Saved By The Puppy

OK. So here I have a nice notebook computer. But I’ve wiped my operating system. I’ve installed a perfectly good version of Linux but it won’t boot except from the DVD drive. And ASUS technicians have stopped talking to me … probably just one setting wrong somewhere in BIOS Setup.

So I have a computer which will read and write my hard drive but not boot from it. What can I do?

And then I remember Puppy Linux, a very tiny version of Linux which completely loads into RAM… and which saves its setup information = but not its bootup = on the hard drive. I love Puppy. I get out my old LuPu disk (Puppy based on Lucid Lynx Ubuntu)… and find that the video drivers, X.ORG, do not run. No problem, there’s a newer version, Precise Puppy (based on Precise Pangolin Ubuntu) and even that has been updated. And it works!

The browser included runs great, but I wanted to use SRWare Iron. No problem, there’s a PUP for that… and I installed it, only to find that it is reporting my Flash Player is out of date (which report I do not get on the smaller, older browser, SeaMonkey). Ah well, getting more things done. Still have to add in all my files (saved to an external hard drive) and get to work catching up my bank account spreadsheet. UPDATE: I discovered that I’m running version 22 of Iron, and 29 is current… trying to download and install 29 (30 is current for Windoze).

It’s odd that I have just exactly the situation for which Puppy is the perfect solution. Good to revisit an old friend.

Hugs,

Me