An editorial on this site predicted that in order for the Linux operating system to become truly useful to people like the editor, it would inevitably have to become bloated. That prediction, while it may still hold true for some of the mainstream Linux distros, is looking rather shaky thanks to two recent projects that have really fired the imagination of, well, nerds like us.

One of these projects is Damn Small Linux (DSL), which we'll cover in a future review. The other is Puppy Linux, reviewed here. Between them, these two Linux distributions have revitalised countless old PCs that were considered far too slow to run up-to-date software from commercial companies such as Microsoft.

Before we cover the details, here's the Puppy Linux proposition in a nutshell: have you got at least a Pentium-class PC with 128MB of RAM and a CD drive? Then you can have access to an easy-to-use operating system with some of the latest office software, e-mail clients, Web browsers, IM clients, graphics applications, audio/visual players, photo editors and much more. It's free, it's fast, it'll boot from a CD without affecting your hard drive and the entire package is a mere 60MB download. In some cases it'll even run on a slower machine with less memory; a 486 with 32MB is possible, although rather slow.

The trick, or one of them, is that Puppy Linux tries to load itself entirely into RAM; operating system, applications, the lot. On a 128MB machine it can do this and have room to spare to run powerful applications and store your files. That makes it immensely fast. To prevent changes and documents being lost when you switch off, the shutdown/reboot procedure writes any updates back to a single file. That file is then reloaded the next time you boot, and can be stored on a hard drive, a USB flash drive, or even a rewriteable DVD.

Some of the applications in the 60MB package, in addition to the Linux operating system itself, include the AbiWord word processor (imports and exports Microsoft Word documents and handles embedded image editing), Composer for HTML editing, Bluefish for code editing, XFinans personal accounting, Gaim Instant Messaging (supports IRC, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo), Mozilla Web browser with Flash and gxine multimedia plugins, Gnumeric spreadsheet editor (imports and exports Microsoft Excel files), mtPaint image editing, gxine for DVDs, MP3s and so on.

To these you can add hundreds of downloadable packages, all free, such as the GIMP for image editing or Skype Internet telephony software. But for many people, everything they're likely to need is already there, complete with a simple menu system and online help.

Although Puppy Linux is now being developed by numerous keen enthusiasts, with add-ons and application modules available from various sites on the Web, the core development is still carried out by the original developer, Barry Kauler. He's done what hundreds of commercial programmers have failed to do; created a fast, friendly operating system package that'll happily run on ten year old computers.

Think about that for a while. You can get old Pentium class PCs for peanuts now; some companies might will even pay to have old machines taken off their hands. Put Puppy Linux on them and you have ideal machines for charities, students, public access terminals and computer novices. And you don't have to pay a penny for either the operating system or the software.

As is always the case, there are some drawbacks. Puppy Linux as it is now (version 1.0.8) is a work in progress, so hardware support isn't perfect, though it was as good as any other Linux distro on our test PC. Getting hold of the ISO file and burning it to CD requires a bit of knowledge, as does configuring your PC's BIOS to boot from CD, but if you can wire a plug you should have the level of technical ability required. And there are other options too, such as running Puppy Linux alongside a Windows installation without having to repartition your hard drive.

Watch this space. We predict that Puppy Linux is going to be very big, while remaining small, fast and elegant.

This is an operating system for people who don't care about operating systems and just want all the major application types installed and running without hassle. It's also great for anyone with an old PC lying around unused which has previously been considered too slow for practical use. And for nerds like us, of course.