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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