runs Debian on an ancient Thinkpad R40.

Even my Android phone is almost (gasp) two years old and it runs Froyo.

thanks for post, but WHY BELITTLE MY POINT!
If all in jest, not funy

I understand where you are coming from as I also fit in the category of those you describe.
If one is using Windows, the updates eventually kill the PCs speed and a lot of things will not run with the excuse of your hardware being too old!
With each release of Windows or a program for it, one is supposed to go out and buy a new computer that also will become obsolete in a short period of time.
I have to agree with you that older versions of Puppy need to be kept around and not disappear.
Also, updates to Puppy need to keep in mind that not everyone has the new wiz-bang computers being made and some of us just cannot afford to upgrade our hardware.
As a case in point, I have a 10 year old Toshiba laptop that has its memory maxed out at 512 megs of RAM.
After a few updates of Windows, on could watch a movie on TV while the laptop was booting!
I installed Puppy on it and even then, was restricted to some older versions.
I had to create a swap partition to compensate for the low memory.
But Puppy at least was very usable on the laptop.
As to programming in BASIC, I do believe that a search will give you Puppy Basic that one can use.

if you are on a debian-based distro, try upgrading easily with:
command in your terminal.

How on earth is this relevant to the original question or any query in this thread?

Regards.

What do you primarily use Puppy Linux for? I put it on a USB flash drive just in case I need to boot a hosed system. I like that slacko can install plain Slackware packages! I don't like that Seamonkey opens with a big red security warning and a "Check for Updates" button that does nothing.

-Ben

I got that big red notice too with Slacko.
The remedy is to update Seamonkey and the update option under help does not work corectly.
One has to get the latest version from either the murga-linux/puppy forum or get it from the seamonkey site on the internet.

As to using Puppy linux, I currently am using it as my main OS of choice.
I have used some version of Puppy for about 10 years now and only go to Windows to play a game that wine will not handle and to let windows and the associated antivirus update themselves.
I feel more secure running Puppy as root than running windows.
Also, with Seamonkey and addons of Adblocker Plus, NoScript, and Ghost, I also feel more secure on the internet.
I am posting this from IE in windows though as I was playing a game that would not work with wine and that was due to it not handling an update of the registry in wine.
I should mention that I have a on-demand version of avast antivirus installed on Puppy just for the H*** of it.
Every once in a while, I will run it to do a check of my system.
And so far, Puppy has came out clean.

On my wife's PC, running Windows XP, she inadvertently clicked on a popup that told her her computer was infected by a virus and to click on blah blah to check her PC.
After that, any program she clicked on showed a popup saying the program was infected.
I went in with Puppy and got rid of that damn thing whitch was a trial to get rid of.
Before I installed extra addons in Seamonkey, I got the same type of popup with the antivirus showing a windows desktop as it went through its motions of trying to convince me my PC was infected.
I laughed at that knowing full well that it was a scam to try to convince me to install software that I did not need.

I have had some problems with Puppy. But they were mostly due to companies not making drivers for linux and with a bit of searching, I was able to find drivers for my hardware.
About the only piece of hardware I cannot get to work is a cheap USB2serial adapter that does not want to communicate with another PC through that port.

In regards to using the sudo command, Puppy does not need or use it as all versions of Puppy have the user running as root.
And as far as the running as root debate, we have heard all of the arguments before.
As a matter of fact, one can remove the hard drive from a PC, boot Puppy from a CD, and then go to the nastiest internet sites you can find without any fear of your PC being infected by anything.
You have the option when you shut down to save or not save your session back to the CD/DVD. So since anything that tried to infect your PC is only in memory, when you shu down without saving, there is no place for the virus/malware to install itself.
I did mention that Puppy has the ability to run complete with all applications in memory. Because it does.
Any comments are welcome!

If Puppy were more widely used, then it would be a bigger target. It would not take that much to compromise a Puppy Linux system. A malicious site could exploit a security bug in an old web browser and then flash malicious BIOS, which would persist across a reboot. This would be much more difficult to do on another Linux distribution where the browser is not run as root, and is kept up-to-date with automatic updates.

-Ben


http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=66&id=7

http://www.symantec.com/security_res...061210-3452-99

You don't even have to flash the BIOS, most Puppy users use a save-file, so that changes to the OS can persist during a reboot. Actually, Puppy must be a hacker's dream.

When booting Puppy from a CD/DVD with the ability to NOT save a session/alternative type of pupsave, the session remains intact and unchanged on the next boot.
Also, by using the NoScript plugin, any attempt of a hacker to use a script or program to reflash the BIOS is just not there.
And as was stated by another, windows is the primary target of hackers as it is more widely used.
Also, one can have a backup of their pupsave file and also have an md5sum of it to see if it has changed.

Of course, there are also anti-virus makers that make programs that will work with linux if one wants to go that route.
And common sense comes into play when on the internet too.
If popups are not disabled and one sees one that says your PC may be infected and click on their on-line virus checker to check out your PC, you do NOT click on it!
As I said previously, before I had popups disabled, I got such a popup that actually showed a windows desktop with their virus checker supposedly running that said my PC was infected.
And to get a windows desktop on linux just does not happen unless one is running windows through an emulator.

Have not seen a /dev/bios node on PUPPY until now . Maybe all the other OS'ses with CONFIG_DEVTMPFS=y and CONFIG_DEVTMPFS_MOUNT=y are doing such . There is money in scaring people .
http://www.sigsauer.de/deutsch/unternehmen.html