Damn Small Linux is Damn Fine

[MisterChristie]

It has been a while since I last used DSL and when I saw this new release I figured I'd try reviving an old Toshiba Satellite A20 laptop. Speced with a P4 2.8GHz, 512MB ram, 55GB hard drive. And it works great. The default Fluxbox is excellent, but I decided I would install Awesome WM as I use that daily, and it is working beautifully.

My only problem is I can't seem to shutdown the computer from the login screen, I have no mouse cursor there and I'm not sure what keys to use.

BadWolf works well, can be a bit laggy, so going to try NetSurf. I tried loading Youtube but BadWolf freezes loading it. Of course I never expected to watch any videos on Youtube on this machine.

Here are some shots of Awesome WM on DSL with the excellent wallpaper that ships with DSL.

[John]

Thank you for sharing your experiences with DSL! I agree with you that Awesome looks great.

The login manager does not have a way to shutdown from the login screen, but you could use the ctrl+alt+f1 keys to get to a TTY and then use ctrl+alt+del to prompt a shutdown.

I have had good luck with Badwolf and Youtube as long as I enable JavaScript before entering the website and I keep the video play area on the smaller side. The larger Firefox-esr does play videos more smoothly though. NetSurf is a nice browser, but it is significantly less HTML5 compatible than BadWolf. It will not be able to play Youtube. Think of it as a middle ground between BadWolf and Links2 or Dillo.