Puppy Linux OS

Puppy Linux is a very light Linux distribution that can be booted from a usb key and then loaded into RAM. It can be useful when you need to run a different OS on your computer for maintenance or other needs: for example when doing maintenance on a filesystem, the filesystem often needs to be unmounted, and if it is the root filesystem, the only solution is to run a different OS.

To run Puppy Linux:

• Download the image from the official download page or look for it on distrowatch
• dd if={puppy linux image} of={usb key (e.g. /dev/sdb)} ; sync. As always with dd, be careful of what device you choose or you might make your computer unusable.
• Boot the computer and choose to boot from the usb key
  • When prompted, if you don't need a graphical session, choose the "No X" option
• You will see that Puppy Linux is loaded into RAM, when finished, you may remove the usb key.
• bash: by default root logs in sh, which is not as nice as bash
• Optional: edit /root/.bashrc (not all editors are installed by default, vi is)
  • Add \w somewhere in the PS1 variable to have the bash prompt show the current directory
  • Add alias ll='ls -lh' because, come on, how is this not a default!?
  • Save and then source /root/.bashrc

Note: the default password for root is usually woofwoof.