Again my ability to edit the last post has timed out. Sorry.
How to text install D**n Small Linux (DSL) 4.11RC2 SysLinux
Surprisingly D**n Small Linux turned out to be easier to figure out how to install from a text prompt than CrunchBang 11.
This is because CrunchBang decided to obscure their TUI installer.
I downloaded the D**n Small Linux 4.11RC2 with SysLinux so it can boot from an FAT16/FAT32 formatted USB drive.
At the boot ment press either F2 or F3.
Type: install
You'll get a very simple TUI.
At this point there's a few things you need to know...
D**n Small Linux does not like Oracle VirtualBox's SATA virtual hard drive apparently.
So I can't partition or install on /dev/sda which Linux will typically recognize this device.
I am not sure if this means they removed drivers the other distros have or what not.
I just had no luck trying quickly so I altered my VirtualBox setup to mount the 4GB VMDK virtual drive as IDE instead of SATA.
That being said I know that if I have only 1 interal IDE drive it will typically be: /dev/hda
Once I put a partition table, master boot record and a bootable primary partition that will typically become: /dev/hda1
Now on the menu select 10 (cfdisk) to setup the partition table.
If it asks about erasing the drive...make sure you select properly for your install!
Then...
From there use 'New' to setup a new primary partition.
Set the partitions up as you like.
Select 'Bootable' to mark that new partition bootable in the partition table.
Normally cfdisk will make Linux type 82/83 partition types so that should be fine.
Select 'Write'.
When the write finishes you need to reboot.
(If you've ever installed DOS this is very much like using FDISK.)
If cfdisk drops you to a prompt, just type: reboot.
The system will reboot.
Again at the boot menu press F2 or F3.
Then do a: install.
This time on the TUI menu select: Install to hard drive
It will ask you for the partition to install to, for me that was: /dev/hda1
The rest is basic stuff.
When you reboot DSL is nice enough to setup the boot menu with forced resolutions.
DSL is also nice enough to obey the 'vga=' kernel boot option I will explain later.
Technically you could use the 'vga=' option to make the DSL LiveCD display correctly.
If you select the option without the resolution listed it should display at 640x480.
Simple enough.
The DSL default install did not have Abiword, it did have Ted Word Processor that used less than 1MB of physical RAM with a blank document.
The default install came with Firefox which consumed about 23MB of physical RAM while displaying
https://www.google.com as the only tab.
When I first booted there was 14MB of 512MB of RAM used.
After starting FireFox it hung around so it raised that to about 37MB of physical RAM used.
14MB is the smallest of the Linux install we have yet to try in this topic.
The hard disk install consumed about 375MB of the 4GB virtual drive space.
375MB is the smallest storage footprint of the Linux install we have yet to try in this topic.
Perl 5.8.0, BusyBox SED and BusyBox AWK are installed by default.
I should mention that like PuppyLinux, DSL does not have a GUI login screen provided by something like gdm or lightdm.
However it does ask you to login at the text command prompt before it automatically starts the GUI at boot.
It will ask you to create some user accounts and set the root password during the first boot after the hard disk install.
PuppyLinux by default does not seem to authenticate the user at all.
Not authenticating the user is not a great idea if the users perhap have password keyring for say websites.
I did set DSL up for multiuser during the initial install so this only makes good security sense.
What is the 'vga=' boot option that DSL obeys and why not just use that everywhere:
In grub1, lilo, syslinux you can use a kernel parameter: vga=
This does not usually work in grub 2.
What you set that equal to is usually a 3 digit number.
If you want to know what number look here:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_...o_mode_numbers
For 640x480 with 16bit color use: vga=785
What does it do?
Well you probably noticed that the boot menu looks a little more 'pretty' than a simple TUI.
That is because it's text in a graphics mode as is your typical modern Linux prompt.
That setting changes the graphics for that mode.
In some distro's that option also impacts the installed GUI.
Usually this setting will impact the GUI when that distro resorts to using the VESA driver by default like DSL does.
If you install an ATI, Intel or NVidia driver in the GUI this option usually has no impact on the GUI but generally still impacts the boot menus and the full screen command prompts.
How would you do it in grub 2 like Lubuntu?
Use this option in the grub configuration file instead:
GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480
That will impact only the boot menu.
To change the command prompt as well add:
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep
Remember if you change the file: grub
In: /etc/default/
You need to commit your changes with a: sudo update-grub
Why did I not mention it before? I did not need to because I had you put everything text based into the default 80x25 text mode. However, in the rare case that does not work out for you these additional choices add yet another thing to consider altering. Just remember you need to disable the 'console' default I told you in previous instructions to add. Disabling the command that forces grub 2 to be 80x25 text will allow it to be graphical again and adhere to your new resolution choices. It will impact both the boot menu and the command prompt. Also remember that a graphical grub menu generally means the boot process will be graphical and that means the splash screen or a little Linux mascot might come up (once you make these alterations) in place of the boot process I suggested you display. If you go back and look at my other instructions you can figure out how to get the boot process back perhaps with some help from Google.
I hope this was informative.
I might try to show how to make this work with Linux Mint XFCE 13 LTS.
Currently Linux Mint is at version 15.
The thing is that the Mint project decided to start demanding PAE built into the kernels after version 13.
This means that systems that do not support PAE might not work correctly and older systems often do not suppport PAE.
Several distros have PAE support with either 2 separate builds or a set of conditionals to allow the PAE functions to bypass without issue.
Besides the LTS (Long Term Support) builds from Ubuntu and Linux Mint offer years of support before they are considered end of life.
This means years of posts from users to help you if you need it and that are precisely for your installed version of the distro.
Besides Linux Mint 13 offers both a Debian and an Ubuntu kernel which do have differences.
I haven't bothered with Knoppix because the project maintainers do not suggest running Knoppix from a hard drive.
That does not mean you can't it just means I won't suggest you do something that could lead to strange complications.
Have fun. Never heard from the OP so I hope this helps.