Damn Small Linux
February 21, 2005 – 11:06 pmAdam recently burned me a copy of Damn Small Linux, and I decided to give it a try last night. Like other Linux live CDs, this distribution allows you to boot and run a complete operating system from your CDROM drive. The biggest advantage I can see to doing this for someone in my position is to try out Linux free of charge. Granted, almost all flavors of Linux are free of charge, but this particular choice allows you to play with Linux without changing a thing on your hard drive. You run Windows? Who cares? Some other flavor of Linux? No problem. Just put the CD in your CDROM drive and take it for a spin (no pun intended).
One problem with this idea is how necessarily static the software offering is. I saw that there is an option to change window managers, and I definitely need to look into this. I am not a huge fan of the WindowMaker, FVMW, FluxBox, etc. type window managers, though I get along just fine with them. I was pleased to see Firefox (web browser) and XMMS (Winamp clone) on there, because those two are mainstays of my Linux experience. In fact, just to test the system out, I opened Firfox, navigated to Shoutcast, and choose one of my favorite Internet radio stations, and XMMS opened without a hitch and started playing the streaming audio. Very impressive.
I would highly suggest this sort of distribution for people who would like to play around with Linux without wanting to change their computer’s current configuration. You can download an ISO from the Damn Small Linux site, or I am sure you can find it through some other popular ISO site as well. Just burn the ISO to a CD (making it bootable), and you’re off to the races. It’s also important to realize this is only one flavor of Linux, so if you don’t like how the screen looks or how the windows are handled or you find any other item with which to quibble, don’t worry. There are other distributions which may fit your needs better. I was pleasantly surprised, and very impressed, with my brief experience (so far) with Damn Small Linux.
2 Responses to “Damn Small Linux”
Something that Jeff neglected to mention is that Damn Small Linux is only 50 MB, so it will easily fit on a mini-cd or business-card CD (very small CDs that fit in your pocket/wallet) or onto a USB key drive (aka usb flash drive, usb pen drive, etc.)
A few things that Jeff will discover as he uses DSL a little bit more, but that I will toss out for the benefit of anyone else interested:
* If you have some storage space available (hard drive or usb/key/pen/flash drive), you can add software, thus making things a little more flexible, although still not as flexible as a full blown hard-drive installation of Linux. I think that there are also Damn Small Linux-specific software modules that you can install which “install” into RAM, meaning you don’t need hard drive or key drive space to install them.
* Some of the Live Linux distros get updated frequently, some don’t. If you burn your copy of (insert live linux cd name) onto a CD-RW, then you can upgrade your full operating system on the same disk whenever the distro is updated. Or you can simply burn onto a new CD-R. (CD-RWs are nice if you’re trying out lots of different distros).
* One of the other big live linux cd distros (in fact, the one that most of the others, including DSL, are based on) is Knoppix, which can be found at www.knoppix.net, www.knoppix.org, or www.knoppix.net.
* If you’re worried about tying up your CD drive with the operating system, most of the distros have options that allow you to put what you need from the OS into RAM, allowing you to use the CD/DVD drive for cd/dvd burning, music, movies, etc.
* If any of you want a copy of either Damn Small Linux or Knoppix but don’t know how to deal with burning ISO images, let me know and I’ll help you out/give you a copy.
By Adam on Feb 22, 2005 at 12:54 am
I was about to ask about Knoppix, as that’s the name that I’ve always heard associated with this sort of concept. Some people swear by it as a useful rescue disk, with all the utils you’d need should, say, your master boot record decide that storing actual boot information was so, like, last year.
By paul.za on Feb 22, 2005 at 10:31 pm