Reviews for The Official Damn Small Linux Book: The Tiny Adaptable Linux That Runs on Anything (Negus Live Linux)

1. DSL

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2009

   Without doubt DSL is a praiseworthy minimalist distro but this book contains so many hurrahs for the developers it can be a little irritating.
   
   Both the book and the live CD explain how to install to hard disk, and as a beginner I was able to achieve dual boot with XP, although it operates perfectly well without being installed.
   
   Of course you don't need this book just to try DSL out. But the book will explain how you can get the best out of it.
   

2. Not so simple as they make out

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, July 12th, 2008

   The Official Damn Small Linux Book: The Tiny Adaptable Linux That Runs on Anything (Negus Live Linux)
   
   Runs on anything? Not if you want it to run from your hard disc it doesn't. I tried to install dsl from the CD on two systems, one a laptop which had an old NT disc on it and a desktop with a clean disc. Having got past the initial problem that neither screen would display anything beyond the introductory screen without modifying the boot instruction I proceeded. It was a little awkward that there was no UK keyboard option. I found in both cases that the instructions in the book did not agree with what happened on screen. I tried all sorts of variations but nothing would get linux to boot from my hard disc. There is no troubleshooting chapter so no explanation of error code 15 which kept appearing on my laptop or any of the other errors which appeared for no apparent reason. At least it made me appreciate Windows in its many forms. The occasional blue screen in NT I could live with.