Damn Small Linux - Not!

twilight32 · Joined: 17 Sep 2006 Posts: 1 Location: canada

I am a long time windows user trying to use/learn linux now. Iam trying with DSL-N and puppy as my first tests with linux.

I am a trying to install the dsl-n on an old machine P1 133 MHZ, 64 MB Ram, 1.7 G HD. with a 1.4 mb floppy drive

questions I have :-
1) in the download area for DSL-N, there are 2 boot floppy images , what are they both for ? one of them has size over the 1.4 Mb floppy disk that I normally use. why are there 2 ?

2) do we use different boot floppy image for DSL and DSL-N ? also why are there different boot images at different locations ?

3) I have dowloaded the floppyimage from DSL and used it for installing the DSL-N to my hard drive on my machine. however ,when it gets to displaying the graphical screen, it just freezes, the mouse and keyboard doesn't work at all.
I did ctrl alt bkspace, to get out of the startx screen, and then reconfigured the mouse (using some xsetup?? command that was displayed on the text screen once you exit the gui screen) , and ran startx again, still no success.
One thing I noticed is that there was some message ¨modprobe:modprove. cannot open dependencies file /lib/modules/2.4.2/modulesdep (no such file or directory), there were also lots of similar modprobe messages, though I can´t remember them now. can anyone help me understand what when wrong there pls ?

4) I ´ve tried with puppy linux (their kernel is 2.6), and it went in smoothly to the end, and I am currently using puppy to type in this post. they provided one boot disk image (wkpup2) , and you just copy the puppy file to your c:drive. and it install right away without any issue.

5) for installing DSL-N , just my own suggestion, can´t we place all our the necessary files on the c: drive , and then run a batch file from there to do the install. then we won´t need any cd drive, no floppy drive etc ... for installing. That will resolve a lot of problems for many people using the oldmachines.

anyways thanks in advance for any help I can get from this forum. sorry for asking so many questions, I tried reading the forums, but there were contradictions on the forums which confused me more, being a newbie , i felt a bit loss.

thanks

rja · Joined: 20 Apr 2006 Posts: 21 Location: Chicago, IL USA

To start with, DSL-N is probably not ready for "trying to use/learn linux" yet.

It is a Release Candidate (0.1RC4 right now). It hasn't had it's first relese
yet. It is available for download for people who are willing to test and
report bugs.

For a P1 133MHz 64MB, DSL is a better choice. DSL is at version 3.0.1
and has had years of testing and refining so that it works very well with
older hardware. DSL is ready for production use right now.

1. DSL-N is using the 2.6 kernel which will not fit on a single boot floppy.
DSL is using the 2.4 kernel, which is smaller and will fit on a single floppy.

Windows uses 1440K formatted floppies, but Linux allows the floppy to be
formated with different numbers of tracks (cylinders and sectors).
It can format a 3.5 inch High Density floppy with
360, 720, 820, 830, 1440, 1600, 1680, 1722, 1743, 1760, 1840, or 1920K,
depending on the hardware in the floppy drive.

2. See #1. Different kernel versions.

3. See #1. Different kernel versions.

4. That assums that you have a working Microsoft Operating System on
your hard drive. I don't have any experience with installing DSL that way,
but I would not be surprised if it can be done.

5. See #4. Try searching the DSL forums to see if someone else has
installed DSL from a Windows OS with a batch file. If not, you can always
post your suggestion to the "DSL Ideas and Suggestions" forum.