SaidinUnleashed
Group: Members
Posts: 1428
Joined: Mar. 2004 |
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Posted: Oct. 13 2004,01:47 |
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massive update day!! woo-hoo!
anyways, lost several pages of the faq when my laptop crashed a few weeks ago, but here's what i ended up saving, quite by accident. I'm putting it in quote tags, because i'm too ing lazy to edit out all the legal crap and formatting.
Quote | Damn Small Linux Forum FAQ (Full-size!)
by J.P. Nimmo A.K.A. SaidinUnleashed
Damn Small Linux is © 2003 - 2004 John Andrews Linux is a Trademark of Linus Torvalds All other Licensed names used in this FAQ are the property of their respective owners.
The purpose of this FAQ is to answer the most common questions that people ask about, and the most common issues that poeple have with Damn Small Linux, which I will, from now on, refer to as DSL.
Q: What is DSL?
A: DSL is a 50 MB live-bootable distribution of Linux derived from Klaus Knopper's "Knoppix". Live-bootable means that you do not have to install it to try it out. Just pop it into your CD-ROM and turn on your PC. A few minutes later, you're using DSL!
Q: Okay, I get the Live-boot thing, but 50 MB just isn't that much! I mean, how functional can DSL possbly be?!
A: Incredibly functional! With DSL, you can everything that Windows can do, and even a few things that windows can't! DSL even has some things that the big distros are getting into. DSL has 3 web browsers, 2 chat clients, a fully functional office suite, cd burning capabilities, a remote desktop client, a terminal server client, 4 editors, a multimedia player, all sorts of system tools, and even games. DSL can do all this because it uses small, lightweight, but powerful applications.
Q: Okay, that really wasn't much of an answer. Can DSL do (insert job here)?
A: Here. I'll list the applications in DSL in groups and tell you what they do. All of these apps can be found in the menu by following the string above the apps name, except Fluxbox. It starts on its own. The strings look like this -
"Games>>TuxNES>>Sack of Flour"
To follow this string, right-click to open the menu, highlight "Games" and the Games submenu will open. Highlight "TuxNES", then "Sack of Flour". Click "Sack of Flour" to start the game!
Some of these apps have shortcuts on the desktop, but I'm listing them according to the Fluxbox menu.
Anyways, here are the apps, as well as a short description of each one.
Fluxbox - the graphical interface (GUI). Probably the first thing you'll encounter in DSL. Just remember, you have to right-click to open the menu.
Apps>>Editors>>Scite Scite - Scite is an fully functional editor that uses a GTK interface. It has a lot of familiar buttons, and is very easy to use. Scite automatically recognizes commands for several programming languages, like C, C++, python, and several others. This is what you would use to edit configuration files, write programs, or whatever other "under the hood" tinkering you would want to do.
Apps>>Editors>>Vim Vim - Vim is another editor, but instead of being GUI based like Scite, Vim is text-based. You can use it from the X-terminal. Vim is a lot like the more common editor Vi, but is much smaller and lighter. Personally, when I first started using Linux, I found Vim to be confusing, but it is quite useful, once you learn how to use it.
Apps>>Editors>>Zile Zile - Zile is a clone of the extremely popular Emacs editor. By far, the most functional, terminal based editor (IMHO), Zile is also fairly easy to use. F10 shows you the mini-help. Just remember that in Zile's command list, "C" means Ctrl.
Apps>>Editors>>Nano Nano - Nano is a clone of the popular terminal-based editor, Pico. Pico is extremely easy to use. All of the commands for Pico are listed at the bottom of the screen. "^" means Ctrl, so to exit Pico, you would press Ctrl+x. It's really easy. NOTE: some of the functions, like the Get Help and Spellcheck functions had to be removed due to space restrictions. But don't worry, it doesn't affect performance.
Apps>>Graphics>>xzgv Image Viewer xzgv - Xzgv is an image viewer (duh). You can use it to view the most common types of pictures. However, .bmp isnt supported, because .bmp's are freaking huge.
Apps>>Graphics>>Xpaint Xpaint - Xpaint is an image creation program, similar to MSpaint. Obviously, Xpaint has nowhere near the functionality of the GIMP, but for a 50 MB space restriction, Xpaint works like a charm.
Apps>>Office>>Ted Ted - Ted is a lightweight wordprocessor. It was originally meant to be something like MSwordpad, but it grew into a fully functional WP capable of creating documents in Rich-text format (.rtf).
Apps>>Office>>Xpdf Xpdf - Think Adobe Acrobat Reader. It lets you view and print PDF files.
Apps>>Office>>Xcalc Xcalc - A neat little scientific calculator program. Very useful when the need arises.
Apps>>Office>>ABS Spreadsheet ABS Spreadsheet - A cool GTK spreadsheet program. At the midpoint between size and functionality, ABS is a nice happy medium. Nice and small, but powerful enough for most things. Compatible with MS Excel, so that's good too.
Apps>>Office>>SQLite SQLite - a very small variant of the SQL address book. This is actually a very good Address book!
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yeah, i know, it's not a lot, but well windows sucks like that. So deal.
-J.P. SaidinUnleashed
-------------- They say if you play a Microsoft CD backwards, you hear satanic messages. That's nothing, cause if you play it forwards, it installs Windows.
Unleash the power of the TILDE~~~
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