I am asking out of curiosity, I haven't kept up with Linux developments in general, but I do remember reading somewhere that kernel version 2.6 was "too big" for DSL and that some of its improvements were backported into 2.4.

Newest kernel version is 6 and I doubt it would fit within the 50 MB constraints, so if DSL were to come back to life, what (versions of) software do you think it would use?

Modern Linux kernels use initial ramdisk, so kernel images are smaller than they used to be back then.

I thought those were used back then as well.
"linux24" (2.4.31) is 981.6k and "minirt24.gz" is 292.1k in DSL 4.4.9.

Can a modern kernel, version 5 or 6, be stripped down to be as small as that?

Candidates for "modern DamnSmallLinux" can be found at: https://distrowatch.com/search.php?isosize=Under+100MB&status=Active

The top entry is Tiny Core Linux (http://www.tinycorelinux.net), and as per DistroWatch's Tiny Core Linux info page, the recently released v14 uses Linux 6.1 (confirmed by the Tiny Core v14.0 release notes).

The default/recommended TinyCore download is 23MB, and within that ISO there is a 5.1MB /boot/vmlinuz file.

I don't use any distro, not even DSL. I just track Linux, 6.6 stable (6.6.11 as of recent). I build that
with all firmware/modules for my laptop built in, set to boot to vesa framebuffer (very portable - my usb/system for instance boots to desktop just as well on a AMD/Radeon laptop as it does on a i5/nvidia). I also build initramfs into that kernel, overall end result is a 16MB (xz compressed) vmlinuz filesize. Within the initramfs I build busybox, alsa/sndio (sound), ssh/ssl, framebuffer vnc, and a few other odds-and-bods (framebuffer battery and clocks ...etc).

With that I boot with vga=ask, for instance selecting a 1366x768x16 vesa resolution (my laptops res) and that drops into a framebuffer cli. dd if=/dev/random >/dev/fb0 for instance will fill the screen with random colored pixels.

Typically I wifi net connect, use ssh to set up tunnels for vnc, or even overlayfs mount a full desktop sfs file that is headless and set to serve out to vnc, that I'll use fbvnc (vnc viewer) to connect to ... for a full gui desktop, and where that's all running in the framebuffer (if I ran dd if=/dev/random >/dev/fb0 that screen would be covered with random colored pixels).

I have vnc servers running on a fast hard-wired i5, that I use to build the kernel (typically in around 5 minutes) and also can serve as a browser with fast rendering and fast download speeds (I see 1750 fps when glxgears and internet speed tests indicate 140Mbs download speed - not bad for a wifi net connected old laptop 'desktop' system ), another on my phone so I can vnc into that for a otter browser and internet connection for my laptop whilst out and about. ...etc. vnc is very common, most devices can usually run it.

A nice feature is that if I'm vnc'd into a graphical desktop on ctrl-alt-F2, that's running chrome playing a youtube, then that will bleed through to other tty's, so without freezing screen updates before switching to ctrl-alt-F4 or whatever, then on ctrl-alt-F4 the video will still be seen/heard.

As its purely for personal use/single user, I have /bin dedicated to just busybox, and have sym linked /sbin /usr/bin ...etc all into just /usr/bin, as have I merged all LIBS.

So my full desktop experience boots from a 16MB single file (vmlinuz) boots quickly, more often I just sym link in a sfs that is set to be headless and serve via vnc, set that up as a overlayfs, into which I use fbvnc viewer. That linking/setup is also very quick.

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292K in days of 512K ram, versus 16MB in 8GB ram days, and in that context systems are a lot smaller than they used to be And proportionately take up a lot less space on your HDD/SSD.

I don't think anyone needs to worry about a 50MB limit these days, as no one I know uses the media this was originally made for.

Most people these days will use a pendrive, & the smallest is usually a 1GB, so many distros will fit on & run from these.

A new release of DSL from the original developer came out a few days ago. https://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

It's based on antiX and targets a 700 MB size now, enough to boot off a CD on computers not capable of booting off a USB key.

To answer your question, it ships with kernel 5.10.188.

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Damn Small Linux 2024 is being released to keep those old 32bit computers running, now that a lot of distros are dropping it, & being made to fit onto a CD.

But its new incarnation is hardly small. Is larger than Fatdog with less in it.

There's a 666MB of high (xz) compressed filesystem, that extracted totals around 3GB. Fatdog's is around 460MB by comparison and includes Libre Office ...etc.

Would have been nicer to see it focused more on the actual small side, as the arena its actually targeted is already saturated.

I think you are missing the point - it is a 32bit distro for CD - a new release of DSL from the original developer - & Fatdog is only available as 64bit - but there are other 32bit systems, (Tiny Core, SliTaz, AntiX, etc), but they are in a minority these days.

The original DSL was designed to fit the 50MB mini CDs of the time, this is designed to fit a regular CD, which is what a lot of old machines have.

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My understanding is its using antix's i486 kernel.