I want a Python Puppy !

[Claudio Grondi]

Paul Boddie wrote:
> Claudio Grondi wrote:
> 
>>I have just discovered the existance of Puppy Linux which is a complete
>>operating  system with a suite of GUI apps,  only about 50 - 60M booting
>>directly off the CDROM ( http://www.puppylinux.org ).
> 
> 
> This isn't really Python-related, but I thought that Puppy Linux would
> be even more interesting if it could use CD-RW media wisely (so that
> you don't fill up a CD-R disc and then have to burn the image and the
> latest contents onto another one, but can instead create new sessions
> and then choose to erase and rewrite them later) or even CD-MRW (so
> that you can write back to the disc as if it were a normal drive).
> Perhaps someone has delivered one or the other of these things since I
> last checked.
> 
> Paul
I know, that the latest Puppy Linux can save done settings to the CD-RW 
using multisessions (but it didn't work with my DVD drive as I tried it, 
maybe LG is a not a very common one, so it is not supported), but sure 
it would be better if it could utilize InCD format or DVD RAMs (I 
haven't tried it that way yet - at least I haven't read yet, that it 
supports such kind of things). Check out http://puptrix.org for derived 
packages (as GrafPup) if you are interested in latest achievements.
Puppy Linux should be also able to install new packages and it seems, 
that GrafPup download site provides Python 2.4.2
( ftp://grafpup.com/packages/python-2.4r2.tar.gz ) for its version of 
Puppy Linux.

As a Linux newbie I am not eager to try it all myself from the very 
beginning. I tried already Gentoo Linux (too difficult to setup for a 
beginner), Suse Linux (Python 2.4.1 but on a Live CD without Tkinter), 
Knoppix (Python 2.3 with Tkinter, but failed to access my USB port), 
Pollix (failed to start at all). In the past I have evaluated Mandrake 
(now Mandriva) which compared to Suse and Debian was my favorite Linux 
distro, but I don't like the fact they went more commercial, so I have 
left it currently out from consideration. On the list of Linux distros 
still to check out is Ubuntu.
Puppy Linux is much faster than any other Linux distro, because of 
holding of all of the available packages in RAM what makes it very 
interesting for me (having 3 GByte of RAM on my system).

 From this experience I am fascinated by Puppy Linux as an OS in a 
similar way as I was evaluating Python as a programming language, so I 
have got the feeling they belong somehow together.

I am in the process of migrating my Python related programming 
activities from Windows to Linux, so what I want from a Linux 
distribution is, that I can use Python 2.4.2 with all its sattelite 
modules on it as I do it now on Windows making Python a kind of 
interface to the OS. This way I can start to work on Linux knowing 
nothing (or at least not much) about Linux itself using it only for 
Python scripting (and then learn step by step the Linux specifics if 
necessary - I have already some very old and very basic Unix skills for 
the beginning as e.g. knowing about ls -l and the necessity of mounting 
of drives).
Currently it seems, that the answer is a full installation of Suse 
Linux, but I would be much happier with Puppy Linux if it would provide 
a Python scripting development environment out of the box.

I can imagine, that a release of an as .iso file downloadable Puppy 
Python Linux Live CD along with a Python release can be a very 
interesting option from a point of view of providing an easy way for 
evaluating the power of Python scripting language.

Claudio