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.
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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
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!
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 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&sli...
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!