Fast distro

jar1 said:
@Mike thanks but just the type of person who doesn't want to type in too many commands... :) that's why i skipped Arch linux too. Long ago i tried installing debian but it was all too complicated for me :)
Click to expand...
Mm....no. Not really.

When I say "manual" and "hands-on", I do NOT mean using the terminal. We very rarely use it in Puppy.

When I say "digging around in the file-system", that's literally what I mean. Using the file-manager to create directories, physically move files around, etc, etc. Forget the terminal. Even performing a quick'n'dirty, manual install of Puppy is way more fun than installing mainstream distros!

I've been running Puppy for near on a decade. I have a dozen or more of the little darlings in my "kennels", and also play around with ChromeOS 'Flex' and HaikuOS from thumbdrives. I avoid the terminal assiduously; as far as I'm concerned, I want nothing to do with it. Which, yes; for a Linux 'geek', that is considered a very strange attitude.....

It's up to you, of course.....but DO have a look over at the Puppy forums, even if you don't take it any further. If a dumb bozo like me can handle Puppy, anybody can!


Mike. :p
 
Last edited:


MikeWalsh said:
It's up to you, of course.....but DO have a look over at the Puppy forums, even if you don't take it any further. If a dumb bozo like me can handle Puppy, anybody can!
Click to expand...

I'd like to give it a try. just trying to get these other distros working first... before I test all the distros on planet!
 
MikeWalsh said:
@jar1 :-

(That installer The Duck showed you is almost 20 years old, and it no longer works properly for modern Puppies......reason being the modern UEFI requirements. Why it hasn't been removed - or re-written - heaven above knows...)

Mike. ;)
Click to expand...
My apologies. :oops: :(
 
The Duck said:
My apologies. :oops: :(
Click to expand...
@The Duck :-

Nah, don't worry about it, mate. Nowt to apologise for; you weren't to know. For installing older Puppies on older, traditional MBR hardware it still works perfectly........but ever since UEFI became a thing that we had to face up to, a whole slew of installers have been cooked up by various community members (none of which quite seem to do what they're supposed to.)

This is why I go with the quick'n'dirty method myself. Once you've got the hang of it, it's fool-proof. And results are consistently repeatable. I don't think I've used an "official" installer for a long time.

I'll have a look-see if I can find rockedge's tutorial that you mentioned....


Mike. ;)
 
Last edited:
jar1 said:
I'm having bit of trouble installing the distros, last 3 attempts have failed on some GRUB not being able to install error. What could cause that? I always select the erase whole HD option when installing
Click to expand...
were those 32- or 64-bit? if 64, did you try 32 to see if it had the same problem?
 
jar1 said:
I'm having bit of trouble installing the distros, last 3 attempts have failed on some GRUB not being able to install error. What could cause that? I always select the erase whole HD option when installing
Click to expand...
On Puppy Linux you have to install Grub4DOS at the end of the install.
You also have to set up a boot flag as part of the installation which can be done using Gparted.
Failure to do either will give an error or just will not boot up.
 
@The Duck :-

There's these three:-

Installing to a Bootable USB Drive with Save File

Installing Puppy to a UEFI Internal Drive

Installing Puppy on an MBR (Legacy) Internal Drive

Any of those ring a bell?

(The reason these are all 'posted' by rockedge is quite simple. wizard actually wrote them, but as Admin rockedge had the power to 'lock' it all as he went. The whole point was to make this a read-only, info-only section. And that's what he's done.

We didn't want people replying to these, since it would all end up getting messy & untidy, full of opposing, contrary opinions. We discussed all that in a separate thread, some time before wizard wrote the final drafts....)


Mike. ;)
 
MikeWalsh said:
@The Duck :-

There's these three:-

Installing to a Bootable USB Drive with Save File

Installing Puppy to a UEFI Internal Drive

Installing Puppy on an MBR (Legacy) Internal Drive

Any of those ring a bell?

(The reason these are all 'posted' by rockedge is quite simple. wizard actually wrote them, but as Admin rockedge had the power to 'lock' it all as he went. The whole point was to make this a read-only, info-only section. And that's what he's done.

We didn't want people replying to these, since it would all end up getting messy & untidy, full of opposing, contrary opinions. We discussed all that in a separate thread, some time before wizard wrote the final drafts....)


Mike. ;)
Click to expand...
Them are it the first one is the one I remember but all of them are useful imo.

Thanks @MikeWalsh

I don't know why I kept missing them when I was looking for them.
Puppy Linux forum has a lot of stuff to search through.
Rockedge has a good search link.

Puppy Linux Forum Search

rockedge.org rockedge.org
 
Last edited:
z7vl7abxc said:
were those 32- or 64-bit? if 64, did you try 32 to see if it had the same problem?
Click to expand...

bit of both
i think the problem might be the distro tries to install UEFI boot system but this old laptop probably doesn't support that..... so maybe I need to manually create partitions to MBR
not sure only guessing how this linux stuff works :D
 
i believe the installer will try to install in the mode it was booted in. if it boots in uefi mode, it will try to install in such and so forth. one way i try to check that in a live usb is to run the command

efibootmgr

in a terminal. if that does run, it was booted in uefi mode. i think a uefi install would need the disk it is going to install on to have a GPT. the quickest way i know to check that is to run the command

sudo parted -l

and check the line that says "Partition table". gpt is for gpt, but i believe the older mbr would be labled msdos.

editing to add: that is a lowercase L in the second command. since it also kinda looks like a 1.
 
Last edited:
@The Duck :-

Yeah. The Puppy Forums are a bit like Doctor Who's T.A.R.D.I.S., my son. There's a hell of a lot more going on than initially meets the eye, when you start to drill down into it.....

And that's only three and a half years-worth. The old Forum had nearer 16 years worth, and had a much larger membership (and was a lot more active in the early days.) After it shut-down when John de Murga died (in July '20), rockedge found out the MySQL database had well over a million posts extant; the final size was somewhere in excess of 25 GB.

The major problem with the old forum was that the software hadn't been updated in many years. Eventually, it got so that with the global shift from 'http' to 'https', new members simply weren't receiving their confirmation posts any more. And that was just the beginning of a very steep, slippery slope.....so Erik (rockedge) set up the present forum as a 'test-bed' in Dec 2019, to try and suss a few of these issues out. He made such a good job that it eventually became the new, main Forum......and the rest, as they say, is history.

Mike. :rolleyes:
 
well it looks like im looking for fast-to-install distros now (JK) because it takes long for them to install only to fail to install grub in the end
Lubuntu/AntiX was the last distro I was able to install after that nothing has worked

I tried toggling legacy mode from bios on/off but that doesnt help

kinda out of ideas but I was thinking maybe I need to partition the disk my self?

also wanted to ask if linux has MBR that maybe corrupted/incompatible that needs to be fixed somehow? or is it "all" redone on new installs?
 
interesting I was able to install xubuntu. then I tried lxle but same grub problem
 
jar1 said:
if linux has MBR that maybe corrupted/incompatible that needs to be fixed somehow
Click to expand...
I have not come across this problem myself, but we have had a problem with SSD's where there was a hidden windows partition at the beginning of the drive, where Linux likes to stick the grub loader
 
Brickwizard said:
I have not come across this problem myself, but we have had a problem with SSD's where there was a hidden windows partition at the beginning of the drive, where Linux likes to stick the grub loader
Click to expand...

hidden partition, i checked the partitions in linux installer, in there was only two partitions. so i guess it's good?
 
made some progress here I was able to install peppermint. Idk was it the 64bit or different iso burner I used but glad I'm getting these distros finally working
Haven't got LXLE working yet but I think it was last update 2015 so maybe its not the best choice

If anyone knows easy to install fast distros please let me know :)

thx!
 
jar1 said:
Haven't got LXLE working yet but I think it was last update 2015 so maybe its not the best choice
Click to expand...
the newest version i see on lxle's downloads page: https://www.lxle.net/download/

is LXLE Focal 64Bit which is based on ubuntu 20.04 (codenamed Focal Fossa) so it should be supported until 2025. distrowatch and the lxle forum say it was released in may of last year.

obviously you should use a distro you can install so this isn't a post to pressure you in any way, but that 2015 date isn't accurate.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Members online

Total: 871 (members: 2, guests: 869)

Latest posts

Top