Puppy gives you a fast, complete, bootable, writeable Linux on a single piece of removeable media

more verbose text: HowPuppyWorks

only disadvantages:

* space limit of USB stick
* enough RAM req'd for speed, 512 MB is good
* only apps with Qt and 3 other libs are currently supported

on stick there are only 4 files

1. vmlinuz - the usual kernel
2. image.gz - the usual initial RAM disk image
3. usr_cram.fs - the /usr subdir, basically readonly, keeping the UNIX system files
4. pup001 - keeping your individual files in one piece - you may want to backup this

by default you are the user "root" thus your home directory is /root . It is saved to pup001 on shutdown. pup001 also saves your dotpup extensions which are not in the initial puppy distro for space reasons.

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for users with some background it is possible to get fully genned up quickly . this is an early attempt to provide this quickstart focusing of what one needs to know w/o to rtfm - spelling out the differences from other Linuxes.

How Puppy Works - Take Two

summary

Puppy is assembled out of pieces when you boot.
First the loader (Gujin, GRUB or LILO) loads the Linux kernel (vmlinuz - 1MB) and a rudimentary filesystem (image.gz - 10MB) containing basic utility functions.

The Linux kernel starts up and runs the rc.sysinit script. At this point, the system is only capable of command line interaction. Sysinit loads usr_cram.fs (60MB) which contains most of Puppy. Now it is possible to run the full Puppy GUI desktop system.

These three essential files are read-only, and usually stay unchanged over the life of a Puppy installation.

A fourth essential file, PUPXXX (PUP001/PUP100 - 5MB to 256MB) stores all the settings, changes, and added programs and documents. It is loaded at the end of the boot process, and then stored away when you shut down, so that the next time Puppy starts you can continue from there.

Swap space is optional. And a modular package of resources for developers can be optionally mounted (50MB).


CategoryDocumentation