Puppy Linux is a well designed distribution with a very nice installer, however this does not mean that you will not run into problems. Here is a handpicked list of Puppy Linux installation problems and what you can do to overcome them.
Introduction
Puppy Linux is a light weight distribution we review almost every release in Bright Hub. If you have decided to install Puppy on your computer, I recommend you to go through Miagon's in-depth guide for this excellent distribution, where he covers initial setup, choosing the right hardware, preparing your computer, installing the distribution, standard applications and installing new applications. Throughout the article, we will see what could possibly go wrong during installation and what you can do to avoid or fix these potential problems should you encounter them.
Partitioning
If you have a dual boot setup on your computer and one of them is Windows, we advise that before installation, you should first go through the disk defragmentation process and then proceed to open up free space for the Linux install. If you are using WIndows vista you can use the included partitioning tool to free up space on your hard disk however there are some users who report that their hard disks are messed up after resizing it with Vista's partitioner. At this point, since you will be installing a Linux distribution, why not use GParted by booting your Puppy Linux Live CD and loading up GParted? This will help you avoid any potential partitioning problems before you encounter them!
Broken Installation: Setting Up the Layered Filesystem
After your Puppy Linux install all may seem correct but then you receive an error on your screen saying “Broken installation: Setting up the layered filesystem. Kernel panic – not syncing and no killable process.” In most cases this error is a result of you not checking the integrity of the file you have downloaded and burnt on a CD/copied to USB. Immediately after you download Puppy (or any other distribution), make sure that you check the md5sum of the file with md5sum distro-name-version.iso and compare it with the md5sum that the developers announce on the website. If the md5sums do not match, then the ISO file you downloaded has problems, and the safest way to make sure you have a valid ISO is to re-download it or get it elsewhere (from a friend, from a magazine etc.).
Puppy Linux won't Boot without CD After Installation
During the installation, if you did not install GRUB (the bootloader, which takes care of booting the operating system) to /dev/sda1 (or /dev/hda1) or the Master Boot Record, then you have crippled the installation. You will either have to go through the installation again or edit GRUB manually. If you choose to reinstall, make sure that the GRUB is installed to /dev/sda1 (or depending on your computer /dev/hda1; the installer will tell you about that).
Read on for not booting to the graphical screen, unbootable Windows installation, a sound card that doesn't work and problems with unrecognized hardware.