Friday, July 22, 2005

Puppy Linux 1.0.4 tested: Outstanding!

Puppy Linux has been my favorite small Live CD in the size category that can easily load completely into RAM. This distribution is so carefully optimized that it still has room to install the gigantic Mozilla mail, news, and Web browser suite into memory along with the Linux kernel and a carefully chosen set of utilities. If you have never run an entire operating system directly from RAM (Random Access Memory) before, you are in for a treat!

Running from CD is slow, running from disk, though the norm, is still pretty slow. Booting a moderate sized system live from CD, then loading it into memory and running it is quite the treat.

This latest version of Puppy contains a beta test version of Mozilla that runs better than anything I have ever seen. Starting up a browser directly from memory is downright fast, and so are rendered pages.

I had no problems whatsoever during the entire time that I ran Puppy Linux. Granted, I did not beat every application into a pulp, but I did run the browser for a long time and I attempted (successfully) to install several additional applications during my testing, and they installed and did not adversely affect the running system!

Congratulations to the developer of this fine software!

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