I am looking at booting Linux from a USB thumb and having never used Linux before, I have a very simple question: How do you exit from Linux? I am considering looking at Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux which have desktops, but I can find nowhere on their sites how to shut them down. Is it a Windows like Start menu selection that shuts a session down? I don't want to run a Linux session and change anything on my hard drive, so I am worried about shutting down wrong.

Sorry if this is off topic, but I am having trouble getting on the usual Linux forums with my Windows XP SP1.

Puppy Linux has already a graphical interface, so you don't need anything extra to shutdown, just click the appropriate menu/icons.

But if you are asking for a command, you have reboot, halt and poweroff.

Here you have a good man by Arch distribution guys that is applicable, mostly (rare cases), to any Linux distribution and/or Unix like system:
https://man.archlinux.org/man/halt.8.en

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JohnHell
Puppy Linux has already a graphical interface, so you don't need anything extra to shutdown, just click the appropriate menu/icons.

Yes, but what I am asking is where on the GUI do you find the menu or icon to shutdown? I have searched for hours and can't find a description of the GUI function(s).

Just this morning I found a good description of a Ubuntu method of shutdown:
https://vitux.com/3-ways-to-shut-down-power-off-your-ubuntu-system/

As you can see it explains in detail where to find the menu item and how to use it. I am having trouble finding the same for other desktops of Linux.

Thanks for the Arch Linux page. I had not thought to search for poweroff because I did not know what the functions were named.

All I am trying to do is use a small Linux boot from USB so I can launch a browser to get on sites I can't read with my Windows XP browser. But I do not want to have the Linux interfere with the Windows on my hard drive.

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Holo

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JohnHell
Puppy Linux has already a graphical interface, so you don't need anything extra to shutdown, just click the appropriate menu/icons.

Yes, but what I am asking is where on the GUI do you find the menu or icon to shutdown? I have searched for hours and can't find a description of the GUI function(s).

Is quite straightforward...

From the live bionicpup 8 32-bit I run sometimes:

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Holo
Just this morning I found a good description of a Ubuntu method of shutdown:
https://vitux.com/3-ways-to-shut-down-power-off-your-ubuntu-system/

As you can see it explains in detail where to find the menu item and how to use it. I am having trouble finding the same for other desktops of Linux.

Ubuntu != Puppy

Said clear, any distribution is equal other distribution, at most, on kernel, and that only means Linux, not the version.

Never, except for commands (GNU Core utils, and not fully), the GUI of one distribution will be similar to other distribution. This is as the warning on movies, any resemblance is pure coincidental.

Ubuntu vs Puppy is like compare oranges and pineapples, visually speaking. The systems have similarities.

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Holo
Thanks for the Arch Linux page. I had not thought to search for poweroff because I did not know what the functions were named.

Manuals, read the manuals, is all I can say.

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Holo
All I am trying to do is use a small Linux boot from USB so I can launch a browser to get on sites I can't read with my Windows XP browser.

I understand your point, but what you can, if you have a powerful PC (and have spare disk space), better than boot live, install a virtual machine software (Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 is quite enough, but better 2007) inside Windows and run (or install) from there a GNU/Linux distribution.

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Holo
But I do not want to have the Linux interfere with the Windows on my hard drive.

Don't worry about that.

Unless you intentionally mount it (tell Puppy to have access to a disk/partition) it won't touch your files.

Note that I'm talking about Puppy. Other live GNU/Linux distributions might mount the partitions by themselves. That doesn't mean that your files will be at risk, just that you must to know it.

@JohnHell: You are my hero . Thanks for all your help. The image of the desktop you posted is what I have been looking for. Now at least I know what the icon looks like and have some hope of shutting down.

I am aware that Ubuntu is a very different flavor and was just using that page as an example of what I was hoping to find for Puppy.

I know I should RTFM if there is one for Puppy. I am just trying to get a feeling whether Linux will run on this old PC before I get serious with it. It is one of two I have that has Windows XP SP1 on it and if Linux seems to work on it then I may just dump Windows and do a full install of Linux in its place. The other PC has Windows XP SP2, so I can still run my collection of old WIN32 appilcations.

Does your BionicPup have a browser that works on the newer web sites?

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Holo
Does your BionicPup have a browser that works on the newer web sites?

It has and..., mostly works, but it is based on Gecko 48 ("old"), and it has been years without an update..., at least on the version I have (one year old).

But you can install other browsers if you wish (remember, you are running on live, so you need RAM, plenty, to install).

I am doing this follow-up to inform future readers of this thread what I learned, so don't feel compelled to reply unless you have the time.

I decided to boot from a CD instead of USB on my XP SP2 machine which has 512 Mb ram. I first tried BionicPup with no success. It loaded but none of the applications would open up. So, I burned an ISO of Slacko 6.3.2 and it loaded fine but it had an older version of Firefox that would not work on the site I wanted. Then I tried Slacko 7 which has Firefox Quantum esr 68.12 which allowed me to get onto the web site. At first it was cranky and slow so I booted without loading the sfs and it become more responsive but becomes very slow after using it for a time. I am not sure why this is but I am going to play with the Firefox settings to see if I can speed it up. I know the older Firefox uses an SQL database on the hard drive for many of its functions, so if Quantum does the same I wonder how it does so in ram.

To Firefox eyes it doesn't matter where it runs. A file system on RAM or a file system on Disk is just the same.

But 512MB of RAM..., you'll need at least 1GB, or better 2GB. Have in mind that Firebox, just opening it, means around 400MB of RAM usage (don't know about latest versions on *nix).

If, then, you are running on RAM and there is nowhere to swap (another medium like a disk)... well, do the math You are lucky that even opens.

I'm not kidding (in fact I get mad because the madness of current browsers), but you'll have better luck with Lynx on that level of low RAM. Of course, Lynx is what it is and you can't expect much of current websites :/

Anyway, thanks for reporting this useful information to the Linux community.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2022 08:45PM by JohnHell.