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.