It’s come to my attention lately that there is such a thing as LinuxDS. That’s right – Linux for your Nintendo DS.

Now you’re probably wondering; just now? Yes, just now. I’ve only started to appreciate the home-brew world of the DS and not just the smattering of games one might acquire. Here’s my question; for an OS that’s composed completely of text, maybe you might want to leave it for a system that actually has a keyboard?

The reason I make note of this is that one of the first commands I had to put in was one to upgrade the font, which to my surprise was very very small. Now this is understandable, and they have a fix for it on the LinuxDS Website; http://dslinux.org, and this command is accompanied by a download – (consolechars -f /usr/share/consolefonts/alt-8×8.psf)

That’s a huge pain in the ass to type out with a stylus and virtual keyboard. Not to mention with no local-text box to edit, if you realize you left out the – on the -f, type the whole thing again, or hit backspace 20-30 times to get to the spot you messed up.

So after 20 minutes of yelling and screaming at the virtual keyboard, I realized it must be my fault. I’m attempting to type too fast and being sloppy, and nipped that in the bud. Afterward things became a bit smoother. Sure, commands went in slower, but they were accurate. This then lead me to the filing system.

Now to understand, I’m a networking major, in a Bachelor’s program to finish a degree in Computer Networking; I’m proficient in Linux/Unix. This however is just ham-fisted.

Half the commands aren’t installed…yet? There is no clear, ‘ls’ just seemed to mock me and produce a blank line. I was not thrilled.

So, I went back to their website and checked up on what I was doing wrong, maybe they had their own variations of the command lines. Turns out this is not meant to be a stand alone Linux, but a wanna-be PSP adapter. Most of the functions of LinuxDS lean towards linking up to your computer (which should coincidentally have Linux as well.)

Tasks such as playing music straight from your computer, through your DS (excuse me LinuxDS,) via a wireless link and the Enlightened Sound Daemon, networking to share files and concepts with other LinuxDS users. That’s right: Networking capabilities, screw friend codes. E-mail as well with their ‘nail’ client. VPN connectivity, SSH, Telnet, Samba, FTP, the list goes on.

This is truly an amazing world we’ve come into on the DS; except one problem.

I don’t have Linux on my computer.

How bout a stand alone linuxDS, one that isn’t so attached at the hip like a suckling toddler to your computer?

With no other OS’s on the DS, you think maybe this would be the time for Linux to ‘convert’ some of us and give us a product that actually does something besides pat prior Linux users on the back.

-The Reverend Lei