NoxVampyre

[Log in to get rid of this advertisement]

I can think of nothing bad to say about this thing at this point. It "just works". Whether you want a repair tool for a messed up computer, A slick little live CD, or something fast and easy to install on old hardware, here it is. I have used this CD on every piece of hardware I have, from a P166 to a PIV laptop. I have had NO problems with it. If I were to complain about one thing, it would be the lack of NTFS write ability. From what I understand though, that's coming so I will wait. This thing is fantastic for resurecting old hardware. I quickly made a boot floppy and had it installed and running on a P166 in minutes. It uses Fluxbox as it's window manager, which is great on older hardware. I even like the patched Dillo browser, sure it's no firefox, but then firefox is just a click away if you're on broadband. Once you have Firefox and maybe a few other tools from the click and run repository slap 'em on a USB key and you're set. The CD and a USB key will fit in your pocket and you're off to fix other people's computers, or just surf on 'em without leaving a trace.

Try it, you'll like it.

nycace36

Have been using DSL 0.7.x for awhile as a liveCD (bootable self-contained Linux distro),

Here are, IMO, its overwhelming positives:

- Very portable in BBC or 8cm-CD format
- Can be used on older hardware such as on Pentium I CPU's with 16MB RAM or less, especially useful in runlevel 2 mode (i.e., no XWindows)
- Can be used used as a rescue CD similar in many respects to the venerable Linux boot floppy 'tomsrtbt'
- Has nice, lean version of XWindows with all the necessary apps I use, without the extraneous apps and bloat of the fullest Debian-based-liveCD available today, Knoppix
- Is extendable with extra DSL-rated packages the DSL-team refers to as 'myDSL Extensions' (see http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/damnsmall/mydsl/index.html)
- Is installable onto a system's harddrive for a complete, harddrive-bootable, Debian system.
- One can perform standard harddrive performance-tuning even w/o a DSL harddrive install, such as
1) creating a harddrive swap partition (that the DSL BBC will recognize) which is double the amt of physically-installed RAM, 2) copy source files from the above-listed myDSL Extensions repository or even standard Debian .deb pkg's to a harddrive's /usr/local partition (sources go into /usr/local/src as per Linux convention), compile and run these binaries (e.g., OpenOffice, Firefox, etc.) from the harddrives /usr/local/bin directory, WHILE THE DSL LIVECD IS STILL RUNNING THE SYSTEM! What a CD-diskspace-saving and performance benefit!!

Negatives are some of the tweaks that DamnSmallLinux has done to fit all the stuff into a BBC-CD or 8cm-CD.
This LQ person, for one, would prefer not having Naim-IRC stuff, but would definitely prefer some key security-scanning items. Am somewhat leery of those myDSL-extensions listed in above link rated yellow or red for DSL v.7.x, especially for lower-end systems (read low <32MB RAM)

Overall, this liveCD distro is the best of its kind.
Would rate this an 8.