Puppy Linux
From iA wiki
See also Linux Distributions
Homepage: http://www.puppylinux.org
Puppy Linux is a LiveCD Linux distribution that is very small and focuses on ease of use. The entire operating system and all the applications run from RAM, allowing the boot medium to be removed after the operating system starts. Included are applications such as SeaMonkey/Mozilla Application Suite, AbiWord, Sodipodi, Gnumeric, and Gxine/xine. The distribution was developed from scratch by Barry Kauler; it is not based on any other distribution.
Mission Statement
- Puppy will easily install to USB, Zip or hard drive media.
- Booting from CD, Puppy will load totally into RAM so that the CD drive is then free for other purposes.
- Booting from CD, Puppy can save everything back to the CD, no need for a hard drive.
- Booting from USB, Puppy will greatly minimise writes, to extend the life of Flash devices indefinitely.
- Puppy will be extremely friendly for Linux newbies.
- Puppy will boot up and run extraordinarily fast.
- Puppy will have all the applications needed for daily use.
- Puppy will just work, no hassles.
- Puppy will breathe new life into old PCs
Blindingly fast, incredibly powerful, amazingly tiny...
These are extraordinary goals, yet Puppy achieves them all. Obviously, some objectives have qualifications, for example, to load totally into RAM the PC must have either 128M RAM or failing that a swap partition. Also, the "will just work, no hassles" objective is a work-in-progress!
One thing to be very much aware of is that Puppy is incredibly small. After all, to load totally into RAM and run from there, Puppy has to be small. The live-CD is about 28-72M, yet "every" applications you need is there -- I'm quite serious -- it doesn't seem possible but it is. Furthermore, as everything runs in RAM, there are no delays and the speed is nothing short of astounding.
