Installing Damn Small Linux To Hard Disk

Installing Damn Small Linux To Hard Disk

Tech Blog - I recently been installing Damn Small Linux on old computer which which will be used as log in terminal, for those of you who doesn't know what Damn Small Linux is, DSL is a small Linux distribution about 50mb in size, DSL let you run Linux off CD/DVD like any live Linux distributions but unlike many live CD's and because of its small size DSL can also be installed and run on USB sticks, DSL has a graphical interface using Fluxbox it comes with many application including media players, web bowsers including Firefox, web server, a spreadsheet and word processor as well as some basic picture editors application for complete list click here, anyway on this post I will be discussing howto install Damn Small Linux on your Hard Disk, since DSL is meant to be run as live CD you will need to prepare your disk using fdisk or cfdisk before you will be able to install Damn Small Linux now lets begin.

Damn Small Linux - Download and burn to CD.

Installation steps

Step 1 - Booting your computer off the CD
- Go to your BIOS and make sure that it is set to boot of CD rom
- Boot From CD - if you are asked
- Once your in DSL (Damn Small Linux)
- Run Terminal ( Right click and select XSHELL you can choose from Transparent, Dark and light, all of them does the same thing)

Step 2 - Installing DSL
- On the terminal type the following
- sudo su
- cfdisk
- On cfdisk menu, delete all partition, highlight then select delete
- Once deleted the old partition, create a new partition one for DSL and one for swap
Sample partition
- 6500mb for /dev/hda1 and make this partition Bootable, by selecting bootable
- 1000mb for /dev/hda2 this is for swap space

- Once partition is created, select /dev/hda2 then select type, type in the number "82" this will set /dev/hda2 as swap partition type
- Once type has been set for swap, select "write" and exit cfdisk
- After exiting cfdisk type the following command to create the swap disk
- mkswap /dev/hda2
- After making the swap, go back to DSL desktop, right click then select Apps > Tools > Install to HD

Step 3- On Installation Screen
- Select to install to hda1 or /dev/hda1
- Choose ext2 when ask whether ext2 or ext3
- When ask to install bootloader either one is ok, grub or lilo doesn't matter
- it will install bootloader to MBR
- When done installing it will ask you to reboot, take out the cd and reboot, then your done installing

Step 4 - Post Installation after Reboot
- Select Vesa driver when asked for driver,
- Select 1028 when ask for resolution
- You can skip DPI question(I did)
- Once your in then your done installing.


Enjoy!