DAMN SMALL LINUX Testing this ultra light distribution on a pentium 133 with 32mb RAM and 6,4 HD drive The whole distribution is a live 50 MB iso and it takes less than 150 mb of h/d It is knoppix/debian based with extremely well hardware recognition! For DSL 3.2 select frugal install if any hardware is not detected after a debian install 1. When running live change root passwd with sudo su passwd To install to hard drive use dsl-hdinstall If you can achieve internet connection you can choose extended (You may need to execute) route add default gw 192.168.100.10 #(your router's ip) 2. Use 800x600 16bit, Com port ttyS0 mouse and xvesa with xsetup.sh you can reconfigure X # .xserverrc is written as Vesa with command line options Xvesa -listmodes #lists all supported modes Xvesa -mode 0x0013D #overrides -screen and uses a preconfogured mode All modes are choosins 60hz, trying to find an alternative 0x0013D, 0x0013E chose 720x400 at 70 hz 3. Dsl has firefox included. (although slow on startup) Change language to greek, move it up and encoding to 8859-7 Links is text-based The faster is dillo but i have to see how to configure it Encodings are not supported and it must be patched to do it 4. Use netcardconfig to configure the ip settings. Preferred to use dhcp 5. route add default gw 192.168.100.10 #to add the route to the router for internet. Be sure to use the same subnet mask. 6. To begin installing debian packages try dpkg-restore # while connected to the internet add to /root/.bashrc . /etc/bash_completion It will download approximately 4MB of files to search for packages use apt-cache search packagename In /etc/apt/apt.conf change the following lines to APT::Default-Release "unstable"; APT::Cache-Limit 13000000; 7. If you install it in hard drive remove users in sudoers file with visudo # as root Before using it you must add to your .bashrc file export VISUAL=/usr/bin/vi #the editor that visudo will use since /etc/sudoers is readonly Unfortunately adduser command add new users to sudoers file To change that open /usr/sbin/adduser search for sudo and comment the following lines 465 #printf _("WARNING: Adding %s to /etc/sudoers.\n"), $new_name if $verbose; 466 #open(SUDO, ">>/etc/sudoers"); 467 #printf SUDO "%s\tALL=NOPASSWD: ALL\n",$new_name; 468 #close(SUDO); 8. Set the hostname by editing /etc/hostname Set default domain by editing /etc/defaultdomain 9. The packages installed in dsl are the following (according to its web site) Also, keep in mind that Damn Small is not pure Debian based. there are applications in DSL that are not on this list. Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name Version Description +++-==============-==============-============================================ ii apt 0.5.4 Advanced front-end for dpkg ii apt-utils 0.5.4 APT utility programs ii ash-knoppix 0.2-3 A smaller version of the Bourne shell enhanc ii asmem 1.9-2 This is an AfterStep look & feel memory util ii autofs 3.9.99-4.0.0pr A kernel-based automounter for Linux hc automount-knop 0.5-3 Auto-generate autofs(5) lines on demand ii axyftp-gtk 0.5.1-1 A graphical ftp program with GTK interface ii base-files 3.0.7 Debian base system miscellaneous files ii base-passwd 3.4.5 Debian base system password/group files ii bash 2.05b-5 The GNU Bourne Again SHell ii bsdutils 2.11y-1 Basic utilities from 4.4BSD-Lite. ii cdrecord 1.10-7 A command line CD/DVD writing tool ii cloop-module 0.67-1 The compressed loopback block device kernel ii cloop-utils 0.67-3 Tools for handling with cloop compressed vol ii console-common 0.7.19 Basic infrastructure for text console config ii console-data 2002.12.04dbs- Keymaps, fonts, charset maps, fallback table ii console-tools- 0.2.3dbs-28 Shared libraries for Linux console and font ii coreutils 4.5.4-1 The GNU core utilities ii cpp 2.95.4-17 The GNU C preprocessor. ii cpp-2.95 2.95.4-11 The GNU C preprocessor. ii csh 20020413-1 Shell with C-like syntax, standard login she ii debconf 1.2.21 Debian configuration management system ii debianutils 2.1.4 Miscellaneous utilities specific to Debian ii deborphan 1.3-1 Find orphaned libraries. ii diff 2.8.1-1 File comparison utilities ii dpkg 1.10.9 Package maintenance system for Debian ii dselect 1.10.9 a user tool to manage Debian packages ii e2fsprogs 1.32-1 The EXT2 file system utilities and libraries ii emelfm 0.9.2-5 file manager for X/gtk ii esound-common 0.2.23-3 Enlightened Sound Daemon - Common files ii fdutils 5.4-20021102-1 Linux floppy utilities ii file 3.39-1 Determines file type using "magic" numbers ii findutils 4.1.7-2.1 utilities for finding files--find, xargs, an ii fluxbox 0.1.10-2 Highly configurable and low resource X11 Win ii gdk-imlib1 1.9.14-13 imaging library for use with gtk (using libp ii genliloconf 0.1-3 simple utility for auto-generating of lilo.c ii gphone 0.5.2-5 X/GTK-based internet telephone. ii grep 2.4.2-3.1 GNU grep, egrep and fgrep ii gzip 1.3.5-3 The GNU compression utility. ii hostname 2.09 A utility to set/show the host name or domai ii hotplug-knoppi 0.5-1 hotplug handler for KNOPPIX ii hwdata-knoppix 0.61-5 hardware identification / configuration data ii hwsetup 1.0-11 Automatic hardware setup using the kudzu lib ii icewm 1.0.9.2-7 A wonderful Win95-OS/2-Motif-like window man ii icewm-common 1.0.9.2-7 A wonderful Win95-OS/2-Motif-like window man ii ifupdown 0.6.4-4.4 High level tools to configure network interf ii imlib-base 1.9.14-13 Common files needed by the Imlib/Gdk-Imlib p ii imlib1 1.9.14-2 Imlib is an imaging library for X and X11 ii iputils-ping 20020927-1 Tools to test the reachability of network ho ii kbdconfig 0.5-3 Lightweight keyboard configuration tool for ii kernel-image-2 10.00.Custom Linux kernel binary image for version 2.4.20 ii less 381-2 A file pager program, similar to more(1) ii libao2 0.8.3-1 Cross Platform Audio Output Library ii libaudiofile0 0.2.3-4 The Audiofile Library ii libbz2 0.9.5d-4 A high-quality block-sorting file compressor ii libbz2-1.0 1.0.2-1 A high-quality block-sorting file compressor ii libc6 2.3.1-16 GNU C Library: Shared libraries and Timezone ii libcap1 1.10-12 support for getting/setting POSIX.1e capabil ii libcurl2 7.9.5-1 Multi-protocol file transfer library. (no SS ii libdb1-compat 2.1.3-7 The Berkeley database routines [glibc 2.0/2. ii libdb2 2.7.7.0-8 The Berkeley database routines (run-time fil ii libdb3 3.2.9-17 Berkeley v3 Database Libraries [runtime] ii libdps1 4.2.1-3 Display PostScript (DPS) client library ii libesd0 0.2.23-3 Enlightened Sound Daemon - Shared libraries ii libforms0.88 0.88.1-6 The XForms graphical interface widget librar ii libfreetype6 2.1.2-9 FreeType 2 font engine, shared library files ii libgdbmg1 1.7.3-27.1 GNU dbm database routines (runtime version). ii libglib1.2 1.2.10-6 The GLib library of C routines ii libgsm1 1.0.10-11 Shared libraries for GSM speech compressor. ii libgtk1.2 1.2.10-14 The GIMP Toolkit set of widgets for X ii libgtk1.2-comm 1.2.10-14 Common files for the GTK+ library ii libid3tag0 0.14.2b-4 ID3 tag reading library from the MAD project ii libjpeg62 6b-6 The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG runtime li ii libldap2 2.0.23-14 OpenLDAP libraries (without TLS support). ii libmad0 0.14.2b-4 MPEG audio decoder library ii libncurses5 5.3.20021109-2 Shared libraries for terminal handling ii libnewt0 0.50.17-12 Not Erik's Windowing Toolkit - text mode win ii libogg0 1.0.0-1 Ogg Bitstream Library ii libpam-modules 0.76-9 Pluggable Authentication Modules for PAM ii libpam-runtime 0.76-9 Runtime support for the PAM library ii libpam0g 0.76-9 Pluggable Authentication Modules library ii libparted1.6-0 1.6.5-1 The GNU Parted disk partitioning shared libr ii libpcap0 0.6.2-2 System interface for user-level packet captu ii libperl5.6 5.6.1-7 Shared Perl library. ii libpng10-0 1.0.15-4 PNG library, older version - runtime ii libpng12-0 1.2.5.0-4 PNG library - runtime ii libpng2 1.0.12-6 PNG library - runtime ii libpopt0 1.6.4-2 lib for parsing cmdline parameters ii libreadline4 4.3-5 GNU readline and history libraries, run-time ii libsasl7 1.5.27-3.3 Authentication abstraction library. ii libsqlite0 2.4.7-1 SQLite shared library ii libssl0.9.6 0.9.6g-6 SSL shared libraries ii libstdc++2.10 2.95.2-14 The GNU stdc++ library ii libstdc++2.10- 2.95.4-15 The GNU stdc++ library ii libtiff3g 3.5.5-6 Tag Image File Format library ii libungif4g 4.1.0b1-5 shared library for GIF images (runtime lib) ii libusb-0.1-4 0.1.6a-2.1 Userspace USB programming library ii libvorbis0 1.0.0-1 The Vorbis General Audio Compression Codec ii libvorbisfile3 1.0.0-1 The Vorbis General Audio Compression Codec ii libwrap0 7.6-ipv6.1-3 Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers library ii libxaw6 4.2.1-3 X Athena widget set library (version 6) ii libxaw7 4.2.1-3 X Athena widget set library ii lilo 22.5.6.1-1 LInux LOader - The Classic OS loader can loa ii login 4.0.3-7 System login tools ii loop-aes 1.6i-1 AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) Kernel mo rc lpr 2000.05.07-4.2 BSD lpr/lpd line printer spooling system ii lprng 3.8.10-1.2 lpr/lpd printer spooling system ii makedev 2.3.1-62 Creates device files in /dev. ii mawk 1.3.3-9 a pattern scanning and text processing langu ii mkdesktophdico 0.5-2 Automatic KDE/GNOME Desktop harddisk icon cr ii mkisofs 1.10-7 Creates ISO-9660 CD-ROM filesystem images. ii modutils 2.4.21-1 Linux module utilities. ii mount 2.11y-1 Tools for mounting and manipulating filesyst ii mountapp 3.0-2.1 Tool to (un)mount devices, dockable in Windo ii mouseconfig 0.5-2 Lightweight mouse configuration tool for Kno ii mpg321 0.2.10.1 A Free command-line mp3 player, compatible w ii nano-tiny 1.0.6-2 free Pico clone with some new features - tin ii ncurses-base 5.3.20021109-2 Descriptions of common terminal types ii ncurses-bin 5.3.20021109-2 Terminal-related programs and man pages ii net-tools 1.60-4 The NET-3 networking toolkit ii netbase 4.09 Basic TCP/IP networking system ii netcardconfig- 0.5-14 Minimalistic ncurses/dialog-based network co ii netkit-inetd 0.10-9 The Internet Superserver ii nfs-common 1.0-2 NFS support files common to client and serve ii nvi 1.79-20 4.4BSD re-implementation of vi. ii parted 1.6.5-1 The GNU Parted disk partition resizing progr ii passwd 4.0.3-7 Change and administer password and group dat ii perl-base 5.8.0-15 The Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister. ii portmap 5-2 The RPC portmapper ii ppp 2.4.1.uus-4 Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) daemon. ii ppp-scripts-kn 0.5-1 PPP connection scripts for various providers ii pppconfig 2.1 A text menu based utility for configuring pp ii procps 3.1.5-1 The /proc file system utilities ii psmisc 21.2-1 Utilities that use the proc filesystem ii pump 0.8.11-8 Simple DHCP/BOOTP client. ii rebuildfstab-k 0.5-4 fstab-rebuilder for KNOPPIX ii rxvt 2.6.4-6 VT102 terminal emulator for the X Window Sys ii scanpartitions 0.5-4 fstab-helper for KNOPPIX ii scite 1.44-1 Lightweight GTK-based Programming Editor ii sed 3.02-8.1 The GNU sed stream editor ii slang1 1.4.4-7.2 The S-Lang programming library - runtime ver ii sqlite 2.4.7-1 A command line interface for SQLite ii sudo 1.6.7p3-2 Provide limited super user privileges to spe ii syslinux 2.00-2 Bootloader for Linux/i386 using MS-DOS flopp ii sysvinit 2.84-143 System-V like init with KNOPPIX scripts. hc sysvinit-knopp 2.84-1 System-V like init with KNOPPIX scripts. ii tar 1.13.25-5 GNU tar ii tcc 0.9.18-3 The smallest ANSI C compiler ii tcpd 7.6-ipv6.1-3 Wietse Venema's TCP wrapper utilities ii ted-common 2.14-1 common files used by ted and ted-gtk ii ted-gtk 2.14-1 graphical RTF (Rich Text Format) editor, exp ii traceroute 1.4a12-12 Traces the route taken by packets over a TCP ii usbutils 0.9-1 USB console utilities ii usleep-knoppix 0.5-1 sleeps for a number of microseconds, see man ii util-linux 2.11y-1 Miscellaneous system utilities. ii vorbis-tools 1.0rc3-1 Several Ogg Vorbis Tools ii whiptail 0.50.17-12 Displays user-friendly dialog boxes from she ii wireless-tools 26-1 Tools for manipulating Linux Wireless Extens ii wlcardconfig-k 0.5-2 Minimalistic ncurses/dialog-based WLAN confi ii wmcpuload 1.0.0-1 Dockapp that displays the current CPU usage ii wmnet 1.05-7 network monitor for WindowMaker using kernel ii wvdial 1.53.0.1 PPP dialer with built-in intelligence. ii xbase-clients 4.2.1-4 miscellaneous X clients ii xfonts-75dpi 4.2.1-3 75 dpi fonts for X ii xfonts-base 4.2.1-6 standard fonts for X ii xfree86-common 4.2.1-3 X Window System (XFree86) infrastructure ii xlib6g 4.2.1-3 pseudopackage providing X libraries ii xlibmesa3 4.2.1-3 XFree86 version of Mesa 3D graphics library ii xlibs 4.2.1-3 X Window System client libraries ii xmms 1.2.7-1.1 Versatile X audio player that looks like Win ii xmms-cdread 0.14a-9.2 Input plugin for XMMS that reads audio data ii xpacman 0.11-9 Basic Pacman ii xpaint 2.6.2-2 reasonably versatile X-based image editing t ii xpdf-common 1.01-3 Portable Document Format (PDF) suite -- comm ii xserver-common 4.2.1-3 files and utilities common to all X servers ii xutils 4.2.1-3 X Window System utility programs ii xzgv 0.7-14 Picture viewer for X with a thumbnail-based ii zile 1.6.1-2 a very small emacs-like editor ii zlib1g 1.1.4-6 compression library - runtime 10. You can set styles by Desktop/styles Tree and moon is a nice one 11. It includes games also!! Check out 12. You can move with the arrows in the taskbar through workspaces and windows 13. Beaver is a very nice graphic editor, low in needed resources ! 14. Since no xfree drivers, except vesa standard, are included in dsl i had to install apt-get install xfree86-common apt-get install xf86config-knoppix apt-get install mdetect #for mouse detection apt-get install xbaseclients apt-get install xserver-xfree86 # 4 MB apt-get install xdebconfigurator # be careful because they upgrade e2fsprogs. Uninstalling and reinstalling it may fail and leave your system unused !!! If you want to try it get a backup of the whole partition first!! to force loop-break cat >> /etc/apt/apt.conf APT::Force-LoopBreak true; Remember to delete it afterwards since it is very dangerous use INSERT live boot cd mount /mnt/hda5 # where you want to save the image partimage # on a pentium 133 it is faster not to use compression if you don;t need it badly Add to your path /usr/X11R6/bin # startx xf86config (or xorgconfig) etc.. *******************************XFREE CONFIGURATION************************** rm /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 # so that mkxf86config will write a new one execute mkxf86config rm /etc/init.d/xsession apt-get install xsession-initscript-knoppix apt-get install xsession-knoppix get an xserverrc and xinitrc from a knoppix installation (i should find the package they are bundled in instead) and copy them to /etc/X11/xinit/ delete any .xserverrc files in user directories so that they won't be used instead rm /etc/X11/X ln -s /usr/bin/X11/XFree86 X edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 Check that below lines are correct Identifier "XFree86 Configured" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Serial Mouse" "CorePointer" InputDevice "USB Mouse" "CorePointer" # 2 mouse were used together !! Change their labels according to the correct labels that are defined later on this file Be sure you have an /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config file with the following allowed_users=console nice_value=-10 Now if you want to force a specifi vsync and resolution edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 Edit the line below so that maximum value is just over the vertical refresh you want e.g if you want 85 Hz set it to VertRefresh 50 - 87 Set also default depth to 16, 24 or 32 Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Card0" Monitor "Monitor0" DefaultDepth 16 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "800x600" "640x480" Delete ay mode higher than the one you want. E.g. here 1024x768 were deleted Do that for all depths you use cp /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 /etc/X11?Xf86Config.bak # for safety reasons ************************END OF XFREE CONFIGURATION*************************** 16. You should reinstall lilo also in the partition you installed it, so that you can use other partition managers like bootmagic or smartbootmanager. Unfortunately this information is not copied to any image backup of the partition you will make either with savepart (DOS) or partimage (LINUX). So backup with savepart the info in the mbr from lilo to be sure you can boot in case of emergencies! 17. I tried also installing a login manager (This was also kind of necessary since an init script probably xsession from package xsession-initscript-knoppix started X on startup) apt-get install xdm apt-get install wdm 18. Minimal window managers include pwm, icewm, antiright (no debian packages yet), etc .. apt-get install icewm icewm-themes icepref # icepref is a configuration tool, icewm-themes are hundreds 19. Trying to use dsl as an xdm client apt-get install xnest # about 2MB login in X and execute as root Xnest -ac -query 192.168.1.200 :1 apt-get install xserver-xfree86 # 4 MB mv ~/.xinitrc ~/.xinitrc.bak mv ~/.xserverc ~/.xserverrc.bak mv /usr/X11R6/bin/startx /usr/X11R6/bin/startx.bak apt-get install xdm ********************DSL 2.4 and above SPECIFIC****************************** Started at about 1m15s to console login prompt and 1m45s to fluxbox After 300 packages extra 1m45 2m30s to fluxbox 20. Install ssh /etc/init.d/ssh start 21. As a dsl user execute mydslPanel.lua From system category select dsl-dpkg.dsl and gnu-utils.dsl Add to /root/.bashrc . /etc/bash_completion to be able to use TAB completion with apt-get dpkg etc.. Add the standard debian repository commenting anything already in /etc/apt/sources.list deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ testing non-free Execute apt-get update 22. We need to replace the existing startup X windows scripts with xserver-xorg, so apt-get remove xserver-xorg-core apt-get install xserver-xorg (About 30 Mb 60 packages) Replace all existing configuration files with new ones to clean things up In xserver-xorg configuration when I used vesa I had problems with dri Add a new user to test the X window system adduser newuser Login as the new user Let's try installing aptitude to help us overcome the conflicts in packages of the dsl installation, since will try to use it as a debian system apt-get install aptitude (About 20 Mb 20 packages) file etc/X11/xserver/SecurityPolicy was not installed. Reinstall it aptitude reinstall xserver-xorg-core. (It failed with a segmentation fault) It seemed that dpkg was in a very old version, so apt-get install dpkg It may fail again, so manually dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg* Try again aptitude reinstall xserver-xorg-core. But xdm seems to run so lets try also gdm (40 packages 40MB) apt-get install gdm Configure it to be light. Anyway it puts a 20 seconds load so I will disable it along with xdm. Install sysvconfig aptitude install sysvconfig sysvconfig Install also blackbox from apt to inform gdm of its presence apt-get install fluxbox 23. Configure fluxbox Select desktop full enhanced Desktop See here for useful dock applets for various alike window managers like Window Maker, blackbox, fluxbox, (even kde and gnome) http://wmalms.tripod.com/ Add a keyboard switcher apt-get install fbxkb Edit the ~/.xinitrc startup file and add before the dillo command a line for the fbxkb application fbxkb& 24. Lets checkout the selection of light software it has File browser: apt-get install emelfm emelfw Text editor (compiled, unpackaged in debian) beaver Image editing apt-get install xpaint xpaint Image viewer apt-get xzgv xzgv Music player (a winamp like clone) aptitude install xmms Wordlike rtf editor apt-get install ted ted xls editor (compiled, unpackaged in debian) siag Web browser apt-get install dillo See here for similar proposals http://users.skynet.be/six/gpure/tech/linux/apps.html 25. Let's see our extra software. Popular applications, some take long to load but generally run comfortably Ftp client (10 Mb extra space, 15 seconds to load, fast afterwards) apt-get install filezilla Word processing (100Mb extra space,50 new packages, 60 sec to load, medium speed afterwards) aptitude install abiword It will install among other a printer daemon (cupsys) and samba daemon and client. You may disable any of them if you don't need them from sysvconfig sysvconfig Programming-pascal lazarus (250Mb extra, 50 packages, 20 sec to load, good speed) aptitude install lazarus lazarus-ide Programming-html nvu (30Mb extra,10 packages, 1 min to load, medium speed on execution) nvu is currently on the unstable debian so apt-get install nvu may not yet work for you You can also download from the official site www.nvu.com the debian/ubuntu deb package wget -c http://www.nvu.com/download/nvu-1.0.ubuntu.5.04.deb dpkg -i nvu-1.0.ubuntu.5.04.deb apt-get -f install rm nvu-1.0.ubuntu.5.04.deb nvu Web browser - opera (15Mb extra, 60 sec to start and load its default page, runs rather slow but impressively good considering it is complete) apt-get install opera GIMP - Advanced image processing(120 MB extra space, 70 new installed packages, 60 sec to load, fast afterwards) apt-get install gimp The installation stopped in order to move data out of a directory, and so I did mv /usr/X11R6/bin /usr/X11R6/bin.bak Then try again apt-get -f install A confict between x11-common and atmelwlandriver-tools should be resolved by dpkg -r atmelwlandriver-tools Then try again apt-get -f install Use the new configuration in all files, to clear things up Finally try installing again apt-get install gimp 26. Rather heavy popular software that was excluded Web browser (30 MB extra space) apt-get install firefox 3 minutes to load, and very slow on everything including browsing. So I removed it. apt-get --purge remove firefox iceweasel And now let's see our luck with openoffice (50 packages 300 Mb) apt-get install openoffice.org Errors encountered in conflicting existing ash-knoppix and bsh apt-get -f install dpkg -r ash-knoppix apt-get -f install apt-get install openoffice.org No luck as it was presumed. 5 minutes to load and almost unable even to move the window. So we remove it apt-get --purge remove openoffice.org* 27. Localization in greek Set up greek locales apt-get install locales to force loop-break cat >> /etc/apt/apt.conf APT::Force-LoopBreak true; If packages locales starts to generate quite a lot locales, use CTRL-C to stop it and then retry with dpkg-reconfigure --force -p0 locales Select en_US ISO-8859-1 , el_GR ISO-8859-7, el_GR.UTF-8 UTF-8 as default You may need to run again apt-get -f install to be able to proceed installing packages with apt For greek in keyboard and ability to switch with alt-shift, you must first have a running xserver-xorg setup for your X windows. Then in /etc/X11/xorg.conf in the keyboard section add or modify your matching lines *"XkbLayout" "us,el" *"XkbVariant" ",extended" *"XkbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle" For greek in a typic console see http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/441