Hi, Linux newbie. I have done some searching but failed to find anything to directly help.

I am looking for a small footprint distro that also has a desktop as I will only want it for web browsing. I will be installing it in a VMWare Player within win8.1 pro.

I tried Ubuntu and Mint downloads and they were going to take FOUR hours! (Country living slooow speeds) I then found Damn Small Linux and when I installed it into Player, it gave me a black screen with three options. F2, F3 or Enter. None of which made sense to me when I selected them.

I do NOT want to learn to use Linux before I can use Linux, so what can I get that will have a desktop, preferably with Firefox and VMWare tools installed (or simply installed) that will not hog my meager Internet access for hours?

Thanks

a lot of the puppy isos are relatively small (Tahr-pup is around 200 mb ) http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux...6.0-CE_PAE.iso. You might check out antiX or MX (see my signature). The downloads are CD sized (700~ mb).

Odd, DSL should have worked great. Might have been a bad download or other config fault. It would normally boot right up and work.

Slitaz, Puppy(and pup clones), Antix, Slax, LPS, are linux ideas and many more maybe. Could even still use the old QNX floppy with network. Can consider MenuetOS too.

Yes, you shouldn't have to learn linux just to use it.

If downloading is such an issue, there is the possibility of buying a disc. osdisc.com has a good reputation (but I have never used them personally). But do not get from ebay or amazon!

I don't use Mint, but when I downloaded it for trial last April, it was real slow too.

Also, if you go for a Ubuntu based one, I would stick with ones based on 14.04 (only exception would be Mint's newest one).

I heard LXLE mentioned reasonably favorably on Linux Luddites. They have disks available from OSDisk.

Thanks to everyone.
@jefro:
I tried downloading DSL from two different mirror sites and both start up at a command prompt rather than installing.

I finally found Lubuntu, while not an overly small download, installed perfectly and has a dedicated button for the web browser.

Nice to hear you've succeeded!

For the record (if anyone finds this thread later) the distros which are currently CD-sized, but still install enough software for practical purposes, are AntiX, Exe, Linux Lite, Salix, Semplice, WattOS, Xubuntu, and Zorin Light. There's also Puppy and Slax (intended to run in RAM) and Bodhi, with only a browser installed.

Linux Lite, Xubuntu and Zorin Light no longer fit on a cd.

1 members found this post helpful.

If internet speed is slow as you stated, you can download SliTaz 4.0 it's file size is only 35MB.

An even smaller size is Tinycore linux at 15MB. It includes a GUI desktop. The only caveat it is aimed for people who have been using linux for awhile.