I have something similar to @rado84 going on with my Puppies. Only in MY case, rather than a quick swap mechanism, I do it slightly differently.
Due to the way Nvidia driver installation works with our Pup, once the driver is installed that's it; there's no easy way to uninstall it & return to the nouveau driver OR a different "official" driver. But that's no problem.
Because Puppies are so tiny - in real terms - I just keep two versions of each Puppy.....one with the last, newest driver for the GT 710, and one with the most recent driver for the GT 1030. The GT 710 still functions fine; in my case, I just fancied a newer card within my budget, so I went for the GT 1030. (I found a good deal on an Inno3D GeForce variant, plus it had good reviews.....and it's a "silent" type - no fans! - which is important for me). The GT 710 is sitting in its box in a cupboard, carefully packed away, ready for re-use if & when it's ever needed.
I keep one Puppy which runs with "nouveau" (standard trim), thus the card in use at any given time will make zero difference. If I need to swap cards, I'll do so when using this 'generic' Pup. The rest of the kennels - all 6 of them - will then get swapped over.....which will take perhaps 7 or 8 minutes in total.
The entire "kennels" occupies perhaps less storage space than does a single, popular, fully-installed 'mainstream' distro.....one of the big advantages of 'frugal' installs. Copies of both variants of the entire kennels occupies no more than 11 GB, tops. And this 'swapping-over' process - using simple copy'n'paste - is all scripted & automated in any case, so it'll only be a case of clicking on the script and leaving it to get on with it. (I'm a big believer in automation wherever possible.)
I keep my Puppies small by 'sharing' a whole variety of 'portable' applications between them. These only ever get linked-in to each Puppy along with a Menu entry.....not 'installed', per se. We developed an entire eco-system of 'portable' apps for the Puppy community, because it's a concept that just gels really well with Puppy's somewhat oddball, yet highly versatile method of operation....and it helps to keep your Pup small & neat.
I never see the sense - when running multiple distros - of re-installing the same apps over & over again. It's a huge waste of drive space, so why NOT 'share' a single, fully-functioning & already set-up copy as many times as necessary? And this way, I just have one large directory, on the big secondary data drive, which contains the 'portable' library.....around 120 GB in total.
Well, it makes sense to me.
Yes, I know it sounds horrendously complicated - and, in truth, it DID take a while to set up initially! - but it works SO well it's untrue.
@LinuxUserSince2013 :-
As for the weather radar apps, hmm... At the same time when I bought the GT 1030 late last year, I took the opportunity to 'max-out' the CPU on the Pavilion, and found a very sweet Core i7-8700 refurb on eBay for around GBP £50.....approx the same TDP, too. This has made a HUGE difference to how I do things in Puppy, and now lets me properly multitask and use that 32 GB RAM as I originally intended.
The only snag with my personal, favourite weather app - Ventusky - is that it doesn't make use of the GPU, and is entirely CPU-bound. It used to fairly well tie up the old Pentium G5400 - 2C/4T - when it was running.....but the Core i7-8700 - 6C/12T - shrugs it off, and barely seems to notice it, so that's another big plus point for my upgrade!
This stuff is all detailed here:-
I'm no 'gamer', but on the odd occasions when I do 'mess-around' for the odd half-hour it's always with Linux-native, 'indie' stuff - never AAA+ titles - so that minimal 2 GB VRAM on both cards is ample for the task. There's a ton of really decent & highly-enjoyable Linux-native games out there which seem to be largely ignored; my personal preference is FPS stuff, and I really like the original Nexuiz from the early 2000s, which later 'morphed' into the community-maintained Xonotic. OpenArena (a Quake III port), Urban Terror & Red Eclipse also get a look-in from time to time.
I think it's fair to say I'm pretty happy with my current set-up. It just 'works' for me.
Mike.
Due to the way Nvidia driver installation works with our Pup, once the driver is installed that's it; there's no easy way to uninstall it & return to the nouveau driver OR a different "official" driver. But that's no problem.
Because Puppies are so tiny - in real terms - I just keep two versions of each Puppy.....one with the last, newest driver for the GT 710, and one with the most recent driver for the GT 1030. The GT 710 still functions fine; in my case, I just fancied a newer card within my budget, so I went for the GT 1030. (I found a good deal on an Inno3D GeForce variant, plus it had good reviews.....and it's a "silent" type - no fans! - which is important for me). The GT 710 is sitting in its box in a cupboard, carefully packed away, ready for re-use if & when it's ever needed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I keep one Puppy which runs with "nouveau" (standard trim), thus the card in use at any given time will make zero difference. If I need to swap cards, I'll do so when using this 'generic' Pup. The rest of the kennels - all 6 of them - will then get swapped over.....which will take perhaps 7 or 8 minutes in total.
The entire "kennels" occupies perhaps less storage space than does a single, popular, fully-installed 'mainstream' distro.....one of the big advantages of 'frugal' installs. Copies of both variants of the entire kennels occupies no more than 11 GB, tops. And this 'swapping-over' process - using simple copy'n'paste - is all scripted & automated in any case, so it'll only be a case of clicking on the script and leaving it to get on with it. (I'm a big believer in automation wherever possible.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I keep my Puppies small by 'sharing' a whole variety of 'portable' applications between them. These only ever get linked-in to each Puppy along with a Menu entry.....not 'installed', per se. We developed an entire eco-system of 'portable' apps for the Puppy community, because it's a concept that just gels really well with Puppy's somewhat oddball, yet highly versatile method of operation....and it helps to keep your Pup small & neat.
I never see the sense - when running multiple distros - of re-installing the same apps over & over again. It's a huge waste of drive space, so why NOT 'share' a single, fully-functioning & already set-up copy as many times as necessary? And this way, I just have one large directory, on the big secondary data drive, which contains the 'portable' library.....around 120 GB in total.
Well, it makes sense to me.
Yes, I know it sounds horrendously complicated - and, in truth, it DID take a while to set up initially! - but it works SO well it's untrue.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
@LinuxUserSince2013 :-
As for the weather radar apps, hmm... At the same time when I bought the GT 1030 late last year, I took the opportunity to 'max-out' the CPU on the Pavilion, and found a very sweet Core i7-8700 refurb on eBay for around GBP £50.....approx the same TDP, too. This has made a HUGE difference to how I do things in Puppy, and now lets me properly multitask and use that 32 GB RAM as I originally intended.
The only snag with my personal, favourite weather app - Ventusky - is that it doesn't make use of the GPU, and is entirely CPU-bound. It used to fairly well tie up the old Pentium G5400 - 2C/4T - when it was running.....but the Core i7-8700 - 6C/12T - shrugs it off, and barely seems to notice it, so that's another big plus point for my upgrade!
This stuff is all detailed here:-
Well; now then :-
For the last year or so, the bulk of my upgrades / improvements / new purchases have been on the replacement Latitude I bought about 14 months back, in early September 2024. More RAM, better, more decent storage - and more of it! - new webcams, and other accessories......y'all know the drill, I'm sure.
For what it is, for a 13-yr old machine the E6430 is going great guns, and I'm really pleased with it. It was time to turn my attention to the main box.....in case the old girl was feeling 'left-out'!
One thing I'd been meaning to sort out...
For the last year or so, the bulk of my upgrades / improvements / new purchases have been on the replacement Latitude I bought about 14 months back, in early September 2024. More RAM, better, more decent storage - and more of it! - new webcams, and other accessories......y'all know the drill, I'm sure.
For what it is, for a 13-yr old machine the E6430 is going great guns, and I'm really pleased with it. It was time to turn my attention to the main box.....in case the old girl was feeling 'left-out'!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One thing I'd been meaning to sort out...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm no 'gamer', but on the odd occasions when I do 'mess-around' for the odd half-hour it's always with Linux-native, 'indie' stuff - never AAA+ titles - so that minimal 2 GB VRAM on both cards is ample for the task. There's a ton of really decent & highly-enjoyable Linux-native games out there which seem to be largely ignored; my personal preference is FPS stuff, and I really like the original Nexuiz from the early 2000s, which later 'morphed' into the community-maintained Xonotic. OpenArena (a Quake III port), Urban Terror & Red Eclipse also get a look-in from time to time.
I think it's fair to say I'm pretty happy with my current set-up. It just 'works' for me.
Mike.
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