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Topic: installing DSL, going to download and try in 2 weeks

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kangaroo killa Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 11
Joined: July 2005

Posted: July 08 2005,01:01

Ok i have a 2.3gb partition on my HDD after removing the mandrake 10 swap partition and have installed Ubuntu on the mandrake partition leaving 2.3gb partition just laying there. I currently have grub installed (so i can choose between windows and ubuntu) does DSL come with a boot loader and can i disable it during the installer? so it doesnt kill GRUB off. allso does it detect and install drivers for ATI cards and NVIDIA cards?

oh yeah HI everyone im new

Rapidweather Offline

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Posts: 375
Joined: Jan. 2004

Posted: July 08 2005,01:30

I'd try DSL out running from the cdrom drive first to see how it does.
If you have a swap partition, DSL will detect and use it to good benefit.
I have run Ubuntu Linux 5.04 using their live CD on my Toshiba 4015CDS
laptop, a Pentium II with 512 cache, and 160 MB of ram. Ubuntu runs just
fine, but it takes too long to boot up, and you have to wait till it asks what screen resolution to use, half way through the boot. It does have wvdial, so I just copy my wvdial.conf from my Windows partition to /etc, and ubuntu is good to go with dialup, and Firefox.
You'll find that DSL boots much quicker, and once you make a restoration to your hard drive of your personal settings, DSL will automatically pick that up and restore when you boot up. All in all, DSL runs much better on an older laptop, and the interface (fluxbox) is easier to use than Gnome found in Ubuntu. It's all in what you are used to, I suppose. Ubuntu should have gone with KDE, which looks more like Windows, and has tons of features.
DSL can be installed to the hard drive, but I would just run it from CDROM as a livecd, it is so much easier than a hard drive installation, requiring a boot loader. I do run one DSL I have using loadlin, from Windows 98, and the /knoppix folder is placed on the hard drive. That machine has no cdrom drive at all, and DSL runs just fine like that. (I use a backpack cdrom to get things installed).
Hope this helps.
---
Here is what I have been up to in my remaster of knoppix this week:
---
Internet Radio Station Selector for XMMS
The interface is written in Tcl-tk.

--------------
Rapidweather Remaster of DSL:
http://www.angelfire.com/ms/telegram/getting_started.html
Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux:
http://www.geocities.com/rapidweather/getting_started.html
Screenshots:
http://www.rapidweather.com/linuxcdsales.html

kangaroo killa Offline

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Posts: 11
Joined: July 2005

Posted: July 08 2005,02:17

yeah so its good for older systems eh? will it run good on my celeron D 2.4ghz with 512mb pc 3200?

and so i can choose not to install a boot loader because i have grub?

andrewb

Group: Members
Posts: 316
Joined: July 2005

Posted: Aug. 02 2005,03:09

DSL works great with GRUB anyway!

Just copy the /boot & /KNOPPIX directories off the LiveCD to a partition. Put the necessary option(s) into your existing GRUB menu.lst & away you go!

Examples of what's needed in menu.lst can be found if you load the GRUB.DSL extension. Boot the LiveCD, load GRUB.DSL & have a look in /boot/grub. Note that an important option for a frugal install is fromhd=/dev/hdyn where y='a','b','c',... & n = 1,2,3,... depending on what drive & partition you copied the directories to.

Note that if you use the frugla_grub.sh script it doesn't leave a viable boot option in the menu.lst file for GRUB to use (I think the options are all for full HD installs - NOT frugal installs). The most basic GRUB option that I have found that works for me is:

title DSL
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/linux24 fromhd=/dev/hda2 vga=normal frugal
initrd /boot/minirt24.gz

NOTE:
1. This assumes 2nd partiotion of 1st IDE drive.
2. You may need to specify /boot/isolinux/linux24 (&minirt.gz) if you copied the /boot directory from the LiveCD

Might also be worth looking at:

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/talk/node/135

I couldn't find anything in earlier posts or documentation that indicated the necessary step of adding / changing the 'fromhd' option. I only noticed when I deleted the boot & knoppix directories from my dos partition after the frugal_grub install, that GRUB had been accessing the files on the DOS partition (hda1) rather than the ones on hda2 where I had installed DSL to using the script.

3 replies since July 08 2005,01:01

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