Linux distributions + Slackware >
A Puppy Linux for- thing, built using woof-CE. Built from Slackware.
Overall, I'm not impressed.
- http://puppylinuxnews.org/home/slacko-puppy-is-released/
- As of 2020-01-13 not updated since 2014-03-08.
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Since Puppy Linux uses systemd, I might presume this does too. However, Slacko is built from Slackware using Puppy's build system.
Compatible with the binary TXZ packages of Slackware 14, accessible through the Package Manager (note that native Puppy Linux packages are called PETs);
2015-05-08 - 5.7 ∞
Slacko aka "Spup"
Last updated 2014-03-09. Eww.
Downloaded slacko-5.7.0-PAE.iso
I have no clue how to get this onto a USB stick. There aren't any hints anywhere I can see..
Trying
sudo dd if=slacko-5.7.0-PAE.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M
- dd worked.
- Nice coloured bootup.
- The console test resolution/font is oldschool, but I'm not surprised.
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TTY4 is the GUI.
- This is done to save a little bit of memory. It's a good idea.
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The quick setup wizard
- Has help tooltips that don't go away!
- After selecting to use the firewall, and ok to exit the wizard it opens a term to run the firewall script. That terminal has an ugly font.
- The bottom-left menu seems to be ornery. Sometimes clicking will flash it up and then dismiss it as though I double clicked it.
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As with previous Puppy Linux tests, mouse B4/5 do not work. Sigh.
- Fiddling with mouse setup gave no options for this. I guess I could get technical, but fuck that.
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The package manager
- Ugly, cumbersome and somewhat unfriendly.
- Has dependency resolution.
- I'm forced to individually click to download each dependency. Ugh.
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I installed Openbox to test it.
- There was no hint as to how to get it working.
- WMSwitcher is absent from my menu.
- https://web.archive.org/web/20181223204648/http://www.puppylinux.org:80/wikka/ChangeWindowManager didn't give instructions for OpenBox, and I didn't want to fuck around.
- I can't find "lupify" which is supposedly some other window manager helper thingy with openbox.
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Shutdown
- I can't save to the USB stick?
- There's no way to cancel the partition selection.
Overall, I'm not impressed.
Last updated 2022-10-16 at 12:37:55
The boot CD has a few install options available by clicking the install icon in upper left. One of those is an install to USB. It's pretty easy. Puppy is usually install on either USB or hard drive with a "Frugal" install, which is just copying the contents of the CD onto the USB or into a root directory. The GRUB4DOS boot utility on the Puppy CD will find any Windows, Mac, or Linux installs and even the Frugal puppy installs and make a handy boot utility.
Slacko runs very well from a USB, in that even from the USB it installs completely into memory and thus makes little reference to the USB after that.
I love Slacko and use it exclusively. It is composed of only a few files, and I believe they are compressed. I think they load into memory in the compressed form except for an exec that unpacks utilities as they are called. This is much faster then loading them from disk on each call.
The neat thing about the Puppy versions is that they can truly be ran from CD. Since the system loads into memory, the CD can then be removed and CD utilities in the OS can be used to play or burn or reference data on CD, since the OS is no longer referencing its own CD. So even if booted from CD, it runs like lightening. If ran from CD, it offers the option to make a "save" file on your hard disk, what ever type of file system the hard disk is. It doesn't destroy anything on the disk, just makes a special type of file that contains any data you create or software you install while in Puppy.
The ease of making Frugal installs, the snappiness of the memory installed OS, the access to Slackware and Salix libraries makes it a super system. Since a hard disk install only requires a directory for the CD files, one can have multiple installs of different versions of Puppy on the same partition, each in its own directory.
Incidentally, I've ran an older version of Puppy (431 version) on an old Windows 95 era laptop that only had 85MB of memory. Not enough to hold the system. It still worked. It was a Linux disk, and thus had a swap partition. Puppy just used the swap partition to make up for the memory that didn't exist. It still ran quite well. I don't know about the newer versions, but I suspect that swap space would still allow running in a computer with little memory, as long as a Linux swap partition was available.
[admin edit: his URL was linuxgoodies.com]
marking abandoned