I was looking for a small distribution to install on my old laptop for a while now. It’s a 7 year old pc, at 1.2GHz with 256mb RAM.

I had first tried Puppy Linux when it was at version 4.2 and I was very drawn to it. Version 4.3 was recently announced to my great pleasure. It is based on the 2.6.30.5 Linux kernel and is advertised as “a superb, compact, super-fast and free operating system”. I gave it a go to check this for myself. 🙂

Below I describe a step by step, including screenshots, full installation of Puppy Linux 4.3 from a CD ,on an internal hard disk.

Booting from the Live CD

Obviously you first have to download the .iso file (105mb) from the site, and then burn it to a CD. Booting from the CD will get you to the initial boot screen, wait 5 seconds and then you get to choose your keyboard layout, local settings and time zone.

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Then you get to setup the X server, monitor and video settings.

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If all goes well you will then enter Puppy and you can start the installation process. Since you are using a Live CD, you can of course give it a try before that and check that all will work as intended on your pc!

Starting the installation process

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If you have already partitioned your hard disk, then you can proceed to step no 21 after step 12.

If not, you will have to start GParted and setup the partitions as I did. I created a 512mb partition used as swap space, and a 4.5gb one to use for the PuppyLinux OS.

Using GParted to prepare the Hard Disk

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Installing

After closing Gparted the installer will automatically start again and you can continue with the installation.

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Setting up GRUB

Between these steps sometimes you may have to wait a minute or two so be patient and all will continue as planned.

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Rebooting into Puppy

After installing GRUB the installation is almost finish. All you have to do is reboot into your newly installed PuppyLinux system. Don’t forget to remove the Live CD from the CD ROM drive when it automatically ejects.

Once you reboot, you may have to enter the settings from steps 3 to 8 again, but thats the last time you will be asked to.

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Welcome to Puppy Linux 4.3! You are good to go now! After playing with it for some days I actually feel that my old laptop is resurrected. I hope you too enjoy the experience!



For those that might have trouble with getting online, I added a quick tutorial on how to setup the internet connection.

Setting up the connection to the internet

Here I present the method used for the Wireless Internet. The method is the same (much simpler) if you want to setup an ethernet connection.

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At this point, after you scan for and select the network you would like to connect to, you must select the encryption that it uses (Open, WEP, WPA, WPA2 etc.). Click on the corresponding button, then enter the key required, and remember to save the profile. After that you can use it to connect to the internet.

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If all went well, you should be able to use Seamonkey and browse the web!



I hope you find the guide useful and practical!

If you have any questions, troubleshoots or feel that I left something out, don’t hesitate to place your comment here.