Impressed with Puppy

[Paperlantern]

Ever since Vin posted in that other thread about an OS for an old machine I'd been itching to try his Puppy suggeston on a couple of fairly old machines I had laying around. I'm talking stuff from 2000 and earlier. This weekend I finally got the chance to chck it out. I pulled out the oldest machine I had laying around.

Gateway Solo 5300 Laptop... this thing sports a Blazing fast 650MHz Pentium III and 320MB of memory. I am currently posting now on that machine running Puppy Linux 5.01. I am (was) browsing these boards with ease and speed comparable to any machine I've used recently, and I am also playing a Youtube video in another tab at the same time. the youtube video does hit this poor processor up to the 80s and 90s for utilization, but it does not stutter very often at all, and the memory usage is amazing... 90MB used of 320, while doing stuff.

I was able to get one of the two PCMCIA wireless cards i had laying around working in it with relative ease, the other one seemed to work at first but before I actually surfed anywhere it seemed to crap out on me, and hasn't work since, i'm wondering i it just died, it is about 5 - 6 years old itself.

All in all, quite impressed with the browser and with the OS itself, it's very snappy as well as small at, if I'm seing this correctly, a total install size of 340.6MB. Though install size wasnt an issue because for it's age this thing has a huge drive in it at 60GB.

So thanks to VinDSL, I may even be able to sell this to someone to use for a beater machine for thier kids to surf the internet on, or I may keep it in the kitchen for recipe lookups and such.

 

[VinDSL]

Gateway Solo 5300 Laptop... this thing sports a Blazing fast 650MHz Pentium III and 320MB of memory.[...]

[...]and the memory usage is amazing... 90MB used of 320, while doing stuff.[...]

So thanks to VinDSL, I may even be able to sell this to someone to use for a beater machine for thier kids to surf the internet on, or I may keep it in the kitchen for recipe lookups and such.

You're welcome! ()🙂

Heh! As I said in the other thread...

I would be living in hog heaven if they each had 384MB!

At some point, you might want to give Macpup Opera 2 a whirl: http://www.macpup.org/

It's running like a champ on my 192MB emachine etower... :awe:

 

[Paperlantern]

I may have to try MacPup. While puppy right now is running great, for some reason, it wont keep the network settings. I got it up and running, and obviously posted from it, however each time I reboot, I am required to reconfigure the network completely. Now, it has stopped functioning altogether, and it won't successfully configure and allow me on the Internet. Very strange.

 

[VinDSL]

[...]each time I reboot, I am required to reconfigure the network completely. Now, it has stopped functioning altogether, and it won't successfully configure and allow me on the Internet. Very strange.

Are 'we' talking wired or wireless (networking)?

WiFi has been the bane of every distro (and computer) I've tried, but don't give up. It's just a matter of discovery.

I use MadWifi (Atheros module) whenever possible, but I've never tried WiFi with Puppy (et al.)

If we're talking wired, that indeed is very strange!

BTW, Macpup Opera 2 is based on Puppy 4.3.1, which I prefer over Puppy 5.0.1.

Puppy 5.0.1 (based on Ubuntu) balks at Intel chipsets. It's an Ubu thing.

Just saying...

 

[Paperlantern]

So far no dice on this. This is actually wireless. I had to put a D-Link wireless PCMCIA card in it. Whats irritating is it can obviously see the card in some fashion because it scans and sees a bunch of networks. When I tell it to connect to ours, put in the SSID and the Key for it, that I know is correct, all it does is give me the autoconfig IP address of 169.254.218.75, and of course won't go further, and won't actually go anywhere being that its not a real IP. I saw a post somewhere that said if that happens it means it doesn't support the card, but then how does the card go out and find networks if the computer cant interface with it?

If it can find wireless networks, it is obviously working in some respect.

 

[Crusty]

The driver is probably instructing the card to use the wrong Encryption mode. What level of encryption is your wifi using?

 

[Paperlantern]

WPA2 if i'm not mistaken. I did notice that it wasnt asking for the type, it might just be assuming WEP. Hmmmm.

 

[Crusty]

WPA2 if i'm not mistaken. I did notice that it wasnt asking for the type, it might just be assuming WEP. Hmmmm.

It's been forever since I've had to troubleshoot wireless encryption problems but I do remember needing to use the iwpriv tool to set certain properties on the wificard that weren't available in iwconfig. So perhaps you can try setting the key and encryption mode manually using either of the above CLI tools.

 

[Paperlantern]

Well I tried those utilities, though I dont see where in those things I can change the type of encryption, only that i can change the key, and even then i cant seem to find the right syntax because it always errors when i try to change the key, even though it appears my syntax is correct from the help file. I may just give up on this project.

 

[coolVariable]

WPA2 if i'm not mistaken. I did notice that it wasnt asking for the type, it might just be assuming WEP. Hmmmm.

WPA2 might not be supported by an old wifi card. Try if it works with WEP.
If it does, you know what the culprit is.

 

[Paperlantern]

WPA2 might not be supported by an old wifi card. Try if it works with WEP.
If it does, you know what the culprit is.

Well I hadnt thought of that, that might explain the Netgear card, since its only a a/b card, it's not even g, so it might definitely not support it, but the newer D-Link should, its at least a G, im thinking i bought it around, mid 2008? Would that be too old?

Right now I'm going to try an old standard network card, see if i can get that to work and just leave it alone and perhaps drop my asking price $20.

 

[Paperlantern]

Okay i started form complete scratch, wiped out MacPup to go back to regular Puppy Linux. Installed it fresh with the Xircom Realport PCMCIA card in it. On first boot, the network wizard saw the card instantly, fired it up and away i went, i was on google, youtube, all was fine and dandy. As soon as i rebooted, no more internet connection, AND Puppy stopped seeing the card altogether! What gives? How can it lose EVERYTHING and stop detecting it altogether just because of a reboot? let me just say WTF!

EDIT* I cant even load the Xircom module manually in the network wizard, it just plain sees NO interfaces. Even though, the FIRST time it booted, it already had a network icon in the tray and it was raring to go. All subsequent boots following that first, initial boot after install, there might as well not even bee a network card in the slot. I got nothing. I can't sell this thing like this. What am I missing? What am I doing wrong? Am i not applying or saving something I should be?