In the Boonies

Well, I've been a bit lax again.  But it's been work that's intruded.  I'm still on the road, but soon to be home, and hopefully doing some computerized stuff.

I did tote the my X60s along with me as a bit of amusement in the evenings.  (The heavy lifting was the "new" MacBook Pro, which provided service above & beyond.  And totally Microsoft Office-free, I might add.)  I also brought along a selection of thumb drives with various Puppy Linux distros loaded up.

I think I mentioned in the last few entries that I'd botched up a frugal install of PhatSlacko.  Well, I just decided to do a complete reinstall on the thumb drive, as I wanted to alter the size of the swap file I'd set up.  Of course, there's no CD/DVD drive on the X60s, and I wasn't carrying my external, so I did the somewhat clever thing and downloaded a fresh copy of the .ISO.  Everything went fine till I used the Grub4Dos configuration tool (I follow the IcyOS installation model) under Saluki...  Well, when I went to boot up, I got a nice Saluki splash screen with Grub, even though it was listing Puppy Slacko 5.5 (which, of course, is what PhatSlacko is) in the menu.  However, it wouldn't boot...  Just sat on a blank screen after I selected Puppy Slacko from the menu...

Sigh.

Back to the drawing board.  And remembering that I still had the PNY micro thumb with my first copy of Phat on it with me.  Which made me want to beat my head into the desk, as I could've just installed from it using the "Universal Installer", rather than waiting for the .ISO to download...

Deep sigh.

But I now have a fully functional new install of PhatSlacko on a newer thumb drive.  Which, of course, is why I'm running MacPup 529 right now...

Bigger sigh.

I have also been running UPUP Raring, which I dearly love.  Smooth as glass.  Yeah, it does have the older-style, cartoon-y, almost BeOS-ish (well, to me anyway) looking icons and all, but...  Smooth as glass.  If I were handing a version of Puppy to someone who'd never used it before, I honestly thing this would be the version I'd set up and give them.

Smooth.  As.  Glass.

While cruising through the Puppy Linux forums, I ran across an older listing for a version of Puppy designed to run on the OLPC, the "One Laptop Per Child", XO system.  And I felt like an idiot, because that had never crossed my mind.  Of all the Linux distros out there, Puppy would be perfect for OLPC.  Absolutely tiny, even with huge amounts of bundled software.  Able to run entirely in RAM.  Screaming fast on lower-power processors.   Egads!  Perfect!

And then I remember, with abject horror, Nicholas Negroponte announcing that we really should have a version of Windows running on the OLPC system...

Uh....  No.

I have my sneaking suspicions about where that blindingly dull-headed idea came from.  But, then again, I doubt my opinions really matter, me being one of the "little people who don't understand the 'bigger picture' ", and all.

I think I'm going back to playing with MacPup...