Overview of Damn Small Linux 2024 RC7

If you remember what Damn Small Linux is, this Linux distribution used to be a distro that provided 50 MB discs that contained the Linux live system with the minimal window manager. Now, a modern version of Damn Small Linux no longer focused on being a business card size Linux distribution, but it focused on being minimal at the same time.

Damn Small Linux 2024 RC7 is available here, and it is a “hack” from antiX, which is based on Debian.

We have tested the modern era of Damn Small Linux on VMware, and the results are impressive! Here’s how we actually got it to run.

First of all, on VMware Workstation 25H2, we’ve created a new virtual machine that has the below configuration:

As you can see, most of the configuration, except the hard drive size and the RAM, has been kept as default. We’ve increased the virtual hard drive size to 80 GB and 1 GB of RAM. After that, we’ve inserted the Damn Small Linux 2024 RC7 ISO file, dsl-2024.rc7.iso, to the disk.

We started the virtual machine, and the simplistic bootloader screen appeared.

Then, we let the Linux system load, and a nice splash screen appeared:

When Damn Small Linux finally booted up, this is what we saw:

This is a minimal Fluxbox window manager with desktop icons and Conky, a live system monitor widget that appears on top of your wallpaper. We’ve started the installation process, and the installer ran a verification process on the disk.

After the check was done, the installer made us review the keyboard settings, including the keyboard model, layout, and variant.

After that, the partitioning stage came up immediately. This time, the installer automatically determined that the disk was unformatted, so we’ve chosen the regular install option as it uses the entire disk.

The installer then showed us a last-chance confirmation window asking us to review the changes.

The installer then started automatically, starting with formatting the partition that the installer created to make space for the Damn Small Linux system files. At the same time, the installer prompted us to provide the computer name and the domain.

After that, the installer gave us options to configure the system locale, including the timezone and the default language.

Then, the installer asked us to provide the default user name and its password, optionally allowing us to set the root password for the new installation.

Then, the installer finally went on until it finished its operations.

We let the installer automatically reboot the virtual machine as soon as the installer is finished. After that, we let Damn Small Linux start itself up from the hard disk we installed the system on.

The system started up until the login page appeared. We, of course, don’t like how the login page appears, as it looks rushed.

After that, the usual desktop appeared, but without the “Installer” desktop entry.

The installation is now complete! As an extra bonus, we’ve tested both Firefox and a “lite web browser”, and Firefox wins in usability, while NetSurf doesn’t support modern web standards, so sites there look off. Here’s the comparison between Firefox and NetSurf, open on the Damn Small Linux website:

#DamnSmallLinux #DamnSmallLinux2024 #DamnSmallLinux2024RC7 #DSL #DSL2024 #DSL2024RC7 #Linux #news #Tech #Technology #update