old laptop reborn with puppy linux

[openeyes]

I just loaded Puppy Linux on my 6.5 year old IBM Thinkpad and suddenly it's like a whole new system. I can't watch online videos on netflix (though that function is still in beta testing for Macs too), but I can listen to Pandora online, browse using something derived from firefox (I actually like it better than firefox) and everything opens up significantly faster than with XP. Connecting to my secured wireless was surprisingly quick.

For how I'm running puppy, I just went on their site (Puppy Linux), downloaded the ~90 megabyte free OS, wrote it to a cd using the recommended freeware program, turned off the computer and upon restarting the computer went into the BIOS and told it to check the CD before the hard drive. I'd never tried linux or any other operating system aside from Windows before, and am not extremely computer savvy, but aside from the download time everything was easily done within 15 minutes thanks to good instructions along with small size and an intuitive setup.

[Akashic_Librarian]

Nice one, I think when I am bit older I might buy a seperate Laptop and mess about with Linux and stuff.

[Niki]

Wow that is great! And 90MB for a fully featured OS is pretty amazing on its self. Happy to hear that Linux saved your old hardware.

[ragtag]

I've used Puppy a bit, though my main system runs Ubuntu. Puppy is extremely snappy as I believe it loads itself more or less completely into RAM. You can try it out without touching your hard drive at all. Just pop in the CD and go. You can then optionally save the changes you've done to your drive.

Puppy is a very nice puppy.

[openeyes]

Originally Posted by ragtag

Puppy is extremely snappy as I believe it loads itself more or less completely into RAM. You can try it out without touching your hard drive at all. Just pop in the CD and go. You can then optionally save the changes you've done to your drive.

Exactly. If I want to go back to XP I can just take out the CD and restart the computer. Had I known it'd be so simple I'd have tried it long before I decided it was time for a new computer.

[Trezker]

I gotta remember that name, "Puppy linux". For when I get a cheap laptop or something.

[{aspiring_to_clarity}]

Originally Posted by Akashic_Librarian

Nice one, I think when I am bit older I might buy a seperate Laptop and mess about with Linux and stuff.

You can also do a dual-boot on your current system. Then when you start your computer you just choose which to log into. Puppy would be good because it uses so little space.



Aside: AL, a long time ago you gave a nice advice on one of my threads that was quite lightworkerish (well, it was quite kind, thoughtful and insightful). For some reason it just came back to me and I wanted to say thanks. Now, you can return to your regularly scheduled darkness