Desktop Linux (Puppy Linux 5.0): Reviewed

It’s time for a review of Puppy Linux 5.0!

Puppy Linux, in case you aren’t already familiar with it, is a lightweight version of Linux that is designed for portability.

The .iso file of Puppy Linux 5.0 weighs in at an incredibly petite 128 MB. It’s much, much smaller than all of the usual desktop heavyweight distros. But don’t let its small size fool you, Puppy Linux 5.0 is anything but an also-ran in terms of functionality and usability.

Puppy Linux 5.0 is built from Ubuntu Linux 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) binaries, so it’s…er…pet name is Lucid Puppy. Like a lot of other things about Puppy Linux, the name is cute and adorable. I felt like giving Puppy Linux a dog bone and a pat on the head when I started using it.

What’s New In This Release
Quickpet is a great addition to Puppy Linux that lets you easily add more programs and drivers with one click. You can access Quickpet by clicking on the icon on the desktop.

The Quickpet menu is broken down into the following categories of applications (pets):

Popular Pets
GIMP
Pwidgets
Audacity
Songbird
Wine
Clan Bomber

Internet Pets
Firefox
Seamonkey
Chromium
Opera
Thunderbird
Kompozer

Useful Pets
Lxmusic Versatile Music Player
Dia Diagram Editor
Cinelerra Video Editing
JRE Java Runtime Environment
Foxit Reader
Inkscape

Drivers
Radeon HD
Nvidia 195

Update
Lucid Puppy Update

Before you try to use Quickpet, be sure that your network connection is configured. I forgot about that and got an error message when I tried to download Opera. To configure your network, just click the blue Connect icon on your desktop.

Puppy Linux 5.0 also now boots right to the desktop (don’t worry you can personalize your desktop, see that section of the review for more information).

And you get to choose your default browser as well. Firefox, Sea Monkey, Chromium and Opera are all available. What you choose to use is entirely up to you. You can also opt to simply use PuppyBrowser, which is a version of Firefox.

Use Quickpet to install applications with one click.

When you click to install a pet, it will download onto your system automatically.

Hardware Requirements & Installation

Hardware Requirements
I could not track down the exact hardware requirements for Puppy Linux 5.0. There don’t seem to be any in the release notes or on the Puppy Linux site. It’s possible that I missed them. I apologize if I did. If you have the requirements, please feel free to post them in the comments.

Suffice to say that Puppy Linux is a lightweight distribution so it’s perfect for older hardware or less powerful contemporary hardware.

Installation 
You can install Puppy Linux in a number of different ways. Given its size, it’s obviously a prime candidate to be installed to USB key chains and other portable, bootable devices. Alas, my USB key chain is still missing in action. I know it’s around here somewhere but I’ll be damned if I know exactly where it went. Someday I’ll find it or I’ll get another one. But for this review I just opted to run Lucid Puppy in a VMWare virtual machine.

Booting & Login

Bootsplash
The bootsplash screen is unmistakably Puppy Linux. It looks like no other distro. Hit the F2 key for a list of boot options. You can hit Enter to boot right away or simply wait five seconds for Puppy Linux 5.0 to boot automatically.

You have to hand it to the Puppy Linux developers. The logo is adorable and adds a lot of humor and personality to this distribution.

You can't mistake Puppy Linux 5 for any other distro when you see the bootsplash screen

Login Screen
There was no need for me to login to use Puppy Linux 5.0. I just booted right into the desktop from the bootsplash screen.

Helpful information about Puppy Linux 5 that appeared after logging in.

The Desktop
When you first boot into the desktop, you’ll see the First Run Configuration menu. This lets you adjust your Locale, Time zone, Date and Time, Keyboard and Video Resolution, and Network Setup.

The panel contains a Menu button, along with icons for viewing the desktop, free space and launching a browser. You can also access multiple desktops, and volume controls.

Click the Menu button to access application categories, system settings, etc. See the software section to see more about the software that comes with Puppy Linux 5.0.

Desktop Icons
The Puppy Linux 5.0 desktop is definitely not an uncluttered one. There are a lot of icons on it. But if you look closely, you will notice that they are laid out in a particularly arrangement.

At the top of the desktop you have the following icons:

File
Help
Mount
Install
Setup
Edit
Console

Under that you have:

Write
Calc
Paint
Draw

Then you have:

Browse
Email
Chat

Then:

Plan
Play
Etc.

The desktop icons are basically grouped in functionality categories. This helps prevent the Puppy Linux 5.0 desktop from collapsing into a total mess of icons. But those who are used to booting into an icon-free desktop might be taken aback momentarily when they first view see Puppy Linux 5.0. Don’t let all the icons rattle you; it’s very easy to make sense of them once you take a closer look.

The Puppy Linux 5 desktop is filled with useful icons and colorful wallpaper.

Wallpaper
I love the Puppy Linux 5.0 wallpaper. It’s very cute and has the name “Lucid Puppy” on it. The wallpaper fits in well with the desktop icons and isn’t too over the top.

If you find that you dislike the wallpaper, themes, etc. just right-click your desktop and choose Desktop then Desktop Settings. You can make all the changes you want from the Desktop Settings controls.

Sound and Multimedia

YouTube & Flash
Flash comes with Puppy Linux 5.0. So I was able to watch YouTube videos without having to install it. Sound worked fine and my YouTube videos looked good.

Problems & Headaches
For the most part, I had a good experience with Puppy Linux 5.0.

However, I did have two lockups while playing YouTube videos. I was forced to restart Puppy Linux 5. I’m not sure what the problem was but FYI for those who want to use YouTube via Puppy Linux 5.0.

Another thing I didn’t like about Puppy was that it doesn’t auto-detect and configure Internet connections. I guess I’ve gotten so used to this in desktop distros that I find it annoying when a mini-distro like Puppy doesn’t do the same thing. I’m probably nitpicking or just being lazy here though.

YouTube videos played but Puppy Linux 5 crashed twice while playing them.

Where To Get Help
You can always post a note in the Desktop Linux Reviews Forum and we’ll do our best to offer feedback or at least point you in the right direction. You might also want to check out the Puppy Linux forums, install instructions, and the Puppy Linux technical and developer page.

Final Thoughts & Who Should Use It
Puppy Linux 5.0 was a real treat for me to review. I love this distro’s personality and humor. Everything from the lingo, to the logo, to the wallpaper radiates fun. You can’t help but smile when the Puppy Linux desktop pops up.

Puppy Linux 5.0 is perfect for intermediate and advanced Linux users. However, I worry about recommending Puppy Linux 5.0 to beginners. The network configuration might throw some Linux newbies off and the application menus in Puppy teem with applications. It might be overwhelming to someone who is new to Linux. But if you’re an adventuresome Linux newbie, feel free to give Puppy Linux 5.0 a shot.

Puppy Linux 5.0 is well worth a download, and it deserves a chance to become your preferred portable distro. Check it out.

What’s your take on this distro? Tell me in the comments below. Visit the DLR forumfor more discussions. Visit JimLynch.com for opinion columns.

Summary Table:

Product:	Puppy Linux 5.0
Web Site:	http://www.puppylinux.com/
Price:	Free
Pros:	Quickpet makes it easy to add applications, drivers and updates with one-click. Boots right to the desktop. Good selection of bundled software. Tiny file download size.
Cons:	YouTube videos seemed to lock up Puppy Linux 5.0 twice. Internet connection requires some configuration.
Suitable For:	Intermediate and advanced Linux users. Adventuresome beginners might also want to play with it and see if it’s right for them.
Summary:	Puppy Linux 5.0 is a terrific lightweight, portable distro. It’s well worth putting on a USB key chain or other portable device. Puppy Linux 5.0 is tiny but it packs a powerful bite.

Slitaz Linux : Linux Distro

Many of the lightweight Linux distros on offer are based on more popular desktop variants such as Debian, but this one's grown completely from scratch since 2007. It's one of the few that includes languages other than English (Spanish, French, German and Portuguese).

The base install is competent enough for a variety of tasks. The browser is Firefox 3.5, which may not be the most lightweight app you could think of installing, but it does give Slitaz the ability to run pretty much any web app, which is what many people will want to do with such a diminutive distro that doesn't have a lot of its own software.

That said, there's a cluster of useful tools included as part of the minimal install, including a MTPaint, a PDF reader, music player and a couple of editors (Leafpad and Nano). For lightweight and embedded projects, it rather unbelievably includes a fully functional webserver (Lighttpd) with PHP/CGI support, and various other standard network tools as well (such as SSH and FTP).

If you feel the need to bloat out the system, there are over a thousand packages available in the online repository. Package management is via a tool called Tazpkg, which is tiny, but straightforward and easy to use.

The packages themselves are custom archives with included information and dependencies, so you won't get caught up in a whole world of install pain (though you are limited to the packages available from the Slitaz repository, unless you want to make your own).

The desktop uses the nippy but low overhead Openbox window manager, combined with LXDE desktop, which should be pretty intuitive to most users (it's most akin to a KDE 3.x desktop).

Slitaz achieves the objective of cramming a lot into a small space. It doesn't have an overwhelming selection of default packages, but they do the job, and they do it very fast.

Verdict: Slitaz 
Version: 2.0 Cooking 
Website: www.slitaz.org 
Price: Free

Review of Tiny Core Linux

The Tiny Core project was started in 2008 by one of the refugees from DSL, so it isn't much of a surprise that it follows the same ethos of trying to get as much as possible into the minimum amount of space.

If anything, Tiny Core has taken this to more of an extreme, completely savaging the package base to create just about the smallest distribution you could still consider to be a Linux OS. While this is great news for those trying to fit the OS on to ancient hardware or embedded devices, it does inevitably mean you'll need to do more work if you want to do anything other than boot it up and look at the X display.

Fortunately, there's an app installer that enables access to the large repository of TCZ packages, so you can easily install the apps that you want. Dependencies are handled, but obviously, if you choose to install something like Firefox, you're going to see the disk space taken up by this distro ballooning to new levels. But you will have to install something, otherwise a few system scripts and a terminal will be your only company.

In some ways, it's not quite so useful to have such a diminutive distro. There may be some specialist cases, but for general use, most people can easily spare, say, 100MB of space. Sure, you can build on the Tiny Core install by adding applications, but it may have made things easier to aim for a slightly higher target to begin with.

But that's to take nothing away from the remarkable achievement of creating a Linux install that fits inside 10MB of space. It's easy to see Tiny Core becoming the basis of many specialist application distros – if you can get the base install down in size, it leaves you with a lot more room to pile on your custom applications.

Verdict: Tiny Core Linux
Version: 2.8
Website: www.tinycorelinux.com 
Price: Free

Review of Unity Linux

This Mandriva-based distro wants to give you low resource computing, but it doesn't want you to slum it. Although possibly the best-looking of the distros in the Roundup, it does come at the cost of a slow boot time.

Unity is pretty much as sluggish as a full desktop distro when it starts, compared to the nippy zippy likes of Slitaz and Tiny Core. Once the Openbox-based desktop is running, though, it is as fast and responsive as you could want a distro to be.

The install process couldn't be easier – run the graphical installer, tell it where you live, allow it to partition the drive however it likes and you're done in a couple of clicks. In fact, it may be a little too easy – perhaps it should ask a bit more about where you're installing, but there are manual options available for most of the stages. Installation may take a while, but you can always avail yourself of the live Unity while you're waiting, then reboot back into that lovely desktop.

That's when the real shock hits you – Unity has gobbled up nearly 1GB of space before you've even started installing anything! The minimal install does contain lots of configuration tools, but if you want to do anything like browse the web or play some music, you'll need to get downloading.

The smart package manager is preconfigured to fetch updates and packages from the extensive Unity mirrors, though you could most likely install Mandriva or generic RPMs without much difficulty. Setting up networking was seamless and we were gorging ourselves silly on frivolous applications such as image viewers and audio players in no time.

Surprisingly, once installed, Unity only came mid-table in terms of memory use, but we found that it was sprightly and easy to use. As with some of the other distros we've tested here, this is a beta release, but based on what we saw, it seems ready for a full release already.

Verdict: Unity Linux
Version: 2010 Beta 2
Website: http://unity-linux.org 
Price: Free