Once the desktop came up, I was greeted by the most horrendous desktop I've seen in a long time. I'll post it here for all to see, but I have to warn you that this could possibly ruin your entire day.
Adjusted slightly to a less horrendous background color, and no instructions built into the wallpaper (ugggghhhhh)..........
As you can tell, I'm not very impressed up to this point. So, I thought I would try out a little web surfing, to see how quick and light the OS and browser were. Here is the result.......
What? No network connection? Let me make it very clear that I'm using a desktop system (wired) and I don't even remember the last time I had to manually configure the network connection. So, to get the network connnection up, I clicked the "connect" icon, clicked all in separate dialog boxes the "connect to internet by net interface", "eth0", "autodhcp", "yes" (to save the config), and "done". So, 6 clicks and five dialog boxes later, my network connection was setup. I didn't actually put any settings in there, I just clicked. There's absolutely no reason this couldn't be scripted at boot time.
At this point I was starting to get quite frustrated. I had read some great reviews, and was really looking forward to having an outstanding experience. So far, I was experiencing just the opposite. This distro had transported me back 10 years to the days of windows 98. The graphics are very poor quality, the fonts are fairly small and hard to read, and the entire documentation of the distro seems to be included in the dialog boxes. The sea monkey web browser seems to be an odd choice, even in a light distro. There are light browsers that are much more aesthetically pleasing and don't look like they're from the 90's. But, 90's seems to be the theme for the whole distro so it actually blended quite well with the rest.
The package manager of Puppy seemed to have a fairly large amount of packages in it, but there is no search feature, so you're stuck looking through all the packages. The installed password manager is Gpasman which looked very dated just like the rest. Even in a light distro, Keepass would fit right in, and look much better.
One program that is included in Puppy that ABSOLUTELY floored me was fragger. I had never even heard of this program, but when I opened it up I was very shocked to see that this was a program that graphically displays disk (or file) fragmentation. Maybe someone should explain to the Puppy developer(s) why fragger is so ironic in linux. I couldn't actually get fragger to view my hard drive fragmentation, but here's a screenshot of the program in all it's windows 98 glory.
Is your jaw on the floor yet? I've got more.........
When you go to the terminal, you already have root access, even if you install it to the hard drive. Press ctrl-alt-backspace to get the terminal and you're given a message that you should type in "xwin" to start xorg again (huh, I could have sworn I was running Linux). Trying init 0 or init 6 to restart the system got me absolutely nowhere. In all it's windows likeness, I guess it forgot how to do linux commands. And last but not least, shutdown is an unknown command.
I almost forgot. Included in Puppy is possibly the worst looking graphical editor I've seen in my life. It closely resembles paint from windows, but it's much more ugly. Here's a screenshot.
On a side note, I did find a couple things that were fairly acceptable with Puppy Linux. The drive mounting program was able to see all drives, mounted or not, and mount or unmount with a single click (a refreshing change from the rest of the distro). The firewall setup program was also very simple. Also, because the programs were all loading from memory, they opened very quickly and the system was very responsive, even when testing on an old system with only 128Mb of memory.
To sum things up, I guess Puppy is an appropriate name for this distro. Puppy is full of energy and very fast, but often misbehaves and poops all over. I completely understand the light concept, but with distros like Slax around, there's no excuse for outdated programs that look like they belong in a Microsoft OS. And for humanity's sake, remove fragger from your distro. What the hell were you thinking?
31 comments:
I guess you should have read the wallpaper. And just one question have you ever built a distro?
I've enjoyed using Puppy. You are correct about the non-standard ways Puppy works. I think Barry (lead developer) chose to have it work this way on purpose, not from ignorance. Slax is good, and so are Knoppix, DSL, and others. I've noticed that each live-CD distro has characteristics which make it appealing to certain people. I like the way Puppy does things from the ground up while trying to keep it small, complete and flexible. That leads to appplications looking different from each other. There's less effort spent trying give everything a consistent GUI-look.. It also leads to a few decisions being made by the user, like the keyboard, screen res, video driver and DHCP choices. Of course, these settings are remembered in the user file for future bootups, so it's really just a one-time experience for any given PC. These small live-CDs are still evolving, and I think it's a good idea to keep an eye on Puppy and the others to see how they resolve the issues you've discussed.
I have am a Windows serf who has been following Puppy for several years. The features like fragger (and probably other utility programs) that you deride make this a breat windows salvage tool that is very easy for anyone from the windows world can use, without having to know Linux arcana. Puppy has saved my butt on several occasions, allowing me to extract files from a dead windoze machine.
Having a powerfull OS on a stick is also very usefull at work.
i have a very old pc, p2-300, and puppy is really fast, faster then win98 on it.
you should think on the target user for this distro. yes applications dont look good, but the system is stable and runs fast bringuing life back to some very old machines not counting that u can use it as a recover os when windows dies on you.
Im tired of big distros will full of crap on them.
Finally someone had the idea that bigger is not better.
I can just say that maybe the distro flavour was not to your liking. However, for me, right out of Windows land, it was the first distro that worked without any problems (Ubuntu Dapper and Edgy and OpenSuse made a toast out of some of my unencrypted DVDs, DSL froze the mouse,). Puppy was the first distro which showed that Linux was usable and easy and fast and just worked. It is not meant for the very advanced users maybe, but for me, it is the best lightweight distro. There is also a reason for Seamonkey to be there, it is an e-mail client and browser built in one, and faster than Firefox. I myself would have preferred Opera, but for that I can always use Grafpup, a distro based on Puppy.
I rerally do hope you would see the positives along with the negatives. For one, try opening a document or spreadsheet in Puppy as well as Ubuntu or Suse or most of the large distros. I was surprised how much faster Puppy really was.
Another thing, my wife who is a total novice in computing,even for Windows, thought that the desktop in Puppy was far more user friendly than a distro like say Ubuntu. She felt much less intimidated with it. So the user interface may also boil down to user preference.
This actually quite a UI improvement from previous versions - Puppy sets up on a pretty minimal 50MB (!!!) diskspace last time i checked - Not bad considering.
Oh dear "Happy Linux Guy",
if you don't configure your network or network-tool in windows, you also can't connect to the internet. or do you have another windows like me, maybe a magic windows that i don't know?
and what's about the standard-graphic-tool in windows? Do you really think it's much better than the tool in puppy?
Oh, i've forgot, i am sure you have paid money for you windows. How much did you pay for a system without a word-processor like Abi-Word or any spreadsheet-editor like in Puppy?
So be happy with your funny windows-wallpapers and try to boot your windows with a simply usb-stick :).
I am also happy with my own wallpapers on my working Puppy.
anonymous
I use Linux! Thus, the name of my website. And, it's been a damn long time (besides using puppy) that a distro didn't have the network configured and ready to go the minute I log on.
Dear unhappy linux user,
you made a useful criticism I agreed with (no automagic ethernet connection) but then headed off the deep-end.
so you had to click a few times before it started: is that worse than distros that choose automatically but get things wrong? and you do know that's only the first time, right?
Otherwise you're just moaning about how apps 'look dated'. Over and over and over again. So the browser looks like it's from the 90s. Does that mean it doesn't browse? So the image editor looks like Paint? Does that mean it doesn't edit images? What the hell would you put in a 90MB distro for running live on old hardware? Gimpshop on a spinning cube?! Others do eyecandy, Puppy does a small, light and live OS compatible with old hardware. If you want to prettify it, go ahead: use EZpup, or NOP, or Shard.
And boy, does fragger set you off!
You do remember Linux is a kernel, not a file system? That Linux can work with many different file systems, including ones that fragment? You do remember that Puppy is a live cd OS that can run on almost any x86 computer? You do remember that 95% of the PCs in the world run a Microsoft operating system, with a Microsoft file system that fragments? You do remember that many people install a Linux (or other OS) on a computer that already has Windows? And that to do that you usually need to repartition? And that before you repartition, you usually need to resize the Windows partition? And what does every Linux distro recommend doing before resizing a Windows partition? That's right: defragment.
Yes, sheesh, I realize all those things. I still think there's no excuse for a lot of those things, when there are distros around like Slax, that knocked my socks off, looks very modern, is light, can run on old hardware, and can be extended very easy with it's module system.
The points made in the review are fair and there are reasons for many of them. Puppy would be slowed down by autoconfiguring a network connection. Puppy Linux is more function than sock blowing off prowess. Mtpaint is powerful but does not have a nice interface. The developer is aware of this and is working towards improvements. Puppy is not designed for Linux users but for computer users. I value that approach. At the moment I am using a version of Puppy Nop with Compiz Beryl installed. I had to install Compiz Beryl. I was quite willing to do this in Puppy because it was fun. With other distros I often find I am not having fun. Too many Linux experts are not as helpful as Puppy users. So Puppy is different. Long may it continue. Long may Puppy improve in surprising directions. Long may you be happy with Slax or your fav distro. Are you using Slax everyday? Probably not. Puppy is used every day by many of its users and in preference to Ubuntu or other options. Slax though nice looking and much larger does not contain the functionality that Puppy has built in. When I first started using Puppy I heard people saying they used Puppy every day. How? How could any Linux be used every day on a desktop? It seems everything and everyone has come a long way since then. Have a look at Puppy in a year or so. You may be surprised. I remember it from a few years back. The changes in one year are amazing. That is true of many distros. More so with Puppy. Who knows where Puppy will be running in a years time . . .
I think that the person who wrote
the 'Happy Linux Thoughts' review perhaps behaves rather like the
cuisine critic in "Ratatouille".
This is IMHO a pity, yet I hope that he will eventually come to
appreciate the not-so-small
qualities of the various Puppy Linux releases.
I have had a go with a number of
Linux distributions, and Puppy is the one I have installed on all my five computers (three at work plus two at home). Many of its functions are so self-explanatory that even my own wife, who is usually quite unconfortable with computers, prefers it by far to Windows XP or 98.
I have tried Puppy Linux on a wide range of hardware, ranging from Cyrix M II with 80 MB of RAM to Pentium IV with a 2GB's RAM.
Puppy Linux is quite usable on all of them, and the ample selection of
distro flavours makes one spoilt for choice -- there is probably always a puplet which will work better on your own hardware ;-)) .
I agree about some minor drawbacks, the worst of which is IMHO the impossibility to place proper files on the desktop (only links and icons..). Yet IMHO I think Puppy is by far the best light-weight distro
I have tried,and I wish to goodness that many others distro were only
roughly similar in flexibility, usability and friendliness.
Finally, many congratulations to Dr. E. de Bernardis, who single- handedly developed and released a derivative i.e. Rudy Puppy which is
probably my preferred flavour, and is almost a complete system's software in itself. Also TeenPup is
great, expecially for oldie hardware.
Grazie !!! Paolo dall'Italia
I totally disagree with you, Happy Linux Guy. Puppy is fast, convenient, works almost everywhere and can be highly customized.
I also approve the fact that instructions are given in mostly any occasion: it makes it easier to use for beginners and for Linux users used to other customs (like you).
Just to say, my grandmother, aged 87, uses it on her PIII 256 MB laptop with ease (and I'm not joking).
Puppy can be also a convenient maintenance tool, even without being totally specialized for that end. This is where utilities like fragger can eventually be useful.
And, as for the security: not everytime / everywhere you need strong security and multi user capabilitie. When you don't, these features are quite an annoyance and Puppy lets me do without tiresome and unneeded procedures. On my servers, of course, the line is different but nobody's ever thought about making a web server out of Puppy. Peace !
Dude, you're full of it about puppy, especially 3.01. Awesome distro, the only one I like close to as well is pclinuxos. Puppy kicks ass for speed on any computer I've run it on, and it's as adaptable and understandable as any distro I've yet to run across. What's the matter, are you a shill for some other distro or just hyper-critical of other people's programming? Their hard work is what makes that free software world go 'round. Barry is worthy of the praise heaped on him from every corner of the world at this point. Your review is inferior and unfair - and don't think most people don't recognize that.
I agree to several points.
But: Puppy is used as the base to create custom distributions, so called puplets.
I'm the maintainer of Muppy, a puplet with lots of the things you request for Puppy.
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=23397
Themable desktop Icewm, graficsprogram Gimp, even OpenOffice.
An earlier version also autoconnected to the network, but we had reports, that this slowed down things on some machines.
So I dropped this again.
If you are enduser with an attitude for shininess and glory, pleasy try Muppy, NOP, Fire-Hydrant or Ecopup (there are many more interesting ones).
Puppy is not a distro - it is a build-system.
If you see it from this point of view, you might get curious to have a deeper look into the Puppy universe, with many small gems and diamonds :)
Mark
this review is quite surprising, the arguments presented is merely an opinion of a first-time user. i've tried slax, dsl, knoppix for quite sometime; but i ended up not using them the next day.
puppy linux is one of those distros that is ideal for first-time linux users; i've recommended it since june 2007 to all my friends, and tomorrow (dec. 15, 2007) i'll be demonstrating its use again on a college-level seminar.
i'm confident at puppy linux, and i hope the author would see things the way most puppy-linux user does.
figo cantos,
philippines
I couldn't disagree with this 'review' more strongly. When I booted Puppy 3.01, I went with all the default installs - just hit 'ENTER'! The installation had no problem at all handling my video, sound, USB camera and flash drive.
Even the network connection was very simple - I just clicked on about three "auto setup" buttons and went with the defaults.
I went from hitting the power on button to viewing my first web page over my WiFi connection in less than 5 minutes. The installation couldn't have been made much simpler.
For someone who wants to run a simple-to-use Linux system and be able to easily revert back to Windows, Puppy is fantastic!
I can only say, "What a sad review!"
Puppy was to much operating system for YOU?
Kyle
Happy Linux Guy, you actually had to single click on the network icon and make a couple of more clicks to get your internet going? You mean you didn't have to open the control panel and set up a new internet connection, have the system search for the driver and if not found, grub around to find the driver disk or floppy and insert that, point the system to it and then make a half dozen or so inputs to get the thing actually seeing the network?
Huh, you're using some new version of the Win98 that I don't own or heard of that you so often alluded to.
Take your highly regard SLAX, (in your mind) and actually compare it, in file size, to Puppy. Didn't do that, did you. You've also failed to consider that Puppy is, though not a derivitive, is compatible with SLAX, only easier to work with and, you know what? Faster. Yeah, really. I've tried SLAX in many of it's guises and it's never worked as easily, or as quickly, particularly out of the box.
Here's another bit of info for you, regarding Puppy vs Windows. I'm typing this on a unit with an Athlon XP2600 and a wireless card for internet connection. I've booted the live Puppy 3.0 CD, spent all of 30 seconds to get the internet connection going and fired up Seamonkey. This computer has Windows Vista installed on it and I cannot get the wireless working at all, not even manually inputting the parameters. Hmmm. I wonder about that....I've wasted several hours working with Vista trying to get the thing working and it keeps telling me there is a problem with the other end. B.S.
On another side, this thing is lightening running Puppy. The complete load up, including the network setup took a couple of minutes. That's about TWO minutes. Windows Vista takes nearly TEN minutes to do the same and still no wireless connection.
Also, just so you know, there are problems with Puppy. I have a computer that I want to run Puppy on but can't get the internet going either. Thing is, I didn't spend any money to get it not working while this Vista OS, well....
And, by the by, Puppy 2.17 worked fine on that PC so I'll likely be switching back to that version.
I think the point made above that Puppy is for computer users, not just linux users, is a good one. It was the first (and only) linux distro I could just start up and use, mainly due to those popups which you found annoying - they avoid the need to google endlessly to find instructions on how to do basic things. The developer hasn't focussed on "eye candy" but on Puppy's function. As mentioned, there are other "flavours" with "prettier" interfaces (eg 2.15 Community Edition) but there are users out there (like me!) who like Puppy's simplicity and don't care too much about the appearance of the desktop. Like everything, it's horses for courses....
My Name in Linux land is "ttuuxxx"
When It Comes to this review lets just remember 1 thing, Puppy Linux is made for older pc's case closed. That is why it is under 100MB and comes with tons of appications that are great for the size and well choosen also, They are chosen for what they can do with the smallest memory footprint. With that in mind you must not compare puppy with other main stream Linux Distros, because they are way larger and don't work on older pc's like puppy does, Like pent1 pc's with 64mb of ram, With that in mind we must applaud puppy for what it has accomplished in such a short time, and even the package managers are far superior, pet, pup, and now slackware packages, also you can install .deb packages, now lets just say the person who made this review should of never even loaded puppy without any background knowledge and for that the reviewer has failed, 101 computing, always look into the backgrounds of operating systems. If I was Donald trump I would say "YOUR FIRED"
P.s the reason why it ask you questions when booting like xorg or xvesa is because it for older or newer pc's, Older pc's use xvesa and really fly while newer ones use xorg, but at least you have the option of choice, plus it remembers your input, so you only have to do it once, But if you want to see what a 400MB+ version of puppy is like download "Inferno" from my site www.ttuuxxx.com and give that puppy a test, Its a beta so it has a few minor bugs, But when i have a final release It will blow away your Favorite Linux Distro and it will be under 500MB! and its based on puppy.
ttuuxxx
I agree fully with your review.
FINALLY someone in the Linux world that has common sense.
It's like. Ok. You are stating that you KNOW what my monitors resolution is, yet you are NOT setting it to that resolution for me? And ontop of this, you give a WARNING for setting it to the CORRECT resolution of 1680x1050??
How is the novice user going to handle the situation when it gets deployed to 300 desktops?
IMO, puppy is not bare boned, it's actually FILLED with tons and tons of junk that over complicates the OS to the novice user when better mail/browser packages could have been used. The numerous packages are simply misdirected effort.
I had an issue with my new Realtek network card and 3.01 puppy. This is all on a new system. This was very concerning as many others had this issue and the NIC is popular.
I installed Knoppix and other linux distros. They handled the card fine.
What if I purchased this 'trusted' OS for 300 people and this happened?
And you talk about stability? Again, Puppy was the ONLY distro that cuased this. I had to enable PXE boot to make it go away. Puppy admitted that they just 'gave up' on the issue. In the business world, that isn't good enough. That issue alone (along with the VGA) could have seriously screwed things up for an IT professional.
This is why the author is taking the standpoint he is. He understands the importance of things 'just working'.
Many of the users of Puppy don't realize that the sole reason why we would want a liveCD is because we DON'T want to be bothered with clicking buttons on boot. Especially if you are trying to run a webserver or deploy the OS to many systems.
Another major, major flaw is the basical engineering of Puppy. It basically wants to create a 512MB(!) save file on your C: drive to save settings! That is not a very portable OS in my opinion and actually makes it quite system bound. I have Knoppix (which I also dislike) on a USB key and can take my OS anywhere with all my settings. Knoppix, unfortunately, picks incorrect video settings off the bat so bye bye Knoppix.
And people, can we PLEASE get away from liveCD's when 4 gig USB drives are like $25 now. This is getting a bit silly and dated now. The CD booting is 5 years out of date.
Let's put the whole OS into RAM, operate from there, then save the whole image back to USB on shutdown. Forget all the other useless shutdown routines.
I can't believe a version of linux like this is not available in 2008. I guess I'm going to have to build my own.
What a terrible review. Did you even try to use the applications or just judge them by their looks?
No, the internet does not automatically connect, but the effort involved is virtually nil. The wireless setup is just as easy. In fact it is the ONLY distro of the dozen or so I have tried that could run my wireless card, and it took about four mouse clicks to do it.
The default JWM might be a bit bland, but lets face it, it's better than looking at KDE. If you can't live with it, use the Community Edition with IceWM. Simply the best looking distro I've ever used.
MTPaint may be ugly to look at, but obviously you never used it. It's the most kick-arse paint program out there. It does 95% of the stuff I used to use GIMP for.
And as mentioned, fragger is extremely useful for those of us who use Puppy to recover stuffed Windows boxes. Better than Knoppix.
It seems that you are just a shill for Slax. Well, I've used Slax, and I'll take Puppy over it any day. You would too if you gave it a proper test rather than reviewing it on an ill-informed cursory glance.
Quite frankly, your review sucks. You are trying to compare Puppy with some of the more modern Linuxes out there and that is not fair. Puppy is a great distribution for the size it is (under 100 MB). As many postings already have stated, it works on just about every hardware, especially older hardware, and has also saved me on numerous occasions. I run it as a rescue CD and on several older computers where I can not run a newer more bloated distribution. If it were not for Puppy, these machines would have been thrown out.
True, it does not have the latest and greatest applications, but what do you want for 100 MB. But it does have a way to do just about everything you want or need, including Abiword, Gnumeric, Perl and Samba built in. The other really great thing is you can do a frugal install on any OS and have Puppy available to use without disturbing the other OS as Puppy is then reduced to just files on your hard drive (the four system files vmlinuz, initrd.gz, pup_xxx.sfs, and zrdv_xxx.sfs, and your personal storage file pup_save.2fs, where all your other files and configurations are stored). The only issue I have had is to get printing working via CUPS, but I understand they are working on that.
Have tried SLAX, DSL, DeLi, and several other mini distributions and Puppy is the only one that I will use.
Finally, if you hit Control-Alt-Backspace to get to the terminal, then you should be slapped as a Linux user, because that's not the terminal command, that's the exit XServer backdoor command. That's true of every Linux I have ever used. The graphical terminal command you want is 'Console' No wonder it asked you to type 'xwin' again to go back into XWindows.
Hi, my name is Rob and Im currently co-ordinating the project for a new "community edition" of puppy linux, codenamed "Phoenix". Having worked in a community centre cybercafe I can understand your frustrations, and can confirm that all of them will be resolved in the new CE. I hope you will find the time to give it a review once it is out.
Thank you for giving the puppy community the short sharp (and brutally honest) shock it needs!!!
TEENpup 2008 has been released.
a 499Mb Puppy with lots of Apps and better artwork. Ubuntu its not. Slax's it not, it will poo on you too at times like its father.
I dare to to review it without liking it a little!! Woof Woof
@mikedavid00. Excuse me friend, however puppy can save its settings to usb pen. As mentioned before you set it up only once, and on the display warnings side puppy supposes you are an idiot, however it supposes it far less than windows. Win asks you (especially UAC on vista) are you sure few times over for trivial reasons. As far usb booting is concerned, several budget mbos from ecs and asrock do not support booting from usb to this day ('m talking about quad core support mbos) so I disagree about cd booting being 5 years outdated. Final note, so far I had numerous issues with puppy (not all resolved), however the effort put into its creation is very much worth the recognition.
I completely agree with the sentiment of the article and remain surprised by the hurt feelings of many commenters.
There's nothing wrong with constructive criticism. The article was anything but harsh yet the comments sounded like those of a man whose wife had been unfaithful. Talk about sensitive users...
I'm running Puppy Linux 4.12 and had to set up the network manually. Sure, it was easy but unnecessary for any OS attempting to call itself modern. It doesn't make a difference if it's a LiveCD, light-weight OS or a full-blown hard-disk only monster. DSL used to force manual networking - it doesn't anymore.
Anyway... it seems that as of this release, Puppy remains a system best suited for the tweaker. An attempt to install the distro on a hard drive failed miserably because there is little automation to the process. It's a good OS for the casual user with *Linux experience* but requires 1990s type tinkering to make it do what most other modern OSes (including commercial OS of 20+ years ago) do without breaking a sweat.
Puppy needs to decide if it's a toy OS or a highly optimized (speed) everyday OS for today's systems. Right now, it's comfortable being regarded as an occasional use OS for modern hardware.
well, i just heard about puppy a few hours before i came to this page. i thought it must be something quite good because i read that it was very fast and light. this idea immediately changed when i went to their site. its presentation was so amateurish and childish! anyway i downloaded the image and burnt it to a cd and booted up my comp. the desktop! wow! its true what you said. HORRENDOUS!pathetic i checked it out a couple of minutes and got tired of it.
ubunut on top. its teh best out there. but i'll still keep puppy because i want to set it up on one of my very old computers, just to make some use of it
You are lucky. I never got to the desktop.
Macpup had same features of puppy linux and is better in speed.Also it is light in weight.http://ubuntumanual.org/posts/271/macpup-511-puppy-with-an-attitude
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