The New DSL 2024 has been reborn as a compact Linux distribution tailored for low-spec x86 computers. It packs a lot of applications into a small package. All the applications are chosen for their functionality, small size, and low dependencies. DSL 2024 also has many text-based applications that make it handy to use in a term window or TTY.
The new goal of DSL is to pack as much usable desktop distribution into an image small enough to fit on a single CD, or a hard limit of 700MB. This project is meant to service older computers and have them continue to be useful far into the future. Such a notion sits well with my values. I think of this project as my way of keeping otherwise usable hardware out of landfills.
As with most things in the GNU/Linux community, this project continues to stand on the shoulders of giants. I am just one guy without a CS degree, so for now, this project is based on antiX 23 i386. AntiX is a fantastic distribution that I think shares much of the same spirit as the original DSL project. AntiX shares pedigree with MEPIS and also leans heavily on the geniuses at Debian. So, this project stands on the shoulders of giants. In other words, DSL 2024 is a humble little project!
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Nice news. DSL is back.
Ran this on a Celeron/128MB RAM in the mid-2000s, always nice to have a flavor to run on incompetent and legacy hardware.
Oh hey, I was thinking about DSL recently and was bummed that it’d been discontinued for so long. It was my first Linux distro, downloaded over the course of I think a day and a half over rural dial-up. I moved to Ubuntu once I was able to get blazing fast 1.5 Mbps “broadband” but DSL still holds a special place in my heart. Going antiX-based was probably a good move to make it a bit more manageable, and while I downloaded it originally because it was 50MB I agree that it’s probably more realistic that people will download it with a connection much faster than dial-up, and the hard cap on a CD-sized image is I think a good compromise. It’s still, as the name says, damn small, at least by modern OS standards.
Isn’t OpenWRT the true damn small Linux?
Since OpenWrt is just Buildroot with networking libraries and a package manager, I would say Buildroot itself would be an even smaller Linux. Whether it’s been condemned to eternal torment is another matter entirely, though, lol
Sa-lute!
Very cool. I hope they get some minimal Wayland stack soon.
What is it that makes a distro ISO so small? Or maybe a better way of putting it: How come a Linux ISO can be multiple gigabytes in size?
It would be cool of I could use apt
From the announcement on the site:
Unlike the original DSL, this version has apt fully enabled
70MBi is damn small?
Small enough to fit on a CD, which isn’t everyone’s definition of “small.” There are, of course, much smaller Linux distros, less than a tenth the size; particularly if CLI is adequate.
I mean they should just remove “damn” from the name then
