SLAX
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Slax is a modern, portable, small and fast Linux operating system with a modular approach and outstanding design. Despite its small size, Slax provides a wide collection of pre-installed software for daily use, including a well organized graphical user interface and useful recovery tools for system administrators.
The modular approach gives you the ability to include any other software in Slax easily. If you're missing your favourite text editor, networking tool or game, simply download a module with the software and copy it to Slax. There is no need to install and no need to configure, it simply works.
Hmm I might disagree with the last comment above.
Here is an old Slax review.It is here because Slax went out of development for a while and has just been reborn by its developer.The article says that Slax is 24th in the listings at Distro Watch in todays listings it is flagged as dormant.
Everyday Linux User Review of SLAX
System requirements to run Slax
Slax 32bit version Slax 64bit version Processor: i486 or newer CPU, all Intel processors
and AMD processors will work An x86_64 CPU, like AMD Athlon 64, Opteron,
Sempron, Intel Core 2/i3/i5/i7, and others Memory: 48 MB of RAM for text-mode
256 MB of RAM for KDE desktop 64 MB of RAM for text-mode
256 MB of RAM for KDE desktop Peripherals: CD or USB drive to boot from CD or USB drive to boot from Optionally: network card, sound card
network card, sound card
Slax is meant to be run from a usb stick.I decided to try it out and as all you need is a properly formatted stick and a working pc.I used a 8GB stick and made 2GB a swap as I only have 4 GB of ram in my pc and I also wanted to try out Slax on several othere pc's with less ram.To install all you need to do is copy and paste the slax folder from your download to the root of the usb stick.Then you have to go to the boot folder and double click a .sh or .exe file and you are fit to go.
This did not go as planned when I tried from my Arch pc.I followed the instructions and could not get the usb to boot.So I tried from a Slax live cd and could not get the usb to boot.Eventually I read the boot failure message and followed a bread crumb trail of promising fixes found on the net and still the usb would not boot.
Until I found this,
http://old.slax.org/...&parentID=86499
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so just comment the if and fi line for forcing bootinst.sh to use the /slax/boot/extlinux.exe binary not the inner slax return by which :
EXTLINUX="$(which extlinux 2>/dev/null)"
#if [ "$EXTLINUX" = "" ]; then
EXTLINUX="./extlinux.exe"
I thought I had followed this but as you can see below I did something slightly different,no surprise there then,
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# Try to use installed extlinux binary and fallback to extlinux.exe only
# if no installed extlinux is not found at all.
EXTLINUX="$(which extlinux 2>/dev/null)"
#if [ "$EXTLINUX" = "" ]; then
EXTLINUX="./extlinux.exe"
#fi
So I had Slax booted.Everything seemed to work ok for a while and for several reboots. However FF would load and work fine but eventually FF would flash up a window that disappeared quickly when I tried to start FF. I found a newer FF in the modules part of the Slax site and activated it after deactivating the installed FF and this worked for a few goes and the acted like its predecessor.So I tired reinstalling the old FF and same result. I gave up and tried again the next day and FF worked ok and has done since I have no idea what was wrong or how it was fixed.
As long as you know the name of the module like firefox then you can download and instal like so,
slax activate firefox
You can also do this and double clik the downloaded file to activate,
slax download [ name ] [ dir ]
So I had a working Slax with persistence working. I plugged in my tv as a second monitor and it was found and worked well apart from the sound.You Tube worked with sound in fact sound worked on the pc for all programs.All the programs I tried worked well and I had some fun playing with KDE though I did find negotiating through the system settings menues a bit fiddly.
I have tried the Salx stick out on four different pc's and it worked well with all of them. I also made a 32 bit version for a friends Acer Aspire One which when I figured out how to gain a boot menu worked extremly well.In addition I also have a small pocket usb 8GB hdd and the 64 bit Slax worked well on this also.
Would I recomend Slax as a portable ? Well maybe, it works well but a lot of the programs are old.Take for instance FF the one on the modules site is newer than the one on the install but is still out of date as it has a 2014 date. However the developer has only just breathed life into Slax again so updates may be forth coming and if the community dalies around then all should be well. So with this in mind yes I would recomend Slax as a very likely portable keeper.
Interestingly Porteus is a offshoot of Slax and I was initially impressed with it until it started to act strangley and after I struggled with it I gave up. I hope Slax lasts longer, what worries me is that they both use KDE a slice of the linux world I have always suffered glitches with.
If updates for programs are slow to arrive you can always convert and use Slackware packages and I belive you can import from a few different os's.Now a friendly resident Slacker might come in very useful for such undertakings.Anyone know a suitable candidate ?
Fancy a go then this will be useful,
http://straightedgel...slax/index.html
Two more good articles on Slax.
Tiny Linux distros group test: Slax review
Not Really a Slax Linux Review
Edited by abarbarian, 24 July 2015 - 06:27 AM.