Slax Linux

What is Slax?
Slax is a Linux-live distro which allows you to use Linux without having to install it. It is under 200 MB and can be burned to a mini-CD (8 cm). Once you burn it to a CD you can boot off of it and have a great Linux distro, for free and without commitment!

Why Choose Slax?
Why would you choose Slax? Well, Slax gives you many options in a relatively tiny package. What sets Slax apart from other distros and specifically other live distros? Well, for one, most distros must be installed but Slax can be run from CD. Slax is cooler than other live cds (boot from CD without install) because it is small but yet has lots of functionality.

Other Live distributions are usually very large (around 700m - filling a CD) and often include many similar programs on it to satisfy as many users as possible (10 different people can have 10 different favorite text editors). Slax offers usually just one application which is considered as the best one.

Despite its small size, Slax looks very nice. Other small distros can be too small, and not have room for nice graphics. Slax looks beautiful. That's especially nice for people on dial-up. It's great for those trying Linux for the first time.

How Does Slax Work?
When your computer boots from the LiveCD or from the USB Pen Drive, the first step is loading the kernel image (vmlinuz). After this, a 4 MB ramdisk is created in the computer's RAM. The rootdisk image (initrd.gz) is then unpacked into it and mounted as a root filesystem. Large directories (like /usr) are mounted directly from the CDROM/USB Pen Drive.

Slax Versions :-

1) Slax Standard Edition - SLAX SE is a pocket operating system providing wide colection of useful software with Xwindow system and KDE desktop environment.

2) Slax KillBill Edition - SLAX KB is a pocket operating system with the ability to run many Windows applications natively in Linux. It contains KDE, wine, dosbox and qemu.

3) Slax Server Edition - SLAX SRV is a pocket operating system with many internet services ready to use. Includes DNS, DHCP, HTTP, FTP, MySQL, SMTP, POP3, IMAP and SSH.

4) Slax Popcorn Edition - SLAX PE is a pocket operating system which fits even 128MB USB Flash Drives. It contains only XFce desktop, Mozilla Firefox, beep-XMMS, Gaim, AbiWord.

5) Slax Frodo Edition - SLAX Frodo edition is the console base for all other SLAX releases. It doesn't contain almost anything, only full working Linux command prompt and drivers.

System Requirements:

Processor - i486 processor or better is good, both Pentium and AMD should work
Booting Device - CD-ROM drive, a USB drive(atleast 256MB), or a hard drive to boot from. Using a CD drive is best for beginners.
BIOS Capability - BIOS capable of booting from CD-ROM or a floppy drive to use Smart Boot Manager.
RAM - To load Slax with just text you need 32 MB of RAM. To run Fluxbox takes 128 MB of RAM. If you wish to run KDE, you need 256 MB of RAM on your computer.
Keyboard & Mouse - PS/2 (mouse with a green connector; standard), or a USB mouse will work (These will be auto-detected by Slax)
Note - if you have a serial (COM mouse) it will not be automatically recognized but it is possible to use it with a bit of work
- no hard disk is required.

Installation Through Windows:

This is the most easiest way of installing SLAX Linux on your USB Pen Drive. This is not the original way of installing Slax. I have done all the changes that are required, including the syslinux configuration file modification. What you have to do is as follows :

Step 1: Go to BIOS and change your first boot device to "USB-HDD" ie. your USB Pen Drive.

Step 2: Format your usb stick. A very well-respected and simple utility for doing this is the Windows based HP format utility. Put the stick in and then run this application. It will automatically locate the pendrive, now format it using FAT file system, give it a label name such as SLAX and click Start. It will give you warning about wiping the pendrive, just OK this and it will format the drive. A second or two later it will give you information on your newly formatted drive such as size etc. OK this too. Excellent second step out of the way with.

Step 3: Now copy the entire contents from this CD onto your Pen Drive, except the "Html" & "source" directories.

Step 4: Next copy the folder "Syslinux" from the "source" directory to your C: drive ( The drive on which you have installed Windows ) or you can extract the contents to the C: drive from the syslinux-3.11.zip file. Now use your command prompt skills. Go to Start at the bottom left of your Windows computer and then select Run. Type in cmd and OK it to open up a command prompt. In the command prompt type in "cd c:\syslinux\win32" without the quotation marks! Hit the enter key. The cd stands for change directory and c: is the hard drive where I put Syslinux, but this drive letter may be different for you depending on the hard drives that you have. Now type in "syslinux.exe G:" where G is the letter of your pendrive. For you it may be a different letter such as F but you can find out by going to My Computer and seeing all your drives by letter and icon. Hit return. Wait a few seconds and now type exit to leave the command prompt.

Step 5: Now restart your computer to boot through your USB Pen Drive. SLAX is installed - Enjoy it !!!

Installation Through Linux:

This installation procedure will work only if you have not altered your USB Pen Drive partition table. If your partition table is not proper then use the HP USB Formatting tool (in Windows) to format your pen drive.

Else follow the steps given below to install SLAX:

Step 1: Go to BIOS and change your first boot device to "USB-HDD" ie. your USB Pen Drive.

Step 2: Format the USB pen drive to use FAT16 by using the command: mkdosfs -F 16 /dev/sda1 (change sda1 to whatever partition is appropriate for your system). Now mount the pen drive: mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb (make sure that "usb"directory exists in "/mnt").

Step 3: Now copy the entire contents from this CD to your pen drive, except the "Html" & "source" directories.

Step 4: Finally, install and update MBR with LILO or GRUB: lilo -M /dev/sda

Step 5: Now use syslinux to finish the process: syslinux -s /dev/sda1

Step 6: Unmount the pen drive and reboot your system to boot from your USB pen drive. SLAX is installed - Enjoy it !

Note: Both installation procedures are with respect to the Slax Linux CD OR Cursor 2003-07 CD compiled by me.

EngicOS - The First GEC Linux

ENGICOS

Knoppix . Debian . GNU/Linux

Created and Designed by Alok Kamat.

What is ENGICOS ?

ENGICOS is a remastering of Knoppix which in turn is a compilation of GNU/Linux software, run completely from CD. It automatically recognizes and supports many types of graphic cards, sound cards, SCSI devices and other peripheral devices. ENGICOS can be adapted and used as a Linux demo, a training course CD, a rescue system or as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is especially created and designed for the Goa College of Engineering (GEC) students. It is not necessary to install anything on fixed disk. Using transparent decompression, up to 2 gigabytes of executable software can be put on a CD (this CD, for instance, has 1700MB of software on it).

What software is on the ENGICOS-CD ?

In addition to a standard Debian based GNU/Linux distribution (www.debian.org) the following "highlights" are available on this CD:

KDE V3.x as the standard desktop, with KOffice and the Konqueror WWW browser.
X Multimedia System (xmms) with MPEG video and MP3 support as well as the Ogg Vorbis Audio Player
Internet-access software kppp and isdn-utilities
Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) Version 1.2
Tools for data rescue and system repair
Network analysis and administration tools
OpenOffice(TM) 1.x, the GPL'd version of the well-known StarOffice(TM) office suite
Many programming languages, development tools (kdevelop, among others), as well as libraries for software developers.
Altogether, over 900 installed software packages, comprising over 2000 executable user programs, utilities, and games.
Please check the internet for the overview of installed packages and the CHANGELOG with information about current changes and developments. The real version number (=build date) of your CD-Rom is shown on the boot screen at the upper right corner. Please always state this number when you have a question or comment.

System Requirements

Intel-compatible CPU (i486 or better),
20 MB of ram for text mode, and at least 82 MB for graphic mode with KDE. (To run various Office applications, at least 128 MB is recommended),
a bootable CD-ROM/DVD drive, or alternatively, a boot floppy and a standard CD-ROM/DVD drive (IDE/ATAPI or SCSI),
a standard SVGA-compatible graphics card,
and a standard serial or PS/2 mouse, or IMPS/2-compatible USB Mouse.

How to run ENGICOS ?

In order to start the CD, first adjust the boot list in the BIOS Setup of your computer to boot from CD (before the hard drive). Put the CD in and restart the computer. If your computer does not support this option, you must use a boot diskette, which you can create with the help of the boot image /KNOPPIX/boot.img available on the CD. Use the mkfloppy.bat script for the regular boot image (German version). Use the command rawrite2 -f boot-en.img -d A (in the KNOPPIX directory) to create an English boot disk.

How to Install ENGICOS on Your Hard Disk.

To start with the installation first you will require a hard disk partitioning tool to partition your hard disk. You can either use fdisk (Linux & DOS) or Partition Magic (Windows). You can also use cfdisk utility for partitioning which will appear during the installation process. Now assuming that you have ‘Windows’ already installed on your system we shall move further. Using the partitioning tool create a partition of at least 4GB (It should be a Logical partition of file system ext2) and a partition equal to twice of your RAM size eg. If you have a RAM of 128MB, then the size of this partition should be 256MB aprrox.(It should be a Logical partition of file system LinuxSWAP, this partition will act as a swap). Once you have created these two partitions we can start with the installation.

Insert the ENGICOS CD into your cd-rom drive and boot via it. Wait till it is fully loaded. Now follow the steps given below.

1) First press Ctrl+Alt+F1, this will take you in the text mode.
2) Now type ‘knx-hdinstall’. You will be now taken through a series of Windows.
3) Knx-hdinstall 0.39: Press OK
4) Partition Hard Disk: Press space bar to select the hard disk that you partitioned and press OK.
5) Partition Hard Disk: Message ‘Launching cfdisk’ will be displayed, press OK.
6) Cfdisk 2.11z: Press Tab to navigate to ‘Quit’ and press Enter.
7) Virtual Memory (swap): Message ‘Do you want a SWAP’ will be displayed, press OK.
8) Setup Swap: Press Spacebar to select the partition you created as LinuxSWAP and press OK.
9) Setup Swap: Confirm Yes.
10) Creating Filesystem: Press Spacebar to select the partition you created as ext2 and press OK.
11) Creating Filesystem: Choose the filesystem type as ext2 and press OK.
12) Creating Filesystem: Confirm Yes.
13) Copy Files: Message ‘Now files will be copied’ will be displayed, press OK. This process will take 10 to 40 minutes depending on your system. During the copying process you might get some Input/Output (I/O) errors or your monitor may blackout, just do not touch anything till the whole copying process is over. If your monitor blacks out just press the Enter key once.
14) A message box will appear indicating the finish of the copying process.
15) Mail Server: Message ‘Would you like to start the server at the boot of the system’ will be displayed, press YES.
16) Secure Shell Server: Message ‘Would you like to start the server at the boot of the system’ will be displayed, press YES.
17) Samba Server: Message ‘Would you like to start the server at the boot of the system’ will be displayed, press YES.
18) Cups Server: Message ‘Would you like to start the server at the boot of the system’ will be displayed, press YES.
19) Kdisplay Manager: Message ‘Would you like to start the manager at the boot of the system’ will be displayed, press YES.
20) Set Hostname: Enter a name and press OK.
21) User DHCP Broadcast: Press NO.
22) Hit return (Enter) to exit.
23) Set root password: Enter password and press OK
24) Set root password: Confirm password and press OK
25) Set password: Enter password and press OK
26) Set password: Confirm password and press OK
27) Setup Boot Loader: Press YES to install the LILO boot loader.
28) Create Boot Floppy: Insert a floppy disk and press YES.
29) Create Boot Floppy: Message ‘All data on the floppy disk will be lost’ will be displayed, press YES.
30) Finished: Message ‘The installation process has finished’ will be displayed, press OK.
31) Now press Ctrl+Alt+Del at the ‘root@tty1[/]#’ to reboot.
32) Once the system restarts you will be welcomed with a screen allowing you to choose between ‘Linux’ and ‘Windows’. Choose Linux to boot into ‘ENGICOS’.

If the language (ie. US English) is not set properly then go to ‘Control Center (Icon: An electronic circuit board with a gear) >Personliche Einstellungen > Land Und Sprache’. Over here choose ‘Locale and Language’ as ‘English’ and click ‘Andwenden’. The changes will be made when you login the next time.