Damn Small Linux complaint...

[Woof Woof Brysche]

Okay, I'm sorry, but I have to make this. I hate Damn Small Linux more than you could ever imagine. The language in this gets mildly inappropriate.

First of all, Damn Small Linux isn't a very attractive name. It contains a word that makes it somewhat inappropriate, makes it just sound like it's for junk computers, unlike Puppy which I'm running on two very powerful machines.

Although Damn Small Linux is the same size as puppy, it's too bare. Puppy comes with the outstanding SeaMonkey, has a great little package manager, and behind it, a great community with really cool people.

Please try to find me a computer that has less or only 8 MB of RAM. That's what DSL takes, which is completely pointless. Why on earth would it be this small? The name implies it's small, but this is just beyond "small". This Starving Linux, there was no point in creating it.

Now let's move on to aesthetics. Puppy is very cute, just hearing the name makes me go 'awww'. Who couldn't love it, the cute little blue puppy at startup, the "woof woof" once you start up, everything about it rocks.

DSL is ugly as hell.



Look at the ugly interface, who on earth designed it? I mean, I'm a male, and I can STILL say that's ugly and tacky.

I might add on more... Bottom line, Puppy forever! The only ones that compare (in my opinion) are Slax, Arch, Debian, and Gentoo.

[rjbrewer]

No! You didn't have to post this!!!

It has nothing to do with Puppy!!!

Seek professional help.

[Woof Woof Brysche]

No! You didn't have to post this!!!

It has nothing to do with Puppy!!!

Seek professional help.

I already have lots of professional help

[benali72]

I don't believe that DSL and Puppy have the same resource requirements. In their current releases, DSL requires 64M for full GUI and is contained in a 50M distribution file. Puppy requires 128M for full GUI and is contained in a 100M distro file. Also, DSL runs completely from memory with 128M while Puppy requires 256M to run completely from memory.

To me, DSL and Puppy therefore have slightly different target machines. Their ranges of best application are different (but overlapping).

[ttuuxxx]

good post dsl is well, dsl, They don't really update there stuff
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall
The only real change since dsl started to the latest 4.0 was and upgrade of Firefox to version 2.0 and switching to JWM. If you wanted a truly fair comparison of size match the specs, it would be closest is 63MB puppy 1.0.9 even that is a bit newer than the latest DSL, you can download all the older puppies at http://puppylinux.ca/puppyfiles/vintage/
or the next would be puppy 2.02 which was 51MB or 73MB, But that came with GTK2 hence the larger size. DSL 4.0 is still GTK1.2 and comparing the latest of both distros is like comparing a pebble to the tallest mountain. Really DSL 4.0 is just a 5yr old release that has been hardly updated. Puppy has went through complete upgrades a few times and stays with the latest stable release that work well on it. DSL is really an unmaintained dinosaur that does not come close to what puppy is or even was back 5 years ago.
ttuuxxx

[Lobster]

For a long time DSL was a top 10 distro
People found it useful
The first time I ran an OS from a USB keydrive it was DSL that achieved this where Puppy could not.
DSL is based on Debian and hence has access to those files
as well as being able to install a minimal Debian to HD

Personally I found Austrumi (Slackware based) was a close second to Puppy and DSL was a little too minimalist

There was an idea I floated about a merger between DSl and Puppy
resources but no one showed any interest and frankly DSL no
longer has anything we require.

We are now the dominant small distro
with strong innovation from Quirky, Dpup and Pupeee
and many others - as well as compilers and program writers

Puppy runs on any old junk
http://www.brighthub.com/computing/linu ... 15664.aspx

The possibilities may require less hardware than you think . . .
http://www.puppylinux.org/wikka/MinReq

In my usage, Puppy is preferred to Ubuntu, Windows
or MacOS

We are a damn good distro

[Colonel Panic]

I've tried DSL but I couldn't get online with it, so I didn't stick with it.

Obviously I agree that Puppy is the better distro, but IMO anyone who sets out to make a distro which runs on old equipment, as DSL does, deserves praise.

BTW, the first computer I had did have 8 MB of RAM, and I got online with it using DOS and the Arachne web browser. It was great for the time (2000) but limited by today's standards (no tabbing, Javascript etc.). It would have been marvellous if DSL had been around at the time and had worked on it.

[davesurrey]

Well this part of the Forum does say it's for raves amongst other things so fair enough but I have to agree with the last 4 posters.

To compare DSL with Puppy makes little sense and the OP is wrong in stating that the two are of similar size. Trying to work in half the space necessitates a lot of compromises. And in it's favour it should be realised that DSL is one of the few distros still using the 2.4.X kernel which can make a lot of difference as to whether old kit will run or not. Sadly we live in a World where a 5 year old PC is looked at by many with disdain, But if one tries to run a laptop, for example, that is more than 10 years old, one of which is sitting near me, I can say that DSL does still have a useful role to play. I agree with Colonel Panic there.

It's always difficult to know when a distro has died as it's usually possible to find the files somewhere but a quick look on the DSL forum will show that this is effectiveley an abandoned project and has been for well over a year.

In the meantime one of the key (perhaps the key) developer of DSL now is putting his efforts into TinyCore (I trust you prefer the name Woof Woof Brysche.) It starts with an even smaller base (10MB) but soon expands as all distros do when more apps are added and/or better looking apps are chosen. In this respect nothing comes for free. So Puppy has plenty of competition but is still up there with the best.

Cheers

[ttuuxxx]

I just tried the latest DSL, and well after 4 different boot config's it didn't run on my latest pc's, 2.14X does run perfectly, I would say DSL must have some uses for older pc's, but that it is not even close to being update, Newer pc's would find it a waste of time to download.
ttuuxxx

[bugman]

In the meantime one of the key (perhaps the key) developer of DSL now is putting his efforts into TinyCore (I trust you prefer the name Woof Woof Brysche.) It starts with an even smaller base (10MB) but soon expands as all distros do when more apps are added and/or better looking apps are chosen. In this respect nothing comes for free. So Puppy has plenty of competition but is still up there with the best.

as a dialup user, i cannot consider a distro that does not even include ppp to be much competition for puppy . . .

[nooby]

I don't remember how many times I have tried DSL. On three different computers and even on my latest HP desktop but failed to get out on internet.

So it is not for me.

And 2008 when I tried to get in as member on their board they seemed to never accept my email. Maybe they read my ramblings here and decided me no hacker. So I gave up on them.

[Slapdash]

DSL is the reason I came to know Puppy Linux. I spotted the name in an article somewhere, and frankly it caught my eye. I google it, which led me to a wikipedia page on small linuxes, and of all those listed there Puppy seemed the easiest to try. I do seem to remember that I found the installation instructions in Puppy to be the clearest (burn the iso and make the pc boot from the cd first). For some reason I didn't think the DSL install was as simple. Although it might be, don't know, sticked with Puppy ever since.

HOWEVER, what I do know is that DSL was and still is an iconic distribution.
And seeing how it might be considered competition to Puppy I'd be very wary about topics such as this one. It might turn into a flame war within seconds.

[hillside]

Hey! DSL is what really got me into linux. I had an old wreck of a trashed box that someone threw out and DSL ran quite nicely on it. I was able to install all the programs I needed at the time -- spread sheet, word processor, etc. It was never super pretty, but I don't think it was disgusting and it was useful. I like useful.

Take a look at their mission. DSL was a project to see how much could be crammed into a business card sized cd. They set the limit arbitrarily at 50 megs. The intention was never to create a full fledged distro, but to stick to the 50 meg limit and see how much they could do with it.

Their community splintered somewhat a while back and the project has gone stale, but for a while, they were going great guns.

[davesurrey]

Well thank God there's a choice of distros for all our different requirements which should tell us that there ain't such a thing as the best one. It's a very very personal choice.

Yes DSL may not work so well on the latest kit but that's where Puppy 431 can rule supreme... or one of the many other current ones.

And Tinycore doesn't come with ppp or even a WM at the start but it does allow me to add just what I want to and not what soemone else believes I should have.

But slating DSL now seems to be missing the point in the same way that the DC3 was a fine aircraft in its day but won't compare well with a 777 in 2010.

Perhaps we should judge things in terms of their original objectives.

Cheers
Dave

[Aitch]

Wrong place to post this rant, really

There was bad blood between DSL devs & John Murga some time ago, needs to RIP, IMHO

& perhaps since Robert Shingledecker's move to start TinyCore, after a further row with John Andrews, no surprise, really, either

http://www.shingledecker.org/andrews.html

Comparing Puppy with DSL - It's like comparing a sea breeze with a f*rt in a spacesuit.....

Development IS very personal, so no harm intended, either way

Aitch

[racepres]

If not for DSL I would not know about Puppy!
I was P.O.'d at having Mac osX leave my old Powerbook behind, so I put debian onto it. During the research of course unknowing souls pointed me in every imaginable direction [not realizing PPC is mucho Different]! One being DSL for "old" Equip. well I scared up an old lappy [really old] PC and tried DSL, very cool, still on that box in fact. Came up first time w/ wireless connection all by itself. since then I found a new use for cheap equipment that in the past I had nothing to do with.. [No Windoze for me Thanks]. And Puppy is a natural...I'm here to stay, but some genuinely old stuff is better w/ DSL.
Flame On
I'm a Mac... I can take it!!
RP

[daftdog]

I too have DSL to thank for discovering Puppy Linux.
Used BeOS for years until my daughter wanted flash games. Had tried Linux years before (late 90's: with large chunks of my life spent configuring, etc.) so went looking for a Linux distro again. Tried DSL but it didn't work too well on my PC so looked further and discovered Puppy (1.0.9 I think) and haven't looked back. (Occasionally play around other distro's but always come back to the faithful K9.)

[DMcCunney]

Okay, I'm sorry, but I have to make this. I hate Damn Small Linux more than you could ever imagine. The language in this gets mildly inappropriate.

The whole rant is mildly inappropriate. You may not like DSL, but it's a good job of what it is.

Damn Small Linux is based on a theoretical ideal. It's small. It's not the same size as Puppy - it's less than half the size. The creator of DSL set a limit of 50MB on the size of the ISO, while Puppy is now edging over 100MB. (And DSL development has hit a wall, in part because the developer can't think of anything else he can add to improve the distro without exceeding his 50MB limit.)

Find a computer with 8MB of RAM? Perhaps you missed the post elsewhere on the forums where a user described how he got Puppy running on a 16MB machine (by stripping out everything he could, and building the Puppy image he would run on another more powerful machine, to be able to create it in the first place.) Other Puppy users have reported success using Puppy on machines with 48 or 64MB of RAM. There's lots of older hardware out there with limited resources that can still have a useful purpose if you can get a flavor of Linux on them at all.

And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I have an old friend who is a long time Linux user who found Puppy's default appearance ugly. It was too cartoonish for his taste. DSL may not suit your taste out of the box, but hey, it's Linux. You can change it! See the many threads here on what people have done to make Puppy something they found beautiful. Some have changed window managers. Others have enjoyed seeing how they could stretch JWM.

I got into Puppy because I was looking for a version of Linux that would run acceptably on older hardware, and DSL was one thing I looked at. I suspect it would meet my needs too, but I tried Puppy seriously first, and it worked well enough that I felt no need to seriously explore DSL.

On my desktop, I run Ubuntu, and if the user is interested in running Linux and has the hardware needed to run it comfortably, Ubunto or something like it will be what I'll point at. It does the best job I've seen in a Linux distro of figuring out what you have and setting itself up so that it just works, out of the box.

I think of Puppy as the hot rod you build and customize yourself. It's a lot of fun, and the results can be stunning, but you have to be a mechanic to do it. If you aren't a mechanic or interested in becoming one, Puppy is not for you.

Meanwhile, DSL serves a particular purpose, and has a group of users who like it. It meets their needs. The fact that it doesn't meet yours isn't cause for hatred or even dislike. It's just cause to use another distro, and that's what you did.
______
Dennis

[nooby]

I apology for not following the thread. Very busy with frugal install just now.

But one of the developer of DSL and now he launched TinyCore instead he writes in a DistroWatch text that he invented frugal install for DSL.

Could be my bad/poor English not getting it. But he explained why DSL are at a standstill just now. Tiny Core is the way to go he seems to say.

I maybe take a look again at it. TC did not have drivers for my Acer D250 but many it works on my older computers. It can coexist with Puppy so no reason not to test it. TC is not DSL. very different.

[Woof Woof Brysche]

Okay, I'm sorry, but I have to make this. I hate Damn Small Linux more than you could ever imagine. The language in this gets mildly inappropriate.

The whole rant is mildly inappropriate. You may not like DSL, but it's a good job of what it is.

Damn Small Linux is based on a theoretical ideal. It's small. It's not the same size as Puppy - it's less than half the size. The creator of DSL set a limit of 50MB on the size of the ISO, while Puppy is now edging over 100MB. (And DSL development has hit a wall, in part because the developer can't think of anything else he can add to improve the distro without exceeding his 50MB limit.)

Find a computer with 8MB of RAM? Perhaps you missed the post elsewhere on the forums where a user described how he got Puppy running on a 16MB machine (by stripping out everything he could, and building the Puppy image he would run on another more powerful machine, to be able to create it in the first place.) Other Puppy users have reported success using Puppy on machines with 48 or 64MB of RAM. There's lots of older hardware out there with limited resources that can still have a useful purpose if you can get a flavor of Linux on them at all.

And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I have an old friend who is a long time Linux user who found Puppy's default appearance ugly. It was too cartoonish for his taste. DSL may not suit your taste out of the box, but hey, it's Linux. You can change it! See the many threads here on what people have done to make Puppy something they found beautiful. Some have changed window managers. Others have enjoyed seeing how they could stretch JWM.

I got into Puppy because I was looking for a version of Linux that would run acceptably on older hardware, and DSL was one thing I looked at. I suspect it would meet my needs too, but I tried Puppy seriously first, and it worked well enough that I felt no need to seriously explore DSL.

On my desktop, I run Ubuntu, and if the user is interested in running Linux and has the hardware needed to run it comfortably, Ubunto or something like it will be what I'll point at. It does the best job I've seen in a Linux distro of figuring out what you have and setting itself up so that it just works, out of the box.

I think of Puppy as the hot rod you build and customize yourself. It's a lot of fun, and the results can be stunning, but you have to be a mechanic to do it. If you aren't a mechanic or interested in becoming one, Puppy is not for you.

Meanwhile, DSL serves a particular purpose, and has a group of users who like it. It meets their needs. The fact that it doesn't meet yours isn't cause for hatred or even dislike. It's just cause to use another distro, and that's what you did.
______
Dennis

Just consider that DSL has one purpose. Only one. Being small... Well, smallest. Puppy serves many more, I run it on very powerful computers as well as my older laptop.

Regardless, if you find a computer with less than 8MB of RAM, why the hell would you even attempt to run it? What's the point? "I can get a piece of crap computer to run DSL!"

I just wanted to state my opinion. Sorry, you haven't necessarily justified it.