DSL -what makes you to go for this OS
Forum: User Feedback
Topic: DSL -what makes you to go for this OS
started by: sankarv
Posted by sankarv on July 18 2006,08:34
Hi friends, Just express your views on why you choose DSL out of these following reasons. Just drop in your thoughts about DSL so that more info on DSL can be got by sharing.
Posted by skaos on July 18 2006,09:31
I think you missed one important point: low hardware requirements
Posted by kerry on July 18 2006,11:07
cause it's debian and i love debian distro's. as long as i have a working apt-get i'm a happy camper. 
Posted by Zucca on July 18 2006,11:40
Great in speed... as: runs on older machines. BTW how many other ditributions offer syslinux boot?
Posted by nickelplated on July 18 2006,13:00
I'm quite attracted to the simplicity of it.
Posted by humpty on July 18 2006,22:52
it's anti-bloat. a fresh start on every boot.
Posted by ArmorDragon on July 24 2006,13:47
| Quote (nickelplated @ July 18 2006,09:00) |
| I'm quite attracted to the simplicity of it. |
I have to agree with you on it.
I've been working with it for two weeks now (I'm a Unix-like OS novice) and the fact that I can run the embedded version of it and ease myself into it.
I'm really considering running the Debian HDD install version. There are a lot of things that I still don't get but I find that it's fun to get things to work for me.
Posted by Guest on July 28 2006,02:35
I like it because my 8 yr old laptop is useful again.
Posted by Zucca on July 28 2006,08:13
I have rescued over 10 yrs old computer with this Distro.
Posted by Thulemanden on July 29 2006,12:41
I am a member of choir arguing low hardware resources, working on old equipment (Pentium II mmx mobile).It's a very important feature for DSL as it makes it stand out from anything else.
Posted by magog45 on July 29 2006,18:34
It installs on an old server board when Ubuntu wouldn't and its really fast with 2 processors, which it recognized out of the box which Ubuntu wouldn't
Posted by tawalker on Aug. 02 2006,19:52
I like the fact that DSL uses Fluxbox as its default WM - it's different, fast, very configurable and great for tinkering around with.Rather like the rest of DSL, in fact
Posted by Trog Dog on Aug. 05 2006,06:10
It's small and it runs on old hardware.This makes it an ideal platform for running distributed science projects (a la < BOINC >).
Posted by axy on Aug. 30 2006,18:50
don't forget that s the option for old's machines and poor user's like me 
Posted by XP_Doff on Sep. 02 2006,02:11
Well being i'm on dialup the small size is a good factor ,only took me a couple hours longer d\l it then it does to d\l servicepak2 lol.(about 8-10hrs i think it was,compared to say knoppix live cd which took me about a week to d\l ) .. then after i redownloaded it cuz the md5 cheksum was wrong. It booted rite up..( i just run from the cd) the only trouble i had was the monitor was displaying wrong but after reading the forums then checking the wiki cheat codes i just had to put in vga=normal and answer the questions then everything looked great. It hardly causes the cdrom to spin at all ,just when first loading everything at startup.(unlike knoppix live which spins the cd almost everytime i move the mouse) . Also it ain't bloated with 9 million different programs n stuff to confuse a li-newbie like me,lol.
GREAT distro!
Posted by fozner on Sep. 02 2006,04:43
DSL is the only distro I've found that will not only install on a 13 MB laptop but actually do something useful, like browse the web on the color TFT framebuffer and has a fairly recent kernel and build tools so one can actually compile a network driver! Ndiswrapper support being built-in is also nice for when I get that wireless cardbus card and put this old laptop back in the field.I did have to do a few things to make DSL work well with such a small memory space: 1) Install to HD 2) Create a 64MB swap file so it can actually load Dillo and post this message. 3) Copy the network driver, kernel and build tools to CD to transfer to the laptop. 4) Compile the network driver.
Old 13MB laptop: Free
DSL Linux: Free
Wireless cardbus card: $2
Look on people's faces when they see how old my laptop is: Priceless.
Posted by Gregzilla on Sep. 02 2006,22:30
Old PC, Less Filling.
Posted by sivart7555 on Sep. 02 2006,22:35
I love this because i had an old computer sitting around and decided to start a server but the computer is so old no other linuix would work on it......This is my first time to Linux but i love it! The computer is so old it is a 233 with 60m in it and it is fast and works great as a file server.....to windows......
Posted by lovdsl on Sep. 02 2006,23:58
Simple, Fast, Functional, FUN ..at any levelEvery time I think to myself Hmm wish it could do THAT..I discover it will do that..and as grumpy as I get in the attempt to get there the result is always ha... cool... yes it does do that.
Thanks...MANY THANKS
Posted by ian_the_great on Sep. 12 2006,14:00
i chose this because it is the only linux distro that would reconise my hardware, aside from dsl-n, but that diddent work very well (had trouble reconising removeable storage)
Posted by estilos on Sep. 17 2006,01:35
It detects my evil broadcom wireless stuff
Posted by Thulemanden on Sep. 28 2006,21:15
Got a PII 233mHz. Only distro I had that would install. I'm not into building my own kernels to fit.
Posted by Johnnie Price on Oct. 08 2006,20:31
Why did I go with this OS?1) My laptop crashed and I lost my Windows disc. Not going to pay $150 to replace my OS.
2) This is the only version of linux on which I could get my existing wireless card to work.
Posted by WIREHEAD on Oct. 09 2006,03:47
Wanted to try Linux !I tried several other distros and this is the one that worked best !
It's as simple as I am , and runs on the dusty old Celeron Coppermine 566 MHZ 32M memory that's been sitting in the corner.
Awsome !
WIREHEAD
Posted by Lars on Oct. 14 2006,13:08
Low hardware requierments.It's great. Thanks.
It's running on my 100 Mhz, 16 MB RAM Olivetti laptop!!!
Posted by Andreas on Mar. 23 2007,08:15
Love it since I first tried it out on my Libretto 100.Before I´ve been using Win98 which was rather slow on my notebook.
DSL has given a second life to it
Andreas
Posted by ron on Mar. 23 2007,14:10
I have no idea at all.
Posted by JohnJS on Mar. 23 2007,17:35
All of the above.Many thanks RobertS and John and contributors.
Posted by g1gop on Mar. 24 2007,21:21
Peolpe are allways amazed when I show them a distro that does all they want, is free, just works and runs on old hardware.Thanks to all the team.
Alan
Posted by brian_t_s on Mar. 25 2007,18:59
Reasons I use DSL:-1. It runs on old hardware !!
2. Its Linux (wasn't fussed which distro base)
3. Drivers worked immediately for X and ethernet card
4. Its pretty quick and does the job.
5. Reasonably easy to use
Posted by Audioice on Mar. 27 2007,01:29
My puropse was to make an MP3 box out of a forgotten PC. I wanted to learn Linux, and it seemed DSL requirements were met with this PC. The live CD really helped choosing this distro. I chose it because of:-the size
-Runs on experienced hardware and good detection
-wanted a speedy/efficient distro (anything to help this dinosaur!)
-wanted a current distro
The PC running DSL:
Aopen PC, 133 Mhz Intel Pentium, 64Mb RAM, 1.6Gb Hard disk+4Gb Slave (for /home), Video card: Trident 9385 PCI, Sound card: ES 1688 Audio Drive (ISA), CD-RW/DVD combo drive, Dlink NIC, USB PCI card. Frugal Install.
It is not a speed demon, but I could live with it. It will surf the web while listening to MP3s! The other OS could not do that. I think getting it to comply with all my hardware was difficult for a newbie like me. Maybe it is the Debian roots... but I wanted to learn.
Audioice
Posted by buzzard on April 02 2007,03:54
(why DSL ?)It lets me do 21st century things like view the newer acrobat files that windoze 98's acroread balks on, and access jumpdrives, and other such stuff, without having to update to the new and absurdly bloated windows which would require me to buy a completely new pc.
It doesn't have that notorious microsoft susceptibility to viruses.
The main thing I would miss if i gave up win98 completely would be Visual Basic 3, which will run under WINE, although it takes awhile for wine to start.
I suppose I should learn to code linux GUIs in C?
Or maybe there's a penguin equivalent of VB...
Posted by nexxus6 on April 05 2007,14:39
Great in Speed/Size. I use it to get files off broken windows machines and then I can re-image them back to normal.
Posted by François on Oct. 27 2007,20:58
Hello,I choose DSL to give my old laptop a new life. The laptop is a Pentium 133Mhz toshiba satellite 220CS with an XIRCOM ethernet PCMCIA card. It has been boosted thanks to an extension of RAM to 144MB and a new 60GB hardrive at 7200 rpm.
I tried a few distro (VectorLinux, Slax, Debian), but none of them run as smooth as DSL on such light configuration.
Thanks for the fantastic work!
François