DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: new distro based on DSL

Luit Linux has a forum, finally, opened this week.
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http://sarovar.org/forum/?group_id=97
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I'll get over there right away, but I am currently testing and playing with
Damn Small 0.6.2. Luit Linux is very nice, for those of you that like to
test all the various knoppix remaster distros. Also, Feather Linux is OK,
both of these are under 65 MB, and work very well. I did find out that
if you use a DSL backup.tar.gz in Feather, and then save (backup) it in
Feather, then for some strange reason, you cannot then try and apply it
to DSL. I tried rewriting the filetool.lst to fit DSL, but my custom made
filetool.sh would not open the tarball. Went in, but would not come out...
A DSL 0.5.3.1 tarball with Opera and Mozilla Firebird goes right in to
Luit, just fine, per my posts on that.
I sure wanted to see if I could get Thunderbird from Feather to work in
DSL 0.6.2. I'll probably just download the tarball for it, (686 only) and
plop it down in DSL somewhere and see what happens. It ought to work.
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I thought this was the Luit Linux forum, just kidding.

For what it is worth, XFCE is great, but it is too big and resource intensive for DSL.

Here (in part) is a post I left on the Feather Linux board.

DSL is by far the best 50Mb distro I've tried. By best I mean that it works on all my hardware with no problems at all. [Puppy: eth0 trouble, Austrumi: X trouble on some hardware, SLAX (180 Mb): DSL has better usability and is faster than FastGUI on SLAX]

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I am part-time faculty at several universities, so I don't have an office. I do everything out of a backpack. I can find plenty of computers around campus, but nothing real heavy duty. An ideal tool for me would be fast and light, like DSL, but with a stronger set of office applications. Mostly I'm living in a W-dows world, so easy file-compatibility would be a big plus for me. (I keep my active files and a firefox + setup tarball on a 128 meg usb stick, BTW.)

So my suggestion is this: work closely with DSL and let them take care of the base. Take the 8 cm disk as a limit and build the best portable office on the DSL base.

I can see two camps here and at DSL... One group, like me, that takes it "on the road", and another group that is focused on doing HD installs on older hardware.

Ladislav at DistroWatch had a nice opinion piece about having too many new distros, basically.

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If you are thinking of creating a new distribution, then think again. Not counting various floppy and embedded Linux projects, there are already more than 300 active distributions in existence today. Unless you have a really cool, innovative idea, don't expect to get an enormous number of followers with a yet another remastered edition of Knoppix. Instead, why not join an existing project?

Rather than seeing Feeather and DSL drift apart I hope that a closer relationship can happen, with DSL providing the best, fastest 50 Megs and Feather (or someone...?) filling up an 8 cm CD with fast, complimentary office-type apps.

Comments?

original here.