Byzantium Linux

Byzantium Linux is an open source and completely free operating system based on the Porteus distribution, which in turn is derived from the highly acclaimed Slackware distro. It features both the KDE and LXDE graphical desktop environments.

It’s distributed as a dual-arch Live CD

At the moment, the distribution is still in development and it’s distributed as a single, dual-arch Live CD ISO image of approximately 300MB in size, optimized to work on both 32-bit (i386) and 64-bit (x86_64) hardware platforms.

The user can choose between KDE and LXDE desktop environments

Arrived at the boot screen, the user has a choice between the KDE and LXDE desktop environments. In addition, you can start the live system in persistence mode, by copying the contents of the bootable medium to RAM, in safe graphics mode or in text mode.

It is also possible to start a PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) server, perform a system memory diagnostic test or access PLoP Boot Manager in case you want to boot another operating system from an external device.

It’s binary compatible with Slackware 13.37

Despite the fact that it is based on Porteus Linux, the distribution is binary compatible with Slackware 13.37, which means that existing packages can be easily converted with a single command.

Currently, the distribution is powered by Linux kernel 2.6.x, includes drivers for dozens of wireless chipsets, a custom web-based control panel, as well as a various common UNIX/Linux packages like GCC, Perl and Python.

The desktop environments look terrific and include powerful applications

While the desktop environments have been designed to look traditional, they include the same number of applications. Among these, we can mention the Mozilla Firefox web browser, Audacious audio player, PCManFM file manager, Leafpad text editor, GPicView image viewer and Xarchiver archive manager.