“The first thing that caught my eye about the Distrowatch announcement on the release of Slax 4.1.4 was that it included KDE 3.3 which had only been out a few weeks. I wanted to try out KDE 3.3 and a live CD like Slax is a great way to do it, so I went over to the Slax website to download the ISO.” Read more here.
A week with Slax Linux 4.1.4
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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i’ve used slax as a quick linux liveCD, and i must say i like it, i still like to go back to my Full SuSE Install as it i feel more at home there but Slax is really good, im not sure if i hav the version with kde3.3 ill check now lol. but i think its a great liveCD distro.
Wow, how do you get this guy’s life, anyway? He really doesn’t push his computer very hard, so it isn’t too suprising that there weren’t many problems with his usage. I like Slax, too. But printing (not too many print filters included), lack of OpenOffice (for serious writing, KWrite is nice for short letters to Mom, but. . .) and Mozilla (Konq renders too many pages poorly) are problems. Still, next time I switch distros (Fedora Core 1 is feeling old), I would like to try Slackware again, and a hard disk install of Slax is a good beginning point. –AA
This is the first I have heard of Slax. It sounds interesting so I will be downloading it after I type the last period of this post.
Slackware and Debian are my two favorite Linux distributions. I wish somebody would make a cool live CD using Debian.
Cool live CD using Debian??
Ever heard of Knoppix?
Knoppix is based on Debian.
Mepis is nice too–it can be used as a live CD like Knoppix, and is even better suited to a HD install than it is.
The kernel version the author lists is 2.4.8. I’m sure the author meant to type 2.6.8 (or possibly 2.6.8.1).
No, actually he is correct. Just two clicks away from the links provided in the artice you can read:
Linux Kernel 2.4.28-pre2 with SATA support
http://slax.linux-live.org/features.php
yes, it’s 2.4.28-pre2. the biggest reason for the lack of a 2.6.x kernel is that slax uses ovlfs, which allows for full “read/write” access to ALL areas of the file system. i put that in quotes because the actually writing goes to the ram… but the OS can’t tell the difference. this allows for MUCH easier usage as a livecd (plus the ability to use modules–check out the slax page for that) than any of the knoppix-type ones do, where you can only write to your home directory.
If you have a cd that can store 700 megs why only load it with with 185 meg? You still have to carry the cd so it makes sense to cram in as much as possible.
On the other hand, it would be cool to load everything on a bootable usb-mem. OS and files on a small keychain…
one of slax’s goals is to fit on one of those mini-cds. in doing such, it will also fit on a 256 meg usb drive–and many people have put it on one, it works so long as your motherboard will support it.
Impressive for such a small distro, is very responsive using the copytoram option, found my dsl connection with not problem (am using it now) and has a nice selection of programs.
Would however prefer firefox as the web browser.
the reason many people’s favorite programs are missing is because there is already a KDE equivalant that is included “by default”. konquer already has to be on the system, so you have a very, very usable browser. it would take up far too much space (remember, slax is staying mini-cd sized) to add a program that’s mildly redundant.
one of the powerful features of slax that the author did not talk about is the ability to add modules. you can take a chunk of the filesystem (IE “installpkg -root /tmp/module/ package”) and turn it into another filesystem image, which–if included on the cd in the /modules/ directory–will be added to the root file system at boot. if it is not added to the cd, then you can still add it from your hard drive or other medium after booting using the moduse command. since you can put multiple programs and included any needed libraries or what not in a single module, this makes adding programs to slax very easy. there is now also a section of the slax webpage for hosting user-made modules. if you want firefox, just download the firefox module! for LOTS more information, check out the slax forum.
Hey… there’s another live CD from Brazil (but based on Debian).
It boots from a 8 mm CD and run without HD.
Try it!
http://www.guiadohardware.info/kurumin/index.php
This linux is just WOW the only thing I dislike about it was I do have sound and I would like to install it on my HD. It first linux I have try that is really stable in GUI lot of the time I try linux’s and after using it for hour I start getting issue with it from SMB not working to large hardware issues. e.g Video card issues or my mouse not working after a reboot. Also it size is amazing.
I have, and use it all the time (although I like Phlak better as far as live CDs go). I was joking.
I have a feeling the 185Meg live iso is intended to be read-only, to save documents/settings/etc – would a second session on a CDRW (UDF format) be feasable?
My confusion lies in the initial phase of the disc, does the second session need to be mentioned within the 185Megs (specifically first few bits on disc)?
It would be VERY nice to have a UDF session on the same disc as the Live ISO. Other platforms could read your saved docs, and you still keep the original disc image.
I’ll give this a shot, but I’m no expert.
Is there some trick to burning it? I burned the ISO on a 185 MB CD, but it won’t boot.