Damn Small is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution. DSL was originally developed as an experiment to see how many usable desktop applications can fit inside a 50MB live CD. It was at first just a personal tool/toy. But over time Damn Small Linux grew into a community project with hundreds of development hours put into refinements including a fully automated remote and local application installation system and a very versatile backup and restore system which may be used with any writable media including a hard drive, a floppy drive, or a USB device.
DSL has a nearly complete desktop, and many command line tools. All applications are chosen with the best balance of functionality, size and speed. Damn Small also has the ability to act as an SSH/FTP/HTTPD server right off of a live CD. In our quest to save space and have a fully functional desktop we've made many GUI administration tools which are fast yet still easy to use. What does DSL have?
XMMS (MP3, CD Music, and MPEG), FTP client, Dillo web browser, Netrik web browser, FireFox, spreadsheet, Sylpheed email, spellcheck (US English), a word-processor (Ted), three editors (Beaver, Vim, and Nano [Pico clone]), graphics editing and viewing (Xpaint, and xzgv), Xpdf (PDF Viewer), emelFM (file manager), Naim (AIM, ICQ, IRC), VNCviwer, Rdesktop, SSH/SCP server and client, DHCP client, PPP, PPPoE (ADSL), a web server, calculator, generic and GhostScript printer support, NFS, Fluxbox and JWM window managers, games, system monitoring apps, a host of command line tools, USB support, and pcmcia support, some wireless support.
Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things:
• Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)
• Boot from a USB pen drive
• Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows)
• Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install"
• Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install
• Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram
• Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!)
• Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize
Change in DSL v4.3:
* Updated Firefox browser to v2.
* Updated murgaLua to v0.6.8.
* Updated nano-tiny to v2.0.7.
* Updated and consolidation of mydslBrowser with new mydslBrowser.lua.
* New picture puzzle added to Games collection.
* New calculator.lua replaces calcoo.
* Optomized minirt24.gz - much smaller.
* New background and theme for both JWM and Fluxbox.
* Updated 'noicons' boot option to suppress icons in JWM.
* Fixed removal of mydsl extensions on traditional hard drive installations.
* Dropped SCSI modules for needed space - available in the modules section.
* Fixed CD recording scanbus device error by adding scsi/sg.o module
* Updated editor.lua - menu issue resolved for new murgaLua version.
* Updated dmix.lua to support multiple sound card channels with 3-way toggle on sync button.
* Dropped mixer_common.lua - not needed with new dmix.lua program.
* Updated exit.lua - added support for environment variable BACKUP=0.
* Removed unsupported 'groups' command and moved to gnu-utils.
* Corrected permissions on fusermount so normal user can use sshfs.
* New mydslSqlSearch.lua, a personal tool that some may find of intrest.
* New icons for xpdf and files-exec.
* Fixed mydsl-wget from using /var/tmp s/b /tmp.
* Added perl sigtrap.pm
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org
v4.3 Final：
ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/current/dsl-4.3.iso
v3.48 Final：
ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/current/dsl-3.x/dsl-3.4.8.iso
