I need to have some hand holding to get my damn small linux running. I need help starting from to insert the cd into the player?

The most common two problems are that your BIOS isn't set to boot from CD first or you didn't burn the CD correctly.

For the first one, you need to boot the machine and then hit whatever key gets you into the bios right at the beginning of boot (it's usually something like Esc, delete, F1, or F2, but varies depending on what bios you have). Then look for something about boot order which might be something like "floppy, HDD, CD-rom" and change it to "floppy, CD-rom, HDD". Then save the changes and exit. Try again booting with the CD in.

The second problem you can check from another computer. Put the CD in after the system is booted up. Browse the CD. If you see a single *.iso file, you burned the image incorrectly. You should see a directory structure and some files. To burn an *.iso correctly, you have to "Burn from Disc Image" (or similar, depends on what program you burned the disc with).

A third problem specifically for DSL depends on the hardware you're installing it on. If it is a really old machine, you probably need to download the "syslinux" *.iso instead of the "isolinux" *.iso. Old bios versions must have the kernel be less than 1.44MB (a floppy disk), where newer bios versions can handle larger kernels.

Dam Small Linux
I have downloaded the program. The first was version 3.0.1. I popped in into my little laptop computer (old one compaq 1244, 4 meg hard disc, 160 k ram. Everything worked fine. I then installed it to the hard disk hda1 and that worked just fine. The downloading to the hard disc was easy but I have some questions. Why was I ask to make a choice between grub and lilo? I picked lilo just for no reason. I checked the program list just to see what was on board. Fire fox is ok but an old version. Beaver and Ted not my cup of tea. Slag work ok but would have liked to have Thunderbird. Dillo is ok but Firefox is my choice. I was able to download Open office version 2 (an older one) using the mydsl and the tab uci. Wow was I surprised to see the icons pop up on the screen and the program works just fine. Not the case with Thunderbird. It was downloaded but I have not been able to use the program.

I upgraded to the GNU Utils to replace the busybox again I don't know why. I also clicked on the enable apt again I have no Idea why. When I read the directions mydsl -seamless extensions for dsl I just become lost as to what to do.

Using windows is so much different. You find the program you want click on download save to a disk or open and everything is done. Wow not that way with Linux. I have some questions. What about firewalls, spy ware, anti virus program. Are they still needed with DSL.

I have downloaded the new version of DSL 3.1. I was not able to download open office with this version. I had to reinstall the older version of DSL 3.0.1 and it worked fine.

I don't think DSL is the problem I think it is me and I need to have some guidance.

Now what to do.
I have loaded the dsl to my hard disk. When it ask to make a partition I made one called hda1 which is the entire hard disk. Is this good or Bad?
Second thing: when I boot up the computer I always have to go to the mydsl extension tool to get back my open office icons. Is this normal?
Now lets work on this problem.
Thunderbird has been downloaded and is in my file. When I click on load local mydsl extensions a window comes up with a list of many mozilla-tbird files. one of which is tbird gtk21.0.2dsl a second with md5.txt
When I click on emelfm I get 2 windows the one on the left is /home/dsl the one on the left is just / if I go down the list of filenames on the right I find one called tmp/ When I click on it I find a number of Thunderbird files in blue and black along with my open office 2 programs. It look like I also tried to use Thunderbird 1.5 as it is also listed.
So what to do next
on the botton is a block that has dsl@box$ and a place to enter instruction.
How to I get this program to work?
Maybe I should start over with good directions to make the right partitions of the hard disk so that I can use dsl right.

If I start over I could again try the new version 3.1

These specs can't be right. Even DSL can't run on those specs. When I google for Compaq 1244, it seems that it has 32MB RAM and 4.5GB hard disk...Lilo and Grub are two different linux boot loaders. You can pick either one. Lilo is older and was the first linux bootloader. Grub has since become more popular. Lilo stores all the information in the Master Boot Record of your hard drive. Grub just stores a base bootloader, then it looks for your config file somewhere else on the hard drive.Well, those programs are all really lightweight and meant to be minimalistic so they can work on really low hardware specs without grinding the machine to a halt. MyDSL is the method developed for add on packages specific to DSL. They'll work better than any other programs you try to download and install.

You basically updated the hard drive install to use a full feature of tools instead of busybox, which is a minimal set of tools needed to run linux. busybox is used on a lot of embedded devices like routers because of its small size. Enabling the apt repositories will probably get you in trouble. DSL is developed from the Debian distribution. If you install anything with APT, you'll probably break your system since DSL is NOT Debian.

Good catch. You will need to do a bit of learning to get along with linux. I suggest googling for Linux 101 or Linux Newbie and see what comes up. There'll help teach you the basics of the command line and what all these things are for. Typically it's good to run a firewall. There's several graphical front ends to help you configure it. Spyware is not such a concern. There aren't a lot of viruses for linux, but if you share files with Windows users, you'll want one installed. Again, on your old hardware, you may struggle running some of these programs because some are memory intensive.

I haven't used DSL much so I don't know what's available for it....

Good observation. As I said, I would google for linux newbie and play with DSL and learn some things. If my googling of your hardware was correct, you can probably put a more full featured distribution on the machine if you're careful. I would recommend Debian because you'll have a lot of programs that are easy to install. So you can make a nice lightweight distribution like DSL, but have more programs at your disposal instead of only those things in the MyDSL extensions.

One other thing you might do if you can afford it is to figure out what the maximum amount of RAM your laptop can take and then max it out. RAM might be the single best thing to make an old machine run quicker.

you are right I have 4.5 gig hard drive and the memory is updated to 160 mb ram. I have tried several other linux systems and I will have to say the Damn Small Linux is the only one that runs fast and work very well. Still I'm having a few problems! I have been studying "Linux 101" and have leaned a few things but find that there is a lot more to get this old guy up to speed. Connection the the internet works great, I can well get along with the e-mail program included but would like to have thunderbird, I would like to have the latest version of Open office and the last Firefox. this is the goal. thanks for you help to this point.
I have joined a linux club which I think will help in the learning curve. The first meeting is Jan 6th. Looking forward to picking up many pointers