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Damn Small Linux Rises From the Dead With a 4.11 RC1 Release
An anonymous reader writes "Damn Small Linux is back from the dead, with a version 4.11 RC1 release announcement at Distrowatch and another at the DSL Forums! Quoting: 'Here is the first release candidate for Damn Small Linux (DSL) 4.11. The changes in this release are a step toward making DSL a friendly alternative for older hardware. I've fixed some bugs, updated some applications, and replaced others. Applications: updated JWM to 2.1.0 (now supports rounding); updated Dillo to 3.0.2 (much improves CSS support); added XChat 1.8.9; added sic 1.1 IRC client; added XCalc-color. Modified desktop functionality: it is now possible to switch between JWM and Fluxbox without shutting down X; added menu items to switch between DFM and xtdesk icon engines or use none at all." Here's the download page."
To get respun for the raspberry pi?
So now again my example of why it should be allowed to repeat the last word of the acronym expanded, is relevant: "ATM machine is running DSL Linux, and is connected over ATM mode DSL line".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Looking into getting a small distro for old hardware (2002). So many choices, so little time. Seems like puppy is the favorite ?
Try both Puppy and Damn Small. I keep a copy of Damn Small in my CD wallet (not every PC boots reliably off USB) for troubleshooting since it's light and fast even on weak systems.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I just noticed that this distro uses JWM, which was written by legendary TI-83 programmer Joe Wingbermuehle. If you went to high school in 1998-2002 and had a TI83 or TI83+, you might have had some of his programs, such as the Ion assembly shell, Boxworld, Breakout, Diamonds, Dstar, Landmine, or Jezzball.
Anti-X Linux, have it on a 150Mhz Pentium, DSL had some advantages like running on a 8 meg machine (with no use of X of course) and the small size, but hell its been long enough where I had to move on from DSL, and honestly its never really been a great or polished system. Just a fuckton of basic utilitarian things crammed on a disk with a janky UI, and none of the software I would actually use.
I'm so happy to see this project's back from the dead. I'll once again be able to make use of super-old PC's. I hope somebody updates the Xbox release called X-DSL someday. It was made for modded Xboxes and it's the only distro that ever really worked well on them.
The Gospel according to lolcat
This with a dedicated Steam port would be ideal for a lightweight and fast gaming system.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Heck, I've run Ubuntu on machines from 2000.
Arch Linux is pretty lean and can be configured to your liking. Arch is pretty loyal to the KISS principle too. For distros, Arch is my favorite and they arguably have the best documentation available.
If 762MB is not too large, you could try TAILS Linux, which is a privacy-oriented distro based on (I think) Ubuntu, and is preconfigured to run all protocols through the TOR proxy. Of course, for that reason, I'd not trust the security of it. It's pretty cool though; I have TAILS on a little USB keychain drive and use it on occasion. Wouldn't use it for online-banking or anything though. If you are super paranoid, there's even TinfoilHat Linux, but you've given no indication of such. I think DSL should work quite well and see reason not to try it.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
were talking about linux on pc's, not some toy want- to-be workalike
Also, I forgot to mention what might be obvious. A primary consideration when looking for a clean and unbloated setup is your desktop/window manager. Many distros could be slimmed down by using something like LXDE, XFCE, Openbox, Awesome, or even Mate. If you don't need a digital Cirque du Soleil, you can probably avoid KDE and Gnome. I was pretty impressed by XFCE on Arch.
And to correct the typo in my last sentence from the other comment; I see no reason not to try DSL Linux.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
You might want to reread your history.
Limitation of software to a platform is the exact reason Linux exists today.
There are plenty of enthusiasts who want to get things working on older hardware, just for fun.
If the dreams, hopes and jokes of such people offends you enough to make such harsh remarks, then maybe you should look at yourself, because a heart this cold will only bring you pain.
I wish you well.
DSL was hugely important to me. It started me in Linux, got me understanding things, learning scripting, Perl and C. Booted all into ram it was blinding fast even on an old machine. I love small light applications and I still love the idea of a whole desktop and browser in a 50MB iso. It predates Puppy and all the others. But what version stuff is it running now?
What kernel version is it running? libc? Apart from the dispute between its owner and its lead developer (the latter went off to found Tinycore) the big problem with old DSL was compiling anything recent became a pain because it and the gcc versions in the repo were so out of date. Leaving aside security issues this began to hamper what I could do with it. Then there was the old 2.4.26 kernel.
Is that how it has to be if the goal is to support old hardware? How old? Tinycore claims to support 486 with math processor and it has the latest *everything*, tc kernel and apps are often very recent.
Tinycore
yea ok whatever you want to state, heres the deal, I have linux on a 4mb 386, the lowest of the low on x86, I have it on a motorola 68030, the lowest of the low on that side of the coin. I have used uCLinux and sorry, its a very resource heavy slow want-to-be linux like command shell, bad RTOS that really serves no other reason but to bloat system requirements, and cost, to enable piss poor performance.
"because a heart this cold will only bring you pain."
no being a realistic person has brought me a life where I am happy, and not one of dying alone, and broken chasing unicorns that never existed ... thanks.
Comic store guy, is that you?
But that brings up something I've been wondering for awhile which is this....at what point would it be better to toss the hardware? I mean you can buy one of those E350 based kits for less than $150 and that thing takes less than 18w under load and idles in the mid single digits, I don't even remember what the Pi runs but its a crazy small number, so at what point does that old hardware become too much of a piggie to be worth keeping?
Lets face it folks, while you may see the ancient P2 or P3 around occasionally most of those died ages ago thanks to the cheap caps they used back then so what I see the most of, and by most of i mean fricking insane amounts of, is those damned Pentium 4s. Those P4s frankly were NEVER good on power and just cranked the living shit out of the heat, so would it be better to keep it, thus paying the increased electricity and cooling, or just get something cheap that doesn't blow through power like crap through a goose?
I know that while I've got a couple of P4s waiting on me to refurb at the shop, and probably another good half dozen or more gonna be given to me free by the super for parts or refurbing, the only older machine I've kept is a 2004 Sempron a customer traded in that frankly makes a great nettop at the shop. Its quiet, uses maybe 35w on average, and puts out hardly any heat at all. while that Pentium d I have in the corner may run rings around it it runs rings around my AC as well.
So at what point is it better to dump? I hate as much as the rest to toss working gear, just about to carry a 1.8GHz P4 to the dumpster because i can't think of a damned thing to do with it and I hate tossing working machines like that, but at what point are you blowing through more in power and cooling than you'd save by keeping?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
That's my project for the next few weeks. I managed to get a stack of old Celeron machines for ten quid each. Six of them. So I shall learn how to set up a beowolf cluster with LinuxPMI. If it works, I'll look into finding new processors that actually outperform an abacus. I intend to use it for developing my interest in signal processing and compression.
I asked my self the same things aswell, and here's some simple math:
- how much is the impact on your elec bill?
- how many years does it take to break even the upfront cost of the newer but less electricity demanding hardware?
From there, it's your choice.
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
Parted Magic should work even better.
That's the nature of computers. They advance much, much faster than other types of electronics. The most important thing is to keep proper recycling going on.
On the other hand, hardware released just after P4 is not in that dire situation at all. Core Duo stuff (2006 or so) are still fine for basic desktops.
It's usually about having something that will work on other people's old hardware so whether to toss or not is somebody else's problem.
I get your point though, I've got half a rack full of 32 bit machines that haven't even been turned on for a couple of years at least because just about everything newer at any speed uses less power and produces less heat.
What is problematic with DSL and Puppy is that they are a mishmash of various programs with different toolkits. While somewhat heavier, I prefer XFCE or LXDE based distros as they bring a more consistent experience.
Good point. DSL was light, but also felt very clunky: UI and to install extra software. I wanted something with the backing of a standard package repository.
An year or two ago, I was looking for a light Linux to run in a VM and was balancing usability with RAM usage. Here are my numbers from some old notes. Unless specified, the numbers are for RAM usage at login to Desktop at default config (I might have removed some apps I considered non-essential - I don't recall).
Of course, these are not exactly scientific. Was sshd running for Arch?, I didn't note down. The distro version numbers were also not noted, but all distros were roughly from 1.5 years ago. They were more for getting ballpark estimates. AFAI-recall, they were all booted in a 256 MB VM (Virtualbox).
Lubuntu - 85 MB
Fluxbuntu 48 MB (31 MB without X)
Lubuntu 64 MB (41 MB without X)
Ubuntu Server 10.04 without servers and X - 145 MB (did not expect this)
Ubuntu Mint (Gloria) 144 MB
Debian Mint 138 MB
ULite Desktop - 54 MB (17 MB without X)
ULite Desktop without GDM - 26 MB
Non-Debian (without X)
Suse in light server config - 13 MB (incl sshd, 10 MB without)
Arch - 14 MB
So, Suse took the light-weight crown for RAM usage at terminal boot. For me though, Lubuntu was the sweet-spot at that time.
Guess that depends on your definition of old. I hope very few people are still running Pentiums I's and older.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
but people may run an old VIA C3 or some other outlier CPU, which would be only i586 or i486.
ubuntu is almost the same thing as debian, similar selection of software, same text-mode installer - which you want to be using on an old PC, giving you a text-only installation that you supplement by apt-getting a desktop or window manager.
ubuntu mainly gives you a fresh firefox over debian ; if you're going to run firefox then the latest one will use less memory and cpu than an old version. debian may be better if this is not a big concern and you like doing in-place upgrades every two-three years. or you could be using debian testing or sid but only nerds do that.
It sounds like you have applications such as networked storage or firewall boxes in mind, but for desktop use, you can can actually get quite nice used desktop hardware for less than $150 -- often less than half that. For about 8 years now, I've been buying cheap machines, putting linux on them, and putting them in my physics lab for my students to use. For a while I was going to garage sales, Salvation Army, and shops that sold used boxes. But recently I've found that really nice hardware is becoming available on ebay at very reasonable prices. Here are some examples of some recent machines I've bought:
HP Pavilion Desktop D4100Y Pentium D 2.80 GHz 1 GB Memory /PC2-3200, $40+$23 shipping
HP XW4400 Workstation Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 1.86GHz 250GB 1GB CD-RW/ DVD, $90+$24 shipping
HP Compaq D330 uT Intel Pentium 4 2.66GHZ 80GB HDD 1GB DDR Desktop PC, $30+$23 shipping
Gateway GT5637E AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 160GB HDD 2GB DDR2 CD-RW/ DVD-RW, $110+$20 shipping
Even with shipping, it's a lot less money than you'd pay locally for the same hardware. It's also much less work to find it, and it's not in need of as many upgrades as the kind of stuff you find at garage sales, etc., where many machines have no CD drive, no ethernet, or not enough memory.
I typically install ubuntu and set them up with xfce as the default wm. Performance is fine.
Find free books.
I was, until yesterday.
A few years ago I aquired a ton of old HP Vectras that were all Pentium 1 machines, except for one 486 that I put DOS and Windows 3.11 on (just for fun - I had a few floppies with Windows games on them). I've only got a couple left.
The nice thing about them is that they still use lead-based solder, so there's no problem with tin wiskers shorting out the system after a few years. I've got a crate of old, small hard drives, and a lot of them still work just fine (I'm talking between 100MB and 2GB here).
Anyway, they make great firewalls, DNS/DHCP servers, IRC servers, etc. for small networks. Yesterday I replaced my firewall (the last Vectra on my network) with a diskless OpenBSD install on a Mini-ITX system. I still keep the Vectra in the server cabinet in case something goes wrong, though.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Old hardware is only useful because it's cheap (or often free) and it's fun, if that's your thing.
I've got a few old Sparcstation 20s that I play around with. Why? They're fun. Or at least they were, before Oracle mucked about with docs.sun.com.
I've got some old Pentium I machines that I've used as small network servers and firewalls. As of yesterday, I'm on all modern (and much more energy efficient) machines, but a Pentium I will serve DHCP just as well as an i7. I used to keep a few old HP Vectras around to act as a "network in a box" - firewall and DNS/DHCP - to install on networks when a family member wanted additional computers. I don't bother anymore, since home routers are the default these days.
My advice? Take the old stuff you don't need and put them outside where they can be seen - preferably under an awning or something to protect them from the weather. I got my start on hardware when a friend of mine saw an old guy throwing away a shed full of 8088 and 286 class machines - you never know if a pickup truck full of Pentium 4s is all a prospective geek needs to kickstart his hobby. If no one claims them in a week, recycle them.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Hey, if DSL can get updated, why not Toms?
I mean, yeah, we don't need to fit in a floppy any more, but how would you like to have an OS that fits entirely in on-die cache?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Or don't take it to the dumpster, BestBuy takes old hardware off your hands for free and that way it gets properly recycled instead of leaking toxic metals in a dump somwhere
Glad to see it back. I loved having DSL on a USB. I've been using Arch for that lately, but I have trouble remembering how to get it setup after long periods without using it. Hopefully this will also work on my old EEE PC netbook. I'm using Arch and E there too, but never did get around to making it autosense wifi and that sort of thing. As I recall DSL did that very well out of the box.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
Be sure to wipe them, and install Ubuntu or your favorite distro, so when they pick it up, take it home and fire it up, it just works. I've had people stop back and ask what it was I left on the computer I threw out, and could I install it in their dying XP box.
Spread the love!
Cheers!
Oh I agree, I have a couple of Athlon X2s from that period and they are just fine when it comes to power, i also hung onto that Sempron even though its even older because not only is it low power but if i want to lower the power even more i can pick up a socket 754 Athlon mobile for less than $30 that will drop right in and give me more performance while dropping the idle even lower but as long as the Sempron is doing the job i don't see the point.
But those P4s, especially the Prescott and later, were power hogs, like an old V8 muscle car. I have a couple of Prescott boards sitting in the closet as well as a Cedar Mill with HT sitting in the drawer and you just would not believe the amount of heat those suckers belch out, nor how much juice they pull.
So while I have no problem refurbing those units for the poor, that frankly probably couldn't afford a PC at all if I didn't sell those P4s cheap, for someone that already has a computer I have to wonder about the wisdom of keeping anything from the netburst era. I mean sure socket 775s are cheap as dirt and just as common, and there are places selling Pentium Ds for less than $20 thus making it the cheapest dual cores you can get, I really have to wonder if having something that hot and power hungry, even if given it free, would be worth having.
All i know is my boys were gaming on a couple of Pentium Ds with 19 inch CRTs and when I swapped those out for a Phenom II Quad and Phenom II Hexa with 22 inch LCDs their power usage went WAAAAY the hell down, even those we are talking about doubling and tripling the cores and upgrading them from 7600GTs to HD4850s. The power difference was just incredible and really made me rethink the wisdom of keeping anything from the netburst era. Now the only netburst in our family is a little 2.3GHz Celeron that my mom plays her match 3 games on and as soon as another cheap Athlon crosses my desk I'll be selling the Celeron and giving her the AMD.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Dude while I appreciate you trying to help kids you might want to stay away from the P4s and Pentium Ds. Just pick up a kill-a-watt and slap it on one of those to find out why, they belch heat and suck juice like a 70s Monte Carlo with bad rings.
The original Core chips, pretty much all the Athlons and Phenoms were MUCH better about power and can be found just as cheaply if you look around and any of the AM2 sockets can have the chip swapped for one of the low power variants in less than 10 minutes and places like Starmicro sells those for less than $50.
So remember its not just about being cheap to buy, its also how cheap it is to run. The entire netburst era was "Give it MOAR POWER!!" and by the time you got to the Pentium D you could fry eggs on the chips for all the wasted power. that equals not only more power going through the machine, but more AC you are gonna need to keep that lab cool and that adds up if you are not in a northern climate.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The point at which eliminating your wait time for whatever slow application (usually Firefox...), is worth the sale price of new hardware, plus the time and effort to setup that new system.
Power is cheap, and old hardware is much lower power than people expect, due to being single-core and having low-power GPUs and North/Southbridges. I still have a 2.4GHz P4 system up and running in an office... It draws all of 40w at idle, which means operating costs are just a few cents a day at worst, and probably less than the monitor it's hooked up to.
Setup issues can be more significant than price. Upgrading from 32 to 64-bit can be a much, much bigger hassle than just transferring your data over, and dealing with issues like the new system not handling Suspend / Resume properly can mean your NEW system is suddenly the power-hog.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Not sure what particular compositing window manager you're running on Fedora but on Ubuntu with Unity I just do a "metacity --replace" when I need to turn compositing off. And when I want to go back I just do "compiz --replace" as that's the wm Unity uses. No logging out necessary. Of course this is assuming you don't have metacity set up with the compositing but if you do just turn that off in gconf-editor.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
You raise an interesting point, but the numbers don't seem to bear you out. The local cost of electricity is 19 cents per kilowatt-hour. These machines are typically powered on for maybe 10 hours a week, which is about a 5% duty cycle. At 50 W, the electricity cost for a year of use comes out to be about $4. To pay back the cost of a $50 power-saving upgrade, as you suggest, would take decades, which is much longer than these things will be in use. (My time is also worth something to me, so there's no way I would replace all these CPUs.)
When using old hardware, a better thing to focus on is usually replacing CRTs with LCDs. Monitors last much longer than computers and obsolesce much more slowly. People also usually appreciate the extra desk space they get with an LCD.
Find free books.
System Rescue CD is my go to imaging linux.
Cheap storage VM.
But you missed the point which is WHY pay that extra $4 when you don't have to? As the list showed you can get Athlon X2s and first gen cores for the same price and they suck a hell of a lot less juice and don't belch out heat.
So its not like its pay $x or pay $x+y, its pay $x for a power piggie or pay $x for a non piggie, why pay for the piggie?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Because at the time I built the firewall, such things didn't exist.
I used that machine as a firewall for about a decade (it was already seven years old at that time). That $250 nettop PC probably wouldn't still be running after that long. Yeah, I upgraded and reinstalled the software a few times, but that machine served me well and like I said, I keep it as a backup firewall.
Besides, that Vectra has a 120W power supply in it, and was cooled by the power supply fan rather than its own processor fan. Pentium I machines weren't power hogs compared to modern desktops. People seem to forget how computer power requirements jumped up during the PIII and PIV era.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Because the entire system is 10MB. What do you expect, an HD wallpaper?
DSL is still on the 2.4 kernel. Meant to run bare metal on very old systems where some hardware doesn't have drivers in the 2.6 series.
Really?
This is the power supply for a Vectra. This particular one is 100W, and by the date I'd guess it was for a 486. Most of the ones I had were 120W, manufactured in 1996, and ran Pentiums.
Note the odd shape? That little slanted area on the bottom of it is where the fan is. It blew onto the processor's heat sink. Here is another picture, where you can see that fan.
Here is a picture of a 486 Vectra's processor. The Pentium models were very similar, and had no dedicated processor fan.
You don't know what you're talking about, and my guess is that you were in diapers when these machines were made. Go back to your tinker toys, little AC - the adults are talking.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
The PI doesn't have the IO to compete with a E350. There is no SATA, dual gigabit (or 10/100 for that mater), PCI-E, or PCI on the PI.
I keep trying to figure out what i would do with a PI, but even as a media center it doesn't have enough hardware decode codec support and I would have to re-rip all of my dvd rips that are set up for the PS3.
If i wanted a NAS I could go This route or similar in a stock case. A PI as a fun nettop type toy sure, you know maybe it could save me a bunch of power when I'm just reading /.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Puppy is great for running off a permanent live USB. Although to be honest I've lost track of the development of it somewhat- last time I downloaded a new version of it I felt like I was using a completely different distro to how it was originally...
Not necessarily a bad thing, but I'd be interested to hear from a more regular user on what's changed over the years.
At 50 W
How old is your hardware? My first computer, a 1980's era machine, IBM PS/2 Model 30, an 8086/8MHz (without heatsink or fan), had a 70W PSU, so I can safely assume that at peak load could draw this 50W.