SLAX 7.0 "Green Horn" Released: ~200MB KDE Linux OS

[speculatrix]

there is definitely a place for small lightweight linux distros which have simplified window managers and a set of core graphical libraries.

think tomtom, maemo, even android itself (though now Arm performance is very good and memory is cheap it's not so lightweight)!

[Rexilion]

If you like to microoptimize, you should use LXDE. xfce isn't anywhere near as lightweight as it claims to be, and with LXDE you only get what you really need.

That was the configuration for the first attempt. However, it's core component, PCManFM crashed every once in a while and we found it overall to be somewhat unreliable and unstable. This was also the case for lxdesktop if I recall correctly. That was a little more severe as it could take down the entire X session and 'deliver' my parents a scary looking TTY. Yes, this was on a 12.04 release of Ubuntu, where version 0.9 is used. Quantal uses 1.0 and Raring is using 1.1 as it seems.

Upgrading would not take much time since I have a ridicilously sophisticated configuration back-up and management system, but who knows what other snags I will hit. I already have to keep the kernel pinned to v3.4 otherwise nouveau regresses while hibernating. I bisected the commit, but since it was part of the huge nouveau rewrite (read: breakage everywhere for anything before nv50) it's hard to pin down.

XFCE takes 40MB (tops!) more than LXDE, and that is not much for a 512MB machine. Even the DE is 'slimmed', so conventional benchmarks probably don't apply to this specific situation. I.e. there is no gconfd or networkmanager running anywhere.

[schmidtbag]

Totally agree. However, to 'filter it all out' is a onetime occurance now that I put Ubuntu + XFCE on my parents PC.

The hassle of Updating the OS, Updating the Antivirus etc etc are now all minimized to a bare minimum. Every week or so I run:

aptitude -y -R full-upgrade

And I'm done. Windows Updates was a nightmare. Windows XP doesn't receive any new browser and multimedia support from Microsoft. Using third party tools didn't resolve the problem.

I have to confess, the start was rather troublesome especially since my parents have to get used to Linux after using Windows for years. But in the long run, I believe the benefits outweight the drawbacks. The machine is capable of handling the tasks it users demand. Linux provides this facility at a (somewhat small) startup 'price'. But once it runs... . And besides, I wait on how Windows 8 turns out. If it becomes another fiasco like Vista (which came on my laptop), you are left in the dark way earlier!

I agree that buying a 'new one' might be better. But I'm still waiting for stuff like Secure Boot and GPU drivers to become better.

If you like to microoptimize, you should use LXDE. xfce isn't anywhere near as lightweight as it claims to be, and with LXDE you only get what you really need.

[Rexilion]

I like to get the most efficiency out of my system but you don't need a distro under 300MB to run linux on an old computer, especially if its running KDE 4, gnome 3, or unity. While I feel there are many features that don't belong in the kernel, to me spending the time to filter it all out (especially for someone else) just isn't worth the time. Besides, for less than $150 you can make a new PC that is faster, quieter, more power efficient, and physically smaller which ought to replace those computers that you need to microoptimize. I've found anything that is a 2.2ghz P4 or older is not worth installing a new OS on. I know you can get plenty of performance out of one (I used a 900mhz celeron for several years up until last year) but you waste more time and money (on power) than it becomes worth it.

Totally agree. However, to 'filter it all out' is a onetime occurance now that I put Ubuntu + XFCE on my parents PC.

The hassle of Updating the OS, Updating the Antivirus etc etc are now all minimized to a bare minimum. Every week or so I run:

aptitude -y -R full-upgrade

And I'm done. Windows Updates was a nightmare. Windows XP doesn't receive any new browser and multimedia support from Microsoft. Using third party tools didn't resolve the problem.

I have to confess, the start was rather troublesome especially since my parents have to get used to Linux after using Windows for years. But in the long run, I believe the benefits outweight the drawbacks. The machine is capable of handling the tasks it users demand. Linux provides this facility at a (somewhat small) startup 'price'. But once it runs... . And besides, I wait on how Windows 8 turns out. If it becomes another fiasco like Vista (which came on my laptop), you are left in the dark way earlier!

I agree that buying a 'new one' might be better. But I'm still waiting for stuff like Secure Boot and GPU drivers to become better.

[schmidtbag]

I slightly disagree with the both of you. For me, Linux has always been the system that can be modified to run on aging systems, yet provide support for today's current (web) standards.

Since my parents did not want Gentoo on this machine, I had to resort to Ubuntu. (They caught me tweaking on Gentoo for days!)

If a light distro based on Ubuntu would exist, which contained VLC, Libreoffice, Chromium and Claws-mail then I would switch over. These 4 critical pieces of software are a base requirements for my parents to properly use this computer.

However, Ubuntu is pretty well supported. And the LTS make it really nice if you look at support 'costs'. Although I'm still looking for a lightweight distro. Why? Because Ubuntu packs stuff such as Apparmor, a lot of unnecessary daemons, apport, plymouth and ufw. These components are not necessary to drive a PC used for browsing and e-mailing.

I think that as time progresses, a nice niche for lightweight distro's will become more apparent. And I think that Linux will really shine in that specific aspect.

I like to get the most efficiency out of my system but you don't need a distro under 300MB to run linux on an old computer, especially if its running KDE 4, gnome 3, or unity. While I feel there are many features that don't belong in the kernel, to me spending the time to filter it all out (especially for someone else) just isn't worth the time. Besides, for less than $150 you can make a new PC that is faster, quieter, more power efficient, and physically smaller which ought to replace those computers that you need to microoptimize. I've found anything that is a 2.2ghz P4 or older is not worth installing a new OS on. I know you can get plenty of performance out of one (I used a 900mhz celeron for several years up until last year) but you waste more time and money (on power) than it becomes worth it.

[Rexilion]

Well you can still remove what you don't want. But I guess you wouldn't like this approach. Which gives room to the "ubuntu minimal" approach. I recall it's around 10-20 megabytes. Only the basics to start a system ..

I'm not sure I start with around 10-20 MB. But I am starting with a 'base-only' installation (from the alt CD). I even use 'base-installer/install-recommends=false' to strip it down even further. So I think we are talking about the same thing. On top of that, I install stuff like claws-mail and VLC which takes longer than the initial install due to the amount of deps those pull in (like X).

And finally, I delete all stock kernel images/initrd's and sources and build and compile my own monolithic kernel which is about 2,5MB.

That is a pretty slim installation of a little less than 3Gigabyte.

I'm just not really happy with all the bells and whistles that come along.

[AJSB]

SLAX was one of my 1st experiments with LINUX and i always enjoyed it...i'm glad that continues to evolve.

As for "downgrade" a distro like UBUNTU, i dunno if you can do it to a level as small as this and i don't care...why ? because why bother with all the work to do so when we can get a solution ready made, SLAX ?

It's also a nice distro to port for ARM in special for all those small "dev" boards around there...

[Loafers]

any particular reason to use this over porteus?

[Rigaldo]

I slightly disagree with the both of you. For me, Linux has always been the system that can be modified to run on aging systems, yet provide support for today's current (web) standards.

Since my parents did not want Gentoo on this machine, I had to resort to Ubuntu. (They caught me tweaking on Gentoo for days!)

If a light distro based on Ubuntu would exist, which contained VLC, Libreoffice, Chromium and Claws-mail then I would switch over. These 4 critical pieces of software are a base requirements for my parents to properly use this computer.

However, Ubuntu is pretty well supported. And the LTS make it really nice if you look at support 'costs'. Although I'm still looking for a lightweight distro. Why? Because Ubuntu packs stuff such as Apparmor, a lot of unnecessary daemons, apport, plymouth and ufw. These components are not necessary to drive a PC used for browsing and e-mailing.

I think that as time progresses, a nice niche for lightweight distro's will become more apparent. And I think that Linux will really shine in that specific aspect.

Well you can still remove what you don't want. But I guess you wouldn't like this approach. Which gives room to the "ubuntu minimal" approach. I recall it's around 10-20 megabytes. Only the basics to start a system ..

[Rexilion]

Agreed, slax is a bit on the pointless side these days, then again, so are 95% of all other actively maintained distros. Even DSL is losing its novelty because while it is impressively small, people don't own 64MB flash drives anymore (or even 256).

I slightly disagree with the both of you. For me, Linux has always been the system that can be modified to run on aging systems, yet provide support for today's current (web) standards.

Since my parents did not want Gentoo on this machine, I had to resort to Ubuntu. (They caught me tweaking on Gentoo for days!)

If a light distro based on Ubuntu would exist, which contained VLC, Libreoffice, Chromium and Claws-mail then I would switch over. These 4 critical pieces of software are a base requirements for my parents to properly use this computer.

However, Ubuntu is pretty well supported. And the LTS make it really nice if you look at support 'costs'. Although I'm still looking for a lightweight distro. Why? Because Ubuntu packs stuff such as Apparmor, a lot of unnecessary daemons, apport, plymouth and ufw. These components are not necessary to drive a PC used for browsing and e-mailing.

I think that as time progresses, a nice niche for lightweight distro's will become more apparent. And I think that Linux will really shine in that specific aspect.