stefan_tm
03-02-2004, 11:56 PM
Hello,
I just finished exploring Knoppix - and I`m amazed. Really, the best Linux advocate I`ve seen. :)
As I`m not (yet) a Linux user, I need an advice from somebody who knows it a bit. I want to burn a bussiness card CD with a mini-version of Knoppix. I`ve already downloaded "Damn Small Linux" and "Puppy Linux".
Could you tell me which of the two you think worths beeing put on a small size cd? I`m interested in which is the most complete/useful package (at least from a first look of their description). It should have some multi-media stuff, office tools and a recovery kit. And whatever seems practical to have around. :)
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/
Thanks a lot for your suggestion,
Stefan
Here are the main applications in Puppy v.0.8.0 (52M ramdisk):
__________________________________________________ __
Wordprocessing I'll include the low-level text-editors in here. At the text-editor level there are three, the traditional vi, a real easy to use console editor with pull-down menu called aee, and Gnotepad+, that features easy HTML code creation. There are not one but two WYSIWYG HTML editors, Amaya and Composer. Top of the range for wordprocessing is Ted, a WYSIWYG native RTF (Rich Text Format) wordprocessor, that can save in RTF, HTML, PDF and PS. Cleanup HTML code with Tidy. View Word documents with Antiword.
Graphics I've included Xpaint, a paint editor application. For browsing through graphics thumbnails, use the very nice ROX file manager. Xli console image viewer. Gtkgraph is a graphing calculator. Figurine is a beautiful vector graphics editor. fig2dev is a console fig image file format converter, used by Figurine and ABS to export to many graphics formats. ps2edit is used by GSview to export Postscript files to many graphics formats.
WWW There are 4 web browsers! Top-of-the-range is Mozilla, with support for all modern standards including SSL, CSS, Javascript, bookmarks, and cookies. The Light web browser is a frontend for Mozilla that features speed and frugal memory usage. I also threw in the Dillo web browser, and Amaya doubles as a browser and supports XHTML, XML, CSS and SVG. For FTP we have a graphical application called gftp (as well as console FTP apps). For email and newgroups we have Sylpheed. At one stage I was plagued by the Swen virus, so I installed SMM to prefilter email before downloading. For online chatting, there is Xchat and Mozilla's inbuilt chat module. You can also chat verbally with someone over the Internet using Gphone, an Internet telephone. Gwget is a download manager, a GUI frontend to wget. For domain name lookup there is Xwhois.
Multimedia For playing audio files we have console Wavplay and Madplay, and a GUI frontend, Xhippo. A nice GUI audio mixer, Xtmix. For playing audio CDs we have Gcdplay. For "ripping" songs off CDs and saving as wav or mp3, we have ripperX. For playing avi and Quicktime video files we have console Xanim and GUI Gxanim. For playing DVD videos we have Ogle. For burning CDs we have Gcombust.
Games When I demonstrated Puppy to my daughter, she asked "where are the games?" Ok, so Puppy now has games. They are Xpuyopuyo, Gtkfish and Rubix.
Information management Gaby personal database and Xcal calendar/appointments. A spreadsheet program called ABS. There is even a personal finance application, called Xfinans.
File management I discovered this treasure, called ROX Filer. Puppy has the Samba client applications and a nice GUI frontend called Lin Network Neighborhood, for browsing computers on a LAN and mounting external drives. For accessing floppy disks, there is mtools and a GUI frontend MtoolsFM.
System For viewing and printing Postscript and PDF files we have Ghostscript and GSview (latter is the GUI viewer). XFree Xvesa graphics server will run on all PCs. The kernel is v2.4.22. A useful collection of kernel driver modules supplied with Puppy, the rest available separately. The terminal emulator is rxvt. The window manager is Fvwm95. Archive management is with xtar. Secure console applications sftp and ssh. View system settings with xproc and USBview. Screen capture functionality is achieved with Xpaint. The firewall is Linux Firewall and there's also GTK-IPtables. Scan for viruses with Fprot and XFprot. Lots of bitmap and Type1 scalable fonts. Gnetconf to view and configure network interfaces, and Xnetload to monitor network traffic. Xrun commandline window. Turma GUI file text find and replace, and GtkCat to find files. libhardware for automatic hardware detection and loading of kernel modules. For personal security we have Gpasman password manager and Bcrypt for securing files. For easy connection to a LAN and to the Internet via a LAN there is dhcpcd, a DHCP client, plus GUIs Lin Network Neighborhood (mentioned above in File management section) and Superscan network scanner. For PPP-over-Ethernet there is Roaring Penguin PPPOE. For scanner access there is SANE-backends and Xsane.
Puppy also has a whole heap of "wizards" created by me for easy system configuration, such as Modem Wizard, Video Wizard, CD-burner Wizard, plus utilities created by me such as Pmount, remaster-cd and Hardware Probe. There are utilities for installing Puppy to USB Flash card and Zip disk
Documentation I haven't skimped on documentation. All apps have documentation in HTML format, all in the same folder for easy access.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Featured Desktop applications used in Damn Small Linux (47MB)
__________________________________________________ ___
Browser: Dillo
completely written in C.
small: source is less than 365 KB, and the binary is around 300 KB!
Dillo is mainly based on GTK+ (GNOME is NOT required!)
Dillo is very fast!
The Dillo browser in Damn Small has been enhanced, it supports SSL, tabs and frames!
Paches by Andreas Kemnade and Frank de Lange.
Browser: Links Hacker
This browser is a greatly enhanced version of links that weighs in at 1/9th the size of Mozilla yet can handle SSL, js, frames, and cookies, copy and paste, and HTTP Authentication. It is a fantastic browser for old and low power systems.
Word Processor: Ted-gtk NEW
Ted, an easy rich text processor
Ted is a text processor running under X Windows on Unix/Linux systems. Ted was developed as a standard easy word processor, having the role of Wordpad on MS-Windows. Since then, Ted has evolved to a real word processor that still has the same easy appearance as the original. The possibility to type a letter, a note or a report on a Unix/Linux machine is clearly missing. Only too often, you have to turn to MS-Windows machine to write a letter or a document. Ted was made to make it possible to edit rich text documents on Unix/Linux in a wysiwyg way. RTF files from Ted are fully compatible with MS-Word. Additionally, Ted also is an RTF to PostScript and an RTF to Acrobat PDF converter.
Email: Sylpheed
Sylpheed is an e-mail client and news reader based on GTK+ and running on X Window System.
Sylpheed is developed aiming for the following things
Quick response
Simple, graceful, and well-polished interface
Easy configuration
Intuitive operation
Abundant features
Sylpheed is a great email program, I use it as my primary desktop client.
Picture Viewer: Xzgv
Xzgv is a picture viewer for X, with a thumbnail-based file selector. It uses GTK+ and Imlib. Most file formats are supported, and the thumbnails used are compatible with xv, zgv, and the Gimp.
Image Editing: Xpaint
Xpaint is a color image editing tool which features most standard paint program options. It allows for the editing of multiple images simultaneously and supports various formats, including PPM, XBM, TIFF, etc.
Xpaint seems to get less notoriety these days because of the enormous capabilities of The GIMP; yet, Xpaint is very capable, and will serve well for general image editing. It also is a very tight program which makes it perfect fit for Damn Small.
File Manager: emelFM
emelFM is a file manager that implements the popular two-pane design. It features a simple GTK+ interface, a flexible filetyping scheme, and a built-in command line for executing commands without opening an xterm.
Features
Simple Interface
Bookmarks and History Lists
Flexible filetyping scheme
Multiple actions selectable for each filetype
Filename, Size, and Date Filters
Built-In Command Line
User-defined menu
Configurable Keyboard bindings
Configurable Toolbar
Runtime loadable plugins
Window Manager: FluxBox
Fluxbox is based on the famous BlackBox, but with some really nice enhancements -- I believe there is no more work efficient window manager in existence. Learn how to use the tabs, after a while you will be hooked. Unfortunately, the Xvesa server dose not recognize mouse wheels, which makes using Fluxbox that much more enjoyable.
Instant Messaging Naim
Naim is the best terminal based AOL client I could find. I tried out several.
It can also do Lily and IRC.
GUI Text Editor: Nedit
Features: True multi-window, fully graphical design Mouse based editing Cut and Paste with other X Windows/Motif programs Secondary, quick-action, selections Rectangular selection mode Easy to learn Just point and type Capabilities are presented clearly in top level menus Comprehensive on-line help No special knowledge of X Windows required, all important options can be set from within the program Features for programmers Auto-indent Block indentation adjustment Parenthesis flashing and matching Find lines directly from compiler error output Emulated tabs Unix ctags support Client/Server mode for integration with software development tools
Spreadsheet: ABS
Abs is powerful and easy to use -- it is perfect for older systems, or a live-CD will a limited amount of space. It weighs in at less than 1/10th the size of OpenOffice :-)...
Features :
abs is a stand alone state of the art spreadsheet designed to run on any UNIX platform.
abs comes with the ABVisual macro language (compatible with Microsoft Visual Basic).
abs can exchange data with Microsoft Excel through Visual Basic. All data, formats, drawings, controls and charts are exportable to Microsoft Excel.
abs is distributed with source code under General Public License.
abs is under development but already stable enough to be used.
PDF: Xpdf
Xpdf is an open source viewer for Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Xpdf is designed to be small and efficient.
I really wanted to include Xpdf in Damn Small because so much online information is sitting in pdf format these days. A pdf viewer is almost like a second browser.
Some other great packages strait from Debian:
XMMS with mp321 and ogg123 (that's right, you got Music)
nVi, an enhanced Vi
tinyIRC
Assorted Xbase utilities (Xcalc etc.)
Ispell(!) -- American English spell check, NEdit pumps right into it.
ssh, sshd
Zile, a very small yet powerful EMACS clone
Xpacman, small Pacman game
Sqlite a small and very fast SQL database engine
Taken from other sources:
Monkey web server
VNCviewer
Rdesktop
TuxNES
I just finished exploring Knoppix - and I`m amazed. Really, the best Linux advocate I`ve seen. :)
As I`m not (yet) a Linux user, I need an advice from somebody who knows it a bit. I want to burn a bussiness card CD with a mini-version of Knoppix. I`ve already downloaded "Damn Small Linux" and "Puppy Linux".
Could you tell me which of the two you think worths beeing put on a small size cd? I`m interested in which is the most complete/useful package (at least from a first look of their description). It should have some multi-media stuff, office tools and a recovery kit. And whatever seems practical to have around. :)
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/
Thanks a lot for your suggestion,
Stefan
Here are the main applications in Puppy v.0.8.0 (52M ramdisk):
__________________________________________________ __
Wordprocessing I'll include the low-level text-editors in here. At the text-editor level there are three, the traditional vi, a real easy to use console editor with pull-down menu called aee, and Gnotepad+, that features easy HTML code creation. There are not one but two WYSIWYG HTML editors, Amaya and Composer. Top of the range for wordprocessing is Ted, a WYSIWYG native RTF (Rich Text Format) wordprocessor, that can save in RTF, HTML, PDF and PS. Cleanup HTML code with Tidy. View Word documents with Antiword.
Graphics I've included Xpaint, a paint editor application. For browsing through graphics thumbnails, use the very nice ROX file manager. Xli console image viewer. Gtkgraph is a graphing calculator. Figurine is a beautiful vector graphics editor. fig2dev is a console fig image file format converter, used by Figurine and ABS to export to many graphics formats. ps2edit is used by GSview to export Postscript files to many graphics formats.
WWW There are 4 web browsers! Top-of-the-range is Mozilla, with support for all modern standards including SSL, CSS, Javascript, bookmarks, and cookies. The Light web browser is a frontend for Mozilla that features speed and frugal memory usage. I also threw in the Dillo web browser, and Amaya doubles as a browser and supports XHTML, XML, CSS and SVG. For FTP we have a graphical application called gftp (as well as console FTP apps). For email and newgroups we have Sylpheed. At one stage I was plagued by the Swen virus, so I installed SMM to prefilter email before downloading. For online chatting, there is Xchat and Mozilla's inbuilt chat module. You can also chat verbally with someone over the Internet using Gphone, an Internet telephone. Gwget is a download manager, a GUI frontend to wget. For domain name lookup there is Xwhois.
Multimedia For playing audio files we have console Wavplay and Madplay, and a GUI frontend, Xhippo. A nice GUI audio mixer, Xtmix. For playing audio CDs we have Gcdplay. For "ripping" songs off CDs and saving as wav or mp3, we have ripperX. For playing avi and Quicktime video files we have console Xanim and GUI Gxanim. For playing DVD videos we have Ogle. For burning CDs we have Gcombust.
Games When I demonstrated Puppy to my daughter, she asked "where are the games?" Ok, so Puppy now has games. They are Xpuyopuyo, Gtkfish and Rubix.
Information management Gaby personal database and Xcal calendar/appointments. A spreadsheet program called ABS. There is even a personal finance application, called Xfinans.
File management I discovered this treasure, called ROX Filer. Puppy has the Samba client applications and a nice GUI frontend called Lin Network Neighborhood, for browsing computers on a LAN and mounting external drives. For accessing floppy disks, there is mtools and a GUI frontend MtoolsFM.
System For viewing and printing Postscript and PDF files we have Ghostscript and GSview (latter is the GUI viewer). XFree Xvesa graphics server will run on all PCs. The kernel is v2.4.22. A useful collection of kernel driver modules supplied with Puppy, the rest available separately. The terminal emulator is rxvt. The window manager is Fvwm95. Archive management is with xtar. Secure console applications sftp and ssh. View system settings with xproc and USBview. Screen capture functionality is achieved with Xpaint. The firewall is Linux Firewall and there's also GTK-IPtables. Scan for viruses with Fprot and XFprot. Lots of bitmap and Type1 scalable fonts. Gnetconf to view and configure network interfaces, and Xnetload to monitor network traffic. Xrun commandline window. Turma GUI file text find and replace, and GtkCat to find files. libhardware for automatic hardware detection and loading of kernel modules. For personal security we have Gpasman password manager and Bcrypt for securing files. For easy connection to a LAN and to the Internet via a LAN there is dhcpcd, a DHCP client, plus GUIs Lin Network Neighborhood (mentioned above in File management section) and Superscan network scanner. For PPP-over-Ethernet there is Roaring Penguin PPPOE. For scanner access there is SANE-backends and Xsane.
Puppy also has a whole heap of "wizards" created by me for easy system configuration, such as Modem Wizard, Video Wizard, CD-burner Wizard, plus utilities created by me such as Pmount, remaster-cd and Hardware Probe. There are utilities for installing Puppy to USB Flash card and Zip disk
Documentation I haven't skimped on documentation. All apps have documentation in HTML format, all in the same folder for easy access.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Featured Desktop applications used in Damn Small Linux (47MB)
__________________________________________________ ___
Browser: Dillo
completely written in C.
small: source is less than 365 KB, and the binary is around 300 KB!
Dillo is mainly based on GTK+ (GNOME is NOT required!)
Dillo is very fast!
The Dillo browser in Damn Small has been enhanced, it supports SSL, tabs and frames!
Paches by Andreas Kemnade and Frank de Lange.
Browser: Links Hacker
This browser is a greatly enhanced version of links that weighs in at 1/9th the size of Mozilla yet can handle SSL, js, frames, and cookies, copy and paste, and HTTP Authentication. It is a fantastic browser for old and low power systems.
Word Processor: Ted-gtk NEW
Ted, an easy rich text processor
Ted is a text processor running under X Windows on Unix/Linux systems. Ted was developed as a standard easy word processor, having the role of Wordpad on MS-Windows. Since then, Ted has evolved to a real word processor that still has the same easy appearance as the original. The possibility to type a letter, a note or a report on a Unix/Linux machine is clearly missing. Only too often, you have to turn to MS-Windows machine to write a letter or a document. Ted was made to make it possible to edit rich text documents on Unix/Linux in a wysiwyg way. RTF files from Ted are fully compatible with MS-Word. Additionally, Ted also is an RTF to PostScript and an RTF to Acrobat PDF converter.
Email: Sylpheed
Sylpheed is an e-mail client and news reader based on GTK+ and running on X Window System.
Sylpheed is developed aiming for the following things
Quick response
Simple, graceful, and well-polished interface
Easy configuration
Intuitive operation
Abundant features
Sylpheed is a great email program, I use it as my primary desktop client.
Picture Viewer: Xzgv
Xzgv is a picture viewer for X, with a thumbnail-based file selector. It uses GTK+ and Imlib. Most file formats are supported, and the thumbnails used are compatible with xv, zgv, and the Gimp.
Image Editing: Xpaint
Xpaint is a color image editing tool which features most standard paint program options. It allows for the editing of multiple images simultaneously and supports various formats, including PPM, XBM, TIFF, etc.
Xpaint seems to get less notoriety these days because of the enormous capabilities of The GIMP; yet, Xpaint is very capable, and will serve well for general image editing. It also is a very tight program which makes it perfect fit for Damn Small.
File Manager: emelFM
emelFM is a file manager that implements the popular two-pane design. It features a simple GTK+ interface, a flexible filetyping scheme, and a built-in command line for executing commands without opening an xterm.
Features
Simple Interface
Bookmarks and History Lists
Flexible filetyping scheme
Multiple actions selectable for each filetype
Filename, Size, and Date Filters
Built-In Command Line
User-defined menu
Configurable Keyboard bindings
Configurable Toolbar
Runtime loadable plugins
Window Manager: FluxBox
Fluxbox is based on the famous BlackBox, but with some really nice enhancements -- I believe there is no more work efficient window manager in existence. Learn how to use the tabs, after a while you will be hooked. Unfortunately, the Xvesa server dose not recognize mouse wheels, which makes using Fluxbox that much more enjoyable.
Instant Messaging Naim
Naim is the best terminal based AOL client I could find. I tried out several.
It can also do Lily and IRC.
GUI Text Editor: Nedit
Features: True multi-window, fully graphical design Mouse based editing Cut and Paste with other X Windows/Motif programs Secondary, quick-action, selections Rectangular selection mode Easy to learn Just point and type Capabilities are presented clearly in top level menus Comprehensive on-line help No special knowledge of X Windows required, all important options can be set from within the program Features for programmers Auto-indent Block indentation adjustment Parenthesis flashing and matching Find lines directly from compiler error output Emulated tabs Unix ctags support Client/Server mode for integration with software development tools
Spreadsheet: ABS
Abs is powerful and easy to use -- it is perfect for older systems, or a live-CD will a limited amount of space. It weighs in at less than 1/10th the size of OpenOffice :-)...
Features :
abs is a stand alone state of the art spreadsheet designed to run on any UNIX platform.
abs comes with the ABVisual macro language (compatible with Microsoft Visual Basic).
abs can exchange data with Microsoft Excel through Visual Basic. All data, formats, drawings, controls and charts are exportable to Microsoft Excel.
abs is distributed with source code under General Public License.
abs is under development but already stable enough to be used.
PDF: Xpdf
Xpdf is an open source viewer for Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Xpdf is designed to be small and efficient.
I really wanted to include Xpdf in Damn Small because so much online information is sitting in pdf format these days. A pdf viewer is almost like a second browser.
Some other great packages strait from Debian:
XMMS with mp321 and ogg123 (that's right, you got Music)
nVi, an enhanced Vi
tinyIRC
Assorted Xbase utilities (Xcalc etc.)
Ispell(!) -- American English spell check, NEdit pumps right into it.
ssh, sshd
Zile, a very small yet powerful EMACS clone
Xpacman, small Pacman game
Sqlite a small and very fast SQL database engine
Taken from other sources:
Monkey web server
VNCviewer
Rdesktop
TuxNES