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Damn Small Linux Reaches 1.0

What is the best distribution for old computers? This question comes up surprisingly often on public forums and mailing lists, indicating that there is a fairly large market which has been completely abandoned by all major Linux companies. As always, the answer depends on too many factors, but if you are looking for a light-weight, graphical Linux-based operating system for a machine that originally came pre-installed with Windows 95, and which has at least 32 MB of RAM, then you can't go wrong with Damn Small Linux. A 50 MB download that can be run from a CD, USB storage device, or hard disk, this distribution started as a stripped-down edition of the popular KNOPPIX live CD. Since its humble beginnings over two years ago, Damn Small Linux has evolved into a highly respected project with over 5,000 members registered on its online forums. It reached its 1.0 milestone some two months ago.

I installed and used Damn Small Linux extensively on an old notebook - an AcerNote Light, originally purchased in 1997. The machine came with 32 MB of RAM and a 1.3 GB hard disk, none of which were ever upgraded. It had a CD-ROM drive, but no modem, network card or floppy drive. The notebook had been gathering dust in a cupboard until early last year when, out of sheer curiosity, I decided to give Damn Small Linux a chance to bring it back to life. It turned out to be a good decision. Following a brief period of experimenting, the notebook was capable of performing many useful tasks - from monitoring a log file on a remote web server to light web browsing, and even some basic office work in a word processor and spreadsheet. Unfortunately, the notebook died of old age a couple of months ago when, all of a sudden, it refused to boot with an error message indicating that only a trip to an authorized Acer repair center could possibly resurrect it.

It was a sad moment when I had to put it back into the dusty cupboard. By that time, I was already used to having the old laptop humming along quietly and I really missed it. Its most common task was to connect to a remote web server (luckily, the notebook had a slot for inserting a PCMCIA network card) for some system administration, file editing, or as I mentioned earlier, to monitor log files with 'tail -f'. To take advantage of the graphical part of the operating system (running on top of the highly configurable and theme-able Fluxbox window manager) I used it for web browsing with Dillo and Opera. Dillo is probably the lightest and fastest graphical browser available today, but it does not support Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which meant that many web sites did not display as intended. Opera sounded like the next best choice, but even though it is considered a remarkably light browser, 32 MB of RAM proved too little for it to perform at an acceptable speed. Nowadays, Damn Small Linux ships with Dillo and Firefox.

Other applications were a lot more responsive on this old laptop. There were no speed issues with Sylpheed, the only available graphical mail client, while office tasks were handled by two surprisingly full-featured, but still extremely resource-friendly applications - the flwriter word processor and Siag Office spreadsheet. Damn Small Linux also ships with useful software for viewing PDF files and MS Office documents. Printing is supported through apsfilter, which includes a wizard for setting up serial, parallel, and even remote printers through Samba. As expected, no heavy-duty graphics applications are present, but very basic graphic manipulation can be accomplished with the help of XPaint, and a simple graphical viewer is available too. XMMS is there to play media files, while Midnight Commander can be employed to handle any file management tasks. For distraction, a handful of simple games are also provided.

If all these applications are not enough, it is very easy to download and install new ones on the fly. This is done through the DSL Download Extension Panel, a custom utility listing a fairly large number of packages built and tested to work with Damn Small Linux. Among them one would find anything from AbiWord to GIMP and even OpenOffice.org. If there is still something that you miss, then the full power of apt-get and Synaptic, together with a complete Debian repository is just a click away. It goes without saying, however, that installing a large number of Debian packages would surely turn a perfectly light distribution into a full-featured monster that would defy the original purpose of Damn Small Linux. But if you absolutely need one or two extra applications then it's good to know that they are available, and that it is very easy to install them.

More surprises await the user who takes the time to investigate the menus. If the entire system has been loaded into RAM (as opposed to its running directly from the live CD), an option to create a custom Damn Small Linux live CD, complete with all customizations and user-specific data, is provided. This can be useful if you need to take your data and work with you while on the road. As for system administration, Damn Small Linux comes with a simple control panel with buttons to configure various services. These include networking (network card configuration, DHCP, dial-up, PPPOE, wireless networking with NdisWrapper), printing and keyboard layout. Activating the SSH, FTP or web (MonkeyWeb) server is also just a mouse click away. The entire system can be backed up to, and restored from, a hard disk partition. And while on the subject of special features, it is worth mentioning that Damn Small Linux is also available as a Windows executable file, which can be run from within Windows, courtesy of the QEMU processor emulator. Don't expect breathtaking speeds from such an awkward setup, but it will do if you happen to be working in Windows and need to complete a quick Linux task without having to reboot your system.

Originally just a personal toy of John Andrews, the project's creator and lead developer, Damn Small Linux has evolved into a truly valuable Linux distribution. Despite its incredibly small size, the sheer number of available applications and features are nothing short of amazing. Whether you want to resurrect an old, forgotten notebook or carry a small, light-weight Linux live CD in your pocket for emergency needs, Damn Small Linux is a free, feature-full, and intelligently designed Linux distribution. Give it a try a be prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

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New Releases

OpenBSD 3.7 Released

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StartCom Enterprise Linux 4.0.0 (Barak) released

StartCom has released StartCom Enterprise Linux 4.0.0 (Barak). "The inclusion of Security-Enhanced Linux of the US National Security Agency makes StartCom LInux now even more secure thanks to the MAC-based environment, application capabilities and privileges are set by predefined policies and enforced by the kernel. This prevents errant applications from compromising system security. Version 4.0.0 codenamed Barak (Lightening in Hebrew), features the new 2.6 kernel infrastructure with better and more drivers supported, multi-core and hyperthreaded CPUs support to mention only a few. The improved storage and file system capabilities uses now Logical Volume Management (LVM) as the default installation option. Also the desktop environment offers new enhancements providing a feature-rich, easy-to-use application pool, such as Firefox, Evolution and OpenOffice."

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Update 5 for Lineox Enterprise Linux 3.0

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Trustix Secure Linux 3.0 Release Candidate 2

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Distribution News

Debian GNU/Linux news

Another Woody update is in the works. It should be out just before the Sarge release, and will most likely be the last Woody update.

The 'volatile' archive is a place for things that change quickly, like spam filters and anti-virus software. This archive should be live with the Sarge release. Find out more in this post.

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LQ Adds an Officially Recognized MEPIS Forum

LinuxQuestions.org has announced a new forum for MEPIS Linux.

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Ubuntu Hardened SPEC-20050503 and schedule

The Ubuntu Hardened team has announced (click below) rewritten specifications, now publicly available in both LaTeX source and PDF formats, plus an updated schedule and other Hard news.

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New Distributions

Teenager Develops User Friendly SLYNUX

SLYNUX is a user friendly GNU/Linux OS for beginners. It can be run completely from CD without installation. There is also an option to install to hard disk. Anyone who is familiar with Microsoft Windows can handle this operating system. The desktop is designed to be easy to use and friendly. SLYNUX also comes with a wide range of applications. SLYNUX is a Debian/Knoppix-based GNU/Linux system. CXOtoday has an article about SLYNUX and its developer.

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Distribution Newsletters

Debian Weekly News

The May 25 issue of the Debian Weekly News is out. Topics this week include running a Debian desktop with twelve watts of power, Debian GNU/Hurd, the final woody update, and more.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for May 23, 2005 is out. This edition covers the Gentoo Foundation's Trustees Election for 2005-2006, a new mailing list for Perl discussions, Gentoo at OSDL, Developer of the week Tom Martin, the Gentoo Foundation Website Redesign Contest, and several other topics.

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Ubuntu community council meeting

The full log and a summary of the May 10, 2005 Ubuntu community council meeting are available.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 101

The DistroWatch Weekly for May 23, 2005 is out. "Gentoo Linux continues to maintain its presence on these pages - we have a quick tip describing how to save time and prevent downtime while installing this popular source-based distribution. We'll continue with an update on the release of Debian Sarge and point you to a couple of fantastic Linux learning resources made available recently by Novell. The featured distribution of the week is the PHLAK live CD with its amazing array of security tools and extensive documentation, while Robert Storey reveals a great utility to really erase data from your hard disks."

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Minor distribution updates

Lunar-1.5.0 "Indium Phosphide" ISO released

The Lunar-Linux Team has announced the release of Lunar-1.5.0 "Indium Phosphide" ISO. "This ISO marks a radical change in the development of lunar install ISO's and should be far easier and faster to install for everyone. The 1.5.0 release is an i686 optimized iso."

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Empower Technologies Releases LEOs for Texas Instruments OMAP5910

Empower Technologies has announced the official release of the latest LEOs(TM) (LinuxDA Embedded O/S) development platform - LDK5910 optimized for Texas Instruments(TM) OMAP5910 dual core CPU.

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Package updates

Fedora Core updates

Fedora Core 3 updates: gail-1.8.0-3.fc3 (fix the tamil translation), dmraid-1.0.0.rc8-FC3_2 (bug fixes), netpbm-10.27-3.FC3 (updates and bug fixes), sudo-1.6.7p5-30.2 (bug fixes), texinfo-4.8-2.1 (upgrade to 4.8, which fixes a segmentation fault problem).

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Mandriva updates

Mandriva Linux 10.2 (LE2005) updates: rpmdrake (bug fix with the mdkonline applet), qt3 (fix a problem in qmake), kdenetwork (change in MSN protocol fixed in kopete).

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Trustix TSL-2005-0024

Trustix has updates and bug fixes available for TSL 2.2 packages clamav, cups, mysql, and postfix.

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Distribution reviews

Review: OpenBSD 3.7 (NewsForge)

NewsForge has this review of OpenBSD 3.7. "OpenBSD is a complete, relatively small-footprint, Unix-derived operating system. Originally forked from NetBSD in 1996, the project has suffered only one remote security flaw in the default installation in more than eight years. Obviously the development team can't guarantee the security of every one of the 3,000 ported applications, but there is a significant effort to ensure that there are no security flaws or other serious code-related problems in the Ports tree."

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Sentry CD - A different firewall approach (NewsForge)

NewsForge takes a look at the Sentry Firewall CD. "If you want to set up a Linux-based firewall, there's no need to run a bloated distribution that installs everything but the kitchen sink. If you are not afraid to get your hands dirty, and like having total control over your system, then Sentry Firewall CD (SFCD) is just what you need. It is a highly configurable, bootable CD that takes a minimalist approach to firewalling."

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