Puppy Linux

One of the nice things about linux is there is a distribution to suite pretty much everyones needs, lets face it if you want to run Windows Vista you need to have a pretty chunky machine to do it. Why? well because if you have an older machine that perhaps is not powerfull enough to run Vista then you pretty much have to throw it in the bin. This seems rediculous to me after all just becuase it won't run the latest version of Windows does not put it out of the running.

Recently I had cause to decide what to do with my old Sony Vaio N505X. This is a nice small laptop very light weight and easy to carry around, but with a Celeron 333 processor, 128MB RAM and a 20GB hard disk there was no way it was going to run Windows XP well or Windows Vista. Windows 2000, ME, 98, 95 and NT are no longer supported by Microsoft and as such no patches are available. So even if I were to install any of these on the Laptop I would not be able to use it safely on the Internet.

Enter Puppy Linux... Puppy linux is a modern OS with a small foot print, not the smallest but still small with an ISO of 100MB. It comes with an Internet Browser, Word Processor, Calendar among other things, and is very happy running on a machine of such a low specification.

OK so it won't allow me to use the BBC iPlayer but thats hardly the point, if I just want to sit in front of the TV and browse the web I would rather do it on a small Laptop than a large heavy thing.

All in all Puppy and other small foot print distributions are an excellent way of keeping older hardware working and safe and not just dumping it in the nearest land fill.

So if you have an older machine think twice about scrapping it and have a look at what Puppy has to offer.

Puppy Linux Home Page