I bought a second hand computer for my children. It was very, very cheap. I got a cheap keyboard and mouse too and we already had a CRT monitor that was not doing much. The computer is a Compaq Deskpro EN, designed for Windows 2000, as a sticker on the front tells me. It is a horizontal thin box design. I intend to install Edubuntu (Ubuntu Linux for Educational Settings) on it but I’m going to wait a few days for the new release to come out. In the meantime I’m using Puppy Linux on it and I’m very impressed with it.
The Compaq has a 20GB hard drive and 256MB SD-RAM. Puppy doesn’t even need this much storage space or RAM. I have seen it work perfectly well on 96MB RAM on an old laptop. The special thing about Puppy is that it runs in RAM only, even in less than 96MB RAM, and it doesn’t need a hard drive at all.
Puppy is free to use and download. It comes as a small (50 – 90MB depending on version) ISO file that you burn onto a CD or a USB thumb drive or SD card (etc…). Pop the media in a computer and turn it on. As long as the BIOS is able to and is set to boot from media of this kind it will boot into a fully functioning operating system. It doesn’t affect any OS that’s already on the hard drive, so there’s no need to worry about data loss. Assuming you booted Puppy from a CD, once it is loaded into RAM you can take the CD out again. The CD drive can now be used as normal.
The desktop is very intuitive and most of all, friendly. It is very easy to connect to the internet via clicking an icon. I had previously assigned a static IP address for the new computer to use in my router, but it doesn’t need to be done that way. All the user guides and configuration dialogs I checked had friendly, easy to understand explanations that do not presume prior knowledge of Linux.
This Linux distribution would be good for making old computers not just usable, but GOOD again. It would also be ideal for parents who do not want to take the risk of their children clicking around and maybe messing up their computer, but who want them to have the opportunity to use it. Booting from a Puppy CD is a good solution. Having said that, Puppy is not just for children, it’s just friendly and easy so everyone will like it.
It comes loaded with many small but powerful applications: Abiword word processor can open and save as .doc format, so it’s useful for people used to Windows. There is a spreadsheet editor and a stripped down version of the great Inkscape vector Illustration program. The Seamonkey web browser surprised me by being able to display flash based websites without me needing to install Flash myself. The media player plays MP3 and WMA files likewise without requiring additional downloads. To show it’s not just for children consider that it comes with Gparted, the Gnome Partition Editor, which is a great utility that could really do damage to data on the hard drive if used incorrectly.
As you can see this is a full-featured Linux OS with everything most people will need all ready to use. It loads really fast too. It is a very good introduction to Linux as Windows users who are interested in trying Linux can keep on using Windows but boot into Puppy while they get used to it. There are quite a few Linux distributions that have ‘Live CDs’ that work this way, but Puppy excels in this area too:
When you shutdown after using Puppy for the first time you are offered the chance to write one file to the hard disk (or USB thumb drive, or even multi-session CD!) that will contain a Linux file system. The default size is 512MB but it could be more or less depending on your preference. You can even encrypt it if you want. This will contain the configuration files for your Puppy sessions, such as your internet connection details, the wallpaper your child likes, any files you downloaded or made etc. Next time you boot Puppy you will find it as you left it. It will boot faster too!
One thing that will be a change for Windows users is accessing media such as USB thumb drives in Puppy Linux. When you insert the media nothing happens. You have to ‘mount’ the media first. Click the ‘drives’ icon at top left of the desktop. A dialog opens that shows all drives available. Click the icon for the required drive to mount it (or to unmount it later). A new icon will appear that you can click on to view the files on the drive.
The above screen-shot also shows some of the helpful sub-menus available to fine tune your Puppy system, should you need to.
