Damn Small Linux 3.1

I haven't downloaded this one, and I don't really care to. they've just been getting uglier and uglier [I've seen the new theme--it confirms the downward spiral of this formerly pleasant distro], and the important addons, like wine and icewm, do not work last time I tried DSL [3.0], and in the last version, couldn't even be installed after DSL had booted.

The message board used to be very active but not anymore. there's a reason posts have dropped off--no one is interested in a declining product. we'll just stick with the older versions.

If the current Damn Small Linux isn't your favorite small distro now, which one is? and what is the criteria for you liking it? Finally, what aspect of the project management or maintenance do you feel led to this "downward spiral"?

> "If the current Damn Small Linux isn't your favorite small distro now, which one is?"

Hi, thanks for the honest questions.
I don't actually have a favorite at the moment.

I momentarily have high hopes for the Debian Live project. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/
Debian Live [though not really in existance yet] seems to be the closest to DSL and Knoppix, my two former favorite distro's. Also, I want to get involved with the project, because I hope to test and improve the new debian installer. There is [or has been, for quite some time] a problem with the package management with DSL, which impacts the hardware also. [via an inability to upgrade system software, like cd burning software, while running]
I've heard it said that the unix philosophy is to do one thing and do it well. I believe that the success of opensource software is dependent on interoperability, and have other people building up on,and continuing the projects that others have started. If I work towards something, I want to fix linux as a whole, not try to find a temporary incomplete solution that may wither away and be forgotten, my work to have been in vain. That may just be me though.

As for mature mini liveCDs,the only ones I would recommend are an older version of DSL [though, sadly, they all have bugs of some sort--though none so critical as the recent inability to add extensions], or MiniKnoppix [a stripped down version of knoppix 3.7 --with the core system still intact, at 200mb] Puppy is not really a liveCD if it uses the hard drive, and I couldn't get austrami or slax to work on my computer.

> "and what is the criteria for you liking it? "

I'm looking for some six things,I guess: something trustworthy[1], something that has good hardware detection[2], something where there are few software/baseware bugs[3],something which is easily extended[4], something which is easy to use and doesn't require fixes like cheatcodes just in order for them to function at all[5], something which looks pretty, and is intuitive[6].
...............

1.I trust debian more than anything else out there, with the exception* of possibly redhat,solaris,freebsd and openbsd.
But that's pure debian,not modified stuff--and things like changing the browser's default search engine can creep me out, I'm sad to say--I wonder what else has been modified... This is not something DSL can easily fix, unless they become a debian subproject governed by the Debian constitution... this may just be a personal thing, but I use linux, in part, because I don't want spyware, and a small, for profit endeavor with little oversight and little quality control kind of scares me.
*I'm looking for whatever has the best strategy, and the most eyes examining it and fixing things, I guess.

2. DSL used to detect my video card correctly [like every third release or so], but the last version gave me bad colors again. I do have to give props to the team for including scsi drivers by default, but I'm growing weary of wading through the Xsetup.

3,4 The mount applet not appearing in JWM would throw me off, but my main problem was that double clicking on an extension in emelfm, would no longer install the package,in DSLv3.0.
Also... seeing as how a number of extensions don't work,or won't be installed, and given the possibilities of unionfs, I would very much prefer to have the system files needed to install debian packages,to be included in the iso by default.

5. This is often refered to as 'polish', but too many broken things/non automatic things can sink a distro.

6. I have to commend the use of idesk, or whatever the icon manager is, but when an icon is clicked, the new window covers all the icons! I mean, so much for multitasking... The JWM window manager is a great thing compared to the non-intuitiveness of fluxbox. but alas, even it looks ugly. I really prefer landscape backdrops, and color schemes which mimic real life.[i.e. merging colors with the background and losing contrast for inactive windows] I'm writing this from the 'aquablue' themed icewm in knoppix 5.01. unfortunately, the icewm package in DSL does not seem to allow one to install a different theme.
Also,I prefer textured backdrops, to contrast with the untextured windows. I don't like fluxbox. It's nonintuitive, and I think an invisible options like right clicks are debilitating and wrong. The pager in fluxbox in DSL is an interesting idea...but it doesn't actually fulfill its promise--when you click on the model desktops,nothing happens. There have been many hacks to try to work around the difficulties of building a user friendly distro from scratch on top of linux,some of them,like the new mount applet script DSL has developed, have been pretty inspiring. The behavior of that script has not always been as expected, however.And I would love something like My Computer [which is an analogue of /mnt ] to manage my media. But also, while the new DSL Xwindow mount applet is a fine replacement for the older and bigger MountApp,I really _don't_ want the hassle of making my drives mounted,or writeable. [and then having to hunt through the root directory to search for where my drive MIGHT exist is kinda like adding insult to injury]

> " Finally, what aspect of the project management or maintenance do you feel led to this "downward spiral"?

Well,I'm not intimately involved with the project, but I could guess that a combination of a lack of places to post bugs and known issues,plus possibly the developers being overstretched with the new DSL-N project, may contribute to the lack of quality I've observed. Also, it seems that releases are much more frequent, and there's not much testing done. Frequent releases are nice, but only if they work. I'd rather see DSLv3.0 rc20, than a premature release.

Puppy, while having some glaring faults, like its 100's of megabytes of droppings it leaves behind on a hard drive, has really come a long way, by engaging its users, and creating a welcoming website/forum for its users. I don't use puppy, but the difference between puppy's forums/community efforts, and DSL's forums, is really amazing. People *DO* stuff with puppy all the time. There is a huge amount of enthusiasm and remastering going on with puppy. The websites themselves are very different, with DSL being somewhat better organized, though nonintuitive at times and cold, with small type, and puppy being VERY cheerful, with tons of useful images. It's too hard for me to find documentation on puppy's site, but I enjoy the homepage everytime I go there. DSL's forum has some weird search thing, whereby it only searches in the last month by default. Puppy's forum searches for all posted dates.

Also, DSL's broken wiki, with the angry, contemptuous stuff left up by the old maintainer [don't know if it's still there]
was a huge turn off for me. _Every_ opensource project needs to encourage a big, rapid exchange of feedback. The tools for that feedback can be wikis, polls, bug forums, happy webpages, etc, but it's _vital_ that other people participate in the testing and feedback, as software is often very complex and no developer has hundereds of different machines to test things on.Knoppix, while it certainly has its problems and was, in the past, on the decline as well in my opinion, happens to have a wiki where one can post bugs.[even though access to the wiki was restricted until I notified the admin that the new-account function was broken.] Once people started posting bugs in earnest however, they began to get fixed.

..................
Lastly, I don't know how to say this but... the name turns me off. OpenBSD has an excellent association--a pufferfish behaves much like that OS does. Puppy is great too. But...I don't want something malicious that's out to get me in trouble ['damned' as it were] if I use it. DSL has made a worthy attempt at a liveCD, but... a lot of their problems, in my opinion, are self-created.

Hi! Why I can't fill my info in profile? Can somebody help me?
My login is Kisakookoo!