Another feature many lap top users will find convenient, is the ability to create a Puppy Linux boot thumb drive by simply choosing the option “Install Puppy USB Card” under the setup menu. The script will give you a full set of instructions.

Puppy has a utility that will mount hard disks, CD/DVDs, floppies and other devices.

This is a world-first. Live-CDs have become popular, but none save your personal data and settings back to the CD. Most of them can't anyway, as they are too big, at least for a CD. As Puppy is only about 50M, there is about 600M free space on the CD, so why not put it to use?

To get going with Puppy multi-session live-CD is quite easy. There is nothing complicated to do to set it up, it just works. After you have downloaded the multi-session live-CD ISO file, the only slight difficulty is that the software that you use to burn it to CD must have the "Multi-session" and "Data" checkboxes ticked. Most burner software has these choices. Alternatively, just download the "normal" (non-multisession) Puppy live-CD ISO and burn it to CD, boot up, and Gcombust, the CD-burner program in Puppy will do the job. Detailed install steps are given at the bottom of this page.

Puppy Linux is a small Linux live CD distribution that can boot from a CD, DVD, or USB drive; a hard disk is optional. According to the Puppy Linux Web site, Puppy's goals include being Linux newbie-friendly, booting and running quickly, and including all the applications typical users need. The newest version is its most usable yet.

The brand new puppy-2.02-seamonkey version was released late last month. The minimum requirements are a 100MHz CPU and 64MB of RAM or better, which makes it a great way to extend the life of old PCs

Puppy Linux, in case you aren’t already familiar with it, is a lightweight version of Linux that is designed for portability.

The .iso file of Puppy Linux 5.0 weighs in at an incredibly petite 128 MB. It’s much, much smaller than all of the usual desktop heavyweight distros. But don’t let its small size fool you, Puppy Linux 5.0 is anything but an also-ran in terms of functionality and usability.

Yet the Puppy download ranges from only 28MB to about 130M, depending on the version. While most Linuxes require a 700MB download, and some fill up multiple CDs, Puppy typically clocks in at less than 100MB. Puppy achieves this by carefully selecting the lightest program to satisfy each need. It also comes as compressed software, which it dynamically decompresses as needed.

Puppy Linux has been evolving. When I tested an early version of Puppy, I was amazed at how small Puppy was, although I was not impressed with the usability. The applications that were available then were all very much stripped down. However, I did think that Puppy would make a very good Linux to deploy in embedded applications.

As time went on, each new version of Puppy amazed me more and more. When applications such as Mozilla, AbiWord, and Gaim started showing up, I was quite impressed. Over the past two releases of Puppy, Puppy has gone from curiosity to a real desktop contender.

Barry Kauler, the retired Australian university lecturer who built Puppy, didn't trot out another Debian clone or Knoppix knock-off. Instead, he built his distro file by file, looking for the best performance and the most desirable features without encouraging bloat. In some cases, such as Puppy's printing system, Kauler completely rebuilt the software to get what he wanted. Kauler was also extremely careful about his software development choices...

Since it’s a very, very small Live CD (23MB download) I wasn’t realy expecting much in the way of applications. Puppy delivered a standard set of applications that would probably answer the needs of any run of the mill user. There was a graphics program, audio player, some office suite applications, basic Internet tools, and file system browsing utilities. I found the interface a little hard to get around because none of the applications were the standard applications I was used to. For instance, there is no Open Office suite; rather the word processor is Ted, the spreasheet is ABS Spreadsheet, the PIM software is Xcal.

Puppy Linux has a unique selling point; when you shutdown, it writes any changes you have made back to the cd, so they are there when you reboot. Most other linux live distro’s (distributions) have now refined methods of saving changes to a usb memory stick, or a hard disk partition, or a floppy disk, then at boot a command is passed to tell the computer where to find these saved settings. Puppy Linux will automatically re-load your saved settings on the next boot.

Puppy is small, reliable, easy to use, and fully featured. Puppy boots from a CD, but I have installed it to both a hard disk and a USB keydrive. It saves configuration and data in one file on a hard disk transparently, so even though you're booting from a live CD your data is updated and saved on disk, though if you wish you can leave the hard disk untouched and use it as a normal live CD. Puppy runs in RAM, so it is fast.

For the LAN-based box, Puppy Linux remains the king. From easy backups to PETget package management, Puppy Linux is just the ticket for giving older boxes a new life. Another advantage to Puppy is its strong tutorials and community. Overall, Puppy is the fastest, most well thought out distribution I have ever dealt with.

Puppy 3.00 has impressive hardware detection capabilities. It has no issues detecting common hardware such as wireless cards (both my external Linksys wireless card and the built-in Atheros adapter are detected and configured), monitors, graphics cards, external USB mice, keyboards, PS/2-to-USB converters, and more.

Puppy ran on all my computers -- two Celeron laptops with clock speeds of 1.3GHz and 1.7GHz and an E4400 2.0GHz dual-core desktop.