Unorthodox Puppy

One thing I have always liked about Puppy is that BarryK thought things through when he began it.

I believe that some other distros accept the way things have always been done as the way they must be done. An obvious example is that Puppy runs in root. There has been "discussion" about that ;-) But I ask, what does my old clunker need with a multi-user setup, when it can barely support one user--I would much rather have smallness and simplicity. And shouldn't I be the judge about security issues on my own computer. In some situations of course the increased security and complexity would be required, but, imo, not in *all* situations.

When I was making my Greyhound Puppy, I found I could also do without the logs, as well as the convenience items such as blinky, etc., that go in the system tray. Sometimes I might need a log, but not usually. Again, some large institutional installation would certainly require logs, but not *all* installations. I didn't notice this at the time, but now I realize that BarryK himself had already removed the cron demeon that is a usual part of linux installations.

The third thing is shared libraries. These are a good thing, imho. They keep programs smaller and more compatible. But I don't think that shared libraries are the *only* good thing. And from the standpoint of a "personal desktop linux," such as Puppy, I think shared libraries can get in the way. What I think might also have a place are "standalone" programs that arrive in their own folder, can be installed by unpacking that folder, and then run right from the folder. Seamonkey, Opera, and Firefox are like this, also OpenOffice and Realplayer and many others. Indeed, when the goal is to create a convenient linux that can be easily personalized, it would seem like standalone programs would be the best way to go. Just download and go, mix and match, two from kde, one from gnome, some X programs, and one has assembled a unique personal desktop.

OK, so now I backtrack a little ;-) The programs I mentioned obviously do have some dependencies, they depend on gtk or qt, for instance. But Opera lets you go either way, static or dynamic, and generally these programs depend on things that almost everyone will have. Another thing is that the "pets" have many of the advantages of standalone programs from the standpoint of new users, just install the pet and go. Yes, they are great and some programs are never going to be standalone. However, I think the new users have an easier road to understanding and taking control of their computing experience in the case of pure standalone programs, so that is my preference, all else being equal. Finally, I would say that imo the time spent packaging standalone programs such as firefox and opera as 'pets' might be better spent explaining to people how things work so that they can 'standalone' themselves rather than depending on someone else. Thanks for your time.