OS on a Stick 2: Dressing up USB Puppy 3.01

Part 1: OS on a Stick: Puppy 3.01 on a USB Drive

To really experience the power of Puppy Linux run from a USB drive you need to add some of the great variety of applications that are available. The very first thing I usually do is get Firefox. This package and many others is available here. Scroll down to mozilla firefox 2.0.0.4.pet and download it. I usually put it in /root/mydocuments/tmp. Then just click on it (remember - one click!) and install. To see it in the menu choices go to Menu>Shutdown>RestartJWM. This resets the desktop, which is much faster than completely rebooting. Then you will see an icon for firefox in the Menu>Internet.

Next go here and download the Gslapt Package Manager. As I mentioned earlier, the application availability for Puppy increased exponentially when the developer made it coincide with Slackware. This means that Puppy has all the same basic packages preinstalled as it's linux sibling Slackware, although fundamentally it is a very different OS. Follow the directions in this forum thread, and go ahead and bookmark this forum because most of your questions will be answered here.

Next you can install either the Flash9.pup or the Flash 9 plugin from the gslapt package manager (located in Menu>Setup). The Flash9.pup has been hard to find lately, so I went for the slackware package.

I like to keep track of my CPU use and Gslapt has a version of GKrellM which works nicely. Also, there a lot of themes available to give it a cool look.

Next I got MPlayer from Gslapt, which is a very nice video and music player that plays pretty much every format.

Finally to get the look you want you can download wallpapers to get your own background. Download the picture you want to /usr/share/backgrounds and then go to Menu>Desktop>Puppybackground image and choose which background you want.

Also you may want to put links with icons on your desktop. For firefox get the link from /usr/share/applications. Just drag it from the folder to your desktop then right-click the icon and choose Edit Item then change the name to just Firefox. For something like GkrellM just do a search (Menu>Filesystem>Pfind) and find the icon that when you click on it the program starts (/usr/bin/gkrellm) and drag that to the desktop. Find an icon you like and download a folder you create in /root/mydocuments called icons. If you need edit it to make it about 50px x 50px then do so. Next right-click on the desktop icon you want to change and choose Set Icon. Drag the pic from the folder to the box presented and Viola! you have your cool new icon. Here is a pic of my desktop (click on it to see full size):



There is so much more to this incredible little OS. Soon I will document what is called a 'frugal install', where puppy is installed to your computer's hard drive. The possibilities increase exponentially from there.....