Damn Small Linux For Linux

Damn Small Linux is an open source and minimal distribution of Linux based on the Knoppix and Debian GNU/Linux operating systems, as well as on other GNU/Linux technologies. It is a business card size Live CD that installs to USB sticks and disk drives, and runs embedded as a guest OS.

The project is distributed as a single Live CD ISO image of around 50MB in size, designed to support only the 32-bit instruction set architectures. It offers a minimal boot prompt in the style of Puppy Linux, from where users can only add particular boot parameters.

It uses both Fluxbox and JWM (Joe’s Window Manager) desktop environments, but it default to the latter when running directly from the Live CD. The system can be easily installed to a hard disk drive from the boot prompt.

The JWM window manager is comprised of a system monitoring widget, a workspace switcher, a device manager, and a bottom panel for interacting with running applications. The main menu can be accessed by right clicking anywhere on the desktop.

Key features include generic and GhostScript-based printer support, a web server, system monitoring applications, USB support, wireless support, PCMCIA support, several command-line tools, as well as support for NFS (Network File System).

Default applications include the Dillo and Mozilla Firefox web browsers, Sylpheed email client, VNCviewer remote desktop client, XMMS music player, Xpdf PDF viewer, xZGV image viewer, Ted document viewer, Beaver text editor, axyFTP file transfer client, and mtPaint digital painting software.

It comes with Siag spreadsheet editor, Microsoft Word viewer, PostScript viewer, ICQ and AIM instant messengers, as well as IRC client via Naim, FLwriter word processor, emelFM file manager, Rdesktop RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) client, SSH and SCP server and client, DHCP client, and a PPPoE (ADSL) client.