Damn Small Linux 0.8.4 was released recently. Now, the Siag Office word processor and spreadsheet are included, there were adjustments to smbclient GUI; adjustments to the control panel for backup and more. We talked to John Andrews, founder of the DSL distribution last week and he opened up to us with enthusiasm on the project’s future. UPDATE: Many screenshots of DSL. DSL’s main target is to run off business card CDs and/or USB keys (below 64 MBs of space). John is constantly trying to improve the space arranged in the distro so it never ends up being more than 50 MBs (compressed). This way, Linux can be demonstrated easily, fast and without any risk, to new users. Moreover, John told us that he has heard of others running DSL on a 486DX machine with only 16 MBs, with X11, proving DSL to be an excellent choice for older machines.
DSL runs on the Fluxbox window manager along with a few addons to allow for a visual representation of virtual screens, and desktop icons. DSL does not include KDE or Gnome, but the main power behind most apps is GTK 1.2.x, nCurses, FLTk. Applications included are a hacked version of Dillo, Links-hacked (special graphical version of Links), Sylpheed, BashBurn and the Siag office suite. Through DSL I was also introduced to axFTP, a nice GTK FTP app.
DSL is definetely a minimalistic distro, however the GUI preference panels are present. They are written in a mix of Lua and FLTk and they are pretty unique. They are front-ends to daemons or tools, and sometimes they just invoke other, ncurses tools (e.g. the command line version of the Red Hat sound card detection tool). Your can configure a net/Wi-Fi card either natively or by using the Ndiswrapper, Backups and restore your data, your keyboard, your X server, your printer, PPPoE, PPP. You can also turn on an SSH server, or make your installation a client for DHCP, NFS, FTP. Another tool, can install DSL on the hard drive (when you run it from a CD or USB key).
The version of Dillo included is hacked, older version, that supports tabs and it has a streamlined interface. Dillo also serves as the Help application that can guide the new user to DSL. Through Dillo too, you can install new packages! Using the browser, you immediately get a nice interface and clicking on the button “Get it” next to the app name, it installs the app for you! DSL’s package management is similar to the Slackware tarball packages, but it’s using Lua to install them instead of Bash scripts.
Another very interesting aspect of DSL is the fact that you can –at any time– “Enable Apt” from the menu, and have apt-get and Synaptic get installed for you. From that point on, you can literally transform DSL to a Debian. John doesn’t exactly recommend this, as it might create some incompatibilities in some apps, but it is possible to turn it into a real Debian.
Robert Shingledecker is responsible for the backup/restore functionality, a large
part of the MyDSL system package system, the design of the Lua-FLTK admin tools,
and countless ‘under the hood’ improvements over the last year.
So, if disk space is your concern, or you own an old machine, or you simply crave for a very responsive and fast distro, give DSL a try. Download times are minimal, and it’s a no-risk situation. If you are still not convienced, you can always download the Qemu version of DSL, which it will run under Windows or another Linux/BSD via emulation (800 MHz machine with 256 MB of RAM or more, is recommended to use DSL via emulation).
Thanks for the review. The whole turning it into debian sounds very interesting.
Thank you very much for reviewing the latest version of DSL!
It gets really annoying to see other sites reviewing versions like 0.6.3 (whick is over 6 months old).
DSL only gets better and easier to use with each new version.
DSL saved my old laptop from the scrap yard. Running a 133MHz pentium mmx proc and 96 meg ram it is usable once again. You have to try this distro out for older eqipment. Good work John and Robert.
I just ordered a DSL business card cd a little while ago, and now I see this up on osnews. Go go DSL!
I just read through the O’Reilly Knoppix Hacks book yesterday, which mentions this. Similar distros (but both focus on security) also mentioned were:
INSERT – http://www.inside-security.de/insert_en.html
LAS Linux – http://localareasecurity.com/
Anyway, the book is pretty useful. I learned a few things from reading it.
Does anyone have any information about what Siag Office is? Is it some kind of knock-off of Microsoft Office?
Does anyone have any information about what Siag Office is? Is it some kind of knock-off of Microsoft Office?
http://siag.nu/
Small lightweight office package for unix – started around 99 I think!?
Cheers
rob
Sounds good so far..
DSL is by far one of the most usefull distros out there. I carry it in my wallet, and just this weekend I used it to safe my mother’s PC from oblivion.
Damn stable, damn fast, damn small.
Viva la DSL
E
I run DSL (0.8.4) on my 200MMX/64Mb box, and can happily browse around with Firefox, use the Gimp and have my email client running in the background, no sweat.
Also (for a linux install) it’s so easy to tinker with.
Have a Go at DSL based Hikarunix:
http://www.hikarunix.org/
Like it’s mother distro (knoppix), it is great for both demos and recovery.
However, unlike knoppix it:
-doesn’t give the impression linux is slow
-is small enough to fit in your wallet and forget about, so you can always have it on standby.
It’s also handy to avoid workstation restrictions, as long as the bios is set to boot from usb or cd 😉
http://www.tuxs.org/dslwin.htm
This is such a great distro!
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=181&slide=1
i added the option “dsl toram” and it seems to run faster. it says you need 128 meg for this.
it installs great to hard drive, and is very light. i plan on trying the embedded version next, as an alternative to ZipSlack.
What is even cooler is doing a frugal install onto a 64meg or larger CF card, then by using a Cf to Ide adapter watching it boot completely noisless. All info on how to do this is available in the DSL forums.
What do you use to save your hapless windows friend’s pictures and other files when something goes wrong? DSL! It also works well installed on the hard drive. I havent done that in a long time, and it worked pretty well then, so it should be even better now. Great distribution.
did i mention use “dsl toram” when booting??? loads the entire OS into a ramdisk on machines with over 64 mb ram, i think. This allows you to remove the cd, so you can burn cds and what not. And just the coolness of having your computer run without any disk acess whatsoever. haha.
Some progress made in DSL with the real office suite, but this one’s still better. http://sourceforge.net/projects/austrumi/ . Abiword, gnumeric, the gimp, opera, nmapfe, a few games, mingw, plenty of games and even mplayer (including graphical support), all in 50mb.
Austrumi has the apps, but I can’t get it to boot on 3 out of 4 of my computers. It seems to have a lack of hardware support.
I have used DSL since 0.3.11, and I am impressed at how much this distro seems to “evolve” with each new release becoming more and more useful, all the while staying so… well… damn small. ^_^
Kudos to the DSL team!
I was sitting around wishing I had an underpowered 486 machine lying around so I could run desktop Linux on …
“I was sitting around wishing I had an underpowered 486 machine lying around so I could run desktop Linux on …”
Poor guy. I’ll bet you feel just horrible after all those sleepless nights waiting for this release.
As far as knoppix hacks go, if you’re going to use INSERT linux, you might as well use the hack from http://www.ultimatebootcd.com
check it out.
Does anyone know about some intentions of having other languages to enjoy DSl??
I’m from Brazil and would be very useful if portuguese language was added. Would save a lot of machines at my work. Here we use “conectiva 10” and some knoppix versions.
Does anybody know which editor it is in this screenshot:
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=181&slide=7
At least it looks very much like SciTe.
It is scite.
I run damnsmall on an ancient 90MHz laptop, and it is actually usable; even useful. Really amazing work guys.
I fiddled around with an earlier version, and was impressed. But I never did figure out how to get it to print. How does DSL handle printing these days?
I have two old systems
1. 75Mhz (90 if on turbo – oooh!) 16Meg ram and 504Meg HD
took me a bunch of floppies to install but its there
2. 133Mhz Compaq with 32Meg ram and 2.1Gig hd, w/docking station, everything works and its soo much faster than win98!
Excellent distro…fast, small, and very easy to use
Great job DSL team!