Vlogcanic

Damn Small Linux (or DSL) is one of the smallest Linux distros available today. It’s free, it’s fast and it’s 50 MB. Initially started as John Andrew’s personal experiment in order to find out how many useful free software applications could be crammed into 50 MB, Damn Small Linux turned into a larger project with a larger and very passionate development community.

It’s based on Knoppix and uses Fluxbox instead of Gnome, KDE or Xfce in order to achieve maximum efficiency and lightness so that it runs on some really dated hardware — version 4.0 runs on 486DX computers with as little as 16MB RAM. Every application included in Damn Small is chosen to provide as much funcionality possible with as little resources as possible. The kernel series is 2.4 instead of 2.6 so the distro remains compatible with a lot of older hardware no longer supported by the later kernels.

The driving idea behind DSL is to keep adding apps and funcionality, almost a fully featured desktop, to their distros while keeping 50 MB in size and able to run in any kind of system.

DSL standard issue is a LiveCD which fits into a bussiness-card-size CD-R –that includes web browsers, text editors, file managers, PDF viewers and almost all the essential desktop software any user could need. You can use it as a LiveCD, install it to a hard drive or install in to a usb flash drive and use it as a LiveUSB. Since data persistence is supported you don’t need to lose any of your work by finishing your sessions.

The latest Damn Small Linux release is version 4.0, still 50 MB and fully featured.

Damn Small Linux Spin-offs.

The DSL development team is currently working in a parallel project to DSL called Demi Small Linux which will use the 2.6 kernel series and, while keeping a focus on efficiency, will feature a bigger limit in size in order to be more functional ans user friendly.