(The subject of this page is Puppy, a tiny software suite being released to the public for free. Puppy belongs to the category of copyleft-ed or free software. Its download site is here.)
Have you heard of a 60-MB software suite complete for your everyday computing needs, offered for free? That's PUPPY!
Since this wensite went online, the client (workstation) suite recommended by the author to users is Puppy at goosee.com/puppy. During the last Holy week (March 2005), the author had a long session with PUPPY LINUX, and enjoyed a BIG JUMP into the future of computing.
As with the EM mini-CD, Puppy is burned to a CD and inserted to CDROM drive for booting up the system.*
PUPPY in action (version 0.99) can be seen below with the desktop shortcuts, the File Manager, the PDF viewer, the Abiword editor, and the Planmaker spreadsheet.
You may be looking for a presentation window, but it may not be so important now - you see, once you compose charts or images, these can be presented much like slides through an image viewer or through an HTML page (like this one). And PDF files, too, are widely used for presentation.
For getting to the Internet, PUPPY activates the modem through the modem Wizard (shown below). The user will just have to press the correct button, which is ttyS3 (COM4) in this case.
Next, Network Gkdial connects to the Internet Service Provider. When connected, the red bar turns to green.
Adding a connection is straightforward, as the dialog below shows.
The desktop and its status bar cluttered with open windows is a very familiar sight indeed - but with a PUPPY on it!
It is also surprising that the Yahoo and Gmail windows become suddenly more attractive under PUPPY, as rendered by Firefox (see below). The fonts were unusually smooth and pleasing to the eyes.
Image clips of Gmail window (above) and Yahoo! mail (below).
Working with files is quick in MTools, enabling quick transfer of files from Microsoft Windows (at left) to the Puppy desktop (at right). (Some distortion is caused by image reduction to fit the image in a 1024pix-wide window of EM.)
And, if you're curious, these images were captured in an easy two-step process using XPaint screen capture.
To experience Puppy, all you have to do is ask a friend or an Internet Cafe to download and burn for you the latest Puppy ISO (about 60 MB). The link to Puppy is goosee.com/puppy. When you get your mini-CD, change the boot-up sequence of your PC to use CDROM as the first boot device. And then off you go to the future of desktop computing!
* Some answers needed during the first boot-up of Puppy are:
Keyboard Type = US qwerty
Mouse Type:
- serial (has a flat end that is attached to COM port, used by old computers)
- ps/2 (has small round end that is attached beside the keyboard slot)
- usb (has a thin, flat end used by very recent computers)
Do you have wheel mouse? Press ENTER for default (n = NO)
Video Wizard:
- Choose 800x600x16 (the usual screen)
- or 1024x768x16 (wider screen)
- Use x24 or x32 for 24-bit or 32-bit colors (high colors).
CD if something went wrong.
Up to release 1.01, Windows XP users with NTFS-formatted hard disks first have to unzip pup001 to their C: drive to enjoy the speed of PUPPY. Get version 1.01 if your Windows XP uses NTFS (check the properties of your hard disk to find out).