prefer Puppy 2.0.1 over either DSL or feather, does everything I want, very fast, intuitive if your coming from windows, multi-session, i.e. save a puppy session back onto the live CD, this is an option that will become very popular with other distros, but puppy's got it now. Tried AUSTRUMI, very nice, fast like puppy, but limited support if you have a problem, although there is an unofficial uk forum, had a prob with hardware recognition but I will keep an eye out for AUSTRUMI's future releases. so for me it's puppy ... see-ya, yap!"

I've tried two of the three, and here's why I prefer Puppy over DSL.

* You can't adjust the refresh rate in DSL, and its default is 60...gives you a headache VERY quickly. Puppy lets you make these adjustments (resolution, refresh rate) before the OS even boots.

* DSL uses fluxbox, which I find to be a pain. Puppy is a lot more intuitive for people accustomed to Windows.

* Puppy has a great program that makes it very easy to mount/unmount drives.

* Puppy has many more programs than DSL, and you can download different versions to get the bundle of programs you prefer. I love the Opera browser, so I DL'ed the Puppy that includes the latest version. I can import all my Opera (Windows version) bookmarks with a few clicks of the mouse!

I haven't tried Feather Linux (yet), but so far, Puppy is my favorite lightweight distro. I still need to learn a few things about it, but it definitely lives up to the hype of being very fast.

That's my

How come does a refresh rate of 60 give you a headache? Many Windows machines tend to work on that frequency, without giving a headache too easily, and your telly might do that also. Televisions do work on lower frequencies than computer monitors..

I haven't noticed any headache using that kind of "low" frequencies..maybe they just don't affect me?

Puppy v2.02 Live CD is released, now you can READ & WRITE to your NTFS partition ... yap! yap! yap!

http://distrowatch.com/

I have used both versions of Linux, and while I preferred DSL over Puppy's earlier versions (I had problems with booting earlier editions of Puppy that I could not overcome), I really prefer the new Puppy (2.02) over DSL.

I have three daughters, and they LOVE playing with "the new puppy" as we call our disks. I have given my oldest daughter her very own Puppy cd to boot from, and now have no worries about the havoc my kids used to wreak upon my systems. My 6 year-old can even use Puppy to play DVDs without assistance, which is a great boon!

I enjoy the fact that I can keep all of my personal files upon one disk, and have greater security by simply booting in Puppy, doing my work, then saving to the DVD and putting the disk away when done. No more having kids go through my journal files, or boyfriends looking at my financial records. The average person wouldn't think of an operating system and files on a DVD, and so if they want to prowl, they are going to do it on my box, which currently contains Ubuntu (it changes depends upon my mood).

My kids state that Puppy is easier to learn then DSL, but IMHO DSL has more apps to expand with easier than Puppy. I REALLY wish there were a larger assortment of apps to install, as I am not experienced in dealing with installing from *.tar files. The average Windows-experienced newbie won't be either, and I feel that this is something that needs to be addressed.

Also, I have a 120 Mhz/32 Mb RAM 1.2GB HDD laptop that I use with Puppy successfully, though I haven't successfully configured the boot loader yet. Puppy is also easier to configure for networking with Windows computers.

Are you trusting your sensitive data to a dvd which you rewrite on daily basis?

The reasons I like and use Puppy over DSL and Feather are:
1. Full featured Abiword and Gnumerics are already included;
2. Additional applications are easier to install for a newbie;
3. Great community;
4. Xine media works great;
5. JWM and Icewm easier to customize;
6. Ability to save to NTFS hard drive.
7. With CUPS installation, able to get printer (Canon i560s) to work great in Puppy.

I like that I can install it on a USB Jumpdrive, carry it in my briefcase and use it at work on any machine. All my bookmarks are there, and the mail client sends mail using my gmail account. It's a whole OS on a stick.

Yes, I trust my sensitive data to a DVD that I write to on a daily basis. I have had no problems accessing the data from my Winxp box, and the DVD is going strong. Been using this particular DVD for almost a month after experimenting with CD-R's. Had no problems with the CD-Rs except the error messages got annoying. In fact, my eldest daughter uses a CD-R for her data cause all she currently has in her system is a CD burner. The disk I am using is a DVD+R, I want to see how well it does and my next one will be a DVD-R so that I can personally compare usage. One day alone I was working with some rather labor-intensive data entry, and so I saved to the disk five times or so on that one day without a problem to avoid losing data in case of the inevitable disaster (I'm paranoid about data loss having experienced it rather painfully in the past). I do however, occasionally back up all of my files on a RW disk just in case cause I'm paranoid.

I actually feel that my data is safer on the DVD (provided I protect the DVD) than it was on my hard drive, and in fact my sister is thinking of getting me to install a burner on her system so that she can bypass the problem of shrinking hard drive space without purchasing another hard drive.

This new Puppy is a rather wonderful tool, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to keep their private data hidden and private.

Annie, I like your enthusiasm about the multisession DVD/CD capability of Puppy. As to installing from tar, it's really the package manager (pupget) that does it automatically, likewise with the dotpup installer. As to your laptop, you can try pup4dos or the wakepup floppy.

I like Puppy and have used it before but am now only using it to showcase what linux can do on other peoples computers because my version of puppy doesn't like my sata drives. But it's nice being able to watch the astonishment on peoples faces when their old box suddenly starts running as fast as newer windows boxes.

I found something puppy cannot, or will not do. While setting things up the first time I booted it, it asked me what kind of mouse I have. Default is ps/2, but I have usb, so I told it so. When I got to the end and it was up and running for me, my mouse didn't work. I pressed f12 and opened the mouse settings thing and it was still set to ps/2. I figure that what I told puppy to begin with was just saved in that pupsave file and my mouse settings would be correct on next boot. No such luck. All my other settings are remembered, but it still starts me off with ps/2 mouse. Minor annoyance, but you wanted to know.

That's strange, as mouse detection is usually accurate in Puppy 2+. Anyway, the mouse setting is in /etc/mousedevice and in my woopwoop* with USB mouse, I see there "input/mice".

* Wondering about this term - please visit http://puppylinux.org/fiesta

I like the look and feel of puppy over dsl also the ntfs write feature doesn't hurt either.

I do prefer dsl over puppy for webserving. Monkey webserver comes native in dsl but can be added in puppy. I run dsl for my webserver machine.

The desktop in puppy is superior.
I guess my install would qualify as a frugal install.
I start with the cdrom but load from the harddrive. my harddrive has a vfat partition with windowsme on it.


Jack

on the usb mouse detection issue:

you need the line

modprobe usbhid

in the rc.local file.

Jack