The downside is, the more you install, the more you have to increase the personal file size, which I had to do a few times and to delete or move some downloaded files to other harddisk partitions.

Then it struck me that I have not learned how to upgrade my harddisk installed Puppy Linux (and the solutions provided from a website looked too scary to try!). The next option: to make Puppy Linux boot from a Pendrive and I read that it is easier to upgrade. So what start as a thought became my “weekend project” on 21 April 2012.

This article provide an account of what I had to do to get Puppy Linux LuPu 5.2.8 Ubuntu-Compatible) into a 4Gb Pendrive. This is purely my experience and may not be the most effective or correct way of doing things but it worked for me and I am sharing this. If you observe the image above, you would know that the current version of Puppy Linux is Slacko 5.3.1. But in my case, since I am very familiar with Ubuntu which has tons of software (most can be made to work in Puppy), it is in fact a no brainer choice to get LuPu 5.2.8.

So how did I go about it in the first place?

Of course checking the internet for Puppy centric sites are a must and the most effective and easy to understand site is Puppylinux.org, which is where I obtained most of my instructions on how to work on this project. You will preferably need to have 2 Pendrives, one could be and old one with at least 250 mb space left (“Pendrive 1”), the other will be reformatted and preferable a new one (“Pendrive 2”).

Step 1:

Get an iso (image of all the required software as packed in a CD-ROM) from the correct site. The latest version for me was in fact Lucid Puppy (Ubuntu-Compatible Build). Copy the ISO file into Pendrive 1.

Step 2:

You will need to have software that can read / extract and burn the CD image to a CD-ROM. I used Basero Disk Burner that came with my Ubuntu OS in my laptop to do this. If you have already had an older version of Puppy, it has Burniso2cd which does the same job.

Step 3:

Reboot your PC / laptop but with one of your fingers covering the F12 function key. Hit F12 as soon as the screen showing it is rebooting. You will be faced with a screen with choices of boot sequence. Use the down arrow to select CD-ROM (assuming you have done Step 2 correctly & had kept the CD-ROM inside). Be patient…Puppy will load in about 2 minutes. If your PC’s configuration is not too complicated, you will hear a bark from Puppy when it is fully loaded. Bear in mind that Puppy is operating from RAM (that is directly from your PC’s memory where it is loaded), the speed of its operation after loading is very high!

Step 4:

You need to prepare your Pendrive 2 to be a “bootable” flash drive. So go to Menu (bottom left of screen), select Setup–> BootFlash install Puppy to USB.

BootFlash will open a window. Select USB-HDD and follow the rest of the instructions. Do not plug in Pendrive 2 till you are instructed to do so by BootFlash. Once you have plugged in Pendrive 2, it will be recognised by BootFlash, do not click on the icon such as “sdb1” on the main PC screen as this will mount it and pause the formatting process.  BootFlash will format Pendrive 2….so make sure you have all important stuff in it copied to somewhere else! Best of all, do like me, buy a new Pendrive to play with!

Step 5:

BootFlash will then ask you if you want to install Puppy. Select “Install Puppy” and you are on the last step of this process. But there is a problem. You are asked to locate the iso file with Puppy that you have downloaded and the selection from BootFlash is not too intuitive. Insert Pendrive 1 with the ISO file copied in Step 1 into your PC. You will see on your main PC screen that it is registered as something like “sdc1”. Click on “sdc1” to mount it. Then go back to BootFlash’s screen. At the top-middle, you can select which folder to access. Select “/” (that is the root drive), and select the folder “mnt”. When you are in /mnt you will see “sdc1” and click on it. All the files in “sdc1” will be shown on the right panel, including your Puppy ISO. Select this file. BootFlash will copy everything you need to your Pendrive 2. You are done!

Step 6:

Now remove Pendrive 1 and reboot (with Pendrive 2 inserted). Do not forget to hit F12 as soon as the PC screen shows it is rebooting. Select USB-HDD drive and hit enter. You will see Puppy is loading.

It is essential that in the first boot up you pay attention to the instructions on the screen. And always allow time for Puppy to save your personal sfs file etc. at shutdown. If not your installation is wasted.

Why would one wants to use Puppy in a Pendrive? In fact Puppy is written to be operated from a Pendrive or CD-ROM / DVD-ROM. It’s most important feature is that you now can carry a low foot print / low resource system with most of the software you usually use (Libreoffice, Skype, Google Chrome, GIMP, etc.) in a USB-flashdrive that you can insert into any PC and work on it. If my 2004 vintage Dell can be re-invigorated there are many old PC in internet cafe etc. that will be Puppy-friendly! Thus, if you have 2 Pendrives, one to carry Puppy (and associated sfs files etc.) and one to carry your data, you can travel and work without carrying a laptop!

In fact, I would strongly suggest to the Puppy user community to work on a USB-Pendrive version of all releases in the future to make life a lot easier for Puppy users. Imagine if you can just spend less than RM20 to get a Pendrive (4Gb) and just download a zip file and unzip this to the Pendrive…next reboot…zoom…you have your Puppy working!

This latest development sends a very worrying signal to the world…..smuggling of wildlife in Malaysia does not carry serious consequences for the criminals. It will therefore not serve as much of a warning to those still carrying out this trade against endangered fauna and floral of Malaysia.

The author has expressed his views on how biotechnology can be used to thaw the smuggling trade of wildlife in 2007 when he presented a paper entitled, “Orchid smugglers and the use of biotechnology to combat them” in a conference. However, this author is of the opinion that regardless of how well we progress with available technology from identification, detection, tagging  by conventional means and identification via biotechnological advances in the same area, unless the judicial system of Malaysia can take the bull by the horn and enact stringent rules and regulations and couple this with strong surveillance, the smuggling will go on and on undeterred or even undetected.

(Written by DrC at 2012-01-09)

On 22 Jan 2012 hundreds of millions Chinese around the globe will be celebrating the Lunar New Year’s eve where traditionally there will be the compulsory “reunion” dinner. This is a time where family members from all over will congregate together for a few days of merriment.

The author is an ethnic Chinese and despite his forefather having set foot in Malaya about 120 years ago, the tradition that was passed down over 4 generations have not changed. The same goes for many Malaysian who are ethnic Chinese. So the author wants to suggest several answers to the question of: What are the things that or lifestyle modifications that can we do to have less of an impact on the environment so that we can have a green celebration?

The suggestions are mainly in the context of Malaysian Chinese (they also have similar implications to Singaporean Chinese, many of whom would be either joining families in Malaysia or holidaying in Malaysia during the festive season).

1. Transport:  

(refers mainly to those having to take land transport back to their respective home towns)
• try not to congest the highway. Follow the travel directive of the various authorities and highway operators.
• try to car pool or take public transport to avoid overloading the highways. In fact single-occupant-driving habit has to be changed, especially during festive seasons.
• if you are driving and if there are alternative trunk roads to your home town, try taking those…it may involves more traffic lights and a lot more “starts & stops” but let’s put it this way, if there is a traffic jam, being near towns and villages it is easy to have pit stops and wait out the jam which you can’t do if you are stuck on the highway. Why should you pay toll and get stuck in the highway under the hot sun while you can drive with less stress on the trunk road? In fact since most of the traffic jams on toll highways in Malaysia during festive seasons are caused by motorists having to queue to pay toll…is it not a bad suggestion for Malaysia to follow some other countries’ practice of “toll-free” for the festive season?

2. Food: 

Nice lime fruits....eat them & you may be sick....

• There is a trend of having the reunion dinner of Lunar New Year eve in restaurants among Malaysian Chinese. This has its “green” points as well as “non-green” points. For green points, the “centralized” manner in which dishes are cooked means that less cooking gas etc. will be used compared to each family having to cook for themselves. But there are always too much food ordered and too little time to enjoy these. The author suggests that all such families bring a few tiffin carriers to take home to leftover or more like food that could not be consumed (due to lack of eating time). This is because most restaurants will have 3-sessions of diners for the evening and will serve you all 8 dishes in the set-menu in 10 minutes! In fact the author had suggested to his family (but was flatly rejected by the wife) of doing the take-away style for the food and eat at home with the family and do it the French style…of enjoying the food and company for as long as the party desires. What he could not do, he hopes others could do it! Using plastic bags to pack leftovers will attract many “non-green” points! Again the comfort of dong the take-away style and eating at home would have some “non-green” points too as again less water will be used for the centralized washing of the dishes by the restaurants compared to individual households but this may be debatable if you follow the author’s dish-washing technique.
• Follow the examples of many environmentally sensitive personalities: do not order shark fin soup! There are plenty of other equivalent choices that have the same auspicious meaning in their name as conjured up by the restauranteurs.

3. Drink & beverages: 

• Small packet drinks and canned drinks (inclusive of alcoholic and nonalcoholic) are convenient for your guests but the packaging will substantially adds to the amount of waste to be disposed of. Why not make use of small glass or ceramic cups to serve your drinks? Unless your guests are those heavy drinkers, it is usually the case that they will only take a few sips of what you have offered during those “visiting-relatives-occasions” that are the tradition. By offering drinks from large bottles (fizzy drinks or canned drinks) and giving them ice cubes etc, you will save a lot by not having to throw away packets of drinks or cans that have only been sipped a couple of times.
• Get a large ice-box (a large polystyrene box with a good fitting lid will do, but best if you have those specially made cool box) and buy a pack of crushed ice (not tube-ice which melts very fast). You just put your bottle drinks and other stuff (that are water proofed) into this big box with the crushed ice and serve your drinks from there. The lowering of the strain put on your fridge (which in most cases will be full of food etc. and you would have to “eject” non-essential items like packet drinks from it anyway) by constant opening and closing of the fridge door will save you electricity in the long run. A full bag of crushed ice from the commercial van vendor should cost less than RM5.00 and it should do you for at least 24 hours (and the author had done 36 hours last year with his one bag of crushed ice!). When you are done with the melted ice, do not throw the water away…it is great for watering plants of for flushing the toilets!

4. Chinese New Year Greeting Cards & Decoration: 

• Chinese New Year cards – these have become more rare as time goes by, but many in the commercial sectors still carry on the traditional practice of sending such cards to their clients. Hence this may not be easy a practice to discourage in the commercial sectors, but individuals do have a choice. Sending e-cards is to be encouraged but do refrain from the old practice of sending a long list of recipients using just one email and if you really need to do so, please put everyone’s email in the “bcc” field and not the usual email address slot: some of your friends value their privacy and you should be careful of that. Never, never send someone a link in an email and ask him/her to pick up the card somewhere…it is like telling your friends that their physical cards are with the bookstore and they should go and get them if they want them!
• You should re-use your decorative stuff as much as possible and if you need to get new ones, make sure these are made of materials that are recyclable. The used red-packets (“Hong Bao”) that are given away to children & unmarried persons as well as old Chinese New Year greeting cards provide great working materials for decoration. Thus you can practice recycling of these used stuff for next year (if you care to save them in the first place).

Twisted Draceana stems & other decorative live plants

Draceana plants sprouted in decorative fashion in pots

• Chinese New Year will not be complete without some auspicious plants in all forms, from the Narcissus, sprouted bulbs, Draceana (twisted) or in pots, etc. etc. to the potted lime plant with lots of fruits there are plenty of choices. But give a thought of what you want to do with these after the festive season is over before you should buy them. For the potted lime plant, it is easy…grow the whole pot on. But be careful not to use those nice looking lime in your drinks or cooking. These have been treated by multitude of agro-chemicals and usually are not fit for consumption! Most decorative and auspicious plants of bulb origin are not going to last long and if you have composting facility already at your garden, they belong there after “use”. How about those twisty Draceana? Unless you are a good gardener, this may end up in the compost bin or as your household waste as well. You can still grow the Draceana in pots on for a while but they do look out of place once all the buds sprouted for the occasion have grown a lot longer. The author suggest that you may think about potting these Draceana up and treat them as houseplants instead of throwing them away.

The above are merely quick observations and simple suggestions from the author. Many of these may have been thought of by the readers already but may not have been put in practice!

The author is using this opportunity to wish all the readers a happy Year of the Dragon!

The author commenced writing this article using his close to 8-year-old Dell PC with only 512mb RAM. The machine has been limping along under Windows XP for a long time. After yet another crash it was a no brainer for the author to abandon Windows all together and try Linux. This post has been written with the aim of sharing the author’s experience in resurrecting his old PC using a low resource distribution of Linux.  For those looking for a write-up on how different low resource distributions of Linux are evaluated etc. there are many articles out there such as this from TuxRadar.

For many “switchers” to Linux, Ubuntu with its many useful repositories of software and attractive user interface plus tonnes of support groups is the obvious choice. However, if you have a very old PC with low RAM (and no way of boosting that either there is no slots left or more likely the type of RAM cannot be found any more), Ubuntu will seem to be dragging its feet all the time. In the author’s case, the system seemed to have a habit of hanging if he tried to use more than 3 tabs at a time on Google Chrome and for larger files on LibreOffice, it would take a long time to load. Worse still, he could not do multi-task with 1 browser plus one LibreOffice application being loaded.

It seemed that (only 4 weeks before this post is being written) the most logical thing to do was to retire off this old PC some how. But being frugal (due to his economic situation at present), the author had decided to spend some time learning and experimenting with the low resource Linux distributions to find a solution.

Why Puppy was chosen?

The author remembered that a few months earlier he downloaded and even burnt Live CDs of a few “low footprint” distributions of Linux that included Xubuntu, Puppy Linux, and Siltaz with the view of trying it on the old PC. He had installed Xubuntu into his company’s laptop before, a Dell Vostro 3340 but found that Xubuntu is still very resource hungry. For Puppy Linux and Siltaz, he had managed to load these OS only once and left it at that. The main reason was that he was not able to configure his old Dell PC to match the drivers etc, for various hardware for both distributions. For Siltaz, the deal breaker for adopting it was that: although it was faster to load than the others, the author was not able to install it on a partition to the hard-disk that he had created and to add to this negative point, he could not find the way to configure the display so that the full definition of the LCD screen is displayed. So it seemed to him that the most logical choice to consider was Puppy Linux.

Not An Easy Feat

Despite what most articles have advocated, putting in Linux as an operating system is not an easy feat. You have to have a bit of faith in your own abilities and have done enough cross referencing of articles to gain the confidence. For the author, he had learnt about partitioning of hard-disk much earlier when he had the chance to experiment on this skill using his former employer assigned new laptop (on account that if he messed up, the Recovery DVDs had been made by him earlier to restore everything!). However, for Puppy Linux (and most of the Linux distributions), Live-CDs are the way these can all be tested. Now if you have no idea what is a Live-CD, then this link has what you need. As in most Live-CDs, the boot in session is mainly for you to evaluate if the distribution has what it takes for your usage and you are not able in general to install additional software. However, Puppy Linux is a bit different in that it allows you to run direct from Live-CDs or USB Flash Drive / PenDrive with the ability for you to install software which (if you use a multi-session CD or DVD) can be saved back for the next session. 

The author must admit that he found out about this much later but it was his own fault of having the habit of plunging into testing and not reading up on the application before hand and not the fault of Puppy Linux! When he booted up his old Dell PC using a Puppy Linux Live-CD  which was not multi-session for the first time, he had downloaded and installed a number of software from Puppy Linux’s recommended list. As the Live-CD was not multi-session in nature, the data file (including the downloaded & installed software) had to be saved in the old PC’s hard-disk. Thus when he revisited the old PC to take the plunge to install Puppy Linux on to a partition of the hard-disk, there was a big problem as a crucial file was not to be overwritten. He found out later that this was due to the fact that he did not have full administrator (or “Root” ) access to have the permission to write to the particular file. As the old PC has already had Ubuntu 10.10 installed, he was able to log into the PC in Ubuntu as “Root” and made a few clicks at the correct places and unprotected the trouble causing file. After that, the installer inside the Live-CD of Puppy Linux took over and within less than 10 minutes the entire hard-disk installation of Puppy Linux was done. 

The author had chosen “Frugal” install which means that the data file and programme files are housed separately from the rest of the system files which means upgrading etc. in future will be an easier task (in his case, because of hard-disk installation, the data files are stored in the partition assigned, SD3).  After installation was completed, you will need to install the required software (almost all are open-source). This will take, depending on your internet speed, anything up to a couple of hours. If you have chosen “Frugal” installation like the author, these files will be installed into your data file partition.  As Puppy Linux is run solely as a RAM-based system (i.e. it is loaded into the memory of your PC), you need to have, as in the author’s case, more than 128 mb of RAM to have the system running at the high speed that it is reputed to be able to achieve. One quirk that the author does not seem to be able to solve till later was the fast pace in which the Personal Storage allocation had been filling up and he had to add on this a few times. Then he learnt that the files downloaded, if not assigned to be stored in the hard-disk, will be stored with the system files and will be loaded onto the RAM each time. Cleaning up of these files freed up lots of available Personal Storage space. In this case, all the old PC’s factory installed hardware were instantly recognized, including the sound systems and external speakers / sub-woofer etc.. But the added on webcam and wi-fi adapter are still not operational even though Puppy Linux seems to recognize the hardware…it could be that the correct drivers have not made it to the distribution! As the author’s ADSL modem and WiFi router both have many RJ45 slots, it was not an issue about linking the old Dell to the Internet, but that also means that he could not move the old Dell too far from these equipment as he had hoped for with the WiFi adapter.

The Pro

• The old PC has been fully resurrected and runs as fast as the author’s Toshiba T210 which is about 2 years old and just a bit slower than his former employer’s Dell Vostro 3340.
• You can install Opera to extend the range of web services and apps that you need to run easily.
• The distribution-issued range of software and applications are extensive enough to let one start operating the old PC right away.
• Start-up after the initial installation to hard-disk is very fast at around less than 30 seconds as all the system needs to do is to load the itself onto the RAM of the PC.
• Switching off the old PC is even faster than the time taken for start-up.
• For those using Frugal installation, upgrading of system files to newer versions though a bit fiddly (you need to download the image file, aka .iso file, mount it or burn it to CD before you can access what you need), is a matter of copy-and-overwrite 4 files.
• Lots of software are found either in the recommended sites via Puppy Package Manager or from support forum in the form of “pet”.
• Very easy to install additional software, especially those recommended and downloading via Puppy Linux own utilities.

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