Introduction
A hostname is human readable nickname corresponding to a device on the network.
It may be used by a network programs to identify devices in the network.
Internet Host Names
When a hostname is is used to identify an entity in the wider internet (i.e. An Internet Host) we typically call it a domain name.
However, in the case of the internet the relationship between host-name and device is more abstract since not all computers on the internet may see the equate the same physical server with an internet host name. An example application of this is geographic load balancing. In this type of architecture the servers in the cluster and/or content delivery system the DNS name server responds with ip address for a given DNS request based on how close the host is to the server in the cluster.
Puppy Linux Configuration and Host Names
On puppylinux the hostname for your local network can either be confgured via the "First Time Run Settings" or by the standard linux way of editing:
/etc/hostname
Depending on the version of puppylinux the "First Time Run Settings" will run either on initial boot or the boot immediately after the save file is created. If you want to change these settings later on via the wizard then you can acces through the puppylinux menu under:
Menu->Setup->"QuickSetup first-run settings"
related threads
HOSTNAME fixes ROX slowness problem - SOLVED by gcmartin
gcmartin's rant about hostname, MAC address and ip addresses
