Puppy Unleashed

PAGE UPDATED: Feb 17, 2007

Puppy Unleashed contains over 500 packages that have been designed to run in Puppy. You can choose the packages you want and create a custom version of Puppy.

It is also useful to read these web pages:
Introduction to package management
Introduction to PET packages

If you are a Linux newbie, there is a teensy bit of a learning curve involved to use Puppy Unleashed.

Here are the basic steps:

Step 1
Your PC's hard drive needs to have a ext2, etx3 or reiserfs partition, with at least 1.5G spare space. If there is not such a partition, then use a partition manager such as GParted (in Puppy) to create it. If you are going to create a partition, I recommend make it at least 1.5G. The hard drive should also have a Linux swap partition, about 500M.

Step 2
Bootup Puppy from a live-CD. Yes, you will already need to have a running Puppy.*

Step 3
Go to the ibiblio.org Puppy download site, and download "puppy-unleashed-core-2.xx.tar.gz" to a spare ext2/ext3/reiserfs partition with at least 1.5G free space. Get rid of any existing directory named "puppy-unleashed" to avoid conflict. Expand it:

# sync
# tar -zxf puppy-unleashed-core-2.xx.tar.gz

Step 4
After expansion, you will have a directory named "puppy-unleashed" and inside that you will see a directory named "packages". The packages directory is empty, and you have to download all the files from the "pet_packages-2" directory (Puppy 2.14 and later. Download from "pupget_packages-1" directory for Puppy v2.13. Earlier not supported) on ibiblio.org. You could use wget or gFTP to do this.

The above picture shows how to setup anonymous FTP using gFTP. Use your email address for the password. Right-click on the right-hand pane to select all files for download. One thing I recommend is that you do a visual check of the downloaded file-size of files in the left-pane and see that they match the sizes in the right-pane.

Note, if you are on a dialup connection, it is a lot to download, so you can leave out some packages if you know that you won't be needing them. Be careful of this though, as you could leave out something essential. I suggest that there are some versions of Mozilla that you may not want, also the OpenOffice packages. Please download as much as possible -- a couple of people posted questions to the Forum, having downloaded only a small selection of the packages, then finding their custom live-CD doesn't work!

Step 5
The local packages directory will then be full of .tar.gz files. Now expand them:

# sync
# cd puppy-unleashed/packages That is, change into the packages directory if not already.
# ./expandtarballs.sh

FOR PUPPY 2.14+ ONLY:
Puppy has moved to PET packages. At ibiblio.org or other Unleashed repository, there are two directories, "pupget_packages-1" and "pet_packages-2". The former has the older PupGet packages (which have the filename extension ".tar.gz") and the latter has newer PET packages (which have .pet extension). Download only from the "pet_packages-2" directory, into the local "packages" directory.
The script "expandtarballs.sh" is now in the Unleashed package. Do not do the 'cd' step shown above, that is, do not change into "packages", run the script from where it is in the "puppy-unleashed" directory.

Step 6
That's it, you are now ready to build a custom Puppy! Use Rox to poke around inside the puppy-unleashed folder, in particular notice file README.txt -- click on it to open it, and read it right through. Basically, all you have to do to create your own live-CD (and the files image.gz and usr_cram.fs) is to run the createpuppy script:

 # ./createpuppy

The CD that I have put together is "live", that is bootable. After booting Puppy, run the Drive Mount/unmount program in the "File managers" menu to mount the CD and view the files -- you will find the Unleashed file there -- copy it to the above-mentioned partition. For details on the CD, see the download page.

The createpuppy script is very sophisticated and offers a lot of choices. I recommend the first time through just accept the defaults, that is, press the ENTER key only whenever a question is asked.

Updating Unleashed

As Puppy Unleashed is split over many files, the "core" file plus the approximately 500 packages, it is feasible to download by those on a slow dialup connection. It is going to take awhile though!
If you don't want the hassle, the alternative is to buy it all on CD, see the Download page.

When Puppy is upgraded to a new version, you will have to download the new puppy-unleashed-core-x.x.x.tar.gz file, however only the new or changed files in the packages directory need to be downloaded. Though, it would be cleaner/simpler to just download them all again.