Puppy Linux: The Tinkerer's Delight

Reviewed by Howard Fosdick, July 2025 ©, RexxInfo.org, open license CC BY-ND 4.0.

Puppy Linux presents a unique personality. Designed to be small and light, it gives new life to old computers that other operating systems pass by. It also appeals to hobbyists, power users, students, and others who like to play with Linux and “have it their way.” Let’s take a look at what makes Puppy different.

One of Many Puppy Desktops

What's Puppy?

The Puppy Linux website describes Puppy as:

So Puppy Linux is not a single product or download, but rather a family of related distros.

What they all share is that they're extremely compact and designed to run fast on computers with limited resources. They're ready-to-run, packed with tools, and easy to customize.

Each product features binary compatibility with a source Linux distribution. That means it was created with packages and components from that other distro. Here are some key releases and their origins:

(Download any of these from Puppy's webpage.)

The benefit to binary compatibility is that Puppy can access the vast program repository of the distro from which it was spun. So depending on which version you download, your Puppy will be able to install programs from the Debian, Ubuntu, or Slackware repositories.

Small Yet Capable

Puppy has a tiny footprint. All versions download at a gigabyte or less. You can install Puppy into a 5 gigabyte partition and still have plenty of space left for your data.

Yet this small distro bundles a complete set of applications for almost any task. That includes office work, graphics, managing your personal life, networking, the internet, multimedia, games, and tons of utilities.

Puppy provides everything the typical user needs. The exact apps included in the distro vary a bit by which Puppy version you choose.

Though Puppy’s tools perform every common task, remember that they were all chosen for their light footprints. So you’ll find, for example, GNOME Office included as the default instead of Libreoffice.

Should you prefer other applications to Puppy’s defaults, you can install them via the Puppy Package Manager, or PPM.

PPM installs apps with a few clicks and automatically checks dependencies. For example, use the Ubuntu-derived version of Puppy and it links your PPM into Ubuntu’s repositories:

Using Puppy's Package Manager to Install Ubuntu Packages

Of course, if you installed one of the other Puppy versions, you get access to its particular base repository.

Some Puppy versions add other package installers as well. For example, BookwormPup includes the Synaptic Package Manager while the Ubuntu-based spin includes GPkgdialog.

Installation and Booting

Puppy supports a range of install options including:

• Live booting
• Traditional disk installs
• Frugal disk installs

In a frugal install, Puppy copies a few compressed files to your disk and boots from that. It’s kind of like an ISO boot that you can locate wherever you like. Most people put it on a fast-booting device, like a solid state disk or USB stick.

The advantage to a frugal install is that you can place it in its own partition, or a partition shared with other frugal installs. It can even reside in a partition used by Windows or other Linux distributions. Few other Linux distributions offer this flexibility.

Also, a frugal install requires significantly less disk space than a traditional or "full" install. Current Puppy versions consume less than one gigabyte of disk space for a frugal install.

These two panels show some of the install options for Puppy and its apps:

For quick, easy install of apps, Puppy supports squash files. These are referred to as SFS files in the above screens.

Squash files are read-only compressed files that contain a set of related programs. Instead of installing related programs one by one, you can add the entire group merely by adding a squash file to the boot directory and rebooting.

Squash files make for easy installation of tools that are often used together. For example, one squash file adds Libreoffice and all its office tools to Puppy.

For help installing or configuring Puppy, look to two primary sources. First, you typically interact with Puppy through its wizards -- or dialogues -- each of which will guide you with embedded explanations.

Second, you can ask any question in the active Puppy forum. Part of the fun of working with Puppy is its enthusiastic online community.

Flexibility

Puppy supports persistent storage across sessions through its save file or save folder. You can write the save file to any writable medium: a Puppy partition, any other partition, a USB memory stick, an external disk, or a rewritable DVD.

Combined with the boot options, this means that you can run Puppy from any writable storage device. That includes solid state disks, hard disks, USB flash drives, SD cards, and even writeable DVDs.

This flexibility means you can run Puppy on any old computer, regardless of the devices it supports. It also makes Puppy handy for a live USB, or as a rescue system.

I often run Puppy from a live USB memory stick for a portable, fast-and-light Linux I can run anywhere. It gives me privacy and security when using a public computer at a cafe or library. Plus, Puppy requires little space so it leaves lots of room for storing my data on the same thumb drive.

Puplets and Remastering

Beyond the mainline Puppy distros are numerous puplets. A puplet is a Puppy variant made using Puppy’s remastering tool. This means that you run Puppy, then install and un-install whatever you want, and make any other changes you like. Then you save or remaster your creation as your own bootable distribution.

So it’s easy to make your very own personal Puppy version – or puplet – that you can distribute however you like.

Remastering makes Puppy a good base from which to create your own purpose-built system. You might use this function to create a server dedicated to a specific role. Or to personalize your own private live USB Linux. Or to place the same customized system on all the desktops in a classroom.

You can also run any of the dozens of puplets created by others. So you can take advantage of any of the many Puppy variants created for specific purposes.

The Puppy Desktop

Most Linux distributions rely on full-fledged Desktop Environments for their user interface. Popular DEs include GNOME, Unity, KDE, Cinnamon, Xfce, and Mate.

Puppy takes a different approach. Instead of a resource-hungry DE, it employs a lightweight Window Manager (WM), such as Joe's Windows Manager.

Current Puppies pair the WM with file managers like ROX-Filer, Xfe, or MMView. The benefit is that this desktop consumes fewer CPU and memory resources. This is one reason Puppy performs so well on older and limited-resource computers.

Current versions of the Debian and Ubuntu based Puppies include both ROX-Filer and Xfe. The two complement each other. ROX-Filer appeals to power users while Xfe is easier for those who are less experienced.

Here are ROX-Filer on the left and Xfe on the right:

This example demonstrates the power of ROX-Filer. I’ve right-clicked on a file in the ROX-File file manager in order to rename it. ROX-Filer presents two menus full of options:

ROX-Filer in Action

Power users will love this kind of capability. It's highly efficient.

Neophytes will probably prefer Xfe. It presents a very traditional file management interface recognizable to almost anyone who has ever used a computer.

I've given Puppy to naive users who happily use it and find it very productive. But I find it's mandatory to install and configure it for them first, then train them for a session or two before letting them go off on their own.

Puppy Saves Old Computers

Given Puppy’s small size, speed, and flexibility, it’s well suited to bringing mature computers back to life. You can take any old computer – even up to twenty years old – and refurbish it into a useful machine.

Why not grab that old PC from your garage or attic and put it to use again? Puppy makes it feasible.

If you haven’t refurbished before, be aware that there’s more to reusing old computers than just finding a distro that can run on limited hardware resources.

Puppy can help navigate the complexities of older kernels and bootstrap programs, obsolete BIOS firmware, old MBR disks, CPUs that lack features like PAE and SSE3, 32-bit addressing, legacy devices, and more.

Many modern Linux distributions don't give you these options. The assumption is that you're running on current equipment. If you aren't, the burden is all on you to figure it out. Puppy makes this easier because it offers features and versions tailored for aging computers.

For example, Puppy has several tricks up its sleeve to make old computers run fast. The biggest is simply its careful selection of bundled apps. They are selected for light resource use and speed.

Another trick is that Puppy gives you the option to run entirely from memory. This speeds up computers that have hard disks instead of modern solid state disks, or if you're running from a DVD or other slow device.

And finally, there is Puppy's resource-efficient desktop. Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are famous for soaking up computer resources. Puppy is more responsive on resource-limited computers than alternatives because it uses a windows manager.

You'll want to keep track of resources when using older machines. Just toggle the Conky resource manager on or off the desktop to view resource use in real time.

The photos show Conky running on a state-of-the-art computer and on an old dual-core processor from 2007.

The Joy of Refurbishing

With a tool like Puppy, you can build useful computers from what others toss out. I’ve restored many dual core and early Intel i-Series machines dating from about 2005 to 2015.

The sole "defect" of many these computers is that they were sold with Windows 7 or 8.x and don't support Windows 11. So they were junked. They run Puppy Linux splendidly.

Older machines shine in dedicated roles. I've seen them transformed them into a retro gaming box, a writer’s workstation, and a spreadsheet server in a shop too dirty to host an expensive new laptop.

Right now I’ve a friend who’s installing Puppy on some single-board computers for a corporate project. Puppy fits this low-end hardware without overwhelming it. They can customize Puppy to their project's requirements.

How I Use Puppy

I've refurbished computers for charity for many years. I carry my personally-mastered Puppy thumb drive in my pocket the same way those of past generations carried their pocketknives.

Puppy and its utilities help me verify and prepare hardware for use. If the computer I’m refurbishing is intended to boot more than one operating system, I’ll place Puppy in the first partition. It manages the multiple-OS boot menu and serves as a convenient tool for managing any other distro I install later.

Plus, Puppy offers a competitive set of apps in its own right. All within a mere 5 gigabyte footprint!

Here's a fun Puppy project you might enjoy. I picked a couple discarded computers from the village recycling center and combined their best parts. The final build contained a Pentium 4 processor @ 3.2 ghz, 3 Gig of memory, and two old IDE disks.

Then I installed Puppy. On top of that I installed and a product designed to run old games called DOSBox. (Here's how to install and use DOSBox.)

At parties, my retro gaming box never fails to garner attention. Older attendees cluster around it and laugh as they play games they remember from their youth.

And young children seem just as entranced by those old games as they are by the latest!

You can freely download literally thousands of old games from these websites:

• DOS Games Archive
• DosGames.com
• Internet Archive
• AbandonWare.com

Installing the Wine program additionally opens up the whole world of games designed for Windows XP, Vista, ME/98/95, and 3.x.

A Community-Powered Distribution

Puppy is unusual among Linux offerings in that it lacks formal, structured project leadership.

The benefit is that multiple innovations gestate simultaneously among the several versions. And users have more choice. They can pick from a number of philosophically related yet distinct downloads. It's fun to try a few different Puppies and see which piques your interest and fits your needs.

Puppy offers the ideal community for hobbyists, students, hackers, and enthusiasts who want to learn, get involved, and contribute. You can follow your curiosity to your heart's content and participate in the community's vibrant forum. Just jump right in.

On the other hand, if you prefer a distribution with leadership that speaks with a single voice, offers a single download, and presents a clear-cut developmental path -- or if you don't have the time or interest for the forums -- Puppy may not suit you.

Conclusion

Puppy Linux addresses important niches that mainstream Linux distributions ignore. It’s a flexible product that can turn a mature computer into a useful tool. And it runs as fast as any distro you'll find.

You can create or "remaster" your own version to fit your needs. Hobbyists, hackers, power users, and students love it.

I hope this article has given you a good idea of where Puppy excels and what it can do for you.

For more information, visit the Puppy Linux website, the Puppy forum, or watch some of these helpful Youtube videos.

Related Articles

Here's how I refurbish computers --


Linux --

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The author thanks members of the Puppy community who reviewed and helped improve this article.

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