The Puppy Linux Book.pdf

The Puppy Linux Book

Puppy Linux version 4.1.2

Getting started

Grant Wilson

aka smokey01 and wombat01

Page 1 of 69

Table of Contents

Disclaimer................................................................................................................3

Purchase a hard copy of the book............................................................................3

Make a Donation to the author................................................................................3

Introduction..............................................................................................................4

Why Use Puppy when I am happy with Windows?...................................................5

Software Accessible from the Desktop....................................................................7

Help......................................................................................................................8

Pmount the drive/media mounter........................................................................9

PETget package manager..................................................................................10

Setup..................................................................................................................11

Geany is a brilliant text editor............................................................................12

Console..............................................................................................................13

Xlock..................................................................................................................14

Xarchive.............................................................................................................15

Trash..................................................................................................................16

Abiword a MS Word compatible word processor................................................17

SeaMonkey Composer is a WYSIWYG HTML editor.............................................18

InkscapeLite is a vector drawing program ........................................................19

Gnumeric an Excel compatible spread sheet application...................................20

Seamonkey a great browser similar to Internet Explorer...................................21

mtPaint is similar to Windows paint. I like this better........................................22

SeaMonkey mail and news is an excellent email client......................................23

ROX is the file manager. This takes the place of Windows explorer..................24

Gxine is a media player. ....................................................................................25

Ayttm is a chat client. .......................................................................................26

Osmo the personal organiser.............................................................................27

Internet Connection Wizard................................................................................28

Menu Structure and a whole lot more software.....................................................29

Desktop Menu....................................................................................................29

System Menu......................................................................................................30

Setup Menu........................................................................................................31

Utility Menu........................................................................................................32

File System Menu...............................................................................................33

Graphic Menu.....................................................................................................34

Document Menu.................................................................................................35

Calculate Menu...................................................................................................36

Personal Menu....................................................................................................37

Network Menu....................................................................................................38

Internet Menu.....................................................................................................39

Multimedia Menu................................................................................................40

Fun Menu...........................................................................................................41

Help Menu..........................................................................................................42

Where to get the Puppy Software..........................................................................43

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Puppy CD ..............................................................................................................44

BIOS setup.............................................................................................................45

Taking Puppy for a run...........................................................................................47

Installation to a USB Flash Drive............................................................................50

Selecting a USB Flash Drive...............................................................................50

Preparing the flash drive with GParted .............................................................50

Installing Puppy onto the Flash Drive.................................................................56

Frugal installation of Puppy...................................................................................61

Full Installation of Puppy........................................................................................63

Connecting to the Internet.....................................................................................65

ROX-filer.................................................................................................................67

Conclusion.............................................................................................................69

The Puppy Master..................................................................................................69

Thanks................................................................................................................69

Disclaimer

You use the information contained in this book entirely at your own risk, it comes

with absolutely no warranty implied or otherwise.

The author takes responsibility for absolutely nothing.

This book was written entirely within the Puppy Linux environment.

If this book gives you a better computing experience, I will have achieved my

goal.

Purchase a hard copy of the book

If you would like to purchase a hard copy of this book please visit Lulu at:

http://www.lulu.com/content/5560578

Make a Donation to the author

If you found this book useful please consider a donation to the author.

Click here and you will be redirected to the authors web site, then click on the

icon and you will be redirect to the PayPal site.

Thank you

Page 3 of 69

Introduction

I continually hear from people who are frustrated with their computers and the

many problems they encounter with various operating systems. Now don't

misunderstand me, it's not my intent to discredit any operating systems, rather to

bring your attention to an alternative.

The alternative I refer to is Linux, Puppy Linux to be exact. As you are probably

aware Linux is not new. It has been around for many years. There are literally

hundreds of variations of this great operating system. These operating systems

are known as distros, short for distributions. If you have a look at the

http://distrowatch.com/ web site you will notice there are over 350 listed.

Although Puppy is not as popular as the big Linux boys, like Ubuntu, it does rate

quite respectfully around twelfth position at the time of writing.

Why did I bother to write this book/tutorial?

I have been involved with computers and operating systems since 1977. Believe

me, computing has changed considerably since then. The first piece of software I

wrote was using marked cards, not an enjoyable experience especially if you drop

the cards. It was very difficult putting them back in the correct order.

As operating systems have progressed they have become bigger, more

complicated and more functional. It has made computing easier and also more

difficult. Many years ago before Windows there was DOS (Disk Operating System),

it was very small and quite fast. Unfortunately it had many limitations and was

difficult for many to use. Adding peripherals (printers etc) was quite difficult as

you had to locate the appropriate drivers or write your own

I'm told a full installation of Windows Vista requires about 15 Gigabytes of disk

space. Puppy requires about 94 Megabytes when installed frugally. More about

frugal installations later in the book.

Puppy Linux is not Windows, it is different, but not as much as you might think. It

has a Graphical User Interface (GUI) just like windows, as a matter of fact Puppy

can be configured to look and operate very similar to Windows. The transition

from Windows to Linux is quite simple these days. You don't have to be a geek.

Most people do not like change. The majority of computer users have Windows or

Apple software and like to reside in their comfort zones. There are a number of

other operating systems in use but I will mainly discuss Windows and Puppy

Linux. If you are happy with Windows, why change?

Although Puppy is easy to use some instruction will simplify the learning process,

hence the reason for this book.

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Why Use Puppy when I am happy with Windows?

How long does it take to load Windows?

Have you ever had to reinstall Windows?

Have you ever had a virus which has damaged your operating system?

Do the long installation times of Windows bother you?

Would you like an operating system that can be installed in a matter of seconds?

Would you like better reliability?

If you have answered YES to any of the above, trust me, Puppy is worth a look.

I have been using Puppy for two years, maybe longer. Puppy comes with a lot of

built in help and the on line forums are great. The Puppy forum users are very

helpful. There is a Puppy manual which is very helpful but I wanted to provide

some very basic guidance to friends when giving them a copy of Puppy.

I will attempt to keep this book as non technical as possible. Now lets have a look

under the hood.

Puppy Linux is a full featured operating system. It comes with many programs

that will allow you to do almost anything you want. There are literally thousands

of other programs that may be installed if you wish.

Puppy may be installed, mainly, in two ways, full or frugal. A full installation

requires a Linux partition to exist on your hard drive or on another media device.

This means all the Linux files are uncompressed the same as Windows. This

requires about 200M disk space. Boot times are faster but management is more

difficult than frugal.

The other method of installation is Frugal. From Puppy Linux version 4.0, only

three files are required. These three files are compressed with many other files

contained within. A fourth file is created when you shut down for the first time.

This file is called the pup_save file and this is where all your personal settings and

data is saved. You don't have to save your data within the pup_save file as it can

be saved in any other device you have mounted such as USB flash drives, USB

hard drives, memory cards etc. The word mounted may be unfamiliar, it simply

means logically connected to your computer. At first, mounting a drive will seem

like a pain but it has some great advantages. For example, if your drive is not

mounted you cannot get a virus on that drive. It's good practice to surf the

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