I got my Damn Small Linux Linux to work as a live CD. It booted up nearly flawlessly - the only hitch (and a small one at that) was the video mode error, which didn't seem to matter as I just hit the space bar to continue.

Last night, I tried to install Damn Small Linux to my hard drive. Unfortunately, it didn't install properly. While I agreed to the deletion of the data in existing partitions (created in my Fedora Core 1 installation), space in the partitions ran out, and many files didn't install.

To make matters worse, my computer would no longer boot up Damn Small Linux as a live CD. (I have no idea whether the CD or the computer was at fault. Is there any way I can tell?) So I ended up having to reinstall Fedora Core 1 just to connect to the Internet.

Was there something I was supposed to do before installing Damn Small Linux? I assumed that it would wipe out everything that was already on the computer and allow me to start out fresh.

What consumes the most resources is the Desktop (KDE and GNOME). I think if you are going for the "try before you buy" scenerio, you could look at Xubuntu, which is supposed to be light on your resources. I have not personally tried that, but I am running Kubuntu on my laptop and Edubntu on a spare server, and they work from a live CD-to hard disk install like DSL.

If you wanted to go hard core (from a fellow newbie perspective) you could do a base install and work up your installation to a graphical environment.