Damn Small Linux

[A. Maitland Bottoms]

andre kesteloot writes:
 > Damn Small Linux  (DSL) comes with its own server
 > Only 50 Megs

New release from them, nice to see they are even selling
some cool (literally) Mini-ITX systems and the DSM Nano-ITX.
Hams especially should be interested in the fact that these
computers run nicely from 12 VDC. My Mini-ITX box has
Anderson Powerpole connectors.

Seems big, after playing around with openwrt.org stuff, which
is Linux on devices with 4 Meg of flash. Of course, routers
don't have displays to drive. I've got OpenWRT Kamikaze running
on K0BRA's Soekris boards with 8 Meg and 32 Meg Compact Flash
devices. (Soekris boards also take 12VDC.)

So who has flash as small as even 64 Megs these days? One can
run a minimal Debian system from 128 Meg devices or KDE or Gnome
desktops from 1G devices:
See .img files for Live Debian at
http://live.debian.net/cdimage/etch-builds/20070716/i386/
and Debian has nice tools for generating custom "live" images
that can be used for USB devices:
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/Howto/USB

Or perhaps you'd like to encrypt everything, since those
USB devices are so easy to misplace.
http://feraga.com/project/deb2flash

Or why use hard disks at all?
http://eeepc.asus.com/global/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC
(Just put a display and keyboard and WiFi around your flash.)

Lots of fun to be had.

-Maitland