I am new to Linux. I opted for DSL since I use an old laptop - Compaq Presario, with only 60MB RAM and 5GB hard disk. With detailed instructions found on DSL, I've done a frugal installation to hard drive.

At the onset, I miss a My Documents folder. Where do I save all my data? I've been messing around a bit. I found that I do not have a permission to copy files in to some of the folders. For example, Using Emlefm, I can copy to but cannot delete from /home/dsl. But then, tell me, where is it recommended that I make a 'My Data' or 'My Files' or 'My Pictures' etc folder? I see a lot of files - I've no idea what they are, may be I'll soon get to know them - scattered all over the place.

Is Emelfm like Windows Explorer? I'll use Emelf to browse through my hard drive, cut, paste, save and read - am I right? I do not get to right click and Cut, Paste, Send to ect., is it so?

I do not have an internet access at home - I'll get a connection once I feel at home with Linux- where I have my laptop. I download MyDSL extensions while at office, write them on to a cd and then try these from cd at home. I found that DSL hangs when I read large files (something like more that 1 MB) from my 2GB Transend pen drive.

With MyDSL extensions, I have the following doubts:

1. Each time I reboot do I have to reload my programs? Will not they stay there? I've copied Abiword.dsl and MPlayer.dsl into two folders of the same names respectively in /home/dsl using Emelfm. But as I said before, I couldn't delete them later on.

2. Is there an uninstall?

3. Using MPlayer, I cannot play VCDs in full screen. In full screen mode, though the window maximises to full screen, movie is still played in a small, centralised screen.

4. Abiword: behaves like only Windows Notepad. No automatic capitalisation. No spellcheck - neither real time, nor when I click on Spellcheck on Tools menu. No automatic formatting (bullets and numberings.)

5. I miss right click on an image file and make Wallpaper option from Windows.

4. xMMs is as beautiful as Winamp. But I miss that right click on file and Add to Winamp playlist option.

5. How do I use this XMMX-ALARM extension? That seems like something I must try out.

Finally, at startup and shutdown, I get a warning message, something like – maximal mount times exceeded, e2fsck recommended. Should I do something about it?

Please advice.

DSL is a very minimal Linux distribution (which is why is runs so fast). A lot fo the features that you miss (and want) are found in other, more full, distributions. But to answer your questions:

-My Documents: Generally the path /home/<userid> is the default save path for documents/pictures/anything you've been working on. The beauty of linux is that you can really use anything, however.

-To copy/delete files from folders you don't have permissions to, you neet to become root (Windows you generally ARE root, or administrator, 24/7). This basically is to prevent you, the user, from altering the system unwillingly. The 2 methods of becoming root are:
-su
-sudo

Sudo (Superuser do) simulates root permissions for a single command, and su changes your permissions to root for the duration of your terminal session.

-Uninstall: I only use DSL as a LiveCD, but I believe that it uses deb packages on a frugal install. Therefore, the package manager should be either dpkg, dselect or apt-get.
>dpkg -r packagename or
>apt-get remove packagename
dselect I am not familiar with.
You need to become root to do this.

-e2fsck warning: You should run either fsck or e2fsck . Basically it's a scandisk utility, and the warning is telling you to scan your drive.

-Abiword: If you don't like it's performance, get OpenOffice. Warning: it's a resource hog (much like MS Office).

As far as your other wants, there are other distributions that do this. For your hardware you definitely are limited to what you can use, but if you don't like DSL's layout and options, check out:
Puppy Linux
Vector Linux
Zenwalk

I'm sure other people can suggest others.