DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: take away, put in
Okay, lets have a dump of what you think is redundant and what you would like to see. Remember that this is a 50MB MAX distro so don't suggest stuff like KDE, GNOME, or OpenOffice.
Hi John.
Here are a few ideas for future DSL. Obviously there is probably not enough room for all of them but it usually does not hurt to ask:
aumix or other small sized sound volume control utility.
Midnight Commander (probably too big. Maybe can be slimmed down?)
gsview to view postscript files (and also views pdf files. Can get rid of xpdf?)
OR
Siag Office suite. Siag Office comes with gvu, a small utility to view postscript files. Siag Office can be slimmed down quite a bit (help files, unneeded programs like yet another file manager and another text editor) It also gives you a decent word processor that doesn't take up much space and works well on older computers. Also, antiword lets you convert Microsoft Word files into plain text.
A less buggy version of scite or figure out some way to slim down nedit enough to bring it back.
The ability to make a Reiserfs partition and a choice to hdinstall DSL inside a Reiserfs partition. Even on older computers, Reiserfs is the fastest and also the most stable due to journaling capability
LiveCD boot script should specify a higher iNode density when creating the Ramdisk. This will allow the creation of a writable /usr directory on the Ramdisk even when the user only has 32 or 40 MB of RAM. Currently, the user runs out of iNodes even through he has plenty of free disk space on the Ramdisk. This is due to the large number of symbolic links that are created when you build a writable /usr tree that contains links back to the LiveCD for all files in all /usr subdirectories.
xvidtune Allow users to tweak their video settings AFTER starting Xwindows. I don't know if this will work with kdrive servers though.
That's all I can think of at the moment.
I think that DSL is a great product and while these additions would enhance my DSL experience please do not consider this to be criticism.
Happy Holidays
Hi John. I don't really have a specific list, since I think everyone wants different things. With apt-get users can get whatever they want to customize DSL. I would make that the theme. That is DSL should boot from a 50 MB CD and be ready to work with the standard linux commands, a decent MS-compatible word processor like Ted, a printer setup program, a rudimentary spreadsheet, a file browser, and if possible something like LinNeighborhood (samba). Personally, I think 0.511 is there except for the samba client. All the rest is nice to have but not essential (for me) because of apt-get.
The CD should also have a good complement of drivers so that it recognizes as many ethernet cards (laptops included) as possible. If one is to augment with apt-get this is most essential.
There is no way my install will fit on a 50 Meg card anymore. I am running Abiword, Pan, Xchat, Lynx, in addition to the fine apts you have chosen. I have tried unsuccessfully to get my sound card working, and LinNeighborhood, as well as my WiFi card, but I will evenually.
If you make it as easy as possible for people to add/change DSL I believe you will satisfy the most users. Of course the CD only people will be much harder to satisfy.
Thanks again for a great product.
I personally don't need ABS or Xpaint tho it's hard to find a small paint app. I would much rather have Midnight Commander then emlFM (Slackware diehard).
Sylpheed is great, I've used it since I first tried Linux as well as Nedit.
What I'd like to see is the addition of drivers for Linmodems as Kurumin is doing, HSF, HCF & Lucent Agere.
Whatever, keep it small, it makes no sense to add Kde or Gnome, kinda defeats the purpose of DSL & there are lots of distros now w/ Kde & Gnome.
My 2 cents,
roadie
Great input guys, please keep it coming. I am reading them, but I'd rather not put my 2 cents on any one topic for a while. I don't want to squelch anyone's perspective.
Oh, don't worry about criticizing my choices.
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