had to switch to DSL to resurrect old desktop

Hi all! I have been using Linux systems for about 5 years now. Started dabbling with Puppy when I inherited an old desktop. Once I got a laptop (second hand) I had Win XP on it, but still would boot it up with a live Puppy CD when Win got cranky.

Later I got a much better hand-me-down laptop, a big "cadillac" HP/17" screen job. So I dumped Win Xp immediately and put Ubuntu on it, loved it! I needed some $$$ so I sold it to a good friend who needed a laptop, and I just used my old desktop. Later I got another old IBM Thinkpad and put Win XP on the front end and Fedora (17) on the backend. I only used the XP when playing a few games or when a friend came over and wanted to check their email or Facebook--they had a fear of Linux, even though I tried to show them that Fedora pretty much worked like any flavor of Windows.

Now, jump forward to present day; I got my backpack stolen while in the pub with a couple of friends. I just got careless and then POOF! No bag, no laptop! I have no idea why I decided to have my laptop with me that day; I certainly didn't need it. Oh well, lesson learned.

I do some work for a couple of people maintaining their websites and helping them do business emails and so forth, so I had to do something in a hurry. A friend had given me an old desktop, it was a Sony Vaio and at one time it had XP on it, but at some point someone had put Win 95 on it! Because I needed something to do word processing on, I thought I could just use it "as is"--no going. First of all the tower was fairly modern with USB and we all know Win 95 don't know USB! So I got to messing with the HD and kept hitting a wall. Half way through the XP install it would hang up. After several tries I finally realized one of the RAM sticks was bad.

So there I was, two days from having a friend come over to have me do some letter writing and web work and I had a desktop with only 64mb RAM! It also only had a 1.2 Gb HD to boot, so Win XP, once I did get it on there, took up nearly the entire drive! What was I going to do???

Then I remembered the old Puppy days and I remember using DSL live CD once to help someone get some files off their system. So I erased the drive with lots of ZEROS and then did an HD install of DSL with a decent swap partition and did ya know? The thing works like a charm!

I am really enjoying the DSL as I never really did much with it before, my experience being mostly Ubuntu and Fedora, but I am really enjoying this little gem. I have hit a few snags, like I can't figure out why when I add some programs with MyDSL browser, some install, and others simply disappear from the menu list. I also haven't figured out how to get a desktop shortcut for my newer Firefox, though I will be looking into those matters shortly.

All in all, the system is purring a long with a cable ethernet connection and it will bog down after a bit, so I just reboot (or is there a way to purge the swap and RAM without rebooting? No idea).

Ok, thanks for letting me chew your ear for a bit. Look forward to more of DSL updates and so forth. ALoha from Hawaii by the way!
China Mike