Puppy or Damn Small Linux(DSL)?

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dtzxdtzx
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Puppy or Damn Small Linux(DSL)?

#1 Post by dtzxdtzx »

Hi,

Could someone tell me the difference between Puppy and DSL? Which one is better for an old machine with petium 133 mzh cpu and 48 ram?

Thanks
Frank

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Flash
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#2 Post by Flash »

I suppose the answer depends on a lot of things. Mainly, what will you be using the computer for? Also, how familiar are you with Linux and Linux applications in general? Are you comfortable with the command line?

Having said all that, both Puppy and DSL are small enough that you could download them and answer the question for yourself. :)

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Pizzasgood
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#3 Post by Pizzasgood »

One thing I can tell you is that you won't be able to run Puppy in ram with only 48MB. You should still be able to run it, but unless you either do a full or frugal HD install, you'll have to leave the CD in the drive, which will be horribly slow.

I haven't used DSL yet, but I imagine it would be a similar situation.
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Bruce B

#4 Post by Bruce B »

DSL is smaller overall than Puppy, but I don't like it enough to use it.

Puppy would install but not run very fast.

You might want to look into an older release of Vector Linux as some fit your system or come close to fitting in terms of minimum requirements.

http://www.vectorlinux.com/Docs/miscell ... table.html

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search damn not dsl

#5 Post by raffy »

I bet answers to your question are here already:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17771

The problem here is that you can search for "damn" and not "dsl" (words with less than 4 letters are ignored). And probably, a lot won't bother to type "damnsmalllinux".
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

Bruce B

Re: search damn not dsl

#6 Post by Bruce B »

raffy wrote:{cut}


The problem here is that you can search for "damn" and not "dsl" (words with less than 4 letters are ignored). And probably, a lot won't bother to type "damnsmalllinux".
That explains a lot for me. Thanks.

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#7 Post by alienjeff »

Pizzasgood wrote:I haven't used DSL yet, but I imagine it would be a similar situation.
With all due respect, if you haven't used DSL, you really should consider refraining from passing judgement - even imagined judgement. FYI, DSL is a 50M distro, so it will run significantly better than au courant versions of Puppy on the hardware mentioned - so it isn't a "similar situation" at all.

Pre-emptive qualifier: yes, I have used DSL - two versions, in fact.
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#8 Post by MU »

you can search for *dsl* to find 3 letter words.
Mark

Bruce B

#9 Post by Bruce B »

Damn Small Linux is a different experience. There's a lot in common, they're both small live cd Linux distros they have package management, and etc.

DSL is Knoppix based, it has one of the most unique default interfaces one would expect. It comes out with new releases, but when I take at what's under the hood, I don't find much that has changed.

It is not a work of love, like the kind that Barry and others put into Puppy. It also doesn't have the array of small apps that Puppy has and versions of larger apps are old.

I think studying its package system is some worthwhile study.

In my own mind one of the last things I want to think about is difference between DSL and Puppy. Their just different.

I found a few good small apps in it and some games I like, so I borrowed them to enhance Puppy.

The answer I liked was from Flash.
Having said all that, both Puppy and DSL are small enough that you could download them and answer the question for yourself.
I liked it because it's the practical truth. The only way to see if you prefer one over the other, it try them both. The differences are significant enough, the user might know in 10 minutes or so.[/quote]

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#10 Post by Pizzasgood »

alienjeff wrote:
Pizzasgood wrote:I haven't used DSL yet, but I imagine it would be a similar situation.
With all due respect, if you haven't used DSL, you really should consider refraining from passing judgement - even imagined judgement. FYI, DSL is a 50M distro, so it will run significantly better than au courant versions of Puppy on the hardware mentioned - so it isn't a "similar situation" at all.

Pre-emptive qualifier: yes, I have used DSL - two versions, in fact.
I did know it was 50 megabytes. I also know that the parts of Puppy that actually matter are about 64 megabytes. The zdrv_xxx.sfs file has no impact on running speed other than a short delay the first time you load each driver (the first time ever, not per session). I'd say 64 vs. 50 is pretty similar.

But that's not what I meant. I never mentioned similar performance, only similar situation. I was referring to running from the cd. I "imagined" that DSL would be forced to run from the CD unless it was installed, just like with Puppy. Part of my reasoning was that even 50MB is more than 48, and I've been under the impression that DSL wants you to have 128MB of ram before it will run in ram anyways. Even if it could load into ram with, say, 40MB, that would only leave 8MB for personal use, which I "imagine" would not be desirable unless you stick to the CLI, even with DSL.
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#11 Post by Lobster »

:)

What you get working for your needs is better.
DSL has the JWM that Barry has supported and coaxed into stability (with Joes hard coding) as an option.

A running Puppy is better than damn it
but damn it is better than nothing. For what it is (and like Puppy it improves) it is very good AND it can if it runs install a Debian system on your HD.

I have a 133mz Pentium running Puppy at the moment. However the screen display is not very good (frisky kennel members are helping me with that). So about to try the latest DeliLinux (already tried 0.7 - 0.7.2 is out - see later post). However Deli has an old horror style set up routine. Could be tears . . .

How would Austrumi run on your hardware? - Actually it would not - the list of requirements are 128MB ram.

Or how about arachne with freedos (invented by Fish - glad to see them showing some iniatative) and using online apps . . .
http://home.arachne.cz/

Xubuntu is the fastest of the buntu family
I would try Puppy 2.16
and then DSL
if that did not work and I had finished hitting my head against a brick wall as a diversion

then I would look to other options
Last edited by Lobster on Sat 19 May 2007, 10:38, edited 2 times in total.
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#12 Post by Sage »

In answer to the substantive question: Both. DSL is extremely good at what it does. It even installs to scsi. I like it for what it does. Puppy is better at some things. Keep DSL for older kit with lower resources. Enthusiasts should be running half-a-dozen machines - if you need another, let me know how many. Otherwise, anyone can find them lying around these days. As Lob. says, Austrumi is also excellent - it has the advantage that all the choices have been made for you, all work, and precious space is saved by eliminating options, add-ons, d/l s , etc. If multiple machines is an issue for 'er indoors, suggest you keep your boxes and load up 'er suitcases.
If it's security you need, there's only one - TrueBSD. Unlikely the crooked spamming, bot-ing b*st*rds would bother with a minority distro or bother to visit the website to read how to activate it. Criminals are, by definition, lazy.

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#13 Post by GuestToo »

DSL is a 50M distro, so it will run significantly better than au courant versions of Puppy
Puppy at one time used to load everything, the entire file system, from one file (image.gz, which is now named initrd.gz)

that is, all the files in image.gz were decompressed and copied to ram ... image.gz was about 50 megs

later, the file system was split between image.gz and usr_cram.fs, so the image.gz file could be smaller ... it is the size of the image.gz file that determines whether Puppy can boot or not on older hardware with very limited ram

i still have Puppy 108 installed ... Puppy 108's image.gz file is 7.6 megs ... the usr_cram.fs file is 53 megs

later versions of Puppy changed the names of the files, and also changed the way that the file system is loaded, to make it possible to boot later versions of Puppy on machines with less ram

i have Puppy 216 installed ... Puppy 216's initrd.gz file is 913k, less than 1 meg, smaller than a floppy ... Puppy 216's pup_216.sfs file is 71 megs

if there is enough space, the pup_216.sfs file is copied to ram, as was Puppy 108's usr_cram.fs file, which allows Puppy to run faster and without needing to constantly access the slower cd drives or hard drive ... if space in ram is limited, Puppy will just mount the pup_save.sfs file system, which does not use any space in ram (if you actually run a program, that program loads into ram and requires memory, but programs that are not run are not loaded in ram and do not use or need memory)

so basically, the older versions of Puppy required much more ram than the latest versions of Puppy do ... Puppy 216 requires less ram than any older version of Puppy

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#14 Post by Sage »

Nice exposition, G2. We should encapsulate it and use it as a Guide for the legions that come after. Can you organise that. 'Sticky', I suppose?

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#15 Post by Colonel Panic »

Lobster wrote::)

What you get working for your needs is better.
DSL has the JWM that Barry has supported and coaxed into stability (with Joes hard coding) as an option.

A running Puppy is better than damn it
but damn it is better than nothing. For what it is (and like Puppy it improves) it is very good AND it can if it runs install a Debian system on your HD.

I have a 133mz Pentium running Puppy at the moment. However the screen display is not very good (frisky kennel members are helping me with that). So about to try the latest DeliLinux. However Deli has an old horror style set up routine. Could be tears . . .

How would Austrumi run on your hardware? - Actually it would not - the list of requirements are 128MB ram.

Or how about arachne with freedos (invented by Fish - glad to see them showing some iniatative) and using online apps . . .
http://home.arachne.cz/

Xubuntu is the fastest of the buntu family
I would try Puppy 2.16
and then DSL
if that did not work and I had finished hitting my head against a brick wall as a diversion

then I would look to other options
Deli 0.7.2 has just come out, it might be worth a look.

Sage
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#16 Post by Sage »

I posted that yesterday, CP!
Deli is not quite what it seems. Maybe it will run in 8Mb RAM, but this is a truncated console mode. For full GUI with Firefox, 32Mb is needed. Puppy can do that with swap space. ...And it is 130Mb.
Jinx is the one to beat.

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Deli Linux

#17 Post by Colonel Panic »

I think you can get by with 16 MB of RAM in Deli if you use Dillo and links graphic, but it's more limited than Puppy offers with Seamonkey or Firefox. The biggest problem I had with Deli (0.7.1) was that the video settings only went up to what was possible with about 1 MB of RAM, so if you wanted, say, 1024x768 you were stuck with 8 bit colour.

It's a good attempt at a Linux distro for old computers though, and I'm glad it's found someone (Henry Jensen) to work on and develop it.

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#18 Post by wdef »

I'm very familiar with DamnSmallLinux, some of my scripts are in there.

It's quite different to Puppy in most respects, so how-long-is-my-organ type comparisons are a bit silly.

Puppy is probably easier for newbies in that there are more generous configuration GUIs and (eg) gxine and abiword are there ready to go.

For an old machine with 48MB ram though, provided I had a little geek aptitude, I'd go with DSL and then learn a about how to install uci and unc extensions to conserve ramdisk.

Where Puppy shines is probably running off flash, since it has the write-to-flash every 30 min architecture. Also, Puppy has a 2.6.xx kernel, gtk2, and Xorg, not to mention things like ipw2200 drivers, so it's consequently bigger and will run things that won't run on dsl out of the box. But dsl is designed to be light, small and stable, and it's very solid if you know how to use it and you don't need all the latest packages (though I've compiled quite a number of new progs to run on it).

Puppy is easier to compile things on.

I agree not a huge amount changes between dsl releases, possibly partly because the formula is not so bad as it is, but there are ongoing bug fixes and improvements, Geeks and geek-in-training who use dsl tend to be fans of unix minimalism, want the lightest possible system, and don't care much for bloat, KDE, Gnome, etc.

It's also nice to do whatever silliness you want on dsl and not have it bugger up your backup. On Puppy, everything is getting put into your pup_save.sfs, so, if you break your system, you usually have to throw that file (and whatever is it in) away, unless you want to mount it and try a repair. Not so with dsl. If it hangs and you reset, there'll be no backup. Or if you don't want to keep whatever you've installed/broken, you just disable the backup.

A plus for dsl is it's Knoppix heritage, which means it's got Klaus Knopper's virtuoso bash scripts doing things like hardware autoconfiguration. I do admire Mr Knopper's elegant and very tidy code (even if he is fond of opening subshells at the drop of a hat and doesn't seem to believe in indenting). Knoppix proper I always find just too big.

But Puppy's great too. These are different things.

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#19 Post by Sage »

A more informed and eloquent assessment than the one I gave above, but I arrived at the same basic conclusions from the user's perspective. Not a scintilla between us, wdef. It is ludicrous to dismiss DSL - there are many more worthy distros meriting the torch - start with Zenwalk, for example!

Bruce B

#20 Post by Bruce B »

Or how about arachne with freedos (invented by Fish - glad to see them showing some iniatative) and using online apps . . .
http://home.arachne.cz/
Lobster wrote this?

Arachne about drove me nuts.

I eventually gave up, concluding either (1) it won't support NIC internet connections or (2) I'll never figure out how to do it.

From all I can tell, it was designed to work with real modems, not win modems or software modems.

Buying a modem is not a big deal, but my cable modem provider wouldn't know what to do with it anyway.

I guess I could try an alternate operating system like Microsoft Windows, but they're to fat for me and I don't trust them, maybe can't trust them.

Frankly, I think it would be a blast having a DOS system I could use for surfing the internet.

Bruce

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