A new version of the Puppy Linux live CD has been released. I’ve been playing with Puppy since December and it’s definitely the best live Linux distro out there.

Better than Knoppix? It’s horses for courses, but I can’t see much sense in running a fully featured distro from a CD for everyday use.

It needs to be small enough to run from RAM, which rules out all the big distros. There are some nice-looking smaller distros like Slax and its derivatives, but you need geek skills to add software and save the configuration. I haven’t figured that out with Slax yet.

The standard Puppy comes in just 57MB. It includes Mozilla for browsing, Sylpheed for mail, audio and video players, and Abiword.

It’s easy to add extra programs. Thunderbird installs easily from source. The great things about Puppy for me are:

1) It runs from memory and is very fast.
2) It automatically saves your personal settings and restores them on boot.

Puppy uses the JWM window manager by default. I don’t really know why, because it’s rather rough. It’s simple though to install IceWM or Fluxbox.

The new version (1.05) comes with a lurid brown and orange theme, which would instantly turn off most newcomers.

If you’re persuaded by this article to try Puppy, don’t panic when you see the orange and brown. Just go to the menu and change the theme to something sane.

That’s the great thing about Linux in some respects. Personal taste overcomes logic, but it can be easily rectified. It’s also part of the problem when converting people from Windows.

Meanwhile, I’m interested to watch the development of Puppy. I think it’s a great distro and has excellent potential.