User Feedback :: Dissapointed after 3 weeks of DSL

I can speak from installing a DSL based remaster on several hundred old PC's from p1 32mb ram on up that a frugal install on those machines is very doable with persistent /home and /opt directories. I do refurb old PC's for kids in need and give one of these machines to 5-10 families per week. Kids do catch onto these machines very quickly and I offer support for printer and dialup setup as these can be intimidating things to the average person who has never seen linux before and have never dealt with programs like apsfilter and pppconfig.

So, I would say that linuxlizard may have some extensions that are giving him fits (as cbagger01 says) or possibly even a piece of hardware that may be close to expiring. DSL should be screaming on that PC.

I would suggest booting the vanilla CD and letting us know if you are still experiencing lockups and maybe we can help you from there. If the CD runs well, then frugal should run the same as it's only the compressed image copied to the HD instead of being on the CD.

Good luck

Chris

Hi,

Give these a try, too:

Feather Linux
http://featherlinux.berlios.de/

Puppy Linux
http://www.puppylinux.org/

Some people prefer one of those instead of DSL (not sure why).

And there's also this one:

GenieOS
http://genieos.toluenterprises.com/

GenieOS isn't a small distro; it's meant to be an easier way to set up a Debian-stable desktop system. Since it only offers GNOME and KDE as options, you would need to install something like fluxbox, IceWM (preferably), or Xfce yourself.

Phil

dsl rocks. but puppy linux is worth a try, if you really cannot get dsl working.It has pros and conts...i.e. it hasn't got fluxbox and looks more like winblows but..it works well.
Juts my 2 cents.

I find that Puppy is extremely difficult to set up compared to DSL. DSL has superior hardware recognition and works out-of-the-box with many wireless cards. With puppy you need to install Ndiswrapper after you find out that your wireless card doesn't work. You also need to configure your network card before it will work. That's not hard, but it's an extra step that's normally not needed with DSL.

Hi,
it reminds me an old experience with a brand new HP machine, with 800 Mzh and 110 Mb Ram, with a limited 256 Mb internal flashdisk and bios enables booting on usb. I list you my experiences here:

1. I installed DSL on a usb key (not a flash drive; 1Go) in order to work with it as my everyday machine from the usb key (the terminal was not noisy, it was very little, such as a mini-itx one, in short: beautiful). Dsl runs well, but once I would like to work with a .dsl or an .uci extension, my machine could not proceed further; everything sticks, and I could reboot the machine;
2. I decided to do the same with an external partitioned HDD disk with a swap of 1 Go; but results were the same when I would like to work with an extension;
3. thus, I installed DSl on the internal flash disk (frugal) and saved one extension (openoffice) on it, too; I reserved the 110MB Ram to work with one and possible two extensions; it was possible to run openoffice; but my machine proceeded so slowly, that it was impossible to work with it.

I have learned that it is possible to use DSL as such ("naked" so to speak), with very low hardware specifications (as I experienced on a machine with processor at 400 Mhz and 64 Mb Ram). However, you have to learn a lot about DSL and your hardware itself to know how to deal with its main features in order to regulate them correctly regarding your hardware.

If you don't want to use native features only, then you have to look at the hardware specifications and possibly to improve/modify them, in order to get a full extensible DSL.

Testing supposes time to invest not only in order to know what's all about DSL, but also in order, sometimes, to update some hardware. My three experiences occupied me not during 3 weeks, but 8 weeks, since I knew, that it was impossible for me to update my hardware.

Obviously, it was a very frustrating experience; however, after looking for an "old" 486 with 800 Mghz and 256 Mb Ram, I could keep going on using dsl as my prefered os, without encountering anymore problems.
yours
z

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