What I have found is trying to keep the system "lean and mean" certainly is a good idea.

I often D/L large 700 meg files and burn or move them to another drive later on, but I have at least 300 megs of ram in all these machines and also a gig of swap space so there is never any problem, I usually load the distro onto the hard drive and Use the Puppy Grub Boot Manager to operate all the systems, even the ones on multiple drives.
It makes it so easy, and it is all simple clicking to achieve it..
That Grub will detect any boot tags and they all show in the menu, which is easily editable to make it look very nice.

I tried the "Chubby Puppy" but I really don't have use for those extra programs,, I have been using the "ABI Word" for so long I have become uesed to it, especially the saving in PDF format.

The CE (community effort) version was also interesting but again I rapidly returned to the core version it is the one receiving maximum effort.

I didn't have a look at the Grafpup version for graphics, I have heard good things about it.

I did try the windows emulator unsuccessfully, it didn't make a great deal of sense to make the system vulnerable for malware. I don't even know if that would be the case!

One of the forum members was running Paltalk on Mepis, which was interesting, which is worth a look. (if I can muddle my way to get it up!1)

I am most interested to see how jflan goes with his laptop!!
I imagine with a wireless accessory it will work pretty well.

Cheers, Lawrence.