Lots to love about Puppy

Tech tips -

Has your windows computer ever taken a dump on you, saying it cannot go any further leaving you staring at a blue screen full of useless numbers? And, you are saying to yourself, I wish I could just get my ##$%@@ pictures and taxes off this thing before I start over.

Well, we have all been there, and what I am going to tell you now is probably the easiest way I can think of for getting those important files back.

Now, you want to do this before your only computer takes a dive.

Browse on over to www.puppylinux.org and download the latest production release. Puppy is a full blown Linux operating system that is about 100 Megs in size and that will boot from a CD or usb drive.

Once you have downloaded the Puppy iso, you will use your burning software to burn the ISO to cd (we have talked about this in past columns and instructions can be found on the puppy website if you need more info).

To use puppy, just place the cd in the drive and then reboot your computer choosing the option to boot from cd/dvd.

Now, here is one of the really cool reasons I like Puppy; it runs in RAM. Why is this so cool? If it runs in RAM, your CD drive is available to use for burning. Ah, that's right; you can burn your files to a CD. Even easier, if you have a USB drive available, just plug it in and use it to copy your files.

Here is what you can expect when you first boot into Puppy. You will see a few screens asking you what type of mouse you have, what keyboard layout (US) and what graphic mode to use. Choose Xorg (large and sophisticated) first, but if that don't work for you, choose Xvesa (standard mode, small and simple X server). Finally, choose your video mode with x 24 being more color.

Once booted, you will have a full working operating system that looks and feels a lot like the windows you are familiar with. If you haven't used Linux or Mac before, look towards the bottom left of your screen, and you will see what looks like hard drive icons. And, that is exactly what they are. Simply click to mount and open. Plug in your usb stick, and another icon will appear. Click to mount and open that as well. Now you can browse for your files and copy to your usb.... Thank God, got them all back!

Remember, this is a working operating system running from CD. Don't install it on your hard drive or you will end up formatting it! Fee free to browse the internet or play with all the programs the default installation comes with. When you are done, click the menu button and choose the shutdown option.

You can choose to save your session. This will write a file to your hard drive that will be used in future boots to load your initial choices about your mouse and keyboard etc and save any of the changes you made to your puppy desktop. If you are just using Puppy to recover files, then obviously you don't want to save to the failed drive.

This OS can't be any simpler to use and it works great, even if your machine is formatted as NTFS. For help using Puppy, check out rhinoweb.us for a full line of "how to" videos.

toddmusseau@gmail.com