List of minimum system requirements for various Puppies?

[ssme]

As a recent starter with Puppy, one resource that I didn't find anywhere (perfectly understandably) is a single list which indicates the system requirements for acceptable performance with the various Puppy series and puplets based on them. There are lots of little mentions across the hundreds of threads in the forum, but it strikes me that it would be good to have a single thread.

I wonder if I could put this question out to all of you out there so that we can perhaps have a sticky list that newcomers can refer to to get the best Puppy experience from their old hardware.

So if you could post your details for acceptable performance, perhaps in a standard format, something like:
Puppy version/Puplet name/version: e.g. 4.1.2
Install type: Full/Frugal
CPU type/speed e.g. PII 300MHz
RAM: e.g. 128MB
Swap: e.g. 200MB
X-server: Xorg/Xvesa
Hard disk space required: e.g. ~350mb
Performance: Sluggish/Acceptable/Good/Fantastic!
Any other comments (forum/download links for the version would be helpful!):

There's bound to be other useful details, but it would be good to know whether, for example, an ancient PC requires a Puppy 1 series or whether Meanpup or White Fang might be better suited, and the best way is to get everyone's experiences!

If I have time I'll update the first post to make it even easier to refer to the thread.

Apologies if this has been done before, I know I couldn't find it!

My submission:

Puppy version/Puplet name/version: 4.1.2barebones retro
Install type: Full
CPU type/speed PI 233MHz
RAM: 64MB
Swap: 128MB
X-server: Xorg
Hard disk space required: ~350mb
Performance: Acceptable
Any other comments: http://www.puppylinux.org/downloads/pup ... -412-retro - I found retro was better on this hardware than the normal 4.1.2 I tried.

[Bligh]

Good topic, I have found the documentation on Puppy is great. For the newcomer, the problem is finding the information needed in the vast store of available resources. I recently tried, unsuccessfully to run 4.1.x on a p2 with 128 mb ram. Will have to try retro.
Cheers

[canbyte]

Make this topic sticky. SSME good question but here's a different spin.

Just crashed, fried, frazzled my puppy's save file or something. Call SPCA!

Dell, P? 400mhz, 128mbRam, Puppy 412 on cd with save file on 1G USB flash. Also trying to run puppy on a similar Compaq box. Both have Win98 on the hd. Quite happy doing puppy stuff, this forum, etc even with a dozen windows open ++. But load up the pages below and tell me why puppy crashed, with each attempt today getting worse after multiple reboots. I noticed the CPU meter going way up - hit 5th line with i think, 4 pages open!! On second thought, loading the pages to get the url would crash me again while i'm trying to put this message up, so just google and load a sampling from the following message boards: Silicone Investor, Stockhouse.ca, Yahoo Finance, Investor Hub. Also load up some pages from MarketWatch, GlobeInvestor. This stuff is wicked. Probably trying to data mine or maybe just clogged with special scripts, loaded with ads, etc. Dunno.

So Bligh, we have similar boxes but i believe that puppy needs standard integrated oem boxes from a brand name so everything works well together UNLESS owner is a techie. Very important to make known.

I also disagree with you about puppy info being great. Its only great if you can find it and if a noob could contribute anything, JM/ BK take note, it would be to reorganize/ edit this entire site. Threads are very inefficient lessons compared to wiki or a manual, despite being much easier to make.

So i gotta question if i can use puppy to do a real dog's work. I cant deal with it crashing all the time. The Win98 was getting bogged down too and i was blaming it on Bill, possible viruses, fragged hd etc.. Maybe not, maybe website designers are getting just as bad/bloated as MS. Hard to imagine though that web pages, even 6 of them can use up significant memory. Maybe i should ask how much mem puppy chews up if the entire thing sits in RAM. Same for hd install?? How does one read the CPU meter anyway? Maybe the puppy philosophy + low mem is no good for certain apps/ pages. Comments?

What's my fix: better OS, more memory, older puppy, or ????

[Bruce B]

So Bligh, we have similar boxes but i believe that puppy needs standard integrated oem boxes from a brand name so everything works well together UNLESS owner is a techie. Very important to make known.

If it is a good OEM box and has proven itself, YES. The choice the OEM made regarding the hardware components were compatible with each other.

The design of the machine however is most likely Windows centric. The OEM is building it to be a good machine for running the current version of Windows and marketing it as a package. Maybe it the used a 'winmodem' or a wireless network device from a company who doesn't care for supporting Linux.

What I'm wanting to say is, if the machine works well with Linux it wasn't by intent of design on the part of the OEM. It is probably more by design and intent of the Linux community to write software for a wide range of hardware variations.

==============

I built my number one machine for maximal Linux support. Would it work with Windows?

It wasn't designed to. I'm not going to buy a Vista license to find out. Based on all I've read, I think I might have some problems with some of the hardware, the video card and printer mostly, maybe.

If I really wanted Vista, I'd probably allow for some hardware purchase.

On the other hand, if I put in any Linux and it didn't take well to my hardware, I'd wonder, 'What went wrong?'

This computer was thought out and designed for Linux.

Hope this makes sense to you all.

.

[Bruce B]

{cut}

I cant deal with it [Puppy] crashing all the time.

{snip}

What's my fix: better OS, more memory, older puppy, or ????

It shouldn't crash.

With only 128 MB RAM pup_412.sfs was not copied to RAM at all.

You say: Puppy 412 on cd with save file on 1G USB flash

If you can release the CD, the pup_412.sfs on the CD is not being used either.

I don't think flash sticks are a particularly reliable or long lived media. Anything in the pup_save file is of course being read off the flash stick. If pup_412.sfs was copied, (not by you), by Puppy to the flash stick, the the majority of all reads are off the flash stick.

If you are getting read errors, that could be why you have the crashing.

An inquiring mind wants to know:

1) Was your pup_412.sfs copied to the flash stick ?

2) Do you have a swap file or partition ?

.

[Bligh]

That box has win98 and no swap, that could be an issue. Lighthouse 2 gets to the desktop, but the network card quit and Lh 2 doesn't detect the only working spare card I have. Lighthouse 2 might be the release that created a swap file on a laptop with limited ram. Can't remember if it had 128 or 256 mb at the time, but I still need a network card. I just want to see which Pups will run on it.
Cheers

[Mercedes350se]

I built my number one machine for maximal Linux support.

This computer was thought out and designed for Linux.

Bruce B any possibility of starting a thread giving details of your machine?

I have a latent desire to build up a dedicated Linux machine using an old satellite receiver case - because I have it - and it would be something smaller and hopefully quieter than the current number 1 machine.

[Bligh]

With a linux hdd and a swap partition Pup 4.1.2 booted. I didn't have an internet connection, but the desktop apps were quite snappy. This is a p2 300mhz & 128mb ram.
Cheers

[canbyte]

For purpose of this thread lets clarify how memory is used by puppy

Bruce B wrote

It shouldn't crash.

With only 128 MB RAM pup_412.sfs was not copied to RAM at all.

You say: Puppy 412 on cd with save file on 1G USB flash

If you can release the CD, the pup_412.sfs on the CD is not being used either.

Main Files on flash stick: pup_save.2Fs 256mb; pup__412.sfs 92mb [ i made the usb a bootable disk but the Dell can NOT boot from a usb so this file is being read from the cd. BUT, are you saying there could be interference /clash between the two files (flash& cd)???]

I assume that this 92mb file sits in memory leaving 128-92=36mb for my working stuff. Hard to imagine half a dozen pages open chews up 36mb - i think the CPU meter going up to 5 is the real clue what's happening here. Seems to be inexplicable peaks and valleys in that little meter. What do the lines signify?

The purpose of this thread is to get a handle on what puppy needs to operate, also what defines the limit of puppy capability. I can see that large spreadsheets, book drafts, etc could use up 36mb so my basic question is whether puppy's strategy of loading all into ram is counterproductive (saves a few seconds but loses hours of work???).
I think i recall seeing other threads on seamonkey, abiword etc noting various problems. Very important question / thread. Seems the cpu issue is more critical than ram.

Bruce's other Qs
.. flash sticks ...... long lived media > Brand new
..the pup_save file ... read off the flash stick. Yes, visibly.
If pup_412.sfs was copied, ... to the flash stick.... per above
...getting read errors, ....why..crashing. Hmm. see cpu above
An inquiring mind wants to know:
1) Was your pup_412.sfs copied to the flash stick?...Y per above
2) Do you have a swap file or partition ? On reading puppy instructions, i thought i had to make one so i tried but was unsucessful so i went back to 100%, but there was some inability to recognize something (think it was vfat format) so although it worked for awhile, perhaps a corruption got baked in. Again, the CPU issue is the critical, can you try and open those pages to see why they are so hard on puppy. I'll try at this end with a new flash drive. Edit: Done. Just had another seamonkey crash/vanish. So its not the usb. CPU again at 5.

What is that red save "target" icon doing in my puppy screen? I'm suspicious. was not in my original puppy 4.1.2 i got awhile back and still running on my other box. Hmm. Virus? Would explain the cpu spike. Thoughts??

[ssme]

i take it noone is actually going to respond to the topic of the thread with any actual data then

it's not THAT hard a question to answer. will somebody please think of the newbies?

[rjbrewer]

ssme

Google...puppy linux minimum system requirements.

If you want specifics...?

It's your idea; you do it.

Search the web and make a catalogue of every puppy distro and
every computer they have ever been installed on. Failures and
successes.

Come up with some form of benchmark for your subjective
"performance" category.

Let us know how it's going a few years from now....lol

rjb

[ssme]

ssme

Google...puppy linux minimum system requirements.

If you want specifics...?

It's your idea; you do it.

Search the web and make a catalogue of every puppy distro and
every computer they have ever been installed on. Failures and
successes.

Come up with some form of benchmark for your subjective
"performance" category.

Let us know how it's going a few years from now....lol

rjb

very droll. i rather thought the whole idea of a forum was to pool collective experience in a single place for the benefit of all others who might have the same experience in future. how terribly naive of me to think that asking the hundreds (thousands?) of puppy forummers to spare 2 minutes each to copy, paste and edit 9 or 10 lines was not asking too much. clearly, as you so wittily identify, the best use of a forum is for one person to spend a few years collating data that the collective could provide within an hour. be still, my aching sides.

and of course 'performance' is subjective. why do i need a benchmark? it's not a "measure". i asked for people's experiences. why not force a disclaimer from every single person on the forum who says "i love puppy, it runs great on my hardware!"? or does that have to be my job too? performance is a highly subjective measure, it's not an exact science, but it is useful information that is almost entirely absent in any useful form at the moment.

in fact, in the spirit of your post, why not tell every single person who asks a question to "Google it, you fool!". in most cases they are significantly more likely to find a complete, specific, useful answer to their question that way than i am, after all. i hope you maintain your high standards of forum posting, and ensure that "Google it, you cretin!" or "It's your question, you answer it... let us know when you have LOL" are the second post in every thread where anyone has the temerity to actually ask a question.

to be honest, i don't really care whether this information is out there or not. i have a good enough general understanding of computers and the time and enthusiasm to muddle my way through and try 20 different versions of puppy before i settle on one or two. but not everyone does. similarly, not every inexperienced linux user is going to risk linux on their main computer, so having some (even highly subjective) indication of what might work best on their old atticware is priceless.

i sometimes wonder why, as an inexperienced but enthusiastic occasional puppy user for a few years now, i didn't join the puppy forum prior to last month. i think the attitude shown in your post has answered my question. your suggestions are foolish and contrary to the point of this thread, but i bet you felt clever posting them, so well done you. pooling knowledge for the benefit of all? clearly that's not the point of this forum. smug, anal self-aggrandisement all the way it seems. just when i was really starting to like it here too.

SmugPup is a good name for a puplet (AnalPup less so). hmmm...

[racepres]

Sorry... I agree with rj.
Not all boxes are created equally... while my xyz bmf windoze box is not able to even boot w/ 128M of ram, yours may work perfectly w/ only 64M.. In real life I have here in front of me a pair of candidates. both running at 100 mhz clock and both less than 64M of ram... one works w/ 4.1.2. The other can't barely run DSL, and really struggles with meanPup 2.02.. Gotta try the thing to know,... but. YMMV.. RP

[DMcCunney]

I wonder if I could put this question out to all of you out there so that we can perhaps have a sticky list that newcomers can refer to to get the best Puppy experience from their old hardware.

Okay. Re-purposed Fujitsu Lifebook p2110, dual booting XP (which it came with) and Puppy.

Puppy version: 4.1.2
Install type: Full
CPU type/speed Crusoe 867 mhz
RAM: 256MB
Swap: 512MB
X-server: Xorg
Hard disk space required: I carved out a 7.5GB partition for Puppy, plus a 512MB swap partition.
Performance: Between Sluggish and Acceptable, depending on what I run.
Any other comments: Test install, with half the extant software for Puppy loaded.

Performance for Puppy Linux itself is acceptable. Performance drops to Sluggish running big applications. For instance, I installed Firefox 3 in preference to Seamonkey. It takes about 45 seconds to load. Seamonkey 1.1.14 takes a similar amount of time. Once up, they behave well enough, but loading takes a while.

More RAM might help, but the max this old box is documented to take is 384MB, and I'm experimenting to see what I can do with it without spending money on hardware upgrades.

I wasn't expecting a lot, so I'm not disappointed. And Puppy is an order of magnitude faster than XP on the machine (XP needs 512MB of RAM minimum to think about performing acceptably.) The original owner gave it away because she couldn't take the slowness any more and bought a new notebook machine. I thought it might be an acceptable platform for a Linux distro aimed at lower end hardware, and it largely is.
______
Dennis

[Crash]

These two computers represent the opposite ends of the spectrum of the computers that I have access to:

AMD K6-2 550 MHz
384MB RAM
Via MVP4 chip set
40 GB Hard drive, use about 1 GB for Puppy
Frugal Install
No swap file
Vesa video driver
Puppy V4.0
Performance: Entirely acceptable
Comment: test bed for floppy disks
Comment: Dual boot Windows 98 and Puppy Linux
Comment: The last of the great socket 7 motherboards

Intel E2180 2 GHz dual core
2 GB RAM
Nvidia 7100 integrated graphics
500 GB Hard drive
Separate 2 GB partition for Puppy
1 GB USB thumb drive for testing / backups
Frugal installs
Multiple Puppy versions from 2.17, 3.01, 4.0, to 4.2 betas
No swap file
Xorg video driver
Performance: Screaming Lightning
Comment: No floppy drive
Comment: Dual boot Windows Vista and Puppy Linux
Comment: Typical $400 computer from discount store

I'm sure there was another post where people presented very similar information. When I find it, I'll put a link to it here.

/// Edited the next day:

Here is one reference. It's not the one I was looking for, but it is a start:

http://www.brighthub.com/computing/linu ... 15664.aspx

///

[ssme]

Sorry... I agree with rj.
Not all boxes are created equally... while my xyz bmf windoze box is not able to even boot w/ 128M of ram, yours may work perfectly w/ only 64M.. In real life I have here in front of me a pair of candidates. both running at 100 mhz clock and both less than 64M of ram... one works w/ 4.1.2. The other can't barely run DSL, and really struggles with meanPup 2.02.. Gotta try the thing to know,... but. YMMV.. RP

thanks for (partially) answering the question, although more information would be useful. it wasn't so hard really, was it?

as i have tried to make clear again and again, i don't think anyone ever goes looking for this information for a medically valid, stand-up-in-court prescription of what will work. and official minimum system requirements are often a joke (windows xp's official minimum requirements are 233mhz p1mmx, 64mb of ram... you'd barely be able to open notepad with that)...

BUT 10, 20, 100 people's individual experiences in a standard format are a far better indication. it's still no guarantee. and having them all in one place is better than having to trawl the forum (as i have done, several times) searching for, say, the string "48mb" to find other people who've tried an install with that amount of ram, getting 200 results of which maybe 4 threads are relevant, and even then omit the CPU type or some other crucial information. sure, people could re-open the thread and ask the question but it will lead to massive redundancy and replication of information.

incidentally, you're not agreeing with rjb. rjb's point is that the puppy forum's welcome email to new users should read: "Welcome to Puppy Linux Forums! Don't bother us with your questions... use Google and do your own damn research!" all you're saying is that it is impossible to state system requirements definitively, which i think everyone understands anyway. all i'm saying is, people post their experiences liberally in threads across the forum and, indeed, the web anyway. why not post them all in a standard format in one place so people can find them all in one place?

by the way, in the spirit of your post, perhaps you ought to lobby the moderators to get rid of the Hardware forum ("what works, what doesn't, please be specific") as there is a chance (as i have experienced myself) that one person's success with a piece of hardware might not be replicated by someone else.

[rjbrewer]

ssme wrote

incidentally, you're not agreeing with rjb. rjb's point is that the puppy forum's welcome email to new users should read: "Welcome to Puppy Linux Forums! Don't bother us with your questions... use Google and do your own damn research!"

An extreme misinterpretation of the point i was trying to make.

rjb

[racepres]

OK I think I have a clue of what ssme is about. Heck you can sort of start w/ rj's sig. line!!!
If this info gets compiled... all the better. I will start w/
1: compaq evo n115 1.2 g, clock, 380M ram 2g hdd w/ full install of mac puppy [not foxy] no swap, and geexbox cause I like the splash screen, and the play dvd feature.
I use this one the most cause I like the snappyness..
2:Toshiba 780 cd. 266M clock, 128Mram, 5.4g Hdd formatted for DSL, swap, and puppy 4.2.1 full install. Just sent it home w/ it's owner ... Make that elated owner.. beats the *#*# out of windoze of any kind on that box.
3: Compaq desktop, 500 [or so] amd athlon proc, 384M ram 30ghdd w/ dual boot foxypup [full install] winxp pro, and a swap partition, boots into geexbox as well so I guess it may be a triple install!! fun enough that it only gets booted into xp to keep the avg up to date, or run the plotter that it is attached to [chiwanese plotter only does win]
More later.. HTH
RP

[canbyte]

Hey, rjb. racepres, ssme; Lets sit down over an "ebeer" and sort this one out.

I'm going nuts for 2 months now trying to get puppy to work with no idea of why it doesn't or what to do, not to mention getting an oki printer going without ever having compiled anything. Good thing win98 is doing my work. Ssme, forum threads are woefully inefficient at transmitting info of any kind to those not involved. Only once (re aMSN) have i got what i wanted from a thread after the fact. This thread at minimum eventually will need to be edited/compiled into a tabular format at the least then hopefully put into the wiki or manual. Who does such things for puppy? Glad you 'volunteered'!!!

OTOH, as somebody said on page1, computers with different memory perform differently. Can't someone figure out what the critical elements are? I thought the critical element was OEM integrated machines but seamonkey crashing on both machines (Dell, Compaq) disproves that idea. Perhaps someone can suggest other oddball elements that cause failures. My current suspect is cpu load but how to get a handle on this?

Newbies are the beneficiary of this discussion and i think puppy can improve the newbie experience by efforts such as this combined into a less fragmented information base. Takes work.

[rjbrewer]

Canbyte;

re: sorting things out

1. What are the make, model nos. and specs on your computers?

2. What do you have installed on them?

3. What are "your" minimum requirements in order to work or
enjoy operating these machines?

rjb