Damn Small Linux: Quick Start 09/17/2006 05:44 PM

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PLUG mainpage -> Articles -> Damn Small Linux - Quickstart

Damn Small Linux: Quick Start Guide

By Bill Hopkins, October 2005

Damn Small Linux is a handy small Linux distro that can load from a business
card size CD. It's is quite complete and is small enough that even dial-up users
can get it in a few hours. What follows is a guide to gettings started for new
Linux users. You can download Damn Small Linux from
http://damnsmalllinux.org. Try it out!

After DSL boots up, the Dillo web browser

has been opened on the Desktop. You will
probably want to close it down to get it out of
the way, for now. Click on the "X" button at
the top right hand corner of the Dillo window.

Accessing files
At the bottom right hand side of the Desktop, is a system panel. The icon that
shows the word "floppy" is where you "mount" your various hardware such as
hard drives, CD-ROM drives, USB Pen Drives, etc.

In Linux "mounting" your hardware is necessary to make them functional.

You must mount your various drives to be able to use them.

Note: For floppy drives and CD-ROM drives, a disc must be in the drive
in order to mount it, otherwise you will just get an error message when
you try.

At the bottom of the "floppy" icon are a left and right arrow and a small
floppy "drawer". Click on the arrows to cycle through the different available
drives. To mount the drive, click on the drawer to the left of the arrows. The
drawer should now show a green light, indicating it is mounted.

The icon showing a file cabinet and the word Emelfm, is your file manager.
Single click on it to open it. It defaults to the directory," /dsl". You will
probably want to navigate to the files and directory of your hard drive.

Note: If your hard drive has Windows 98 and the Fat 32 or FAT 16 file
system, you can read and write files to it, using Linux. If your hard drive
has Windows XP and the NTFS file system, it is strongly recommended
that you only read the files and not save files to this file system.

In other words, you can access and play your MP3 files from Windows XP but
do not save any files to Windows XP. You can easily partition and create a Fat
32 directory on your hard drive, that will allow you to save files to your XP

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Damn Small Linux: Quick Start 09/17/2006 05:44 PM

computer.

In Emelfm, double click on the "../" line,

below where it shows "Filename", in the left
hand portion of the Emelfm window. Double
click two mores times on the "../" line, so that
one of the directories listed , is titled "mnt".

Double click on "/mnt",and you will see the

floppy, CD-ROM, hard drives and USB drives,
if you have this hardware in your computer.

In Linux, hardware is shown as a directory in your file manager.

hda1 should be your "C" drive. If you have partitions on the C drive they will
show up as hda2, hda3, etc.

If you have two hard drives, the second one will show up as hdb1. SCSI
partitions will be identified as sda1, sda2, etc. USB hard drives are handled as
SCSI drives, under LINUX, so they will also show up as sda1, sdb1, etc.

Now, double-click on the drive you want to access, and its directory will be
displayed. Navigate and access the files by double-clicking as discussed above.

Web Browsers
There are two web browsers available. Dillo and Firefox, as shown on the
desktop.

Dillo is a basic web browser and Firefox is a full featured web browser which
you would normally want to use.

Word Processor
On the desktop, the pen icon, titled Beaver,
is a basic word processor similar to Microsoft
Wordpad.

Program Menu
To access the other numerous programs built into DSL, right click on an
empty space on the desktop.

This is also where you will find the "powerdown" for dsl.

Setup
The "DSLpanel" icon, on the desktop is where you will find the utilities to set
up your hardware such as printers, dialup, netcard, wireless card etc.

If your computer has a wireless card, you will have to run the Ndiswrapper
program to get DSL to operate your card and the program Wlanconfig to set up
the wireless operation. The details to do this will need to be explained by
someone with the knowledge or from other documentation.

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Paint Program
On the desktop, Xpaint is the program you want.

MP3 Player
On the desktop, xMMs is the program you want.

To enlarge the window, click on the top left-hand corner of the window, go to
Options, and click on double-size.

PDF Program
On the desktop, Xpdf will bring up a program to work with Adobe PDF files.

Image Viewer
On the desktop, xZGV is your Image Viewer.

Sound Card Control

On the system panel to the lower right of the desktop, is the control for the
sound card. It is the graphic icon below the floppy drive mount icon.

The left and right arrows cycle through the different inputs and outputs levels.

Cycle through the inputs/outputs until you get to the one you want to increase
or decrease. A bar graph will show up across the bottom of your screen to
indicate the current level.

To change the level up or down, move your cursor over to the small red dot
in the black dial to the left of the Balance slider control, until the cursor
changes to a "hand".

Then right click and move your mouse up or down, to increase or decrease
the level.

Questions or comments? Bring them to the forums.

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