Last Edited: 01 May 2008 by superuser
Importered from old WiKi -- 30/04-08 17:04.

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Ian:Regular forum adviser

My path to Puppy

Ian's Page

I started off in the 60s trying to make a keyboard from one of those little stylus organ things. This led to buying electronics magazines trying to learn about musical electronic devices. From there I progressed to logic gate circuits in the 70s. 1980 I bought a ZX200 from Dick Smiths (still have it) and learnt BASIC.

After I exhausted the range of the ZX200, and being s bit disappointed with not being able to save large amounts of data, (I was trying to create a financial program at the time), I left computers alone until 98 when we purchased a secondhand Compaq Deskpro 450. This thing started life as a 50Mhz 16Mb Ram 2x200m HDs machine and I was introduced to the joys of Windows 95B.

Being the typical 'pull it apart and see how it works' type I soon began to try and learn as much as possible about PCs. After borrowing as many books as I could from the local library and buying the odd computer mag from a secondhand book store I proceeded to beef up the Compaq. A 66Mhz CPU and an extra 16Mb Ram made a big difference.

In my reading of the library books I came across a reference to Linux which the author said was an O/S to keep an eye on. At about this time the Red Hat pocketbook was published so I tracked down a newsagent that had a copy and bought it. After reading the docs and anything else on the CD I was dying to try it but HD space was the problem.

I eventually bought a 4.3G Quantum and proceeded to get my hands dirty. This drive was split in two using EZdrive by a friend (I was at this time pretty dumb about PCs) and Win 98 installed on the first drive. The second one I partitioned myself creating a 2G and swap partition then I installed Red Hat 5.2.

Now this was an experience!

It took me about a dozen goes to get it working, at one time I left the machine unattended while it was doing the install and on my return found a black screen, I panicked. No one had told me the stupid things went to sleep, luckily my wife set me straight on this point (she has been using computers in offices since 1970) (see, I told you I was dumb).

After much wasted time I finally got it working and I was hooked, forget about Windows, so for my next trick, and having purchased 'The Idiots Guide to Linux' at a reduced price, I went for broke and repartitioned it as follows. 1G partition, swap partition, 1G partition, swap partition (I told you I was dumb), into these I installed Red Hat 5.2 and Caldera 1.3.

They were a bit slow opening some apps (especially Star Office 'yawn') but it was enough for me to start learning how to use Linux. The one thing I felt comfortable with was the command line probably because of BASIC, I have never felt the same using DOS for some reason, silly I know.

I moved to Red-Hat 6.0 and later versions as well as other distros via PC magazines and various books purchased when they were on special but my machine made hard going of these.

In 2000 I let my head go and bought to a new machine, a 566Celeron 128M Ram 10G HD 3D 32M graphics card and a burner. With this I tried every O/S I could get hold of, OS2, BEOS, and every Linux distro and version I could find on magazines.

I finally bought an external modem and hooked up to the internet where I was able to access so much more about Linux.

In 2002 I finished a two year Diploma of IT sys admin course that gave me more exposure to Linux as well as Windows and after that I tried to learn as many programming languages as I could, this was a bad move as you probably realize, so I am just concentrating on a couple at the moment.

A few years ago I bought Tom Swans GNU C+ + for Linux and tried to wade my way through that, I'm still wading!

Last year while searching for and trying small Linux distros I came across Puppy and I was hooked again. Having a small amount of knowledge about Linux and with all the distros I had tried I found it instantly appealing. This seems to me the way Linux should run on the desktop, it has a few small things that I would like to see modified but that is not a concern at this moment.

What I enjoy most is the freshness and the pressing forward of the people conributing to the development of Puppy, and I did enjoy the odd dog person query.

As I discover how to get things working in Puppy I like to share this knowledge with everyone and I have tried to do this by writing things as simply as possible, as I can remember when I thought mounting a hard drive meant something entirely different. I think I may have to become more detailed in some of these explanations but I really don't want to write 'war & peace'.

Wow. Great story. I recognise some components in my own interests. I started with Pascal (which I learnt at a college on a 5 week course) and this enabled me to very quickly understand BBC BASIC which is a structured 8 Bit Basic. Built into hardware . I wrote a plotting program with it. Still trying to understand why the Linux kernal is not built into PC's or phones or PDA's in hardware. MS Windows I understand why not. My first experience of Star Office was the DOS version of Star Word (Is it the same thing - it was a german program originally) which had a windowing environment. It was way ahead of other DOS programs but then Windows and Gem were emerging and . . .

Translating things into plain English is a great and useful ability and the beauty of a wiki means you can edit or clarify complex or technical wordings - making them more accessible. Lobster

I came across Star Office when I bought the Idiots Linux book in 98, it came with Caldera 1.3 and Star Office 4.0. Star Office was at that time owned by Star Division a German company and was being developed as a substitute for MS Office so it most likely is the same company.

The word processer for Linux that I really liked was Word Perfect, it just seemed easy and natural to use, to me anyway. As my only previous experience with word processors was MS Word I only really had it to compare against. I have since tried nearly all the office suites for Linux and each one has things that I like and dislike, I have also tried Applix in BEOS as well as the Lotus SmartSuite and I'm still looking for that one that clicks.

I saw all that stuff that was stuck on the Wiki main page and I think it originated in Asia somewhere, it appears to be just bulk ads for drugs and stuff, I think. It is a pain to have this sort of thing happen when all we are trying to do is be a bit more organized with our discussions and feedback for Puppy. I hope this kind of thing doesn't happen too often as it might ruin what for many people could be somthing interesting and informative.

Note from Lobster

Hi Ian Now that is interesting. I tried learning (and it annoyed me that I had to learn a WP) wordperfect 6 or seven times - could not get on with it. The best implementation was for the Amiga - it was reliable fast and used pull down menus (it had to) in some sort of standard logic rather than the Word perfect logic. Interesting because you and a lot of people really liked WP - we are all different.

I really liked Amipro - before it was integrated into the smartsuite where it became Word Pro . . . I only ran BEOS once (from their CD - easy install or run) It was nice but the software was primitive. Was Applix good? I could not see the point of BEOS. OS-2 was technically better than Win 95 but well . . . part is fashion and marketing and such like - hype. Why is Firefox doing well? Hype. Marketing. Very very clever marketing - people do not even realize they are advertising Firefox and Mozilla. Where can we get a Puppy market engineer? LOL

A great product that no one uses is what?

Dead. Let us promote the Pup - Puppy is worthy. WOM (Word Of Mouth)?

OK enough ranting from me and my whiskers . . .

As to the attack on our front page. Not sure how this is done or countered and whether it is deliberate. For now just change back

Here are all the tips I have on wikis which I am posting to all regulars:

* Home pages like this one should be reserved for conversational type stuff and personal info - experiences might be useful and therefore would warrant an independent page - other stuff starting here might be moved to other pages or copied there as the need or requirement is recognised

* The front page should have a simple index that does not change much with new pages added in the News section and then added to an index. As more pages are added we need a main index and sub indexes - the thing is keeping the data organised so it is acessible and useful

* Conversation on main pages (personal pages and chit chat the layout is different) should be in the 3rd person
* Keep cool if people move or modify stuff or have their own style - the WARS we had on the Peace wiki were unbelievable - LOL - For example these are just my guidelines - things I have found useful - not decrees :-) It is the usual like with emails - be as kind as possible - we have less clues to go on and everyone is Puppy friendly
* Get rid of as much eye candy as possible - lines and colours and stuff - blue underline, white background, pics, bold and italic and headings - nice and simple like the HTML on the puppy web pages
* Try to resist the temptation to sign all your comments - the data is neutral. However for here it is a courtesy to sign it like so Lobster

Lobster, I agree with what you say about using the Wiki, at the moment I have no definite ideas or suggestions about how it should be structured but I am gathering some ideas and in the future might be able to make some suggestions.

As for what you mentioned earlier about WP, what I liked about it was that it did things the way I would normally do if using pen & paper, not like MS Word which fought me all the way. An example, click anywhere on a page and start writing, WP yes!! MS Word nooo, tables were another issue. Try making a table and editing it in Word then try the same in WP, give me WP any day.

Of course you must remember that my skill level at that time was zero so not having to use my brain was a big bonus.

As for Applix, it was reasonable, SmartSuite's presentation program I found to be better than Power Point, and Star Office's ability to be able to open everything from the one window I thought was marvelous. OS2 I liked but there was not enough support for it, BEOS I liked for it's speed, now we have Puppy, support and speed all in one.

As for flashy browsers, give me a text based one any day, no graphics to slow you down, if I am after info thats all I want, if I want pics I'll use a gui based browser and go to Ryan Bliss's site. I used to use Lynx but as it would not accept cookies I could not access some email accounts and sites. There may be a way to overcome this problem but I have never followed it up. Actually I might have a bit of a look at it again. Links might be worth a look at too.

I'll follow what you said and refrain from signing off here.

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