Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Damn Small Linux

damnsmalllinux.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 71 posts

Re: Damn Small Linux

#4

Post by hansvm »

barbs wrote: post #3

Here's a cool story of someone using a mini Linux (not DSL) to save a company-wide bug at a fast food chain. https://web.archive.org/web/20100520020401/http://therealedw...

The wildest part of that to me is that OP couldn't help out because there was somehow something more pressing than every non-franchise store not being able to accept payment and likely needing a lot of expertise to patch it fast enough.

Re: Damn Small Linux

#5

Post by mbreese »

gnabgib wrote: post #2

Popular in 2024 (399 points, 179 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39215846

Should really be titled "Damn Small Linux 2024", as this is a reboot of an older distro.

I was going to comment that it must have been posted multiple times before 2024, but this is a refresh of the older distro, there are probably different URLs. I'm not sure what's new about it to warrant a post today, the last release is rc7 from June 2024 and the webpage is full of popup ads that are really annoying.

Perhaps someone discovered it for the first time today? If so, this used to be much smaller. 50MB vs 700MB today. I mean, it's a damn small linux that includes Firefox... that doesn't seem quite right to me.

I think the spiritual (and actual) successor to DSL is http://tinycorelinux.net . Which was also discussed here two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46173547 .

Re: Damn Small Linux

#6

Post by cwillu »

mbreese wrote: post #5
gnabgib wrote: post #2

Popular in 2024 (399 points, 179 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39215846

Should really be titled "Damn Small Linux 2024", as this is a reboot of an older distro. I was going to comment that it must have been posted multiple times before 2024, but this is a refresh of the older distro, there are probably different URLs. I'm not sure what's new about it to warrant a post today, the last release is rc7 from June 2024 and the webpage is full of popup ads that are really annoying. Perhaps some…

Thankfully the linked page includes discussion by the author on how it used to be 50MB and why he decided to revisit his original project with a new scope and size limit.

Re: Damn Small Linux

#9

Post by monus »

The problem with old computers isn’t that they’re slow but fail randomly so they don’t need “smaller” Linux, they need more resiliency that can work with random RAM erros, corrupt disks, absurd CPU instruction failures.

The size was a 90s problem.

Post reply on HN