el rinconcito

As usual, Puppy Linux runs great on the Sylvania Meso netbook. I've posted about this slick portable Linux distro before, here, here, and here. The latest version, 4.20, is available for download here.

It installs easily on a CD or USB flash drive, and saves itself back every time, so even though it's not a permanent hard drive install (though it can be), you can keep all your changes.

I previously had Puppy 4.12 on my flash drive, so the upgrade was a snap. I downloaded the .iso file and extracted three files to the USB drive: initrd.gz, vmlinux, and pup_420.sfs. A quick reboot and I was up and running with 4.20. If it's your first install to a USB drive, the Puppy installer will take care of the flash drive for you. See the documentation.

The Puppy is a fast and portable way to have some Linux fun. It's especially nice if you are just wanting to try it out without making changes to your existing system. It handles the wireless just fine and knows what to do with about anything I jack into the USB ports. The default window manager, JVM, is prettier than ever, and the ICE window manager (icewm) is also ready to go if preferred.

One time I used the Puppy to rescue a torn up Windows XP system. Very handy!

Have fun! Oh, and like most Linux distros, it goes well with beer.

A friend mentioned Puppy Linux to me awhile back, and I finally got around to trying it. VERY impressive. It's a live CD, so you can boot it right into the RAM without installing it. This is handy if you have a company laptop, for example, and the office has you locked out of the network card. You can load the Puppy up and get right online from those cheap hotel rooms.

Some of the nice features:

• Small size
  
• Runs fast. Just takes seconds to get a graphical up.
  
• Easy to use.
  
• You can remove the boot CD once it's up. Then you can stick a music CD in the drive for comfort.
  
• You can save installed software and configurations back to the CD or flash drive if you want.
  
• Hardware detection is superb.
  
• It's fun, pretty too!
  

It amazes me all the wonderful and fun things people have done with this operating system.

Here's a screenshot of it running on our laptop that we can now call the "lapdog":