Big opportunity to promote puppy! Need advice.
Posted: Tue 06 Dec 2016, 21:54
Hi everyone.
I currently find myself in the position of being able to promote puppy linux to possibly hundreds of people and am in need of the community's opinions.
Here's the situation. I am a technical consultant for a charity that sends refurbished PCs and laptops to developing countries, mainly in Africa. For years I volunteered with them as a technician. When I started I used to recommend we send puppy on USB drives with the PCs as none of the computers really end up being for personal use, instead they go to schools or other environments where they have to be shared. Back then I was seen as just a volunteer and nobody really took much notice of my suggestions, so I didn't bother suggesting it anymore.
Then a year or so later the charity was being contacted by the makers of keepod who wanted to sell their USB drives that live booted an x86 version of android. I wouldn't have been involved if it wasn't for the fact that the managers at the charity couldn't get it to work. They needed to edit and run a script, but didn't know how to use the command line in linux. I got it working, made my suggestions of using puppy which is "free and better than android!", but again they didn't take much notice. I don't think they were that impressed with the keepods either. The charity wasn't very forward thinking at that time, but that has all changed recently.
Now the makers of keepod are trying to sell their usb drives again, which now runs Chrome OS. I don't think it is going to be the right choice for this task, as nearly all of the PCs we send will have no internet access or at best a very limited connection at their final destinations. Satellite connections are way too expensive, so we currently provide an offline content server (RACHEL) with batches of our PCs. I know that Chrome OS can run offline, but I am still sceptical as to how functional it can be.
So, now I'm a technical consultant for the charity and my opinions are actually listened to. The charity are asking for my advice on the keepod, which again isn't working (I'll see why tomorrow) and I really want to be able to go in and sell them on puppy this time round. Maybe I should keep an open mind about the keepod, but the main reasons I want them to go the puppy route are:
1: The Keepod now requires specs to be to be quite high. People can use it only with 64 bit machines with a minimum of 2GB of RAM. Those are the minimum specs we ship nowadays, but it would limit people from being able to use their personal OS away from the PCs we send. What if when kids finish school they want to go to an internet cafe that only has 32-bit PCs? They'd have to use the OS installed on those PCs rather than their personal OS with all their personal files and applications on it. Kind of defeats the whole point doesn't it?
2: Getting our own USB drives and putting puppy on them would be half the price of purchasing from keepod. This means for the same budget we could help twice as many people.
3: People in the developing world need "real" computer skills, not just knowledge of how to use shiny looking, locked down operating systems. Linux changed everything in computing for me and enabled me to do so much which otherwise couldn't be done. This in turn opened up so many more opportunities for me in work and other aspects of my life. The developing world has little to no infrastructure when it comes to IT and that will only properly change when the people themselves have the basic skills to build it themselves. I believe getting some experience in linux is possibly the single most important skill in IT after programming, especially for the creative and maker types that will make that change a reality.
I have to be honest, I personally don't use puppy much, well not as much as mint, debian and raspbian, but I do know that it is 100% exactly what is needed for this project. I do sometimes use both the slackware and ubuntu based main editions and also puppy arcade, but not as my everyday distro.
Currently I'm thinking Tahrpup 6.0.5 32-bit No-PAE might be the best option. Assumptions I'm making are that for full compatibility on nearly all PCs, 32 bit No-PAE would be best (I may be wrong). Being Ubuntu based it'll be a tiny bit more user friendly than the slackware base and/or have more software in the repos (I may be wrong.) (We could possibly host entire repositories locally offline). Being a main release it will have a larger user base, which will make it easier for us to find help and fix issues than if we use a puplet. Again I may be wrong and if a specific puplet was more suitable I'd definitely consider it.
So my question for the puppy community is, which release or puplet would you recommend for the task of being someone's main OS (who probably has little computer experience) that will be using it on possibly multiple PCs with no way to know in advance which hardware specs it may be needed for? Please also recommend which version (32-bit without PAE Vs 32-bit with PAE Vs 64-bit) and why. I know that almost any release of puppy would be well suited for this job, but I would still like to know what the puppy community thinks would be "optimal".
Also, am I right in assuming that anything quirky based would be out of the question?
Requirements in order of importance are:
1: Hardware compatibility. Be the most compatible across all hardware types including driver compatibility.
2: User friendliness and stability. It has to be simple and robust enough so it can be used by people without easy access to online forums to ask for help.
3: Large user base. This is not as important as the previous two points, I'm just guessing that any problems that may arise will be easier to fix on our end if the release has more users that may have experienced similar problems.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this insanely long post,
sorry. I probably shouldn't have bored you all with the back story, I just wanted to get across the point that I think they are actually going take this idea seriously this time and if I'm maybe going to be responsible for deciding which version of puppy possibly hundreds of people get to use as their main OS, I should at least get opinions from you guys, who know puppy far better than me.
Any suggestions on requirements for the project you think I should be looking into or have missed will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
I currently find myself in the position of being able to promote puppy linux to possibly hundreds of people and am in need of the community's opinions.
Here's the situation. I am a technical consultant for a charity that sends refurbished PCs and laptops to developing countries, mainly in Africa. For years I volunteered with them as a technician. When I started I used to recommend we send puppy on USB drives with the PCs as none of the computers really end up being for personal use, instead they go to schools or other environments where they have to be shared. Back then I was seen as just a volunteer and nobody really took much notice of my suggestions, so I didn't bother suggesting it anymore.
Then a year or so later the charity was being contacted by the makers of keepod who wanted to sell their USB drives that live booted an x86 version of android. I wouldn't have been involved if it wasn't for the fact that the managers at the charity couldn't get it to work. They needed to edit and run a script, but didn't know how to use the command line in linux. I got it working, made my suggestions of using puppy which is "free and better than android!", but again they didn't take much notice. I don't think they were that impressed with the keepods either. The charity wasn't very forward thinking at that time, but that has all changed recently.
Now the makers of keepod are trying to sell their usb drives again, which now runs Chrome OS. I don't think it is going to be the right choice for this task, as nearly all of the PCs we send will have no internet access or at best a very limited connection at their final destinations. Satellite connections are way too expensive, so we currently provide an offline content server (RACHEL) with batches of our PCs. I know that Chrome OS can run offline, but I am still sceptical as to how functional it can be.
So, now I'm a technical consultant for the charity and my opinions are actually listened to. The charity are asking for my advice on the keepod, which again isn't working (I'll see why tomorrow) and I really want to be able to go in and sell them on puppy this time round. Maybe I should keep an open mind about the keepod, but the main reasons I want them to go the puppy route are:
1: The Keepod now requires specs to be to be quite high. People can use it only with 64 bit machines with a minimum of 2GB of RAM. Those are the minimum specs we ship nowadays, but it would limit people from being able to use their personal OS away from the PCs we send. What if when kids finish school they want to go to an internet cafe that only has 32-bit PCs? They'd have to use the OS installed on those PCs rather than their personal OS with all their personal files and applications on it. Kind of defeats the whole point doesn't it?
2: Getting our own USB drives and putting puppy on them would be half the price of purchasing from keepod. This means for the same budget we could help twice as many people.
3: People in the developing world need "real" computer skills, not just knowledge of how to use shiny looking, locked down operating systems. Linux changed everything in computing for me and enabled me to do so much which otherwise couldn't be done. This in turn opened up so many more opportunities for me in work and other aspects of my life. The developing world has little to no infrastructure when it comes to IT and that will only properly change when the people themselves have the basic skills to build it themselves. I believe getting some experience in linux is possibly the single most important skill in IT after programming, especially for the creative and maker types that will make that change a reality.
I have to be honest, I personally don't use puppy much, well not as much as mint, debian and raspbian, but I do know that it is 100% exactly what is needed for this project. I do sometimes use both the slackware and ubuntu based main editions and also puppy arcade, but not as my everyday distro.
Currently I'm thinking Tahrpup 6.0.5 32-bit No-PAE might be the best option. Assumptions I'm making are that for full compatibility on nearly all PCs, 32 bit No-PAE would be best (I may be wrong). Being Ubuntu based it'll be a tiny bit more user friendly than the slackware base and/or have more software in the repos (I may be wrong.) (We could possibly host entire repositories locally offline). Being a main release it will have a larger user base, which will make it easier for us to find help and fix issues than if we use a puplet. Again I may be wrong and if a specific puplet was more suitable I'd definitely consider it.
So my question for the puppy community is, which release or puplet would you recommend for the task of being someone's main OS (who probably has little computer experience) that will be using it on possibly multiple PCs with no way to know in advance which hardware specs it may be needed for? Please also recommend which version (32-bit without PAE Vs 32-bit with PAE Vs 64-bit) and why. I know that almost any release of puppy would be well suited for this job, but I would still like to know what the puppy community thinks would be "optimal".
Also, am I right in assuming that anything quirky based would be out of the question?
Requirements in order of importance are:
1: Hardware compatibility. Be the most compatible across all hardware types including driver compatibility.
2: User friendliness and stability. It has to be simple and robust enough so it can be used by people without easy access to online forums to ask for help.
3: Large user base. This is not as important as the previous two points, I'm just guessing that any problems that may arise will be easier to fix on our end if the release has more users that may have experienced similar problems.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this insanely long post,
![Embarassed :oops:](./images/smilies/icon_redface.gif)
Any suggestions on requirements for the project you think I should be looking into or have missed will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.