Test Machine Specs:
Board: Asus A7V400MX
Processor: 2 GHz AMD Athlon XP
Hard Drive: Segate 80GB ATA
Memory: 256MB DDRSD RAM
Display: S3G UniChrome IGP
Intro:
Puppy Linux was born in Australia, and was created by Barry Kauler. It is one of the few mini-distros that has earned respect from Linux users and developers around the world. As a testimony to its popularity, it is presently ranked number 8 in Distrowatch.
Installation/Setup:
In this case i used Puppy linux 4.31,You can download Puppy Linux 4.31 directly from here (http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/puppy-4.3.1/pup-431.iso) OR (http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/puppylinux/puppy-4.3.1/pup-431.iso). After created a Live USB with the Help of LinuxLive USB Creator (LiLi) pluged into USB port and booted in the normal way. It was then asked for my keyboard layout and the type of X server that I will be using, of which I just selected the default or the highlighted configuration. I also had an option to set my screen resolution, and to be safe I just used 1024x768 for my monitor. The boot/start-up was smooth sailing and my hardware were well-detected including my audio, video, floppy, and Ethernet.
Look and Feel:
The very light-weight JWM is the default window manager for Puppy Linux and ROX for handling files. I find the desktop very responsive as most applications were quick to open. The icons were well- arranged for easy access to important programs. Even aLinux newbie can easily navigate the very simple desktop. There were also few available wallpapers if you want to change the look a bit.
Package Management:
Puppy Linux has plenty of valuable pre-installed software applications like Abiword, Inkscape, Python, Perl, Inkscape, Gxine, Seamonkey, and a lot more. It also has several network administration tools and a few games. An easy-to-use graphical software manager called PET takes care of installing and uninstalling packages. It can also fetch packages from its own repo and from unofficial packages (DotPups) that were made by its community members. Packages from the Slackware repository is also available for download, but you have to convert the packages first in CLI using a utility called “tgz2pet” for it to be used.
Gxine:
It is the puppy default media player play any kind of media including 3gp,mkv,avi,mp4 and so on. NB: Now Puppy Uses Gnome Player still all codecs are preloaded..
Stability:
Though I can’t really judge Puppy’s stability based only from the short period that I have used it, there’s no doubt that it is a tough and tested distro. As a Slackware-based system, I can consider it generally stable with expected minor bugs here and there.
Conclusion:
I would say that Puppy Linux can be a computer user’s best friend with its life-saving ability to rescue a broken system.It is easy to hack a windows drive and recovering data.It is also helpful to provide protection to windows against USB virus attack (If you sure there is virus in the USB drive then just plug USB drive on puppy and copy the needed data to hard drive then initialize the USB drive ,it realy works) I also find it very easy to use, thus, I can recommend it to beginners and Windows users who wanted to try Linux the trouble-free way.
And You can Download The Latest Version From Here:www.puppylinux.org
Enjoy...
