I’m getting a USB drive ready for Linux, still working on getting a few good games to install and run. THe newer version of Puppy, named Slacko, only had a couple of games so I’ve been trying to find some of the older ones I like and get them to work, it has most everything else I want and runs great on CD. Got it online, everything working, I probably won’t use it to transfer pictures from the camera for now, I like to keep them all in one place, and with over 150,000 pictures, that’s an issue. Don’t want to open up a new storage spot at this point. Everything goes on a big external drive periodically for backup, that would probably work well with Linux too but I haven’t tried it yet.
I’ve tried several different ones over the past 15 years. Feather, Damn Small, Puppy, Cloudy Skies (all astronomical), Ubuntu, Knoppix...I liked Knoppix really well, except that is was a little sluggish, mainly due to the GUI. Damn Small ws the first one I tried, it fits n a mini CD, and runs great, about everything you need in one small package. I used it online with dial up quite a lot about 10 years ago. Feather and Knoppix too. The only thing I found that gave me trouble was a webcam, and never used it anyway. I also had Mandrake installed on a second machine at home, full install, that was my main Internet machine, had everything but webcam working including laser jet printer and USB scanner, transferred pictures to it from my old camera, did almost all the word processing on it, like business cards and such, advertising and invoices for my computer shop, set lists for the band. It got to the point the only thing I used the Windows machine for was to play games and listen to music...Had it set up and XP running great, never put it online once in 6 years.
Once I moved here I don’t have the space, so I use this Windows laptop. Have the Slacko CD in right now just haven’t rebooted in a while so I’m running Window for now.
Funny you should mention Pup. I’m using LxPup on USB right now, heh. I recommend it, it’s the best version of Puppy, IMO. I’ve used pretty much most of the Slacko and Puppy variants.
Tried the mini & mini linux distros you listed, too - they’re okay, but a bit too minimal for my doings. I test out several Linux distros a month, tonight or tomorrow I’m going to give Nanolinux a trial run.
I don’t play games much on Linux other than solitaire, chess and mahjong. On Lubuntu, the Ubuntu-based distro, I tried Wine to play a Windows game or two, works okay. There’s also “Steam” for Linux gaming, but not being into games much I’ve never used it.
You can never have too much backup. I had a 1 TB external drive that I used for backup, worked fine until it took a tumble. Now it just clicks. It’s dead,Jim.