Vlogcanic

General Information.

Initially developed by Barry Kauler, Puppy Linux is a LiveCD mini distro.

It’s one of the few recent distribution made from scratch –not based in any previous Linux distro. It offers an unsuspected high number of applications and options given the size of the LiveCD (smaller than 100MB) including AbiWord (a MS-Word lightweight clone) and a host of other essential programs for everyday desktop use and, to a lesser extent, system rescue.

Features.

Despite being a young and small project it packs a lot of interesting features which account for a large fanbase. Among those are:

• Boots quickly. It starts up in less time that other LiveCDs because of the distro’s light weight.
• Fully loads itself into RAM. So all the software is always available, the system is more responsive, everything runs fast and since the LiveCD isn’t nedeed once the session is started, the CD-ROM becomes available for use, unlike other LiveCDs which must stay put for the OS to work properly.
• Native support for writing NTFS partitions. While most distros can mount and read a NTFS partition, few can actually write them without the aid of some extra piece of software. Puppy does the trick.
• Native Adobe Flash and multimedia codecs. Another useful feature for browsing the web or playing your media files without any extra hassle.
• LiveCD persistence. Many LiveCD distros support some kind of persistence (a way of not losing the work and system changes you perform while using the LiveCD) by writing to a flash drive or an hdd partition. Puppy actually allows you to record your changes in the LiveCD CD-R so long as it’s a multissesion disk.
• Boot options. LiveCD, USB pendrives and flashdrives, zip drives, network, emulators, even a floppy that boots up and loads the system up from some other media. You name it, all booting options are supported.
• Speed and lightness. Because of its very light weight and efficiency it can be comfortably used even in very old machines.
• Escalation. You can add packages to use with your LiveCD.

It’s also intuitive and easy to use.

Because of all of the aforementioned features, Puppy Linux can be a great help when rescuing files from a busted Win computer. It’s also well suited for someone just looking to get the feet wet in the Linux sea or as a portable personal system. Above all, at least in my view, it’s well suited to breath a bit of new life into old computers set to perform desktop tasks.

Small, fast and powerful, this Puppy does a lot of tricks for its size.