DSL was originally conceived and maintained by John Andrews. The community now includes Robert Shingledecker, who created the MyDSL system, DSL Control Panel, and other features.
DSL was originally based on Model-K, a 22 MB stripped-down version of Knoppix, but soon after was based on Knoppix proper, allowing much easier remastering and improvements.
System requirements
DSL supports only x86 PCs. The minimum system requirements are a 486 processor and 8 MB of RAM. DSL has been demonstrated browsing the web with Dillo, running simple games and playing music on systems with a 486 processor and 16 MB of RAM. The system requirements are higher for running Mozilla Firefox and optional add-ons such as the OpenOffice.orgoffice suite.
Features
The current version of DSL is 4.4.5, released September 3, 2008. DSL currently includes the following software:
DSL has built-in scripts to download and install Advanced Packaging Tool (APT). Once APT is enabled, the user can install packages from Debian's 'Woody' repository. Additionally, DSL hosts software ranging from large applications like OpenOffice.org and GCC, to smaller ones such as aMSN, by means of the "MyDSL" system, which allows convenient one-click download and installation of software. Files hosted on MyDSL are called "extensions". As of June 2008, the MyDSL servers were hosting over 900 applications, plugins, and other extensions.
The MyDSL system
MyDSL is handled and maintained mostly by Robert Shingledecker and hosted by many organizations, such as ibiblio and Belgium's BELNET. There are 2 areas of MyDSL - regular and "testing". The regular area contains extensions that have been proven stable enough for everyday use and is broken down into different areas such as "apps", "net", "system", and "uci" ("Universal Compressed ISO" - Extensions in .uci format are mounted as a separate filesystem to minimize RAM usage). The "testing" area is for newly submitted extensions that theoretically work 'as advertised', but may have any number of bugs.
