Which Puppy Linux Should I Use

There'due south no doubt Canonical's popular Ubuntu Linux distribution gets the bulk of attending in the Linux world these days, but at that place are myriad others every bit worthy of consideration.

I looked at Linux Mint not long ago, equally well equally a few key Ubuntu derivatives, but today I'd like to focus on Puppy Linux, a new version of which was just released.

When I looked at the height 10 Linux distributions back in September, Puppy Linux was 10th in popularity on Distrowatch, which tracks the folio hits garnered by each flavor of the open source Linux operating system. Since then, however, it has moved up to No. 9, and for skilful reason.

Small and Fast

Puppy Linux's primary distinguishing feature is that it'southward tiny, taking up roughly 100MB of infinite. Also remarkable about it is that information technology loads into RAM, making it extraordinarily fast; kicking time is 30 to 40 seconds on most systems.

Similar in some ways to Damn Small Linux (DSL), Puppy is ideally suited both for older hardware and for usage situations where minimal resources are available. Whereas most LiveCD versions of Linux must become back and forth to the CD, Puppy's RAM-loadable size ways that applications are lightning fast to start and to respond to user input.

The full-featured but free Linux distribution tin boot off LiveCD or DVDs, floppy disks, internal difficult drive, zippo disk, LS/120/240 Superdisk, flash drives, or whatsoever USB memory device. In fact, it can fifty-fifty use a multisession formatted CD-RW/DVD-RW to save everything back to the CD/DVD with no hard drive required at all.

Booting from DVD or CD, Puppy can salve all work back to the same medium; booting from USB bulldoze or other wink media, Puppy will minimize writes to extend its life.

In short, if you accept a PC with a broken hard disk or that will no longer work with newer technology, Puppy Linux on a CD or USB is a manner to keep that PC productive. Not insignificantly, it'south also a perfect example of a Linux distribution that can exist used to rescue a PC infected with Windows malware.

Compatible with Ubuntu 10.04

Like both Ubuntu and Linux Mint, Puppy is extremely easy to apply; information technology automatically detects most hardware, for example. Included with it is as well a wide range of applications for productivity and other purposes.

Now, with final week's release of version v.2, Puppy Linux offers even more advantages.

Lucid Puppy five.2 adds to the popular Lucid Puppy five.1.1 distribution with a raft of upgrades and improvements to all of the main programs besides as many of the other programs in the carte and organisation. Based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" binary packages, the latest Puppy is likewise compatible with Ubuntu 10.04 repositories.

Included in the latest release are QuickSet for point-and-click desktop configuration;

QuickPet for updates, diagnostics and parcel installs; and several culling window managers available through the package managing director, including Xfce and Fluxbox. The software features version 2.6.33.ii of the Linux kernel. Linguistic communication packs are available for 11 different languages.

No Commitment

A fuller list of the version'due south features is bachelor on the Puppy Linux site, where it'south also bachelor for download as a 127MB .iso image file. Meanwhile, you can find a testing video of the release below on YouTube.

Perhaps the best office of all, of course, is that–as with about Linux distributions–there'due south no commitment involved in trying it out. Specially if you have old hardware lying around, it will be worth your while to take Puppy Linux for a tour.

Follow Katherine Noyes on Twitter: @Noyesk.