Damn Small Linux (DSL) is a simple, small system that you can boot up easily, fast and light enough that you can bring for your travel. DSL is not a new kid on the block, but I have only realise its usefulness when I carry along my 4GB USB Drive (with DSL installed) for my travel. In the many cybercafes that I have visited along my travel, I am able to plug in my DSL, load it from Windows (Yes, it can be loaded inside Windows, without rebooting), do my work, back it up and shutdown. In the event that the administrator allows me to reboot the PC, I even boot into DSL and work from there. Although this is not totally safe, booting into DSL is definitely better than working on a Windows platform in a cybercafe. In case you don’t know, DSL is only less than 50MB. Not only it is small in size, it is also 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
You get a functional desktop where you can listen to music, surf the Web, type document, send email, upload files, edit text , graphics, IM, and many more features, all under 50MB. Impressed? Well, at least I am… Download DSL here.
