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Reviving with Pup By WARRICK SMITH Laptop getting a bit long in the tooth? Does it now run like an old dog under Windows? You need a puppy – Puppy Linux, that is. Puppy runs like a scalded cat, even on old hardware (well, almost). T HIS PROJECT started about six months ago when I asked the computer technician at my school if he had any old hardware for my students to pull apart. I teach technology subjects and I’m always on the lookout for old or dead electronics, motors, lawnmowers, cars, etc. The kids either have a go at repairing them or use the parts in other projects. A few days later, the computer 10  Silicon Chip technician turned up with a heap of dead power supplies, hard drives, a VCR, various other bit and pieces and four dead laptops. I asked about the laptops and the response was “dead hard drives, they’re not worth fixing, let the kids pull ’em’ apart.” Dead hard drives A computer with a dead or dying hard drive can have a number of symptoms. Often, the computer appears to start OK but then the drive makes whirring or clicking sounds and the machine freezes or crashes. Alternatively, it may simply give an error message like “IDE Error” or “Operating System Not Found”. Often, an old laptop with a dead hard drive is usually not worth spending any money on. Many of the older models also struggle to run Windows XP at a decent pace, especially if they have only 256MB of RAM and a modest processor. Puppy is the answer I was starting to think that maybe I had run into a dead-end with these otherwise working laptops when I stumbled across the Puppy Linux websiliconchip.com.au old laptops ppy Linux Fig.2: to install Puppy, you first have to download the image file & burn it to a CD. Imgburn from www.imgburn. com is a good freeware disk burner. What’s more, Puppy automatically detects your hardware and loads the correct drivers, so you don’t have to worry about installing drivers yourself. In short, Puppy is the perfect solution for getting old laptops going again, especially those that would struggle with Windows XP. You don’t have to confine it to laptops either – it can also be used on to rejuvenate otherwise obsolescent PCs. Making a Puppy boot CD Fig.1: Puppy runs fast on old hardware, is easy to drive and boasts a wide range of applications. The desktop shown in the photo at left is the default. site at www.puppylinux.org. Puppy is basically a lean version of Linux that runs well on modest (read older) hardware. In fact, this operating system is so small it doesn’t need a hard disk drive at all. When booted, it runs entirely in RAM (less than 93MB), so it’s quite fast in operation. As with other versions of Linux (and unlike Windows), Puppy Linux can be installed on a compact flash (CF) card, an SD card or a USB drive – you don’t have to install it on a hard disk. This is a real advantage if the hard drive in your old laptop has died and you cannot get a replacement (or you don’t want to spend the money). Of course, if you do choose to install on a USB drive, then you must set the computer’s BIOS to boot from this. siliconchip.com.au This may not be possible on really old machines but you should have no problems with laptops up to seven or eight years old. Alternatively, you can create a live CD of Puppy Linux and boot from that. Your data plus any critical settings (eg, email accounts, network settings, etc) are then be stored on an external drive (USB, CF or conventional). These settings are then read back each time Puppy is loaded from the live CD. Not only is Puppy fast on older hardware but it is also incredibly easy to install and use. It comes with a wide range of applications including wordprocessors, web applications (web browser, email, messaging and FTP client), multimedia applications and image editors. First, you need to get Puppy and make a boot CD. To do that, go to the Puppy website at www.puppylinux. org and download the latest release (version 4.1.2 at the time of writing). This will be an image (.iso) file which you then have to burn to a CD (or you can use a DVD if your laptop has a DVD player). Note that it’s important to burn the image file to the CD so that the file structure is recreated. It’s not simply a matter of copying across the image file to the CD. What you should finish up with is a CD that contains a number of different files (typically seven). If your CD contains just the image (.iso) file, then you’ve done the wrong thing and you will have to start all over again. In order to burn an image file, you can use a commercial disk burning program such as Nero or you can download a freeware program such as Imgburn from www.imgburn.com or CDBurnerXP from www.cdburnerxp. se This is necessary because Windows by itself is unable to burn an image file to disk – it can only copy files to a CD. We’ll assume here that you’re going March 2009  11 Fig.3: you can install Puppy on both internal & external disk drives. It can even go on a compact flash (CF) card that’s fitted to an IDE adaptor and substituted for the hard disk drive. to use Imgburn. Just download and install it, then click on the “Write Image File To Disc” icon. That done, browse for the source image file and select it. Finally, insert a blank CD and hit the burn icon at bottom left – see Fig.2. When it’s finished, check the CD to ensure that individual files have been recorded (not the .iso file). If that’s the case, then you have successfully created a Puppy Linux boot disk (or “live” CD). Boot disk priority Once you have your boot disc, in- sert it into the laptop and check that it boots correctly. If Windows starts instead (ie, if the HDD is still functioning), then you will have to get into the system BIOS and change the disk boot priority order. This can be a bit of a pain if you’ve never done it before. And on some laptops, the splash screen that tells you which key to press to get into the system BIOS disappears before you’ve had a chance to read it. Often, it’s the “Del” (or delete) key but it can also be one of the function keys or a special button on the machine. Fig.4: Puppy comes with the Gparted Partition Manager which can be used to partition and format disk drives, including during installation. 12  Silicon Chip Once into the BIOS set-up, it’s just a matter of navigating to the boot priority menu (it’s usually under “Advanced”) and changing the boot order to suit (the instructions will be on the bottom of the screen). You will need to move the CD-ROM drive to the top of the list. That done, save the changes and exit the BIOS set-up utility. Starting Puppy from the CD All going well, Puppy should now start loading from the CD. During this process, you will be prompted to answer a few simple questions. First, you will be asked to confirm what type of mouse you have (eg, USB, PS2 or serial). Puppy invariably gets this right, so it’s usually just a matter of accepting the default. Next, you will be asked to confirm the keyboard type and then asked whether you want to use “xorg” or “xvesa” for the video. It defaults to xorg and this always works for me. Next, the Puppy Video Wizard asks you to select the screen resolution and colour depth. Again, it invariably gets the screen resolution correct (eg, 1024 x 768) but it also usually allows you to select between a colour depth of 16 or 24 bits (ie, 65,536 or 16,777,216 colours). You can also test the selected mode, to confirm that it works OK. Note that it defaults to the 16-bit setting but you can generally select a 24-bit colour depth, depending on your hardware. Once you’ve done that, the boot procedure will quickly complete and siliconchip.com.au Playing With Puppy In my case, Puppy successfully resuscitated all four of my old laptops and turned them into useful working computers able to browse the Internet, send and receive email, do wordprocessing and perform a host of other useful applications. As a result, these otherwise obsolescent laptops will stay out of landfill for quite some time yet. And that’s good for the environment. Best of all, Puppy Linux is simple to use. As in Windows, you just click on the icons and the menus to find your way around and to launch applications. The only difference is that just one click is used to launch applications from Puppy’s Fig.5: external drives must always be “unmounted” before removing desktop icons. them from the machine. Another difference is that the drives are given names like sda1, sdb1 and so on. It’s easy to follow: sda1 simply refers to the first partition on the first drive, while sdb1 refers to the first partition on the second drive. Similarly, sda3 is the third partition on the first hard drive. Get the picture? When you install a USB drive, Puppy automatically places the drive icon on the desktop (along with any existing drives). You can then mount the drive and browse its contents simply by clicking on its icon. If you want to remove the drive, you first have to “unmount” it. That’s done by right-clicking the drive and clicking the unmount option from the resulting menu list. you’ll be presented with Puppy’s graphical desktop – see Fig.1. Woof woof – you’re set to start exploring. It might be a bit slow to start from the CD drive but once it’s loaded, you’ll find Puppy is quite fast, even on old hardware. Consider Using Ubuntu Linux Installing to other media Unless you’re a masochist, you won’t want to load Puppy from a slow CD drive every time you want to start it. That’s easily fixed. On the Puppy desktop you’ll find an icon labelled “install”. By clicking on it, you will be able to run the “Universal Installer” to install Puppy onto some other media. This could be an internal hard disk drive (HDD), a USB flash drive, an SD card or a CompactFlash (CF) card. My personal favourite is to install Puppy onto either an SD or CF card that’s been substituted for the original hard disk drive. This is easily done using an SD (or CF) to IDE adaptor. Just plug the card into the IDE adaptor and then substitute this assembly for the existing hard disk in the laptop. Of course, if the existing HDD is still OK, then you can install Puppy there. However, a CF or SD card is a great idea if the existing drive is faulty. As a bonus, a CF (or SD) card is completely silent and will draw far less power than a hard disk drive, so the laptop will run for longer on battery power alone. An IDE adaptor to suit your CF or SD card can be obtained from www. siliconchip.com.au I F YOUR LAPTOP has a bit of firepower and at least 512MB of RAM, then consider using Ubuntu Linux as the OS. Basically, if the machine is capable of running Windows XP at a fair clip, then it’s capable of running Ubuntu – you can even install a dual-boot system. Ubuntu is basically a “full-strength” Linux distribution. It’s easy to install and drive and unlike Puppy, it will automatically connect to your wireless network each time it starts up. darkwire.com.au. Alternatively, you will have to order one in from your local computer store. Saving files You don’t need a big CF or SD card to install Puppy – a 512MB or even a 256MB card will do the job but a 1-4GB drive gives you a bit more elbow room to save files and store data. Alternatively, you can save files to an external USB flash drive. In practice, a 1GB or larger card is more convenient. That’s because if you March 2009  13 Connecting Puppy To The Internet If you’ve got a wired broadband connection (USB or ethernet), then Puppy is incredibly easy to hook up to the Internet. You just click the “Connect” icon on the desktop and follow the bouncing ball. You can either click the “Auto DHCP” button in a subsequent dialog box to be automatically assigned an IP address or you can set up a static IP address. Once connected, you simply click the “Browse” button to launch the web browser. Puppy uses the “Sea Monkey” browser and you will be impressed with its speed, even on older machines. Imagine being able to play YouTube videos on a laptop that was made in 2000! Depending on your wireless card (or wireless chipset), wireless networking can be equally as simple. In many cases though, it will be more problematic but we’ve got that covered in a separate article in next month’s issue. Solving Problems Any problems that I have encountered with Puppy have all been due to faulty (or inadequate) hardware. For example, on one laptop, Puppy would get stuck during boot up and stop loading. The problem turned out to be quite simple – this particular machine had no hard disk drive and there just wasn’t enough RAM to load Puppy. Another RAM chip got it going. When it comes to troubleshooting, Puppy can be useful for recovering files if the hard drive is a bit dodgy and the existing Windows OS won’t boot. By booting from the Puppy CD, you may be able to retrieve any important files and save them to a USB drive. In addition, Puppy comes with the Gparted Partition Manager (click Menu -> System -> Gparted Partition Manager) which can be used to partition and format disk drives. 14  Silicon Chip Puppy can be installed onto a wide range of media, including USB memory sticks and CompactFlash (CF) cards. Want an internal solid-state drive? – just get an IDE adaptor for your CF card and substitute it for the hard drive. do a “frugal” install, Puppy saves any subsequent system settings (to be read next time Puppy is booted) to a file called “pup_save.2fs” and this file is typically around the 500-600MB mark. If you install onto a memory card that’s less than 1GB, then this file will have to be saved onto some other external media (eg, a USB flash drive or to a CD if you have a CD burner). Similarly, a full install will typically occupy some 500-600MB of disk space, so you will need at least a 1GB drive or, preferably, 2GB (see the panel for further information). That’s it. You’re ready play with Puppy. He really is a good dog and you will have lots of fun. SC siliconchip.com.au