Time for a New Puppy: Puppy Linux 4.3

Dmitri Popov

Productivity Sauce

Sep 19, 2009 GMT
Dmitri Popov

Mac OS X Snow Leopard? Windows 7? Forget it. The coolest OS release of the year is Puppy Linux 4.3. By now you already know that I have a soft spot for Puppy Linux, so for me each new release of this nifty little distro is a cause for a minor celebration. And the freshly-baked Puppy Linux 4.3 is no exception. In fact, the previous 4.2 release left me somewhat unimpressed, so I've had especially high hopes for the 4.3 version coordinated by Barry Kauler himself. Let me tell you straight away -- I wasn't disappointed.

Despite the minor version number bump, the new release represents "a massive upgrade, right from its very roots to topmost branches." Puppy Linux 4.3 is built using an entirely new system called Woof. This system allows you to build Puppy Linux from the binary packages of any distro, including Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, and Slackware. Barry Kauler also designed a new package management system, called the Puppy Package Manager, which is able to deal with packages from other distros. Puppy Linux 4.3 is based on the 2.6.30.5 kernel configured for SMP (multi-processor) systems which also works fine on single-processor machines. The kernel supports the ext4 filesystem and is patched for Aufs2 (advanced multi-layered unification file system).

Puppy Linux 4.3 comes with a few new applications. My favorite among the newcomers is CPU Scaling Ondemand, a simple graphical tool that allows you to control processor frequency. This tool can come in handy if the processor in your machine is running hot or you want to increase the battery life of your laptop by reducing its processor speed. Bcrypt GUI is another nifty graphical utility that lets you easily encrypt files and documents. The brand new BootFlash tool offers a more straightforward way of creating a bootable Puppy Linux USB key. In addition to the SeaMonkey browser suite, Puppy Linux sports its own PuppyBrowser lightweight browser based on the gtkmozembed library in SeaMonkey. In Puppy Linux, the new browser is used for viewing local HTML help as well as accessing CUPS (the printer server), PPLOG (the blog engine bundled with Puppy Linux), and QUISP (the CGI software for generating dynamic Web pages). The Fotoxx photo editing and viewing application has been replaced with Viewnior, a lightweight viewer which supports basic editing operations such as rotate, flip, and crop. The new Aqualung music player takes care of your music listening needs. It supports the MP3, WAV, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis formats and lets you manage podcast subscriptions. You can also use it to play and rip CDs. The desktop had a minor facelift, and it now sports slick icons and the new Polished-blue GTK theme. These are just a few highlights of Puppy Linux 4.3. For further info, read the official release notes and visit the related thread at the Puppy Linux forum.

Comments

  • Macpup 511

    Macpup is based on puppy which has great features of puppy plus some extra functionality.Check out http://ubuntumanual.org/pos...pup-511-puppy-with-an-attitude.
  • puppy video choices

    I have used many versions of Puppy over the last three years. Xorg works with most onboard video (it can be tested to verify it will work when the live CD is booted). I have only had to use VESA when an nvidia video card is installed.
    Also note that Puppy was never meant to be installed even though the newer version can save several large files to the hard drive to reduce boot times. Most Puppy versions load very fast on any recent PC.
    I have used Puppy many times to repartition & format (even NTFS) hard drives because it does it quite fast.
    I often used Puppy to jump on the internet for quick browsing without waitng for Windows or larger Linux distributions to boot.
  • Puppy makes junk computers useful again!

    Puppy is a fantastic Linux for older computers. Right now I have it installed on a couple machines: P-II / 266 mhz / 256M and P-III / 450 mhz / 512M. These boxes are basically "give-aways" in today's market, yet with Puppy they're still very useful. About the only iimitation I've encountered is that the P-II is too old to run video very well (the P-III runs video fine). What a great distro for refurbishing older computers!
  • Puppy rocks!

    I switched to Linux about two years after knowing nothing else but Windows, so that was a big step. I started with Ubuntu, but switched to Kubuntu soon after (KDE rules!). I still use that on my main computer although I am also very content with Linux Mint that I am running on a test computer.

    Recently someone gave me an old laptop, a Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic Mobile 360 from 1999, which had Windows 98 on it. I knew none of the distros I work with would run on this laptop, so I looked around. I tried a lot of distros (about 7, I think) meant for older computers, like Damn Small Linux, Vector Linux and a few others I can't remember. None of them worked. The last one I ended up with was Puppy, which did boot and run, but it didn't run very well. It was really slow.
    I read that most of it's work is done in RAM so I took at look at it. This laptop is a Pentium 2 366 mHz with 64 MB of RAM inside it and that was just not enough. So I upgraded it with some second hand memory chips, it now holds it's maximum 256 MB, and Puppy runs perfect now.
    I downloaded a custom version of Puppy with the latest Firefox installed, which is what I use a lot. Aside from that, I managed to put Wine on it and run Mailwasher Pro (the only program I know that can bounce mail right from the server), which also runs very well.

    The only thing it doesn't do well is flash video, like on Youtube, but I can live with that limitation. That's what you get with old hardware. A PIII that I tried it on does work, so there's your proof.
    Still, I chat, email and surf the web on that old thing, and thanks to Puppy, I am now looking into turning more old PC's into working machines again. Keep up the good work!
  • puppy

    Puppy 4.3 is truly awesome and fast. I have been using the puppy versions of linux of various hues
    for the last one year. I have tried almost all popular versions of linux and I vouch that that the 4.3 is the fastest of them. The only problem I face is auto detecting my blue tooth mobile as I am not sure whether the puppy linux is configured for bluetooth. I have found Mint linux autodetecting my nokia mobile and making file transfer easy. Of course If I need office application compatible with MS office I have to use Puppy Truecrypt 4.2 which is little bulky with 370 MB.

    Govindan , CISA
  • Puppy 4.3 is exceptional

    Its a amazing fast distro and its my 2nd encounter. It has great impact upon me that why should we looking for good looking slow distro while we can go for a super fast distro that is the difference between a dial up connection and a broad band connection.

    for more visit http://www.linux2u.co.cc
  • Puppy Linux is great!

    For me the neatest thing about Puppy is that it can use a Windows device driver to run my cable modum. I'm more or less computer challenged, so the idea of trying to install a device driver in a Linux operating system was a bit scary. I use Cox Cable, and so when I called them up they told me that "We don't support Linux". I thought that would be the end of it until I read a few articles in Linux forums and found out that "We don't support Linux" actually means "We won't answer any questions about Linux." They didn't tell me that their system will work just fine if you can get your computer set up properly. With Puppy, when I started looking for the internet connection setup area I found a menu item marked "use a windows driver". YEA! I clicked on that and then popped in my cable modem's installation disk. Even though the disk was made for Windows XP, Puppy found the driver and installed it. Bingo! I was on the internet perfectly in minutes. What a neat little distribution.
  • Puppy playing DVDs on a Pent 266Mhz with 128 RAM

    Another awesome release. Do not laugh but I was able to run 4.3 on a Digital 300 PC. Specs Pent 266Mhz, 128Mb RAM, 4MB VRAM Matrox Mystique, DVD-ROM, and 3GB HD. Able to play Hulk movie flawless. Keep up the great work!!
  • Puppy 4.3

    I came around to Puppy Linux through a spin off called Grafpup about 3 years ago. Since then, I've been trying distros left and right from both big and small players in the field, sometimes installing for a while, other times just running from the live cd to get a glimpse. I run a powerful Mac with OS X, an IBM P4 with a major Ubuntu derived Linux distro. But the one I use the most, day in and day out, is an old IBM Netvista which has always had a Puppy install on it. Puppy is addictive in it's simplicity, speed, and letting you, the user, have full control over every aspect of it's computing process.
    All thanks to Barry Kauler who's maintained is original goal of an all around user friendly and very small distro with all the trimmings that will work on just about any old computer.
  • Puppy

    I am a button pusher with almost no knowledge of how Os's work beneath the GUI. That said when my windows xp went belly up after nasty virus infection, I was able to use the Puppy Live CD to salvage my personal files. I also found that I an use puppy to make a back up on my hard drive and was able to do a restore on another winTel box that had gone bad after after a windows update.
    Puppy also recognizes dial up modems that other types of Linux do not.
    In short Puppy is installable and usable by someone whose prior computer experience is noodling with windows. Puppy seems to work right off the disk.
  • PuppyRus - Russian Puppy. take a look, please

    Puppy 4.3 is really nice and fast
    and there are many pupplets( not yet based on puppy 4.3happy

    Russian puppy is here
    puppyrus.org

    i believe you would be interested, Dmitri

  • Multiuser

    Puppy Linux has another user by default called "spot" which is limited user, you can run applications as limited user by typing "su spot" in terminal then you can launch apps from that terminal as "spot" user. There are also puplets which are working on full multiuser enviroment like this one: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=343034#343034 It's based on 4.2.1 and you can createusers, log into X and run most apps as limited user. blunk
  • Single User Mode Only

    People need to know that puppy only runs in single user mode.
    This is great for many people, but not all.
    It can be a surprise if you install it and don't know.
    Still - it's a great distro for small machines.
  • Thanks for letting us know!

    Glad I heard about it here. I ran it in Virtualbox to try it out - make sure to use XVESA if you do this; Xorg didn't seem to work for me (you choose during Puppy setup).

    But I love it so far - some really cool Puppy-only apps in there, like a neat online TV viewer with great presets. It also has a fast way to add your own channels.

    Love the wallpaper, too!
  • Puppy Linux

    I am not a linux geek. I prepare taxes for a living. That said I had a few old laptops that were basically bricks.

    I heard about ubuntu and loaded it into the old laptops, and low and behold they were useful tools. Well kinda, one old laptop strained under ubuntu.

    I found pupply linux and ran it from the CD and that laptop ran great. I did installed puppy linux on the harddrive and have been very happy with.

    I have tried other distro's like slackware. Yes I was able to install it. But since I aint no geek, I find Puppy linux has the perfect balance between being user friendly and being a slim down OS.

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