Cool old computers. The net belongs to antiquities.

Tofu is a MacOS X app that does a few things to text, to make it more readable:

In Tofu, text is arranged in columns, and each column is only as high as your window. So lines are nice and narrow, they don’t move about vertically, plus your text is now in easy-to-digest chunks. You just scroll from column to column horizontally, and feel more in control.

OK. I went and did it: got a Linux live CD ISO file, burnt it, and ran it on an old laptop.

It all started with an old Knoppix CD I had lying around (thanks Erik in Lund!), and late one evening, I inserted it into the old laptop, which by the way is a Toshiba 2520CDS. The thing ran, but very unwillingly, and slowly. But the spark was there: a real functional OS on a CD! So, I dreamt about live CD Linux distributions that night, and today I got me my first dist, after my last bout of fiddling with Debian.

My starting choice is Damn Small Linux, which is based on Debian. The homepage tells us:

Damn Small Linux is a business card size (50MB) bootable Live CD Linux distribution. Despite its minuscule size it strives to have a functional and easy to use desktop.

It just ran, out of the box, and rather fast, too.

There is an option to make a “hd install” the OS on the computer. When I’ve read enough of the documentation, which is only available as a web forum, in the shape of FAQ threads, I’ll endeavour to do a hard drive install. That will speed things up, I guess, and add the possibility to edit config files, and **save** things. That’ll be a hoot.

See you around, one of these days I might call on your help with a Linux beginner question.