DSL Talk

As you all read, I am seeking a tax lawyer this year because my financial situation is a complicated mess, split ups do that to you...

Anyway, it looks like I am also in need of a debt consolidation loan so that I don't get buried from an avalanche of credit bills. Maybe you could say that all this is the result of some type of mid-life crisis? So wish me luck on my debt help, it isn't like I have bad credit, but believe it or not I am still paying on my student loans. My advice to the young geeks out there; keep your debt low and your finance situation in order at all times. Bad credit

So, tax time is coming and I am yet to get organized. I think I need an IRS tax attorney this yeah. The California tax law is really a mess, too bad Arnold is more hype than actual reform. Why can't there be a flat tax so that we could figure out our own taxes without having to higher a high priced tax lawyer, an accountant and a bunch of other people who profit from our system's inefficiency? We pay income tax, ssi tax, sales tax, and then we get taxed on our ssi when we get it back! Man...

So, wish me luck filing my tax return, like the rest of you I'm going to need it! I've read

Lately the DSL IRC channel (irc.freenode.net #damnsmalllinux) has been slammed with new users, newbies, n00bs, n00bies, whatever...Thats great. Its great to know there is a huge interest, and people who want to get involved, get into linux, etc... I know SU already posted about this kind of thing once, but if any of you guys happen to find your way here, awesome.

For the record, It is always a good idea to utilize the 'dmesg' command to discover what your kernel wants to talk to you about!!! If you're having trouble identifying a device, try dmesg. If you aren't sure if your HD is being detected, try 'dmesg'. If you want to know what kind of soundcard you have or what speed your CD writer is, try dmesg. Dmesg is the kernel message buffer and anything the kernel has to say to you will most likely be in there! you can page it by piping it with 'more' or 'less'. 'dmesg|more'

Not Your Father's Operating System
A Developer's Perspective of DSL

What follows is the history of the major design decisions that make DSL what it is today.

As a commercial Linux appliance developer (see: www.shingledecker.org), I had made my own desktop appliances based on Red Hat 6.2 using Icewm. I would occasionally checkout Distrowatch to see if others had similar ideas.

Most everyone knows that operating systems are installed onto hard drives. I had grown tired of installing OS onto hard drives. I had just completed work on several server appliances that do not install to hard drive. Instead they run from a combination of multiple ramdisks and cdrom.

I've been running DSL on my Winbook XL (P233 MMX 32 ram, 2 gig HD, netgear ma111 usb key (wireless)) for a while now...before going wireless G with our new access point...But anyway...i've never been able to get X to work with my mouse. Its sooo annoying. I'm just venting of course. I'm a console lackie by nature, but I do a lot of things with VNC (www.realvnc.com if you're interested) and it helps simplify things a good bit. Keeps all of my email centralized by connecting to the Xvnc server and using thunderbird...etc... And it has java applet for web based access from anywhere...So thats helpful. Or you can use the VNC client...anyway...

First test of fluxbox 0.9.12 ended in slight disappointment. The actual compile was a little annoying until I finally got imlib2 using the proper version of freetype and fluxbox finding them both without an ld wrapper.
After successfully building and moving it into DSL I realized that the addition of Imlib and libFreetype is probably not the best idea. Together they are 750k stripped, which is nearly the size of fluxbox itself. I'm not sure it's worth it just for the ability to add png and jpg images to your interface (xpm is already supported).

Another feature is a Tab action which allows you to jump to specified tabs.

If anyone noticed any strange or oddly formed replies/comments to their posts please let either myself or SaidinUnleashed know! I recently noticed several comments which seemed to have been produced by an automated spambot just spidering the website and adding the comments/replies. Certainly do not click on anything in the bogus comments as that will just say 'hi this website aknowledges your spam. please give us more.'

examples of spam targeting this website: (see pics)
http://www.vectori.net/~tronik/misc/

you can find us online at irc.freenode.net in #damnsmalllinux

thanks for being a great community! =)

SU's memo - or the Private Message (PM) system on the forums.

I have been fooling around with Kanotix BHX lately and I really like it. It runs well, has a decent install feature, and includes a bunch of great progs.The hardware detection is awesome. So yesterday a friend asked me if I could "fix" his box and I jumped at the chance to try it (BHX) on his newer hardware. After several attempts to do a hd install and screwing up the mbr and partitions (don't ask me how) i gave up. He didn't care because XP put his 'puter out of commision a long time ago anyway. I popped out the trusty biz card from my wallet and it booted up and installed no problem.

How could I think of blowing Damn Small off like that? Forgive me for thinking another distro could take the place of DSL as my linux showboat of choice.

Ok so I've been thinking about this other project for a little while too..a forensic cluster...

I've been thinking why not DSL..anyone tried this before..I've got an old kingston 16 port hub and some old 386/486 boxes..I know the processors and ram will be slow..but augmenting a faste macine it might prove useful....

Linspire has broke a lot of ground when it comes to getting Linux into the main stream. I've been doing research on ISPs, and the few major providers that actually support Linux tend to only support Linspire. As a non-Linspire user, I find it a bit frustrating, yet I also find it very interesting.

Also under their belt:
The first to sell whitebox machines at Walmart
The first to come out with cheap Linux-powered tablet PCs
They also have a $500 laptop at Walmart which apparently sells so well that it is constantly out of stock.

There is a lot of criticism out there about Linspire's interaction with the Linux community at large, and also justifiable criticism of forcing newbies to run as root (are they still doing this?), but I don't think there has been a single other company that has pushed Linux harder into the world of the average consumer than Linspire. For better or for worse, they are the FACE of Linux to many.