DSL is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution.
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 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
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.
New in DSL 3.3:
- New gettime.lua to set clock from a time server
- Restored menu item 'Enable Apt' and dpkg-restore download script
- Updated pen drive installation scripts to be device-independent
- Fixed mount tool for CD-ROM and floppy devices; added mouse configuration persistence
via .mouse_configuration; ALSA sound auto-configuration improvement via conflicting audio module
- Added auto-start of GTK+ when GTK+ extension is in mydsl search path at boot; more install options
on 'dslinstall' menu; updated bootfloppy.img to fix the 16MB memory bug
- Added declobber.sh to remove troublesome extraneous system directories in MyDSL extensions
- Fixed man script to support hard drive installations
