2019-05-01_Linux_Format

20 LXF249May 2019 2220May 19Oncet0hOc

Reviews Linux distribution

Theonce-
popular
miniscule
distribution
designedfor
removable
devicessuchas
USBdriveswas
dormantfor
severalyears,
andcameback
tolifere-based
onDebian’s
Stablebranch
(Stretch)
insteadof
Slackware.
Itstillpacks
inagraphical
desktopand
ahandfulof
essentialapps,
butcanbe
easilyfleshed
outusing
Debian’s
package
management
system.

inbrief

VerDiCT

/media/sdb2/custom.sb savesallchangesintothe

custom.sbmoduleinsidetheexternalstorage. This

modulecanthenbeputontheUSBalongwith the other

modules,orcanbeusedtogenerateanewSlax ISO.

Slax’sdeveloperhaswrittenscriptstoreducethis

processtoasinglecommand.Onarelatednote, the only

newfeatureinthe9.8releaseisthepossibilityto exclude

coreSlaxmoduleswhenrebuildinganewISO.

SlaxalsoincludesaPXEserverthatcanagain be

activatedwithasinglescript.Youcantestthisfeature

inVirtualBoxbyattachingtheNICoftheSlaxVM to the

internalnetwork.OncethePXEserverisrunning, any

otherVMthat’sconnectedtotheinternalnetwork and set

tobootfromthenetworkwillbootintoSlaxbygrabbing

theSlaxmodulesoverthenetwork.

Despiteallthechanges,Slaxhasmanagedto retain its

edge.It’slightweight,fastandeasilycustomisable.

Behindthescenes,itsdeveloperistoilinghardto make it

compatiblewithalargeamountofmodernhardware. If it

continuesonitscurrenttrajectory,itwon’tbelong before

thedistroreclaimsthetopspotamongtheportable Live

USBdistros.

or a long time Slax was the

de facto distribution for

bootable USB disks. Back

then,the lightweight distro was

based on Slackware, but was still

relatively easy to customise.

Then, as with many one-man

projects, it stopped receiving updates

and has been dormant for several

years. Now in its second innings, the

distro has undergone a dramatic

change with the move to Debian, yet

retains all the features that made it

stand out from the swathe of Live

USB distros.

Slax is available for both 32-bit

and 64-bit machines and its ISO

weighs in under 300MB. The distro

is getting regular updates and is graduallytakingonnew

features, the majority of which are behind the scenes and

focused on improving compatibility with modern

hardware. For instance, the previous version improved

compatibility with new USB devices, and shaved a

handful of megabytes from the ISO image by using 1MB

blocks to compress the SquashFS filesystem instead of

the previous 512K blocks.

Slax has a unique mechanism for installing onto a

USB disk. Instead of dd-ing the ISO to a USB stick, you

need to loopback-mount it and copy its contents to a

ext4-formatted disk. Then run a script from inside the

USB to make it bootable, and you’re good to go.

The distro offers three boot options. By default it

boots with the persistence option to save any changes

made in the Live environment. You can optionally

choose to boot into the factory environment by disabling

persistence. The third option runs the Live environment

entirely from RAM. It’ll perform a lot better than the

previous options, but will only work on machines that

have an adequate amount of memory.

Despite its miniscule size, Slax boots to a graphical

desktop sporting the lightweight Fluxbox window

manager. The desktop runs Slax’s homegrown and very

minimalist xlunch application launcher that weighs in at

only 25K. The headline feature of the distro, however, is

its modular architecture. Everything in Slax, from the core

components to the web browser, is a module that users

can enable or disable on the fly as needed. This makes it

fairly simple to customise the distro to suit your needs.

Any changes you make to the distro, such as altering

the wallpaper or apt-get-ing new apps, are automatically

saved if you’re using the distro from a writeable medium

such as a USB disk. If you’re running Slax from a non-

writeable medium like a CD or have disabled persistence,

you can still save your customisations by rolling them into

a module. A simple command like savechanges

Slax 9.8

Once the apple of Mayank Sharma’s eye, can the back-from-dead

distro manage to retain its charm despite all the changes?

f

Theminimalistdistrohasn’tlostitscharmsandis inour

opinionstillthebestoptionforlugginga USBLinux.

feaTureS 9/10

PerformanCe 9/10

eaSe ofuSe 8/10

DoCumenTaTion 8/10

Rating 8/10

DevelopeR:TomasMatejicek

Web:www.slax.org

licence: Several

Slax doesn’t have traditional support options, but its custom scripts have enough documentation

to make first-time users welcome.