Damn Small Linux

Damn Small Linux (which with henceforth be referred to as DSL) is an appropriately named Linux distribution. It fits into 50 MB. Now that's damn small! Amazingly, in that 50 MB is everything that you need, provided KDE or GNOME isn't one of them. DSL uses the minimalist but excellent Fluxbox window manager, so you can get great performance from this system even from old hardware. In fact, I tried DSL out on a 7 year old Pentium MMX at 200 MHZ with 98 MB of RAM and it worked surprisingly well.

Good Points	Weak Points
minimalist (if you like that) sound works right away easy network configuration with 'netsetup' includes the latest Firefox	if you're into bells and whistles, it's probably too minimalist for you to play sound, there's DSL media player - but it's not too functional couldn't set up printing on old hardware, you'll have to go through some setup options on boot

DSL is the perfect live distribution if you're looking for something that works well in hardware that may have seen better days. On new machines, it works just as well, of course. The fashion conscious may find it a bit too minimalist for their taste, even though at 50 MB there's not too much room for window dressing. But even at that size, I found everything I needed to get productive work done (as long as I don't have to print it). It comes with latest Firefox. I was able to listen to my favorite online music via the command line (ogg123, mpg123). For those of us who prefer no-frills, Damn Small Linux is a great Live distribution.

Conclusion

There you have what in my opinion are the top live cd distributions. With them you can work productively in any machine that will boot from a CD. As you've seen, some have more applications that others and offer more options. As with all things, some work better than others but all share one fact that they are Linux - and Linux gives you a great deal of freedom and choice.

Michael J. Jordan is the webmaster of Linux Online. He can be reached at Michael.Jordan**AT**Linux.org