Damn Small Linux was originally developed as an experiment to see how many usable desktop applications can fit inside a 50MB live CD. It was at first just a personal tool/toy. But over time Damn Small Linux grew into a community project with hundreds of development hours put into refinements including a fully automated remote and local application installation system and a very versatile backup and restore system which may be used with any writable media including a hard drive, a floppy drive, or a USB device.
Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things:
* Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)
* Boot from a USB pen drive
* Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows)
* Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install"
* Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install
* Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram
* Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!)
* Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize
Changes for 3.0:
1. New DSL now boots to unionfs.
2. New boot option "legacy" to boot without unionfs.
3. Moved MyDSL local extension loading functionality from emelfm to MyDSL desktop icon.
4. New mountable MyDSL extension type unc with automatic branch management.
5. Adjust Getting Started/Dillo screen to support booting 640x480.
6. Added ACPI modules for newer power management support.
7. New FUSE support.
8. New sshfs support for simple remote network mounts.
9. Fixed bug in kbdconfig when changing keymaps.
10. Fixed sshd stop issue in early 3.0 RC versions.
11. Fixed reported typos.
12. New theme "A Penguin with a Hat"
13. New unc extension section in the MyDSL Repository.