Why did you get DSL?

Forum: water cooler
Topic: Why did you get DSL?
started by: Borderpatrol

Posted by Borderpatrol on Sep. 09 2005,20:00

What was your purpose for download it and running it.

The size, and I wanted to learn more about linux.

Posted by Your Fuzzy God on Sep. 09 2005,22:29

I had a bunch of junk parts lying around and built 2 computers (Both 225Mhz and 128MB ram). I was new to Linux, but had already had success installing a < webcam > on a Linux machine (Mepis to be precise). While I liked (and still like) Mepis, these machines were too slow to run it on and they only have 500 and 850MB hard drives. I searched around for a mini-distro and found DSL. I have been playing exclusively with DSL ever since. Mepis just sits in the corner quitely and does it's job.

I love Linux because once the computer is set up I never have to worry about it. I have had the webcam running for over 6 months and have only had to reset the machine once and that was because the router died and I don't know the Linux command to reissue an IP (ifconfig something eth0

).

Anyway, that's my story about how I found DSL. Eventually I will probably give the two old machines to a school (my mum is a 1st grade teacher). I have found a few educational games but I want ALOT of little games and educational packages on these machines before they go out. With a frugal install the computers should last damn near forever.

Posted by MethodOne on Sep. 09 2005,22:55

I use it for the following reasons:

-The size
-Wanted to know more about Linux
-has all the apps I want
-portable (use it all the time in my college's computer lab)
-runs on older computers

The computers that have DSL installed are as follows:

Compaq Presario 1200 XL118:
500 MHz AMD K6 with 3DNow!
64MB RAM
6GB hard drive
shared Trident CyberBlade i7 graphics
Frugal install

A computer that my grandma gave me:
800 MHz AMD Duron
192MB RAM
30GB hard drive
8MB NVIDIA Vanta graphics card (eVGA)
Frugal install

Edit: The computer that my grandma gave me is now running Ubuntu. I now use DSL on older hardware than that and as a live CD.

Also, my Compal DL70 laptop doesn't run DSL very well. It doesn't stretch to 1680x1050 with its Mobility Radeon X600. I don't have time to fool around with my Win XP partition, xfree86, or the ipw drivers. KANOTIX better suits my needs for that system.

Posted by adssse on Sep. 10 2005,04:36

My reasons for starting to use dsl are much like others. I had an old 233mhz with 128mb ram and I needed something that would run smoothly but was also up to date. I also wanted to start learning about linux and it seemed like a great distro because although most things are fairly straight forward, not everything is spoon fed to you.

Posted by dsln00b on Sep. 10 2005,06:36

I got DSL for several reasons:

- I was in search for the best distro that suits my need
- I wanted a distro that is speedy
- With excellent hardware detection
- It comes with apps that I would expect that is included
- And with MyDSL and apt-get, I can get more apps if I wish to

Keep up the good work John :;):

dsln00b

Posted by ke4nt1 on Sep. 10 2005,11:35

Why did you get DSL ?

...I didn't , DSL got me..

73
ke4nt

Posted by green on Sep. 10 2005,12:36

DSL is too cool not to do. Cool factor goes a long way.
I use it on a 133Mhz laptop to a 2.2Ghz desktop and everything in between.
Someday I'll be like Ke4nt and have a dual processor server......

Posted by mikshaw on Sep. 10 2005,14:51

I was looking for something new that wouldn't take four days to download.

The myDSL system and the fact that everything is readable script have been the primary reasons i'm still interested over a year later.

Posted by jshaw on Sep. 12 2005,02:40

I'd been interested in linux for a couple of years, but couldn't ever get everything to work on a new install. I tried 3 or 4 different distros and some wouldn't recognize the sound card, some the nic, etc. I started to get tired of downloading 600 MB iso's just to spend 30 minutes on an install and then not be able to get online to figure out how to get online. Then I came across DSL by way of linux.org. I burned the CD and popped it in the computer... and I've been using it ever since. I am still amazed at how much more time I have to use my computer, instead of constantly having to tweak and configure it, although I still do that for fun. DSL's the greatest.

Posted by Me! on Sep. 28 2005,18:39

As a teen when I first started using computer they were mainframes running Unix. (old man alert) My parents couldn't afford a mainframe for the home, so I moved on the the Apple //e, then on to IBM compatibles. Because I had learned on Unix command line I always like command line to run a computer. I went from a DOS 5.x machine to Windows 2000 machine! I hated and still hate the graphic user interface. I had heard about Linux, but computers took a backseat to my second career choice and never learned more about it. About two years ago, I was able to get a job using both my computer degree and my 'new' career choice, and was able to learn Red Hat, from the command line.
Someone download and burned DSL to a CD and I used it infrequently, but stayed with the Red Hat. We had a computer here at work that was doing nothing, and my supervisor wanted me to spend more time with Linux. So I downloaded DSL 1.5, reformatted the HD, and have been fooling around with DSL. I like it, even if it is a graphic desktop. I took an old home computer and use DSL on that now. I think it is a great quick and dirty OS/web server/ssh client, etc.
I will spend more time with it at home, at work we are building our own Linux for what we need, which is another story, but I do recommend DSL to friends that want to learn Linux. (One person didn't even know they were using Linux after I booted their computer with DSL when their computer crashed.)

So that is my DSL story.

Posted by Qwert on Oct. 17 2005,22:11

I have my DSL on a 128mb usb-pendrive...and I can go everywhere with my system!

It's too cool! :laugh:

I can make everything with this little distro and his MyDSL extension! It's simply beautiful!

I love it

Posted by humpty on Oct. 23 2005,11:19

Wanted an OS with the following;

* Able to just switch off the PC without waiting for shutdown.

* Real add-on apps preferably without messy install.

* Core OS must always be 'clean' (not messed up by apps).

* Portable with excellent Hardware detection.

Posted by loell on Oct. 24 2005,04:03

My pc keeps on shutting down with winxp, due to my crapy mother board. i've searched for distros that can help me

and I found dsl, since then, i became obssesed with it.

Posted by TravMan1963 on Nov. 20 2005,01:24

I started learning about Linux - about a year ago... when I took a college course. Having run win95 (and prior to that a Commodore 64 + 128-D)... guess you could say I just have a curiosity about computers - and - like the Commodores - DSL is a little distro - that rox!

emelfm looks simliar to some of those old disk aps... vim and nano are similar to... I think the word processor was 'SpeedScript'... then along came GEOS..(like 'windows')... and the little pc's performance really suffered... I discoved long ago that a light and bloat free OS and well written code (as well as being in ROM (or RAM with DSL)) = a much more responsive system!

I also have 2 older pcs - a 166 3gb/64MB and a 200mhz --- the 166 runs win98 and firefox ----- so SLOWLY --- that's one of the main reasons I've been working with DSL - wanted something light and fast... (the to ram option isn't availible for that machine - but I've tried it on my 1.5 Ghz 1GB pc --- and... u get the idea...)

I've tried a few distros - Red Hat, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Goblin, Gentoo, and DSL... learned on Red Hat @ School... like Knoppix and DSL at home. 'Back in the day' (when I had the Commodores running) - everything was command line -or you had to write your own programs (I did quite a 'bit' of that)..(the BASIC interpreter and OS are in ROM - ) - so - this is kinda 'takes me back'... although Linux is mucho bigger - another neat aspect is that it is so customizeable - and STABLE

--- the more I use it - the more I like it....this little distro called DSL - 'phenomenal cosmic power in a itty bitty living space'.

TM

Posted by Sir Lunch-a-lot on Nov. 26 2005,20:52

Well, I had got a few live cd distros from a teacher of mine at school, and was interesting in putting linux on my hard drive so that I could learn more about it, and actually use it. Only trouble was, these live cd's were not made so that installing would be feasible.

Mepis was recommended to me by a friend, but, having dial up, I coulnd't download that ourself. And even our school's highspeed was having issues downloading it.

So, when I went hunting for a different distro, I looked for two things:

-Reasonably Small.
-Easy to install.

And When I came across DSL, the reviews I read commented on its ease of installation. And, since it was only 50 megs, I figured I could download it in an afternoon (with download resuming software, of course). I was quite pleased with it when I installed it. It was a very painless install.

I will (hopefully) be getting Mepis on Monday, but I still intend to keep DSL. It's great for learning some of the basics of Linux on, and... yeah, its just great.

I got an older PIII computer from our school library (They were going to recycle the computer, but since I was interested, they said I could have it). I installed DSL, put a few games on it, and gave it to my sister.

Posted by fuzzybud on Dec. 08 2005,00:36

My desktop has an AMD Athlon XP2000+ with 1 GB of RAM. Size is not an issue with me. I am growing more enthusiastic about DSL because John and others have made a mature distro in a small package. DSL is more flexible in how it is used than anyother distro that I know of. And DSL is growing in popularity which might change the movement of Linux away from three, four, and five disk distros. Today's home computer power is so great that developers have grown lazy because they can just add more of "stuff" rather than be more creative as John has been forced to be. I have tried most of the distros in the past two and a half years. I now only use FreeBSD, Kanotix and DSL and just possibly DSL might be myt main distro.

Posted by AwPhuch on Dec. 08 2005,17:58

I dont evern remember when I got "into" DSL...way back when in the .0.6 version or something...

I use it alot and expecially as a rescue CD

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by crusadingknight on Dec. 08 2005,20:39

DSL/Debian/Ubuntu/GNU/Linux (yes, I installed DSL, followed by Debian packages, followed by updating to Ubuntu-5.04 packages, followed by recompiling all of the GNU packages [and Lua, and vim] from source, followed by compiling a tuned kernel-2.4.32) currently serves as my only OS on a 564MHz early i686. I got it because I prefer speed to UI - in fact my window manager only usually serves to run Abiword, aterm (read: vim, bash, gcc, etc.), and xmms. I'm thinking of grabbing the jwm source soon and doing a recompile, followed by source optimization for my needs, so that I can use even less resources.

Posted by Traveller on Dec. 13 2005,16:46

i'm a guy who's willing to deal with getting my finicky computer's reboot issues. i'm willing to accept the fact that to deal with those motherboard issues, i'll need a new computer.but i like my K6-2 @333MHz. i have 196 MB RAM, and a little 4 GB hard drive. i'm not willing to deal with a bloated, buggy and expensive OS on top of this thing. and i like having an itty-bitty iso. i tried Knoppix and never got it to install on the hard drive well. and i don't like KDE on my comp. every other attempt i've made at getting a different distro to work on my comp failed at the install. so i use DSL. i can't wait to move and get a dial-up at home so i can mess with people's heads. they'll get a little flustered when i tell them that i run DSL on a dial-up.

Posted by Helge Hafting on Jan. 03 2006,08:51

I got DSL primarily to use random computers as terminals. I teach students to set up linux servers, so I have to hang out in the lab. Sometimes there is a lot of work to do - and sometimes lots of idle time. In the latter case I use DSL to quickly boot some unused computer. Then I can surf the web or ssh into my office computer and get other work done.

DSL is great for this, the small size means it starts up quickly and remains fast with the "toram" option. And when I need more software than a browser, I simply ssh into another machine.

Posted by cyprus on Jan. 13 2006,04:20

Been playing with linux for maybe a year now. Tried Knoppix, Red Hat 9, and Libranet. Right now, dual-booting Mandriva and WinXP on my daily driver (Gateway laptop, Athlon 64 3400+, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB hdd)

I got DSL a couple of days ago to turn one of my old computers into an mp3 jukebox and fileserver. AMD K-6 350, 196 RAM, plus a scrounged 15 GB hard drive. Main reason I picked DSL was because it's tiny => more room for music. Still trying to get some things working...

Posted by cyprus on Jan. 13 2006,05:18

Posted by pr0f3550r on Jan. 13 2006,11:01

Why?

- It fits (redundantly) on my 1GB flash drive;

- I haven't got a computer and I have to borrow one

- It boots from Winblows with Qemu-kQemu-Qmv86

- It works

- It's Linux

- It's Debian

- It's Damn Small!

Posted by daacosta on Jan. 23 2006,04:34

1) Because I was intrigued with the possibility of placing a whole operating system inside a USB stick [This coupled with a OOo suite makes it perfect to fulfill my needs...] :laugh:

2) Because it is the absolute best way to learn about Debian :;):

I seem not to have enough of DSL and have been running it live and embedded on top of my Fedora Core 4 box. In fact, when FC 5 comes out I am going to hold upgrading my box and install DSL on my hard drive in order to play with it and maybe turn it into my favorite OS.

:blues:

Posted by muskrat on Feb. 02 2006,18:00

Why did you get DSL? and Why do I use DSL? are two totally different questions.

Why did you get DSL? For the same reason I got about two dozon other downloads, just plan cirous, I like to test drive any new linux I can. It's a great learning experance.

Why do I use DSL? Because to date it is the best HD install on my 500mhz AMD 64mb ram Laptop. Everything worked right out of the box so to speak. Except the wireless nic card. Even the sound which was unusal, Mirco Suck didn't even do that from the factory. Lost98 never had any volume on the sound system, you could bearly hear it. DSL give me enough volume I can here it over the sound of the desiel engine while I'm in my truck.

It's funny thing though, I tried to use it here at home on my Desktop PC, and was greatly disappointed. DSL wouldn't run my 3com nic which all other linux distros see. So I use Puppy here at home.

Of course I still keep GNU/Debian 3.1 around and Slackware 10.2. Those are my old faithful distros. And in my cybercafe I still have to have Micro Suck, the masses of dumbed down PC users cry for LostXP, But I've managed to calm them with LostME, because I refuse to use XP on my equipment.

As soon as I get a good grip on win4lin I might can get them to run emulated LostME! That's my hope.

Posted by doobit on Feb. 02 2006,18:49

Interesting, because DSL runs my 3Com nic just fine. I got DSL because of the novelty of it at first, but then quickly discovered that it's not only dam small, but dam practical as well.

Posted by 300c_pilot on Feb. 04 2006,03:28

I learned of dsl and thought it would go good on a compaq 1275, does well and makes the laptop useable again.

What I have learned in the mean time is that it is an excellect recovery platform for failed Windows machines that clients have to have files from. It also makes a solid platform for daily operations.

When your machine has to boot, use DSL...

Posted by Radieon on Feb. 08 2006,00:08

I use DSL for many reasons.

-I wanted to learn more about Linux. What more than to play in root and not worry...
-Small size (and Live CD capabilities)
-Embeddable on my USB Drive (512M)
-Backup (Windows is like glass... aren't windows made of glass?)
-Internet purposes. For some reason, Windows won't install friggin' updates. This prevents me from using the school's network, i.e. internet access.
-And edit .iso files and test them using Qemu.

It's the perfect tool when you have the myDSL extensions. These are awesome!

I got DSL because back in high school, I had a small thumb drive (128M) and was looking for something to use it for other than carrying mp3 files and such. I'm still learning more about Linux everyday. I have a slow 300MHz with 192M ram and a 20G and 6G hard drive. I still use my 0.9 iso from a while back, as well as the 1.5. DSL is awesome; keep up the good work!

Posted by edmunday35 on Feb. 23 2006,15:53

I stumbled across DSL from Frozen Tech's live CD list last year and have been playing with different distros. DSL seems to be the easiest to work with, is Very small works on my old P1 machines with 100meg ram 850 hd. I just DLoaded 2.2b and really like the feel as I am running it now after swapping hd with a friend and reinstalling mine the linux system crashed.

Posted by _pathos on Feb. 26 2006,09:21

I'm doing a BSc and with all this talk about linux and after realising its infinite advantages over windows from the labs at uni I wanted to get my own.

I only had 56k dialup internet and I was estatic when I found a live cd distro that I could download in only 3 hours.

I fell in love with it instantly because although it wasn't perfect it seemed so easy to customize.

Its the easiest distro to install too. You can install it from within win95

, or with a dos boot disk/tomsrtbt and serial cable (beats floppy install).

Posted by jam22 on Mar. 16 2006,07:35

DSL can really run on old hardware!

I am currently using a P1 75 with 32mb RAM. I replaced the hard disk with a 6GB since it crashed. Just created enough swap file (500mb) and wow it really works. The speed is okay. Not so fast but since I used it mostly for documents its okay.

I am still exploring it but at least my old computers have been given a new lease on life.

btw, I also have pentium 2s but since I can upgrade the memory to 256mb I am using Knoppix/Kanotix. It sure is great that I can use similar distros for low powered computers to more higher powered ones.

Posted by humpty on Mar. 17 2006,05:47

I got fed up of installing/re-installing bloated OSs cos the apps screwed up the works or put something somewhere I didn't know about. A bloated linux is just as bad as a screwed up m$bollocks system (see, I'm not biased :cool:

).

DSL is lean and mydsl apps are the future - truly standalone. It won't surprise me if they choose it to run something on a NASA mission one day!

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 18 2006,18:26

FYI, if you want to run knoppix on your 256MB machine and you miss the lightweight desktop/window manager Fluxbox that comes with DSL, you can start up knoppix and specify Fluxbox instead of KDE. You type:

knoppix desktop=fluxbox

and you will see a big improvement. Still not as fast and light as DSL, but much better than KDE.

Posted by JohnH on Mar. 19 2006,15:26

I fell into DSL while looking for a distro to use in a Jukebox that will hold 200+ Cds on two 200Gb in uncompressed format and have excellent audio quality output.

My lack of understanding the filesystem has prevented my jukebox from happening but I now use DSL on a silenced 450Mhz PII for web cruzing while watching TV or listening to music.

Posted by janrocks on Mar. 26 2006,03:05

How? I needed a file server

Why..Poverty, my main machine is a P3 600 with 256ram and only room inside for one hdd...My isp insists on hated xp or ME (why?...I'm working on that) so lack of space on my drive means that I needed to set up some other relics to act as "driveholders" to give me some secure, reliable space to keep all the things I download, and to store all my music on.

My husband keeps complaining about the "Frankenstein Monster" that is evolving in the spare room 2 P133's and a collection of various 486dx2's.(I asked for money, honest..when the electricity bill comes he will have to buy me a better computer, It's gonna be cheaper).....The spiders are very happy though, they got some warmth now!

DSL fits well with my life model...Lean Mean Cooking machine!

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 26 2006,05:51

Hook up a home router to your ISP.

Most ISPs can be configured to work with a router.

Once a router is set up, it is easy to have a linux or MacOS box connect to the Internet.

Posted by ShellMaza on April 17 2006,23:20

I Love It, I Use The LiveCD All Day And Night. I Have A Failing WD 36G Raptor And Is Very Flackie. I Have A 2nd 120G Seagate Drive As Stroage. I Use To Run NetBSD On My Old P2 Labtop With Fluxbox. DSL Has Brought Back My Fluxbox Enjoyment. And The MyDSL Ext Installer Makes Life Easy!

Main Pc:
Intel P4 HT 3.0Ghz 775
1 Gig OCZ El Plat Ram
GForce 6600 256MB AGP
36G 10K RPM WD Raptor
120Gig Seagate
SB Audigy 2
Water Cooled!

Posted by underdog5004 on July 11 2006,01:25

Well, I've been tooling around with linux for the past year and a half. I've tried SUSE, ubuntu, debian, gentoo, etc...
I finally got fed up with all the bloat (especially for SUSE and Ubuntu), so I tried DSL, just as an experiment; I [SHOUT] LOVE [/SHOUT] DSL...right now I'm using DSL on a 366Mhz 20Gb HDD 64Mb RAM box with a gig of swap...I just load my entire music collection into the playlist in xmms, select random + repeat, hit play, and relax...ahhhh. I've even got xmms to start automatically on boot.
Now, if I could only get myDSL extensions working...

-Matthew

EDIT: Yay!! I finally read the wiki on myDSL extensions...and I love them. I've got everything from blender to bugsquish to wmbubble! Yeah. I'm so stoked.

Posted by yaen on Aug. 15 2006,14:58

This distro can run my compaq armada 1700 PII 233 Mhz 96 Mo 3 Go as none distro or OS can do. fast and beautiful.
I installed it with boot parameters :
lang=fr noacpi nolapic noapic fb=800x600 noscsi noagp

still looking how to configure sound and Realtek 8180L wifi. everyting works great otherwise and with this old computerit's amazing.

Posted by Module on Feb. 22 2007,18:28

I got DSL because:
- I wanted to run a portable OS
- I like Linux
- I like Linux
- It does what I need.

Posted by curaga on Mar. 11 2007,16:38

I got DSL 'cause
I got an old computer for free and wanted to do something with it
I also like Linux
I'm quite anti-M$

Posted by the Missing M on Mar. 23 2007,15:38

On any platform, I've always liked and respected lean, clean software that doesn't weigh too heavily on the hardware. Often you get the same or better functionality, with the added benefit of much greater speed. Okay, so you miss the fun of watching a beautifully rendered splash screen for thirty seconds, while the program loads. That's one aesthetic experience I can usually do without.

But the traditional command-based UI of UNIX, Linux, and other UNIX-like systems can be a little intimidating. *Very* useful, once you get the hang of it, but where to begin?

My CLI/scripting experience is limited to using MacLynx [an old, now very broken v2.7.1 port that hasn't been updated since the '90s], a shell account with a previous ISP, used to run Lynx via telnet sessions and unpack tarred/gzipped web pages on-site [saves a lot of time, even if you don't save any space compressing GIFs/JPGs; there's a lot less handshaking between FTP client and server, when you're only uploading one big file]. Then there's AppleScript, a few batch files [mostly for use with the hot new Lynx 2.8.6 on a PC ;-) ], and a sadly incomplete vocabulary using `Run...' and the Command Prompt in Windows. I guess JavaScript doesn't count.

Not much to start with, is it?

So I'd kind of dismissed Linux as a truly amazing, but kind of out-of-my-reach system, at least until about a month ago. And in this past month I've been learning a *lot* about it.

Although I haven't actually tried DSL yet, from everything I've seen it's the best thing going, especially for older hardware. And it generally suits my aesthetic sense that `less is more' in software. Nice to see I'm not the only one who thinks that way. :-)

One thing that looks really nice about the FluxBox desktop environment is that, unlike KDE and GNOME it doesn't try too hard to look like the MacOS or Windows. And why should it? It's not. One thing I've noticed, learning to use Windows after being a Mac user all this time, is that the apparent similarities can sometimes be worse than the differences, especially when something that looks familiar doesn't work the way you expect it to.

Who knows? This might even be an easier system to learn. If not, at least it promises to be interesting. :-)

Patrick.

Posted by ron on Mar. 23 2007,18:37

Quote (the Missing M @ Mar. 23 2007,10:38)

But the traditional command-based UI of UNIX, Linux, and other UNIX-like systems can be a little intimidating. *Very* useful, once you get the hang of it, but where to begin?

Can you recommend a good command-line email client, which will allow me to set TLS and also set specific ports for SMTP and POP3, so I can use it with Gmail?

Posted by the Missing M on Mar. 23 2007,21:53

Quote (ron @ Mar. 23 2007,06:37)

Quote (the Missing M @ Mar. 23 2007,10:38)

But the traditional command-based UI of UNIX, Linux, and other UNIX-like systems can be a little intimidating. *Very* useful, once you get the hang of it, but where to begin?

Can you recommend a good command-line email client, which will allow me to set TLS and also set specific ports for SMTP and POP3, so I can use it with Gmail?

Pine's my first guess, but maybe not the best. Maybe you should ask again in the `Apps' category, and hope someone who actually knows what they're talking about will answer you. ;-)

But since you asked me instead...

It's a complete terminal-based email client, which might be more than you ever wanted or needed, especially if you're just looking for a quick one-command tool for email. Blat with Wine might be closer to what you had in mind. I installed PC-Pine under Windows, tried it, then found something else. Held onto Pico though [Pine's default editor, included with the installation] because it does come in handy, regularly. :-)

Pine seems to have the features you're looking for, as described here;
< http://www.madboa.com/geek/pine-ssl/ >

Note the syntax;
smtp-server=smtp.server.dom:port/tls

And here's where it comes from;
< http://www.washington.edu/pine/ >

Please keep in mind that I have no idea what I'm talking about, have not actually used Pine under Linux, installed Linux locally, or used DSL [yet...], so my advice should not be taken, and certainly should not be taken seriously. Okay?

Okay. Ass covered.

But I still hope it helps.

Patrick.