DSLinux was based on μClinux which is mainly made for embeddable devices. In other words, it was pretty useless for the enduser.Was Linux DS actually useful for anything?
Web browser? You mean a textual one for sure? DSLinux didn't have an X Server afaik.To an extent it was.
For a while the web browser was one of the better options for it on the DS. It had some of the better telnet and ssh options for the DS (and this was before netbooks, before tablets rose up and before the mobile phone OS market got something resembling a dominant platform with workable options for end user code) and there are accounts of people using it for real, it was eventually ported out (though with the help of the work done for the DS linux project) but for a while it was the main method of doing a disk check on your actual DS, some of the server options it had did OK as far as such things went, by virtue of the text readers that Linux tends to come with it had some of the more reliable options for text viewing and writing.
It was never going to be more than a curio, or become anything like the various Linux implementations on something like the raspberry pi are today, but for the time it was usable, useful in many cases and fun if you like tinkering with things like this.
Also didn't another homebrew also have a filechecking function? I remember using something else for that...