Should desktop users boot Puppy from a USB stick, or install it to a HDD?

[GNU2Linux]

Just seems odd to boot an operating system every day off of a USB stick when I have two internal spinning rust hard drives with plenty of space available. Is USB really the preferred method to use Puppy on a desktop if one doesn't care about the portable operating system aspect of running it on a USB stick and taking it from place to place to potentially use on different computers? I have a Pentium D 3.00 Ghz (64 bit) desktop with 2 GB of RAM from 2006 that I need a lightweight o.s. for and FossaPup64 9.5 seems pretty snappy running from the 16 GB USB I have it on compared to some other locally installed distros I tried.

So does it make sense to install it locally on one of the hard drives alongside either Linux Mint or Bodhi Linux and boot it from a hard drive since it loads into RAM anyway? Or is it really better for me to always boot from the USB stick every day and forget the local install?

[amethyst]

There's no commonly preferred media. All my Puppys boot and run from hard disks. A USB stick is really for mobility if you want to use the OS on another machine, or if you don't have hard disks or you just want to run from flashdrive by choice. Do a frugal install on your preferred hard drive. i suggest the upgraded Fossa9.6CE or BookwurmPup. I use both of them on my old machines.

[trawglodyte]

If you use pupmode 13, the difference of having it on a USB flash drive vs hard drive will be a few seconds when it boots up and some extra seconds when you do a pupsave. That's it. Should be no other difference performance-wise, just whatever your preference is.

Of course, I just recently figured this out and before that I thought there was no way running off a USB was a legit way to keep an OS, so I have been putting them on a hard drive partition. Now I'm fooling with usb a little to see what those options are like.

[amethyst]

If you use pupmode 13, the difference of having it on a USB flash drive vs hard drive will be a few seconds when it boots up and some extra seconds when you do a pupsave. That's it. Should be no other difference performance-wise, just whatever your preference is.

Of course, I just recently figured this out and before that I thought there was no way running off a USB was a legit way to keep an OS, so I have been putting them on a hard drive partition. Now I'm fooling with usb a little to see what those options are like.

When using HD with save, you can change to pmedia=ataflash in which case you can run in pupmode 13 similar to using a flashdrive.

[Geek3579]

I have Windows 10 on almost all my desktops and laptops. I keep it there just in case....Never needed it in 6+ years of using Puppy Linux exclusively as my daily driver. Maybe one day...

The issue for me is the boot location. Having the EFI boot from a separate USB, SDD, HDD or even a SD card keeps the Windows boot drive clean, and I just need to adjust the BIOS to get it to boot from the correct drive. Yes I could use LICK to frugally install Puppy Linux on the Windows partition, but I prefer to have direct control over the process and keep the Puppy OS on a separate partition. I usually shrink the Windows partitions to add an extra 2 partitions - one for the Puppy Frugal OS directories, the other for data/files. That way the boot, OS and data are on separate partitions in case one fails, which seems uncommon now that I use ext4 for all partitions except for the boot partition.

[williwaw]

operationally, the advise above is spot on

consider the set up geek describes in the post above.....
dual booting with windows
shrinking oem windows partitions and splitting into two different partitions

When you consider just about everyone ends up putting puppy on a usb in order to have a rescue disk or a way to do the partition operations for a dual boot, why not start out with a usb install to learn and gain experience?
Having a puppy tool kit is optimal for creating more puppies, too.

[MochiMoppel]

Just seems odd to boot an operating system every day off of a USB stick when I have two internal spinning rust hard drives with plenty of space available.

It's not that odd. I boot all my desk/laptops from a USB stick because, apart from other advantages already mentioned, it allows me to shut off the internal "rust hard drive". I do this immediately after boot. Beautiful silence, less power consumption and less fear to hear the "click of death". The huge space on the hard drive is used for backups and video collections etc, Since the HD needs to be mounted and accessed only occasionally on demand it remains relatively shielded from Puppy.

[mikeslr]

Neither. With a desktop computer, you can have folders to hold Puppys on your hard-drive and create a dedicated USB-Stick to hold just a boot-loader and set bios to give 'Boot-from-USB' priority. Plug in the stick to boot Puppys; unplug the Stick to boot Windows/Major Distros.

Grub2Config, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 703#p29703 run from a Puppy on a Stick will write a boot-loader to another USB-Stick, or back to itself. It searches all connected hard-drives and USB-Sticks and generates a listing of all operating systems it finds. [Among the listings will be to Chain-load Windows boot-loader on the hard-drive. So you can boot Windows from that Key if you want].

With Puppy in a folder on the Hard-drive, the first thing grub2config does is load vmlinuz from that Puppys' folder. The next is that Puppy's initrd(.?z). Initrd provides instructions what to do next. When booting is finished, the USB-Key is dismounted and can be unplugged.

The above provides two advantages. (1) The boot-loader doesn't over-write Windows boot-loader: No chance of locking oneself out of Windows as I did with my Wife's computer.
(2) Less frequent need to press the Power Button to switch from one operating system to another. Just select reboot rather than shut-down. Previous to using the above system I had two power buttons burn out.

[GNU2Linux]

Well, these answers have certainly given me a lot to think about. Thanks for the feedback. My older pc mentioned above only has Linux Mint XFCE and Bodhi Linux on the two internal hard drives, no more Windows so I don't have to deal with that. So I'm probably going to try to figure out how to install Puppy to one of those two internal hard drives for use with that old desktop and also keep a version of it installed on the USB drive for off site use in case I ever want to bother with that.

I have to say though that the bewildering amount of choices and flexibility with how to use Puppy on a USB or hard drive and all the options and edge cases and various possibilities about how to set it up discussed above and elsewhere I have read belies the grandpa-friendly certified™ slogan on the Puppy web site. Installing Linux Mint on its own hard drive was so straightforward and easy by comparison in my opinion.

[mikewalsh]

@GNU2Linux :- Hallo.....and to the "kennels". Nice to have you here with us.

Um.....as mentioned above, it IS purely down to personal choice. As @trawglodyte says, he's been putting Puppies onto his internal drive for the simple reason that, up until now, he was always used to performing full installs to his main drive with all the other distros he's tried out. And yes; for some folks, the whole concept of running an entire OS from a USB stick takes some doing to "get their head around it".

Many people have difficulty adjusting to this rather different way of doing things. Some, however, take to it like a duck to water.....

=====================================

@mikeslr mentioned the best way of approaching the Puppy-to-hard-drive paradigm up above. Unlike other distros, which invariably require their own, dedicated partition for them and them alone, multiple Puppies can quite happily "share" a single partition between them.

If you wanted to, say, run 3 different Puppies from the same partition then you would create three separate directories (Linux-speak for a Windows 'folder'), and give each one a unique, distinctive identifying name (usually the name of the distro itself is quite sufficient). You retain the same "frugal"-type installation method as you would for a USB stick; if you like, think of each sub-directory as an individual USB stick, if that makes it simpler to visualize.

Unlike most distros, which are constantly reading-from/writing-to their partition, and only loading stuff from the hard drive as & when it's needed, with the Puppy frugal install method you basically load the entire OS into RAM.....and then run it from there. An area of RAM is 'set-aside' for caching additions, configuration changes, etc.....then you have three options:-

• Save these changes back to the 'save'-folder at regular, specified intervals
• Save back to the 'save'-folder continuously, as & when they're made
• Set things up so that Puppy ONLY 'saves' this stuff to the 'save'-folder as & when you TELL it to

All of the above are recognized by Puppy as different operational 'modes'. If you stay with us for any length of time, you'll see these mentioned quite regularly, as different people figure-out the best way for them, personally, to use Puppy. What works for ME will not necessarily work for YOU (and vice-versa).

Until very recently, computer RAM was by far & away the fastest-performing component of any system. However, the current crop of modern, nVME NAND-flash drives (think supercharged SSDs!) are now reaching the point where they're starting to overtake RAM itself in terms of sheer speed. All of which opens up a whole new raft of possibilities....

=================================

IF you want 'portability' then it goes without saying that the 'save'-folder will need to be on the USB stick along with the rest of the OS. If, however, you will always run this USB Puppy from the same machine, it makes more sense to create the 'save'-folder to run on your internal HDD/SSD/nVME/whatever, because these media are far faster than most USB sticks.

With any Puppy employing the 'frugal' method of operation, all you're really doing is use that stick/directory/whatever to 'store' the compressed files that make up the OS until such time as you boot it.....at which point it's all decompressed into a virtual file-system that's created, 'on-the-fly', in RAM as & when it's needed. I know it all sounds very complicated, but once you begin to understand the unique, 'Puppy' way of doing things it will actually start to make sense..!

At the end of the day, as far as the average user is concerned, a 'Puppy' will work exactly the same in operation as any other OS. You don't HAVE to understand the clever, technical tricks that make it all possible under the hood.......not, that is, unless you're curious and WANT to.

Mike.

[esos]

So does it make sense to install it locally on one of the hard drives alongside either Linux Mint or Bodhi Linux

The concept of puppy linux is frugal install.
It is not fullinstall like Linux Mint or Bodhi Linux.
It is very simple:
Create a empty folder on any Linux Mint or Bodhi Linux partition(s).
Extract the puppy.iso to the folder you just created.
Figure it out menu.lst or grub.cfg depend on your existed bootmanager.
That's all.

[bigpup]

With other operating systems installed on the computer.

The issue becomes setting up the boot loader to boot a Puppy frugal install.

Windows, Mint, Bodi, etc........... OS's do not install boot loaders that know anything about booting Puppy Linux.
A lot of Linux OS's during their install process will install there own boot loader. Usually grub2.
But again they never look for Puppy Linux installs to add to their boot loader menu.

The last Linux OS you installed is probably what installed the boot loader being used.

So you need to make Puppy Linux the last OS that gets installed.

Some of the boot loaders that Puppy has developed for installing a boot loader. Will try to make boot loader entries to boot Puppy as well as other OS's it finds installed on the computer.

Grub2config boot loader install program is one of them.
If it is not in the Puppy version you boot from installed on USB.
Get it here and install it and run from Puppy:
viewtopic.php?p=29703#p29703

What it takes to boot a specific Linux OS changes over the years.
So not 100% always will get the boot menu entry correct for every possible Linux OS you may have also installed on the computer.
Could still need to tweak the entry a little.
Only way to know is try using it and see what happens.

Sorry about the need to make choices in installing Puppy Linux.
But that is what Linux is really about.
You decide what to do. You have choices.

The easiest Puppy Install is to a USB stick, SD card, or CD/DVD.
But even USB installer programs you can get off the internet have issues because non of the other USB installer programs truly understand how Puppy is best installed to a USB.
But they will make an install that will boot and Puppy can be used.

Installer programs in Puppy do know correct ways to install Puppy to a USB.
But catch 22 the programs have to be run from a booted and running Puppy Linux.

[mikeslr]

As the above posts indicate, Puppys don't need their own partition --only their own folders-- and most Linux boot-loaders don't know how to handle Puppys. While installing grub2config may be the easiest way to obtain a boot-loader which recognizes Puppys, other Linuxes and Windows, not even that is essential. You can manually add Puppys to the grub2 boot-loader provided by whichever Linux now controls booting. See https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 2181#p2181.

Rather than the 'set-root' argument used by oui in the above post, you can substitute:
search --no-floppy --set=root --fs-uuid 39ff128d-806e-45a0-9c0c-4013859ec05d

From a terminal, the Linux command blkid will generate a listing of UUIDs that you can copy and paste as arguments for the fs-uuid command.

Puppys arre 'granpa-friendly' because grandpa is running Windows. Only 'Linux-Only' users have difficulty. Grandpa will follow the instructions to first deploy Puppy to a USB-Stick using either Lick, or Rufus, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 522#p40522. Any Puppy so deployed includes all the tools needed to deploy it (or any other Puppy) to a hard-drive or create additional USB-Puppys; or as previously noted, grub2config will write a boot-manager that offers to boot pretty much any operating system.

'Major' Linux distros not only don't provide boot-loaders which recognize Puppys as operating systems; they don't have builtin the tools needed to manually deploy Puppys. Those can be installed, if you know what's needed; or Unetbootin can be used if you know that the menu-entry it creates has to be manually edited: pmedia=cd changed to pmedia=usbflash.

[GNU2Linux]

I'm a former long time Windows user for a few decades, but pretty much exclusively have used Linux for the last few months with Mint being my main operating system on my more capable computers. I used UNetbootin on my laptop to write Puppy to the USB stick and manually changed pmedia=usbflash in one recommended file after reading that tip here in the forum. But I made it hard on myself at first by trying to fit it on a 1 GB USB stick the first couple of times. Seemed to work until I tried to boot from the USB when it gave serious errors. I had previously found that the 492 MB FossaPup64 iso runs fine in a virtual machine in Virtualbox with only 1 GB of space and only 1 GB of RAM allocated to it, but it seems to take up a good 1.3 GB on the USB stick for some reason. Not sure why that is.

Both Mint and Bodhi are on their own internal hard drives on my older PC and I'm pretty sure each has it's own boot loader that starts up depending on which hard drive I select at the boot screen. USB is also an option of course when I hit F12 after start up, so you guys might have talked me into just leaving Puppy on the USB since it loads into RAM when it starts up anyway. I already have a save folder there from the last time I shut it down.

[esos]

Both Mint and Bodhi are on their own internal hard drives on my older PC and I'm pretty sure each has it's own boot loader that starts up depending on which hard drive I select at the boot screen. USB is also an option of course when I hit F12 after start up.

Basically you need only one bootloder to boot all Operatingsystems, so you can ignore F12

[GNU2Linux]

Both Mint and Bodhi are on their own internal hard drives on my older PC and I'm pretty sure each has it's own boot loader that starts up depending on which hard drive I select at the boot screen. USB is also an option of course when I hit F12 after start up.

Basically you need only one bootloder to boot all Operatingsystems, so you can ignore F12

Come to think of it, the hard drive with Mint XFCE which I installed first loads all the way by default upon start up without showing me boot options just like Windows used to. I only get to Bodhi on the other internal drive or get to the USB by hitting F12 at start up. I'm sure I could change the boot order in the BIOS if I felt that strongly about it, like if I wanted to let it boot off the USB first by default.

[williwaw]

changing the boot order in bios to make usb first is nice
plug it in , it boots when you power up, leave it unplugged and the hd boots

i think what esos is suggesting is with an edit to one of the bootloaders, you could choose bodhi or mint in a menu that comes up after poweron

no need to f12 or f2 or bring up a bios menu at all

[wizard]

@GNU2Linux
I have a desktop similar to yours:
CPU = Pentium D 3.2ghz
Ram = 3gb
HDD = 40gb IDE

It's running MS Windows 10, Friendly-Fossa64, FossaPup64 9.5. Have run F96ce_4 and Bookworm64 10 from USB, but boot time is slow. Would be better if installed to HDD. Uses Grub4dos boot manager, but could just as easy be Grub2.

Your two HDD's with Bodhi and Mint installs have separate Grub2 boot managers. I would set like this
overview:

-Set bios to boot the 1st drive as default
-Boot the 1st drive (probably now named sda1) distro
-Open the 2nd (probably now named sdb1) drive grub.cfg find the boot menuentry and copy it
-Open the 1st drive custom.cfg and paste the 2nd drive copied section into it
note: if the system does not have a custom.cfg you can open grub.cfg and paste into the boot section

This should allow you to boot either distro from the 1st drive grub.cfg menu

Now boot the system from your Puppy USB.
-use Menu>Setup>FrugalPup to install Puppy to the 1st drive. Be sure to create a directory/folder to contain the Puppy install.
-do not install grub
-use the same 1st and 2nd grub copy procedure above to copy the entry from your USB grub.cfg to the 1st drive: custom.cfg.
-edit the copied USB grub.cfg entry and change the drive uuid to match the 1st: drive uuid.

When you're done you'll have a triple boot all from the 1st drive grub.cfg menu.

You can add more Puppy's the same way.

If you try this and get stuck, just post your grub.cfg files and we'll help.

Also, add some more ram if you can.

wizard

[trawglodyte]

After booting pups from a USB for a few days I have to edit what I said before. On my machine, boot-up is about the same whether it's USB or hard drive. The pupsaves (using pupmode 13) take a few minutes with USB and are blazing fast with my nvme hard drives. But I was right that other than that the experience is identical whether USB or hard drive.

This all varies based on USB 2.0, 3.1 Gen 1, 3.2 Gen 2, 3.5" HDD, 2.5" SSD, M.2 2280 nvme, etc.... (which all have different write speeds) I should note that with pupmode 13 an easy work-around is to do the pupsave before you reboot or shutdown and do something else for the few minutes it takes to save. My guess is if you only have a USB 2.0 you're probably not going to like how long it takes to do a save, but like I said if that's what you wind up doing you can just do it before you shutdown and do other stuff while it's writing the save file.

[wizard]

@trawglodyte

the few minutes it takes to save

The best stragey for the OP is to keep the save file/folder as small as possible. Run portable apps or sfs apps rather than installing them and save documents and downloads in folders on /mnt/home or /home. My typical save file/folders are less than 1gb, so shutdown or manual saving is seconds even on USB 2 ports.

wizard

[esos]

Come to think of it, the hard drive with Mint XFCE which I installed first loads all the way by default upon start up without showing me boot options just like Windows used to. I only get to Bodhi on the other internal drive or get to the USB by hitting F12 at start up

Pls show us your grub.cfg from first OS (Mint XFCE) and grub.cfg from second OS (Bodhi).
Manual entry is necessary to put all in one grub.cfg. That's all about multiboot.

[houndstooth]

If you're a beginner you should learn pupsaves, & if you're using pupsaves it's better to use Puppy on at least a drive if not internal partition. By "drive" I include SD/mSD, eMMC, & USB HD/SSD.

If you're booting live (all in ram), I prefer USB thumbdrives.

One caveat is I do not install anything without backup up the system the way it was before the install.

[cobaka]

Installing to HDD or Thumb drive? Good "Q".

I do both, but I generally install to an internal HDD, not a thumb drive.
I abandoned Windows a long time ago; that means I can (and do) re-format the HDD to install a Puppy. Generally I use MikeSLR's "manual installation using ROX file manager".

-> https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... +ROX#p1788

very helpful. Try using this method to install any puppy onto a thumb drive a few times.
After you 'nail it' format you HDD and install Puppy onto the HDD. Install from an installation on the thumb-drive.

Have been running uPupBB32, uPupBB64 and FossaPup for a long time now.
All installed using the method in the link above. Don't touch the HDD until you install Puppy onto a thumb several times. I used Grub4DOS to install the bootloader.
I use the version of Fossa Pup with the Tasmanian Tiger and pink sun/moon.

Difficulties enountered with installation: sorting out the correct video driver. (An uncommon problem, but it happens. When you run into trouble give @bigpup a shout.)

Installing Puppy (compared with Windows) is a breeze!
Собака

[trawglodyte]

My typical save file/folders are less than 1gb, so shutdown or manual saving is seconds even on USB 2 ports.

Thanks for telling me. I was wondering about USB 2.0. I decided to test it on my machine. Wasn't that big of a difference on write speed.
Other machines might have faster write speeds on their USB 3.0's than mine. IDK.

6.3 MB/s - USB 3.0 (3.1 Gen 1 header on ASUS B360M-A mobo)
3.9 MB/s - USB 2.0 (header on same mobo)

I couldn't find something to benchmark with right off-hand so I got

Code: Select all

apt install gnome-disk-utility

on BookwormPup to do it. (shows up as "Disks" under Menu>Utility)

Screenshot(3).png (135.85 KiB) Viewed 899 times

Screenshot(4).png (125.73 KiB) Viewed 899 times

[wizard]

@trawglodyte

Good show on the test, keep in mind there can be huge differences in the write speeds of different USB flash drives My fastest ones are Sandisk.

Thanks
wizard

[gychang]

I boot all my desk/laptops from a USB stick because, apart from other advantages already mentioned, it allows me to shut off the internal "rust hard drive". I do this immediately after boot.

@MochiMoppel How is this done?

[MochiMoppel]

@MochiMoppel How is this done?

Puppy identifies my HD is sda, so in order to shut it down I use hdparm -Y /dev/sda

[gychang]

@MochiMoppel How is this done?

Puppy identifies my HD is sda, so in order to shut it down I use hdparm -Y /dev/sda

thanks!.

[vtpup]

I've had a lot of fun running Puppies off of USB thumbdrives on laptops, but unfortunately the physical problems have cropped up on my older laptop as the USB port has become looser. If you bump the drive, you lose contact, and that really messes things up for saves, etc. There's also the danger that a pet (the animal type) or your kid, or even you, will knock it while you're using the laptop on your lap (hence the name), and possibly do damage. The new USB C thumbs have even weaker jacks, since they are smaller.

As a result with my newest laptop, I want to run off of the internal nvme drive, and I don't want a thumbdrive sticking out of the box, even for boot ups only. Sure I'll use thumbs for tests of new stuff or special purposes, but for everyday use I want to internal startup and run. Also even with high speed ports and good brand thumbs, I find Qemu VMs slow on thumbdrive.

Anyway, that's just my own present decision, and the reasons for it.

Now, I have Win-11 onboard this new laptop, which I want to preserve as well for a very few weird CAM and other device driver programs that don't do well in WINE. The question is with Win 11 is how to deal with it's already weird partition scheme. The main data space is in partition 3, with "Windows RE tools" in a small 4th (last) partition.

I'm not sure how I can get an ext4 on the drive, in the way I used to when Win took up the first 3 partitions only. That just took shrinking the 3rd partition in gparted, and reformatting the freed up space in ext.

I'm guessing the only solution is living with NTFS and using something like LICK to install into a MS partition, which I've never used before. But I'm a little concerned that LICK only mentions being suitable for up to Win-10.

How does it like windows 11? Anybody know?

Thanks....

Screenshot(1).png (45.38 KiB) Viewed 463 times

[vtpup]

Hmmmmm, easier than I thought re. repartitioning. I checked and it turned out the drive was formatted with GPT, which allowed me more than 4 primary partitions without having to make an extended and logical ones. That meant the 4 existing Windows primary partitions could stay without juggling things.

AND, Windows 11 has a built in graphic partition manager that looks a like gparted, which will shrink windows partitions. So I did that on the data partiton while in Windows 11 itself.

The partition manager lacks Gparted's safety check (where you mark things first, then implement them second). Win's does what you say RIGHT NOW! I kept looking for an "Apply Changes" button. There wasn't any, and with nvme it all happened in an instant. So be careful what you ask for!

Anyway, back in Fossapup64, I gparted the newly freed space into ext4, and Bob's my uncle. Now I just have to thinka about a boot manager.....