Slax

Slax is an open source, freely distributed, small, fast, stable and modular operating system based on the highly acclaimed Slackware Linux distribution and built around the modern and eye-candy KDE desktop environment.

Availability and boot options

It is distributed as two Live CD ISO image, one for each of the supported architectures (64-bit and 32-bit), designed to be written to blank CD discs, as well as two zip archives with USB images, supporting the aforementioned hardware platforms.

When booting Slax from either a CD or USB disc, you will have the possibility to set some options. For example, you can enable persistent mode, which means that you can save system settings and downloadable files directly on the boot medium and reuse it whenever you want.

In addition, users can boot the Live CD in graphical session or in text mode, copy the entire contents of the ISO image to RAM (system memory) and run the operating system from there, ejecting the media, as well as to make it act as a PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) server.

Features at a glance

As mentioned, Slax uses the KDE 4 desktop environment, which features a single taskbar located on the bottom edge of the screen, from where users can access the main menu, launch applications, interact with running programs, as well as the functions from the system tray area.

Default applications include the Kate text editor, KMag screen magnifier, Ark archiving tool, Dolphin file manager, KSysGuard system monitor, Gwenview image viewer, Okular document viewer, KolourPaint digital painting software, JuK music player, SMPlayer video player, Pidgin multi-protocol instant messenger, and Mozilla Firefox web browser.

Bottom line

In conclusion, Slax is an amazing Linux distribution than can easily become your pocket operating system. Too bad that it can’t be installed on a local disk drive so easily.

What is new in this release:

• After few months of silence, the Beta release of Slax 7.0.9 is now available for testing. It features Linux Kernel 3.9.7, KDE 4.10.4 and FireFox 22.0. It is a bit bigger than usual, since FireFox started to require icu4c for some strange reason, which is 7MB packed (!) ... I have to find out if this dependency can be dropped.

What is new in version 7.0.8:

• Some of you will hate me for this :) I've just released yet another Slax version. This one should fix the plasma task bar finally. If not, then I'll give up :) Anyway, if you do not like to download new Slax each two days, feel free to use 7.0.6 or 7.0.7 and just resize the taskbar manually to full screen width if you need.
• What is the problem with the plasma bar anyway? The root of the issue is in the way how the settings are stored for it. If a height is to be specified, which I need for slax, then a width must be specified as well. If a width is specified which is smaller than user's desktop size, it sometimes adapts the task bar to full width, but sometimes it doesn't. However I found out that if really big width is set, which is bigger than the screen, it adapts to actual screen width properly. So I set there 8000 pixels, in the hope that all Slax users will have smaller screen.

What is new in version 7.0.6:

• Upgraded Linux Kernel to version 3.8.2
• Upgraded KDE to version 4.10.1
• Fixed missing notification when module is activated or deactivated
• Upgraded all packages to reflect changes in Slackware-current
• Updated FireFox to 19.0.2
• Show date on taskbar under current time
• The device notifier in KDE is now hidden since it was showing on mad positions.

What is new in version 7.0.5:

• Slax 7.0.5 updates KDE to version 4.9.5 and FireFox 18.0.1, furthermore it provides new feature which lets you upload screenshot of any application to Slax website in order to assign it to a module of your choice.

What is new in version 7.0.4:

• added 'load=' and 'noload=' boot parameter support to filter loaded modules. The first parameter (load=) affects only modules from /slax/modules/ directory - if specified, only those modules matching the pattern are loaded. The other one (noload=) affects all modules, even the core ones. You can use regular expression pattern, for example noload=kde|devel|ffox
• better bootinst.sh compatibility with ubuntu and its clones, since those have different default shell which behaves a bit differently than I expected
• PXE now tries to get Slax data over TFTP (from the same server) if http connection to port 7529 fails, so you don't need to have a dedicated HTTP server running for PXE if you don't need the best performance (tftp is slow)
• fixed a bug which appeared when using from=... to load Slax from a path which included a directory with two letters, like /os/.
• fixed URL open in KDE (using %u in exec command in firefox.desktop), so clicking a link in pidgin for example opens it in firefox instead of downloading the URL by kde kioslave. Thanks to Manfred M. for the suggestion
• support for special files in Slax Bundles. Content of file /run/activate.sh gets executed on activate, content of /run/deactivate.sh gets executed on module deactivation. File attributes don't matter at all, so there is no need to set them executable.
• the autobuild system now adds a file /run/requires to all modules which require other modules. This file is used by 'slax activate' command to recognize and activate all dependencies automatically.
• even more improved X autodetection. Tries to fallback to modesetting driver if X -configure fails to produce a working xorg.conf file, and fallbacks to vesa driver if modesetting is not available.
• deactivation of Slax module now removes the module file, unless you deactivate it with the real filename as argument - then it is kept
• added unRAR support (compiled from official unrar sources)
• provide rightclick menu option to activate / deactivate Slax bundles in dolphin
• hide loop devices from showing in dolphin by udev rule
• buildscript now requires description, it is no longer optional
• fixed korean support (added missing font to korean module)

What is new in version 7.0.3:

• added PDF file with Slax documentation
• added PXE server and client support
• added dnsmasq, added httpd support to busybox
• improved X autodetection by calling X -configure if default configuration fails
• added xev, a tool to list code of pressed key, so user can easily remap it with xmodmap
• bashrc file has been fixed to properly show current directory on command prompt
• fixed cleanup of 'slax' script (remove temporary files from /tmp using trap)
• fixed buildscipt checks to allow required bundles with + and _ characters in name
• fixed deb2sb (and deb2txz) script to support lzma-compressed DEB packages
• run kbuildsycoca4 on module activation to update KDE menu
• include mc.sh in bashrc so mc remembers last directory
• Big thanks to Manfred M. (http://www.fluxflux.net/) for suggestions!

What is new in version 7.0.2:

• I made some experiments with the firefox module which is inside Slax, and I forgot to delete 2MB of useless data inthere so the resulting Slax 7.0.1 is more than 1MB bigger than it should. No harm happens, the forgotten stuff has no side effects at all, it just shouldn't be there. I'm pushing out 7.0.2 right now. If you can live with the fact that the new version 7.0.1 you just downloaded has 1MB of unused data which wastes your precious disk space then there is no need for you to download 7.0.2 since it is the very same in all aspects as like 7.0.1 (minus the forgotten stuff). The new version will be ready in about two or three hours, and I'm not going for any release announcement this time (except of this blog post) since the change is rather cosmetic and doesn't affect functionality.
• I didn't notice that 7.0.1 was so big unless I saw that distrowatch listed the release with download link size 213MB - then I realized something has to be wrong, since the previous release was 212MB and I didn't add any big stuff at all. So thanks distrowatch for listing the actual download size :)
• I will also publish a diffmod, a Slax Bundle (module) with just the differences between 7.0 and 7.0.2 so everybody who has the older version can upgrade his/her Slax to newest version by just a very tiny download. I'll publish the links here when ready.

What is new in version 7.0:

• Slax 7.0 is the major update of Slax Linux live operating system. It includes newest Linux Kernel, KDE4 desktop, GCC compiler and lots of other stuff and that all in just a ~210MB download. Furthermore it's available in more than 50 localizations, so you can get a Slax that speaks your language.

What is new in version 7.0 RC3:

• Slax is now translated to more than 50 languages
• added 'slax' use like 'slax activate'
• avoid unwanted error warnings about missing devices
• bootinst script fixes and improvements
• added some firmware including radeon and some wifi drivers
• support from=/path/slax.iso boot parameter to load slax data from the given iso
• Firefox style improvements, Slax software Center
• added module tools such as sb2dir, deb2sb, txz2sb
• added development module. Total Slax size is now around 210MB (for 32bit)
• new wallpaper, hooray!