Can not boot Noble Puppy 32b from live bootable.

[DiaNobb]

Trying to boot Noble Puppy live bootable on hardware as the following:
MB : G45T AM2 V:1.0
CPU: Intel Core2 Quad and cooling fan
RAM: DDR2 800 SDRAM 4G (2x2)
PSU: UFO AB450 (450W)

My USB stick: Generic 8gb USB2.
Noble Puppy 32b ISO downloaded from SourceForge via Puppy Linux.
Live bootable was created with USB Image Writer of Cinnamon 22.1.
The live bootable did not boot and a message saying:
(Minimal BASH-like line aditing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible completions of a device/filename. ESC at any time exits.)
grub>_

Do not understand at all. It seems some code or grub is required since there was a prompter prompting. Do not know what to do. Help, please?
Thanks.
DiaNobb

 

[Brickwizard]

Puppy is basically designed for running "live" from Ram you can install it but its a bit odd in the way it works, I suggest you start with

How to Install Puppy Linux: The Complete Beginner's Guide

Run a lightweight version of Linux without the commitment Do you want to try Linux without committing to a full installation? Unlike other Linux distributions, Puppy Linux doesn't require a full installation—it can boot from a USB drive....

www.wikihow.com

 

[MikeWalsh]

@DiaNobb :-

As m'colleague says above, Yes; you CAN install Puppy to an internal drive, although she was always designed to run completely from a flash drive.....and to save everything back TO that flash drive.

Me, I'd suspect the stick creator in use. My guess is that USB Image Writer fails with Puppy for exactly the same reason that nearly every other installer fails; because they don't understand Puppy, or how she works.

Most of these utilities are 'dd'-based, and expect to find a full layout of the file system, all ready for them to copy across into its new home. But this is not the case with Puppy.

Our Pup consists of half-a-dozen or so highly-compressed 'read-only' files. When Puppy boots, the initrd first creates a virtual file-system in RAM. This is formatted to a Linux-compatible format (ext3/4); the 'read-only' files are decompressed, and their contents are copied across into that freshly-created 'virtual' file-system.

Essentially, Puppy's file-system only ever exists in RAM.....and that ONLY for the duration of the session.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

Most of these installers fail because they're designed to query things IF they don't "see" the expected full file-system ready to copy across. So; we take a different approach with Puppy. We use a more traditional type of installer, that was designed before all these cross-checks were developed and implemented as the 'norm'.

Once you have your first Puppy installed & running, you then have access to any number of specific Puppy installers, designed to work with Puppy. But you still need to get that first Puppy installed, so.....we recommend the use of the long-running utility, UNetBootin.

We don't recommend the one that everybody else does; Balena Etcher. This works great for the standard, "full" distro install to its own dedicated partition, because it was designed for this. But it falls flat at the first hurdle with Puppy, because it doesn't understand what it's looking at.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

TBH, you'd be just as well to visit the dedicated noobs section at the Puppy Forums, here:-

Getting Started with Puppy

.....because we've got a whole bunch of tutorials dedicated to all these specific issues, and detailing how to work around and with them.


Mike.

 

[The Duck]

Being as Noble Pup is only 348MB I'd create a bootable CD and install it from that onto a USB flash drive as a frugal install.

You can use Xfburn to create the bootable CD which should already be installed on Linux Mint.

NoblePup32-24.04-251101.iso	2025-11-01	384.8 MB

Github Puppy Linux Releases - Browse /NoblePup32_release at SourceForge.net

Github Puppy Linux Releases /NoblePup32_release files. Browse /NoblePup32_release files for Github Puppy Linux Releases, Puppy Linux releases from Github

sourceforge.net

 

[DiaNobb]

Puppy is basically designed for running "live" from Ram you can install it but its a bit odd in the way it works, I suggest you start with

How to Install Puppy Linux: The Complete Beginner's Guide

Run a lightweight version of Linux without the commitment Do you want to try Linux without committing to a full installation? Unlike other Linux distributions, Puppy Linux doesn't require a full installation—it can boot from a USB drive....

www.wikihow.com

Thanks.
Downloaded UNetbootin from its own website and tried to install it on Cinnamon. Terminal said: Cannot add PPA: ''This PPA does not support noble''.

Then, downloaded Balena Etcher fron its own website. It was a zipped file. Could not be extracted. "An error occurred while extracting files."

Is it possible that Cinnamon 22.1 excludes or rejects these apps?

Again, thanks.
DiaNobb

 

[DiaNobb]

@DiaNobb :-

As m'colleague says above, Yes; you CAN install Puppy to an internal drive, although she was always designed to run completely from a flash drive.....and to save everything back TO that flash drive.

Me, I'd suspect the stick creator in use. My guess is that USB Image Writer fails with Puppy for exactly the same reason that nearly every other installer fails; because they don't understand Puppy, or how she works.

Most of these utilities are 'dd'-based, and expect to find a full layout of the file system, all ready for them to copy across into its new home. But this is not the case with Puppy.

Our Pup consists of half-a-dozen or so highly-compressed 'read-only' files. When Puppy boots, the initrd first creates a virtual file-system in RAM. This is formatted to a Linux-compatible format (ext3/4); the 'read-only' files are decompressed, and their contents are copied across into that freshly-created 'virtual' file-system.

Essentially, Puppy's file-system only ever exists in RAM.....and that ONLY for the duration of the session.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

Most of these installers fail because they're designed to query things IF they don't "see" the expected full file-system ready to copy across. So; we take a different approach with Puppy. We use a more traditional type of installer, that was designed before all these cross-checks were developed and implemented as the 'norm'.

Once you have your first Puppy installed & running, you then have access to any number of specific Puppy installers, designed to work with Puppy. But you still need to get that first Puppy installed, so.....we recommend the use of the long-running utility, UNetBootin.

We don't recommend the one that everybody else does; Balena Etcher. This works great for the standard, "full" distro install to its own dedicated partition, because it was designed for this. But it falls flat at the first hurdle with Puppy, because it doesn't understand what it's looking at.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

TBH, you'd be just as well to visit the dedicated noobs section at the Puppy Forums, here:-

Getting Started with Puppy

.....because we've got a whole bunch of tutorials dedicated to all these specific issues, and detailing how to work around and with them.


Mike.

Thanks.
Sounds frustrating. I am a newbies literally. It would be almost impossible for me to run Puppy Linux if it is so different from normal operating systems.
Tried to install UNetbootin for creating a live bootable USB but Cinnamon terminal rejected and said: Cannot add PPA: ''This PPA does not support noble''.
Then, tried Balena Etcher and downloaded Balena Etcher fron its website. It was a zipped file. Could not be extracted. "An error occurred while extracting files."
Either Cinnamon rejects creating a Puppy live bootable or I am too ignorant for the attempt of running a Pyppy OS.
Really appreciate your goodwill trying to help me.
DiaNobb

 

[DiaNobb]

Being as Noble Pup is only 348MB I'd create a bootable CD and install it from that onto a USB flash drive as a frugal install.

You can use Xfburn to create the bootable CD which should already be installed on Linux Mint.

NoblePup32-24.04-251101.iso	2025-11-01	384.8 MB

Github Puppy Linux Releases - Browse /NoblePup32_release at SourceForge.net

Github Puppy Linux Releases /NoblePup32_release files. Browse /NoblePup32_release files for Github Puppy Linux Releases, Puppy Linux releases from Github

sourceforge.net

Thanks.
Do have three CD/DVD drives from old desktop machines. Yet, don't know if any one of them would work. It was almost 18 years ago I burned CDs and DVDs. Not sure if they still work today. The capacity is DVD 4.7gb, actually 4.2-4.3gb.
Hopefully I can create Puppy Noble live bootable directly on a 32gb memory card, and run the OS directly from the memory card.
But right now I cannot even finding a suitable program to create the live bootable.
Thanks.
DiaNobb