Damn Small Linux (DSL) Forums

Ok, so I've got one of the old CD's of DSL and I've never been able to wrap my brain around the Linux OS enough to get it to run. (I even bought the book!) So, for someone with little to no experience with Linux where do I start? Is there a step by step "How to" that I can work through? I'm from the days of DOS so I don't mind working a bit to learn Linux. I also have an old(er) desktop that I can put a "standard" Linux OS on to learn. Ideas???

Wow, that's sort of an open ended question.  I guess the first place to start would be to make sure your older desktop's bios  is setup to boot from CD, stick the CD in, press the power button and see what happens.  DSL has auto-hardware detection that works well with older computers, so with any luck you should have a basic Linux desktop to mess around with.

I have the book too. If I recall there is a chapter all about booting DSL, start with that... If (rarely) you get something funky, bring it here we'll help :P

I don't know if highpockets is around to see this, but it may help someone else.

Not only do you have to set CD Boot ahead of Hard Drive Boot in the BIOS, but you have to make the CD burn image bootable. Not to plug a particular product, I have used Infrarecorder - a free download - successfully 9 out of 10 times. It has a "Write Image" selection which makes the CD bootable.

Good Luck!

texbrew