User Feedback :: Is DSL the one?



Bravo well said.
And as I said at the beginning The right tool for the right job

With 300+ Linux distros out there to install to your hard drive
why would we, the developers of DSL, want to offer only the same thing.

DSL as a liveCD, embedded, frugal or applicance type application is a more interesting and far less crowded space.

DSL is not only a small distro but offers so many type of installs that work great on very minimal hardware.

How many Knoppix deriviatives under 50MB have 2.4.31 kernel offering 64 cloops and so many interesting way to deploy it?

So to compare DSL, as only a hard drive installed system and to compare it to the full sized traditional Linux distros, is to not know what DSL is all about.
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I must have missed something...
Honestly, with no insult towards the developers, can DSL compete with straight Debian or (K)unbuntu?  It's pretty much a miracle as it is. A Linux distro that is only 50Mb! Kudos to the developers!


Depending on what your needs are for a day-to-day system, yes I think DSL can compete pretty effectively with most of the major distros in a HD install.  I use it at work everyday to analyze and work with GIS map data, on a machine that's been retired for almost 5 years.  Aside from the difficulties I've encountered in compiling source code, most of the Linux binaries and Debian apt-get packages that I've installed have worked fine.  The source that I haven't been able to compile is mostly fluff, and not missed at work at all.  I tend to agree with the DSL dev community that most  of the large Linux distros today come with far more applications than are needed.

When you consider the speed with which the system deploys, and the fact that X, USB, sound, and most network functions are available 5 to 10 minutes after launch (in a worst-case scenario where one has to actually do some setup tweaking), I actually consider DSL to be a step ahead of Debian and other full distros in many ways.

Yes, DSL works fantastically well as a rescue system, I've used it 3 times already in this fashion since discovering it.  It also works better than Cygwin as a means of using Posix tools temporarily on a Windows machine, since it seamlessly mounts NTFS and has a richer toolset out-of-the box than Cygwin.  But it seems to me that saying the distro is "supposed" to be used this way is unnecessarily limiting.

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DSL as a liveCD, embedded, frugal or applicance type application is a more interesting and far less crowded space.


This may be so for you as a developper, but from the number of posts that exist in this forum that come from people using DSL in HD installs, I also suspect the distro is the seed of a true Linux revolution.  One where anyone can get a good Linux OS running in a traditional HD installation without needing huge distro-specific bibles to get the soundcard to work, or an MTA setup, or stuff lke that.

*THAT* was the intent behind my post originally.  To point out that as a HD installation used to replace other traditional Linux distros, it fell short due to the source compilation limitations.  I don't understand the response I've gotten from roberts on this matter.  It seems to me that he discounts HD installs as being old-school, ridiculous ways of using the distro.  Funny thing is that nowhere in this post, or in any others, have I said that liveCD installs are lame, or that having a small embedded linux distro to use on dedicated appliances is a bad thing.  <shrug>  I find this attitude puzzling, especially given that the HD install option exists, AND the large number of people who seem to use it in this fashion.

Maybe a survey of how people use the distro would be informative?
Hmm, looks like user "green" has a survey going, and wouldn't you know it, the poll has HD installs in the lead.

41% for HD installs, with the next closest being 14% for live CD installs.

Interesting....
That poll doesn't separate Frugal HD from normal HD installs.
It's also a relatively old poll, started nearly a year ago.  Many people (myself included) have since begun using DSL in other ways.  I've seen more than a handful of users who have moved from a traditional hd install to frugal during that time, which doesn't account for others outside of my limited experience.  As far as users going from frugal to traditional, I haven't seen any.
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