Patching DSL's name - RTDM?

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Patching DSL's name - RTDM?
started by: docdtv

Posted by docdtv on Oct. 27 2004,00:05

First off, DSL is fantastic. Light-weight and yet highly functional, it is a wonderful way to breathe life back into old PCs whose next destination had been as door stops...

Now, at the risk of making people wet their pants while RTFMing, I'd like to raise an issue concerning DSL's name.

Forget all you've heard about life in post-Clinton America. I hang out in the small-town upland Southeast USA. To my surprise, I have learned that among nice older people here, the "D-word" is still SHOCKING.

I want to help people here enjoy a cheap zero-maintenance Internet appliance by having them use DSL on ancient PCs. I'm afraid that the D-word will make my job harder than it need be - it is a punch below the Bible Belt!

Is there an easy way to patch the various occurences of "damn" to "darn", or have you lost the power of speech because you're on the floor out of breath from laughing so hard?

- Just a DSL FNG

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Oct. 27 2004,01:36

This has been raised several times, and the name hasn't changed so far.

So I doubt that it will change any time soon.

"Damn Small" is just to show the extent of how tiny it really is.

At least it isn't called F#$%ing Small Linux. Look on the Bright Side™.

-J.P.

Posted by cbagger01 on Oct. 27 2004,03:57

FYI,

John & Co made quite an effort to eliminate the word "damn" from being used inside the distribution. The bootup screen no longer contains the word "damn" and the default user account name is "dsl" instead of "damnsmall".

Short of renaming the distro and confusing everybody, there isn't much more that can be done.

If the name is too big of an issue for you, please try some other distributions that are based on similar concepts as Damn Small Linux, with some of them being direct decendants of it.

For starters, try Feather Linux or Liut Linux.

"Feather" sounds pretty harmless but who knows about Liut? Maybe it's named after a demon from the sixth plane of h*ll? Who knows :laugh:

Posted by clivesay on Oct. 27 2004,12:22

Hey! A little CB humor! I like it!

If you really love DSL but the name throws you, look at Feather. It is similar in design and they both are based on Knoppix 3.4. I live in the midwestern US and have dealt with the same issue you are describing.

Chris

Posted by somerville32@hotmail.com on Oct. 27 2004,12:31

I can't see a problem with you calling it darn small linux to your friends and family that you are trying to get to use DSL. It isn't going to throw anybody off. I would suggest just using the acrynom DSL but I could see that causing confusion. So if I were you, just say darn small linux.

And ack to the people who suggest other distros!

~Me

Darn Small Linux Rules

Posted by Razor Toting Jim on Oct. 27 2004,13:13

From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY (©1911 Released April 15 1993):
DAMN, v. A word formerly much used by the Paphlagonians, the meaning
of which is lost. By the learned Dr. Dolabelly Gak it is believed to
have been a term of satisfaction, implying the highest possible degree
of mental tranquillity. Professor Groke, on the contrary, thinks it
expressed an emotion of tumultuous delight, because it so frequently
occurs in combination with the word _jod_ or _god_, meaning "joy." It
would be with great diffidence that I should advance an opinion
conflicting with that of either of these formidable authorities.

How could any get offended by the word Damn in DSL. It is used in a positive. manner.

Razor Toting Jim

Posted by Jed on Oct. 27 2004,13:49

background to the above:
< http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8109/ >

Posted by clivesay on Oct. 27 2004,13:55

In my case, I am dealing with kids. While I understand the "it's no big deal" argument, you can't explain that away very well to a school administration and/or a small faith-based community like where I live. This has been talked about many times in the forum. I think John just never realized how popular this little project would become. I feel sorry for the people who just settle with Fedora or Suse. They are missing so much!!

Chris

Posted by mikshaw on Oct. 27 2004,14:27

Quote

I feel sorry for the people who just settle with Fedora or Suse. They are missing so much!!

Don't feel sorry for me. I've been using suse for a couple of years, and i love it. Comparing it to DSL doesn't work for me, since I use them in different ways.

removing "damn" from the distro would at least break some extensions...I don't know any more than that. Personally I think it's silly for anyone to be concerned about a word, and this coming from someone who was raised conservative, fundamentalist baptist. Still, if it is an issue, there are other distros, as was mentioned.

Posted by clivesay on Oct. 27 2004,15:04

milkshaw -

I am talking about the people who never venture outside the big distros. I like MEPIS myself. I am just talking about learning...isn't that what Linux is all about?

Posted by somerville32@hotmail.com on Oct. 27 2004,15:38

I concur!

Posted by docdtv on Oct. 28 2004,01:04

Quote (cbagger01 @ Oct. 26 2004,23:57)

First let me thank the powers-that-be for having addressed the issue I raised. I'm also sorry if doing that much kept them from working on substantive technical progress. But for the record, I know there are still uses of "damn" within some of the utilities, although I can't cite a particular example off-hand. And of course you know at which Web site one gets technical support.

One older woman in my county, a Mormon (we have the oldest LDS congregation in my state), takes the D-word in stride by telling this little pun: "You know, when Brigham Young settled out West, he would say 'dam this!", "dam that!" - refering, of course, to rivers."

As for me, I spent most of childhood in the big, bad Inner City. Perhaps you know the old Robin Williams joke about how kids there learn to recite the alphabet: "F****** A!, F****** B!, F****** C!, ..."

As nearly everyone knows, the acronym DSL has its own problem, because of collision with Digital Subscriber Line.

I will be sticking with DSL. I've invested some of my limited time in it, and I now learn it earns the praise of people I respect who have used it a long time, too. For now, when asked by local people what DSL means, I think I'll say it means "Door Stop Linux" to ME - a distro that runs just fine on PCs perhaps otherwise only useful as doorstops these days. Maybe if they discover another meaning, I'll try to placate them with the notion of the far more severe expressions they can encounter merely by surfing the Web using DSL - or any other OS.

While it might be flattering that DSL has inspired parallel efforts with less provocative names, there is something to be said for keeping forking to a minimum. (No snickering!)

I read claims that as of version 0.8, DSL remastering grows more difficult. If things are really not that bad, I'd like to try my hand at remastering, if only to *fully* automate the process of customization, e.g. via a floppy disk. If I do that, I can grep for any "nasty" words while I am at it.

Thanks again for the many kind replies posted here. :o)

Posted by WoofyDugfock on Oct. 29 2004,07:11

I like F#$%ing Small Linux. Call it F#$%ing Small Linux with all wildcards evaluated, and put a whopping great erection on the boot up screen.

And CBagger1's demon Luit and all his little minions from the sixth layer of hell are nothing compared to Beelzebub himself, and you know to what OS I refer ... Now THAT's what I call indecent.

OK I'm being crassly facetious as usual, sorry. But y'know, a lot of Americans (but not enough) and 99% of rest of the world are awfully tired of puritanical claptrap. It's not whether or not these issues are trivial, or are right or wrong in themselves - that's a separate issue - it's that these are so glaringly, unsuccessfully at odds with the dominant reality (money, money, money, status, possessions, Hollywood, power, bigotry etc) that it cannot help but be seen as hypocrisy - especially when the hard-won liberties that supposedly lie at the heart of Western life are glibly dispensed with in their name or in the name of this god 'security'. And if you're into this figure Jesus: only one thing ever got Jesus mad. Guess what it was? Hypocrisy of course!

This word "damn" is a perfectly legitimate word that occurs in sacred texts and in common usage. Yes I suppose it was once used as a literal curse about sending the receiver to hell but is anyone actually thinking of this meaning now and if so does it matter a damn?

And what of "shucks" and "sheez!". I think Ned Flanders uses those, doesn't he? Words like these are (I'm guessing) but thinly disguised references to either Jesus or to that famous middle Dutch/ancient Nordic word for excrement. Ban them! Ban them all! Castrate and burn all defilers of the language!

Anyway "Sheez Small Linux" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Please note I am NOT calling the original poster a hypocrite, and I know he has his reality to deal with. I really hope DSL or its variants get taken up with gusto by the Mormon community or whoever. But I can't help but think that there are more important matters to worry about in the world. Whether John and the developers feel like changing the name, or not, is their business - they are the ones who put in the hours.

Damn, I've probably gone and offended everybody now! Forget I ever said anything.

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 29 2004,14:07

Quote (WoofyDugfock @ Oct. 29 2004,03:11)

Thank God I'm not the only conservative American on this board...I thought I was going to die!!!

Nuff said by me...dont want to hijack the thread

Oh and Political Correctness can kiss my a$$

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by WoofyDugfock on Oct. 31 2004,09:56

Yes afterwards I did have second thoughts about my post, although I still largely agree with it and I am relieved you did Brian. I know this isn't the right board to get into politics (although I would say that merely using OSS and Linux is something of a political statement, given the arguably damnable - no pun intended - MS hegemony).

However just for the record (not to make a big deal out of it) I wouldn't describe myself as 'conservative' other than perhaps in the John Ralston Saul sense, if you have read any of his books or heard him speak. But as he would say, such lables have lost much if not all of their original meaning in any case.

Anyway back to technophilia ... and I really do hope the d-word doesn't interfere with people using DSL or offend anyone.

[I] :;):