Damn Small Linux Not So Small

An anonymous reader writes "According to DistroWatch, Damn Small Linux (DSL) is currently the most popular microLinux distribution. Linux.com (Also owned by VA) takes a look at why this might be the case, and how you can best take advantage of it. From the article: 'What began as a toy project to stuff the maximum software inside a 50MB ISO file has matured into a refined community project known for its speed and versatility. DSL includes the ultra-lightweight FluxBox window manager, two Web browsers, Slypheed email client and news reader, xpdf PDF viewer, XMMS with MPEG media file support for playing audio and video, BashBurn CD burner, XPaint image editing, VNCViewer and rdesktop to control Windows and Linux desktops remotely, and more. If they could do all this in 50 megs, imagine what they could do in more space. Last month the DSL developers released DSL-Not, a.k.a. DSL-N 0.1 RC1. It's 83.5MB of DSL coated with GTK sugar. Yummy!'"

Awesome

[ThinkingInBinary (899485)]

Despite the increasing size, DSL is still an awesome tool. It manages to pack almost as much coolness as Knoppix (less cohesive, 'cause it's not all KDE, but most of the functionality is still there in discrete applications) in a much smaller size that is more convenient to download when you need a quick but useful bootable Linux disc.

Kudos to the developers, keep up the good work!

PuppyLinux with 2.6?

[molarmass192 (608071)]

DSL is nice, but it's got a 2.4 kernel, PuppyLinux (one bone) fits in 25M and gives you a 2.6 kernel with all the accompanying hardware support goodness. To me that makes DSL very 2003, it's playing catch up in my books.

Re:PuppyLinux with 2.6?

[Mistshadow2k4 (748958)]

It has a 2.4 kernel because it still supports older hardware. 2.6 does not. It doesn't even support some not-so-old hardware that 2.4 did, as I've elarned from personal experience.

Re:PuppyLinux with 2.6?

[rapidweather (567364)]

I got my start remastering DSL, often winding up with 75 MB or so once I put Firefox, etc. in there.
I then switched to Knoppix 3.4, using the 2.4 kernel to support older hardware as mentioned.
Here is my Getting Started Guide [geocities.com], also have a technical blog here. [blogspot.com]
There are some screenshots available there.
One post that I need to draw your attention to is the one about "testcd" [blogspot.com] for Knoppix remasters. I did run into problems with some versions of DSL using isolinux, in that they would not boot on many of my older computers, due perhaps to the "testcd" problem. It is extremely important that any knoppix remaster pass that test, or there will be complaints concerning no-booting on boxes that used to run the distro flawlessly in an earlier syslinux version.
For that reason, DSL often offers syslinux versions alongside isolinux versions.
I don't feel that I have to, since I pass "testcd" 100%, and mine boots on all my older boxes, in addition to the newer P4 ones.
One clue that I did take from DSL is to include lots of custom-made applications, found nowhere else. That makes a remaster different, and not just a re-arrangement of stock applications.
I do have a bright yellow boot: command line against a black background, making it easy to enter long cheatcodes when trying out a new build. So many knoppix builds have a pale gray boot: command line with black background, very hard to see what you are doing!

Also, see the main screenshots page link in my signature, below.

Re:PuppyLinux with 2.6?

[Red Alastor (742410)]

What I like about Puppy is that it can save back to its own CD/DVD. If you burn it on a DVD, you almost have a hard drive. And like DSL, you can install more stuff on it automatically.

Oh and it can be installed to hard disk to give a new life to old computer.

http://www.puppyos.com/ [puppyos.com]

Re:PuppyLinux with 2.6?

[MobileTatsu-NJG (946591)]

"I have it running on the hd of a PII 350mhz machine with a joke of a video card and only 64mb ram, and it will fly. Takes no longer than a minute to boot. Win98SE, on the same PC, took 5-10 minutes just to get to the login screen."

Really? Years ago, I had a P2 350 with 64 meg of RAM and Windows 98. (not Special Edition. If it has a 'boot slower' feature, I'd be interested to hear about it...) That didn't take 10 minutes to boot. Maybe 2, but nowhere near 10. If it did, I would have switched to NT far earlier than I did.

Re:PuppyLinux with 2.6?

[im_thatoneguy (819432)]

My 98 used to go from power button to booted in 38 seconds. That beats my current average of 52 for Ubuntu.

Re:PuppyLinux with 2.6?

[kobolt_115 (902047)]

My Commodore 64 goes from power button to booted in 2 seconds, beat that!

Re:PuppyLinux with 2.6?

[MrCopilot (871878)]

From dsl N http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/dsl-n/f/viewtopic/3. html [damnsmalllinux.org]

1. Kernel 2.6.11 and modules
2. Mozilla Suite 1.7.12, browser,mail,irc,etc.
3. Mplayer 3.3.5 audio and video
4. Leafpad 0.7.9 editor/notepad
5. Abiword 2.2.7 wordprocessor
6. Gnumeric 1.4.3 spreadsheet
7. gTFP 2.0.18 ftp client
8. gaim 0.77 IM client
9. Xpdf 3.0.0 pdf viewer
10.Emelfm 0.9.2 file manager
11.Xpaint 2.7.6 paint program
12.Cups 1.1.14 printing
13.unionfs supported as an optional boot parameter
14.MyDSL system of extensions
15.Frugal Installs
16.USB Pendrive Install
To me that makes DSL very 2003, it's playing catch up in my books.

Update Your Books.

Begun,

[giorgiofr (887762)]

the bloat war has.
(bloat war/bloatware? get it? get it?! ah I am teh funny :D)

Re:Begun,

[scenestar (828656)]

You are going to die alone.

Sylpheed is an awesome email client

[ThinkingInBinary (899485)]

Sylpheed is pretty nice. Back when I used GNOME, I tried it [mooo.com] as my email client. Really nice, great performance on large folders. (Now I use mutt.)

Not that big Linux

[zaphod_es (613312)]

> If they could do all this in 50 megs, imagine what they could do in more space.

The OP seems to have missed the whole point of DSL. There are plenty of other choices of distro if you take away the size limit.

Re:Not that big Linux

[theshowmecanuck (703852)]

The OP seems to have missed the whole point of DSL. There are plenty of other choices of distro if you take away the size limit.

I think what they meant was, "imagine what it would be like to have a distro that wasn't full of bloat."

You may now begin telling us how #insert_your_favourite_distro_here# is bloat free. :-)

Re:Not that big Linux

[k33l0r (808028)]

Problem is that the more features (ie. bloat) you lose the smaller your potential userbase becomes. One man's feature is another man's bloat... You could have a distro with only the things one person wants but then someone else might see it as lacking in some essential area...

That's one of the reasons why all modern OSes are so large, they all strive to attract as wide a userbase as possible. They want to appeal to EVERYONE.

That and

[Sycraft-fu (314770)]

Something that people see as bloat aren't, really. Take, for example, a good configuration interface. You decide instead of a rigidly defined text file or a simple binary dump you are going to have XML files underlying your config. Further, there's going to be a nice GUI interface to access them, with checks to make sure all input is in an acceptable range not just to predefined limits but with regards to other options chosen, and a robust context help system. You might find in the end that this is a significant part of your program. It's not trivial to do all that. However it's not bloat, it makes it much easier to use your program and to interact with it. The GUI/help aspect means that users need bery little knowledge to get things set how they want. The robust XML config files mean that other programs can easily interface with yours.

Programs are much larger these days then they used to be but that's not a bad thing. EVen if it is because of something like moving to a managed language that needs runtimes and generates larger code, it's not bad if it makes it easier to maintain. You can still step back to more compact, less feature rich designs when needed as DSL demonstrates.

Re:Not that big Linux

[level_headed_midwest (888889)]

Well, you could use Linux From Scratch or Gentoo to simply compile and install anything you want exactly how you want to have it. Or you could install a Linux distribution in terminal-only "server" mode and then add from there with binary distributions that don't just dump a standard set of stuff upon install. Everybody is never going to be 100% pleased with any certain distribution's default setup because people have different needs. But the ability to pick and choose not only packages and programs but entire distributions is really Linux's strength. If somebody doesn't like Mandriva's setup but likes Slackware's, then they install Slack because it fits them and it works for them. At least we Linux users get the opportunity to choose the setup, default packages, and distribution of the OS we run. So the moral of the story is if you're the Slack user before, sure, say how and why you like Slack but DON'T go start a flamewar on /. about how Mandriva sucks because as long as a distribution is still being made, it must work for somebody and be their right tool for the job. If there was only one distro, that would literally make Linux just another Windows or MacOS X take-it-or-leave-it OS.

Re:Not that big Linux

[foreverdisillusioned (763799)]

50 megs is a tad arbitrary. I think that 200~ish would be a better number, as it can fit on mini-CDs (yeah I know business card CDs are 50 megs, but I've never even SEEN one before, whereas I find that mini-CDs are small and handy) and it can fit on cheap 256mb flash drives. I'm not advocating bloat, but if there has to be a hard limit I think 50mb is a tad small. I think that the number of people who use mini CD-Rs or 256+ MB flash drives outnumber the people who use business card CD-Rs or 64 MB flash drives by quite a bit. In a 50 MB setup, extrmely useful apps like the OpenOffice.org suite (I say its "extremely useful" more for its compatibility with MS Office than anything else) will never be included by default. With 200+ megs to play with, suddenly OO.o seems like a very natural inclusion. Yes, I know there's an OO.o DSL package; I just think that there should be a default default distro in the 200~ MB range where it (and other useful-but-somewhat-big apps) is included by default.

Re:Not that big Linux

[Reverend528 (585549)]

50 megs is a tad arbitrary. I think that 200~ish would be a better number,

Plus, with the extra 150 megs, they could ship EMACS.

I use it all the time

[mr_stinky_britches (926212)]

and I must say, for desktop use, when you need linux real quick or want to boot off a CF card or USB drive, this will do the job just about every time :)

I would guess at two reasons for the numbers

[ahfoo (223186)]

First, for people who just need a quick formatting tool, it's good enough with the MyDSL extensions making it nice and simple to use for a lot of USB boot type applications.

Second I have found many non Linux users who think DSL sounds like a good way to start because they're so sick of bloat. Could be that a lot of them download it just to see what it's like. This second reason is probably somewhat unfortunate since DSL can be a bit frustrating for someone unfamiliar with FOSS distros.

I used to have some machines using DSL, but I found that Knoppix with fluxbox just made it so much simpler.

Re:I would guess at two reasons for the numbers

[ZachPruckowski (918562)]

Or to save a lot of space? I recall reading an article about making a cheap file server. It basically consisted of 4 x 250GB HDDs in a case with some crappy Sempron. They used a cheap $10 USB stick with DSL to run it, and only connected a borrowed monitor and keyboard to set up Samba and the networking. Otherwise, they'd have had to use space on the disks, or trade one disc out for a CD-ROM to run and boot CD.

Re:I would guess at two reasons for the numbers

[Firehed (942385)]

There's also stuff out there like FreeNAS, which fits on a 16MB USB key or CF card. Now my experience is that FreeNAS was slow as hell, but I'm inclined to blame that on network drivers. Also, it's technically FreeBSD-based (and derived from m0n0wall, I think). Unfortunately I don't know enough about *nix to do a command-line driver update and even if I did, I don't know whether I'd have enough space to do so - maybe this is easier with DSL. As it is, I'm forced to keep using the horrible Windows filesharing stuff.

Thumbdrive

[daranz (914716)]

Personally, I carry it around on a thumbdrive... with qemu-win. It serves no purpose besides lauching it on people's computers and telling them "Look, it's Linux under your Windows!" Best thing is, I still fit plenty of other crap on the same, 1GB drive.

Re:Thumbdrive

[by Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I really like the QEMU option. It is especially comforting to Windows users weary (for good reason, Sony...) about booting or running anything from CD they don't understand.

Also, when booting from any device is impossible, and you just gotta have your Linux, this makes a great option.

I've never tried the combo of QEMU and DSL, but I just did, and I'm making this post from within Linux running on top of WinXP. In fact, I'd never used QEMU before. It's the itch I didn't know I wanted to scratch until I tried it.

It's a bit slow, obviously, but it definately gets the job done and done well. I can't count the number of times I wanted to use a Linux app or CLI while in Windows and didn't want to have to reboot.

The FOSS community continues to amaze me at least once every month.

Re:Thumbdrive

[by Anonymous Coward]

Umm... no tool for NTFS resizing, you say? How about the cryptically named ntfsresize(8)? Its author claims it does its job better than Partition Magic or any other commercial or non-commercial tool (ie. it is allegedly the best there is) and it is supported by parted(8).

Good, but not perfect... Knoppix is a pain

[green pizza (159161)]

I've played with Damn Small Linux, but anymore I pretty much just take the time to roll my own LinuxFromScratch.

DSL is a nice demo, but the Knoppix structure makes it a real pain to customize.* Say you want a different version of Perl or Xorg, or want to modify the bootloader and kernel to display a full screen banner image/logo, it's a whole heck of a lot of work to rip out the original components and replace them with your own. Rolling your own distro from scratch only requires a bit more work, and you have better control and a better understanding of what's going on.

* If any DSL experts have advice on how to make these customizations easier, I might give it a try again.

Re:Good, but not perfect... Knoppix is a pain

[grasshoppa (657393)]

There is a very real need for a quick and dirty distro. What you are describing is a situation where another distro would fit better.

The problem isn't the tool. The problem is you trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

DSL and DSL-N

[aymanh (892834)]

Last month the DSL developers released DSL-Not, a.k.a. DSL-N 0.1 RC1. It's 83.5MB of DSL coated with GTK sugar. Yummy!

Actually, looks like DSL-N is more than just GTK sugar, from its web page [damnsmalllinux.org], DSL-N features a modern kernel with more hardware support, in addition to more apps [damnsmalllinux.org], like MPlayer, Gaim, and gFTP.

It's also worth mentioning that the original DSL uses a lightweight GUI toolkit called FLTK [fltk.org] and Lua for its tools, interesting!

It's popular because..

[SillySnake (727102)]

It runs well on old hardware.. Plenty of us have old pentium 1/2 machines around that aren't doing a whole lot. Windows 98 keeps becoming a worse and worse option with viruses and now the lack of updates. It provides life for an old computer. I ran it for a period of time on a 166 when both of my other machines went down, and while it wasn't super fast, it did everything I needed it to. Plus, I didn't have to go through the trouble of finding a win 98 cd and a key. It's a neat idea, very portable, and has grown a lot as a distro since its early days.

Re:It's popular because..

[suffe (72090)]

Yeah, I hate trying to boot up windows on those pesky pentium 0.5 things. Bogs down the entire setup. And to think they were all the rage before the Pentium and Pentium Pro came out.

why I love linux

[free space (13714)]

I had an old unused Pentium II machine running Windows 95. I reformatted the hard drive, installed DSLinux and used it as a file server/CVS repository. It had some glitches but essentially it's like having a new low end PC for free.

I wonder if the DSL project can be forked to create a "Damn small server" project, so anyone can set it up on an old machine, enable some services, hide it in a corner, and use SSH/VNC to administer it.

Smoothwall.

[twitter (104583)]

I had an old unused Pentium II machine running Windows 95. I reformatted the hard drive, installed DSLinux and used it as a file server/CVS repository. It had some glitches but essentially it's like having a new low end PC for free.

If you have a laptop, you have a computer you want to use for more than a server. DSL is just the right thing if you have low RAM. If you have 128 or more MB of RAM, just run Mepis or Debian Sarge.

I wonder if the DSL project can be forked to create a "Damn small server" project, so anyone can set it up on an old machine, enable some services, hide it in a corner, and use SSH/VNC to administer it.

Have you looked at Smoothwall yet?

missing the point?

[thelost (808451)]

"If they could do all this in 50 megs, imagine what they could do in more space."

stop calling it Damn Small Linux for one.

How the times change

[r (13067)]

A 50MB distro is called "damn small"? Damn. I remember when Slackware 1.x core came on a couple of floppy disks. And if you wanted a good text editor, you had to find one on Archie and get it yourself. But we were happy in those days. :)

Re:How the times change

[slide-rule (153968)]

Moderation:

+1: Respected elder

-1: Up hill both ways...

Different *DSL sizes make sense

[BigFootApe (264256)]

Not all DSL users stick to the CD based install. Some, I'm sure, switch to USB thumb drives for portable operation. A version of DSL designed to fit within 150 megs or so would be perfect for larger thumb drives.

Size/ability tradeoff was always available

[rbrander (73222)]

I managed to get DSL working on a 256MB USB key. Then I installed their package for OpenOffice, which was 75MB all by itself. OK, my USB key is now 50% taken up by DSL+OO, and half empty for my files.

Then I did nothing more than

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=DSL_OO.image

and stuck in other 256MB USB keys and did:

dd if=DSL_OO.image of=/dev/sda1 ...to copy the memory key, DSL, OO, 128MB free personal disk space, and all.

and was able to hand out $25 "thank you" tokens to speakers at our local Unix User Group (www.cuug.ab.ca) that consisted of a bootable USB Linux with full OpenOffice functionality. Ran fine on 256MB PCs with all software loaded into RAM - OO starts faster on these old machines than much faster ones that have to pull OO off the HD.

In short, you could ALWAYS pump up DSL with a good selection of softare they've made available in packages. It only starts off at 50MB.

Finnix: Obligatory self-promotion

[fo0bar (261207)]

I just thought I'd do some shameless advertising and mention my distro, Finnix [finnix.org]. It's a 100MB livecd that has no X, desktops, productivity tools, etc... but makes up for it by having a ton of sysadmin utilities, such as LVM detection and cryptsetup. It's basically the CD you carry around to help fix broken systems. There's also a PPC port, obviously can be booted from a thumb drive, as well as within Xen/UML virtualization systems.

Finnix doesn't really compete with DSL, except for the "damn, this system is hosed, I don't have a recovery CD around, and I don't want to wait to download 700MB for something like Knoppix" crowd.

What is up with DSL and Samba?

[by Anonymous Coward]

I like DSL and I've used it extensively, but I cannot deal with having to get online to connec to an on-line download server before having Samba. That just sucks. Sure, you can carry it on a thumb drive as an extension, but it would be so much easier if it was part of DSL.
          I was really disappointed after downloading DSL-N and finding out it still has this same disappointment.
          Now, please, somebody make a fool of me. Show me I'm wrong. Tell me there is a way to do a samba connect without downloading anything with DSL or DSL-N.

Damn small runs on Damn thin computers!

[DoninIN (115418)]

I was using DSL on a pentium II 350 mhz computer for the last few months and I loved it, that's the beauty of DSL, more so than the "small" in terms of size, the thing part is of huge usefulness! What's the street value of a PII 350? $0.5? Seriously, it's a free computer someone gave me when we installed new hardware at their location, I threw it in my graveyard, and for a while made it a DOS V6.x game box (it's back to that role now, I eventually got bored and bought a modern computer) but during its run of several months I've been web browsing on it from home and haven't had any problem running firefox.

50 megs?

[AC-x (735297)]

Pfft, I remember playing with a bootable floppy [toastytech.com] containing QNX with a complete GUI, web browser, texteditor and full network support.

Ok, it had absolutely _nothing_ else but it was still damn cool.

Re:No Firefox ?

[DrSkwid (118965)]

The DSL I have has Firefox.

And though it I had the introduction to the excellent Scheme In A Grid [siag.nu]

DSL recently had a "Donate a Dollar" fundraising drive. I don't know how much money they made but I gave them a $. Who says you can't make monet from free software !

Re:No Firefox ?

[MobileTatsu-NJG (946591)]

"Who says you can't make monet from free software !"

Well.. I suppose the GIMP's good enough these days to create a monet, but you'd stil be far better off springing for Photoshop.

Re:No Firefox ?

[stjobe (78285)]

Nah, just give me emacs.

But then it wouldn't be Damn Small, now would it? ;)

Re:yuk! gtk! Fluxbox is much nicer anyway.

[damiam (409504)]

Fluxbox is a window manager. GTK is a UI toolkit. They don't even compete; you're comparing apples and oranges.

Re:Bloatware

[Mathiasdm (803983)]

Ah, that's nothing!

In my days, we didn't have those fancy 'computer' thingies.

We only had good old Turing Machines!

Me and my 27 brothers would sit along an infinite line of paper for 27 hours a day, and we'd constantly move the pointer, change 1's into spaces and the other way around.
Then, we barely had time to go home, get a spanking from hour father, rape our oldest sister and run back to work, where we had to arrive the day before!

Ah yes, those Turing Machines. They don't make 'em like they used to!

Think VMWare + Truecrypt with DSL as the base

[misanthrope101 (253915)]

I don't see the point

There are applications for a small distro. DSL + VMWare + Truecrypt is an interesting setup. All you'd have unencrypted on your HD would be the DSL install, and you could run your "real" OS from a VMWare Virtual Machine stored in an encrypted container, even in a hidden container. I haven't actually tried this, but I've seen posts by people using Puppy Linux (or was it Feather? can't remember) for just this setup.

Now if only Truecrypt and VMWare could be automagically installed via apt-get or Synaptic. I can even learn to use the command-line version of Truecrypt, if I could just get it installed in less than an hour. I haven't even tried on DSL yet.

Re:DSL + eye candy?

[desNotes (900643)]

There is a distro called Austrumi that is 50MB with e17 installed. I am using it as my main distro and it is nice and fast. Check it out...no I am not involved in the project personally. desNotes

Re:16MB with X?

[RGRistroph (86936)]

You might want to check this out:

http://www.angelfire.com/linux/floorzat/2diskXwin. htm [angelfire.com]

However, I believe your best bet is to avoid X. You need a very minimal hand-built linux that uses the svgalib and links, and maybe seejpeg, to do all graphical stuff. If you put it together consider posting an image of it somewhere.