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Puppy Linux Changelog

What's new in Puppy Linux 8.0

Mar 25, 2019
  • This is that latest official Puppy Linux distributions. It repectively supports 32 bit x86 and 64 bit x86_64 (amd64) architectures. It also supports both legacy BIOS and UEFI booting however in the case of UEFI secure boot must be turned off.

New in Puppy Linux 5.7 (Jul 29, 2013)

  • Another pup in the Precise series! This pup comes in two flavours, one for older hardware and/or those on dialup Internet, the other for those with relatively modern hardware.
  • The "retro flavour" is an upgrade path for those who have used our Wary Puppy, that targeted older PCs and analog modem dialup -- unlike most other Linux distributions, it continues to support a wide range of analog "winmodems". It also has two web browsers, SeaMonkey and Opera, the latter preferred for PCs with less than 256MB RAM.
  • The "modern flavour" only has one browser, SeaMonkey, and forgoes most of the analog modem and true-SCSI drivers, and is the choice that will suit most people with a PAE-capable i686 CPU, no ISA cards, and 256MB or more RAM. You also get the benefit of a much smaller download, the live-CD .iso file is 155.7MB.
  • There are many fixes, improvements and new features in this pup, and the release notes give details. In particular, there are exciting new features at the underlying "Woof-level", or infrastructure-level, such as the more efficient pup_event daemon and IPC mechanism, and support for running Internet applications as user 'spot'.

New in Puppy Linux 5.7 RC1 (Jun 17, 2013)

  • Login and Security Manager (System menu).
  • SeaMonkey maybe faster.
  • pup_event_frontend_d, the daemon that manages desktop drive icons (amongst other things), should be faster.
  • JWM 784, Psync fixed, BaCon 2.1.7.
  • Linux kernel 3.9.5, maybe better drivers. Configured with devtmpfs, PAE-enabled, i686 CPU.
  • Also under-the-hood, udev replaced by eudev.

New in Puppy Linux 5.6.1 (May 29, 2013)

  • Precise Puppy 5.6.1 is a bug-fix release of 5.6. I will probably also release a Service Pack PET package for those who already have 5.6 running, though it is easy to upgrade from the 5.6.1 live-CD.

New in Puppy Linux 5.6 (May 21, 2013)

  • Relative to Precise Puppy 5.5, this latest pup brings some exciting new features, including a new Xorg Video Wizard (with forced-reboot recovery mechanism), new non-PAE 3.2.44 kernel with lots of analog modem drivers (making this an excellent pup for those still on dialup Internet), many more applications internationalized, many applications upgraded, lots of bug fixes, and so on! Plus, a huge number of fixes and improvements at the infrastructure/system level. In all, a great new edition of the Precise series.

New in Puppy Linux 5.6 RC (May 20, 2013)

  • Pmusic:
  • Have rolled back to version 2.6.7, as the 3.x series requires ffmpeg >= 0.11, whereas Ubuntu Precise Pangolin only has 0.8.x.
  • Needs testing.
  • Boot help:
  • At first boot screen, pressing key brings up help. There is a typo in the examples, "pfix=fr" should be "pkeys=fr". Already fixed in Woof.
  • Analog dialup:
  • Rerwin has put in a lot of work compiling drivers. This is shaping up to be a great pup for those still on dialup, even rivaling Wary.
  • Many of these drivers were not in beta2, so need testing.

New in Puppy Linux 5.6 Beta 1 (May 8, 2013)

  • Kernel: 3.2.44, no PAE support.
  • For anyone interested, includes Kompozer web page designer.
  • if you are one of those unfortunate enough to have troublesome video hardware, and all you get is a black screen, and/or the keyboard and mouse are dead, this pup has a new recovery mechanism:
  • If you can get to the text-mode console, fine, then run the Xorg Wizard by typing "xorgwizard". This will enable you to select alternative Xorg drivers.
  • However, if the system is black-screen/dead, then if the PC has a 'reset' button, press that, or, hold down the PC's 'power' button for 4 seconds -- on virtually all PCs this will force a power-off. Then power-on again, do nothing, wait, and this time the Xorg Wizard should automatically start. Then you should be able to select an alternative Xorg driver.
  • If this forced reboot succeeds in getting you to a graphical desktop, let me know. or if failure, let me know also -- with some details about what type of video you have, if you know it.

New in Puppy Linux 5.5 (Mar 11, 2013)

  • The very first Precise Puppy was version 5.4, on 23 October 2012, built from Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04.1 binary DEBs. Since then we have had bug-fix and minor upgrades, versions 5.4.1, 5.4.2 and 5.4.3, the latter released 17 December 2012.
  • Well, time marches on, and Ubuntu have released their second build of Precise Pangolin, 12.04.2. Precise Puppy 5.5 is built from 12.04.2+ DEBs, but of course it is extremely important to understand with Puppy Linux that our use of the binary packages of another distro is only a convenience for us, to obtain binary compatibility, hence compatibility with that distros package repositories -- in all other respects, from the lowest levels of the infrastructure upward, Puppy is unique.
  • There have been many bug-fixes and improvements at the Woof-level since Precise 5.4.3 was released, plus many package fixes and upgrades. Enough to warrant the number jump to 5.5.

New in Puppy Linux 5.5 RC (Mar 6, 2013)

  • I have decided to release only one Precise Puppy, with the 3.2.29 kernel. Pemasu is providing the variant and other enhancements.

New in Puppy Linux 5.5 Beta (Feb 20, 2013)

  • This build has rerwin's puppyfied Frisbee (originally created by Jemimah).
  • Built from Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.01.2 binary packages.

New in Puppy Linux 5.4.3 (Dec 17, 2012)

  • Various improvements and bug fixes

New in Puppy Linux 5.4.2 (Dec 3, 2012)

  • I was touting this as a bug-fix-of-a-bug-fix release, however it has significant changes at the Woof-level, so I have bumped the version number from 5.4.1 to 5.4.2

New in Puppy Linux 5.4.1 (Nov 15, 2012)

  • This is a bug-fix release of 5.4. Yes, we did find some significant bugs and shortcomings, and fixed them! There is one significant fix at the "Woof-level", that broke shutdown and reboot when the session is saved to the entire partition. Quite a few fixes at the "Precise-level": Some of them are just annoying, such as ePDFview rendering wrong colours. Or, somewhat more than just annoying, such as missing firmware that caused some wireless drivers to fail.

New in Puppy Linux 5.4 (Oct 23, 2012)

  • Precise Puppy is built from Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04.1+ binary DEB packages, hence has binary compatibility with Ubuntu and access to the vast Ubuntu package repository. Couple that with Puppy's tiny size, speed and ease-of-use, and this is one incredible pup!
  • This is the very first release of Precise Puppy. It is assigned version 5.4 to indicate it's position relative to the other puppies, such as Wary 5.3 and Slacko 5.3.3 (5.4 coming soon).
  • A lot of work has happened at the "Woof-level" since the release of Wary 5.3 in April 2012 -- of particular importance to Precise are the many enhancements to the Puppy Package Manager (PPM). At the "Precise-level" there has been a very long period of testing and refinement, over several months.
  • As Ubuntu Precise Pangolin is a 5-year Long Term Supported release, we expect that Precise Puppy will be also.