written by Tomas M. 23 days ago

I am happy to let you know that new Slax version has been released. This release updates 11 core packages and contains the following changes:

written by Tomas M. 84 days ago

New Slax version 9.9 was released just few seconds ago. It contains updates for all core packages, most noticable is the update of Chromium web browser, which added 10 MB to the total ISO size for no apparent reason, unfortunately there is nothing we could do about it. Anyway, lets live with that and enjoy the new release! :]

42 comments  42 new

Slax 9.8 is ready

written by Tomas M. 152 days ago

Slax project is pleased to announce the eighth update of its stable distribution, based on Debian stretch. This point release only updates some of the packages included, no new features were added.

Visit www.slax.org to download the newest Slax 9.8 or to order it pre-installed on a DVD disc or USB drive. Sales made on Slax website help fund the project, thank you very much for making your purchase! :)

EDIT: I completely forgot that one feature was indeed added to this release, the possibility to exclude core Slax modules when rebuilding new ISO with genslaxiso command.

49 comments  49 new

Releasing Slax 9.7.0

written by Tomas M. 172 days ago

Good news, a new and improved version of Slax has been just released as Slax 9.7.0. You can download Slax for free or purchase a cool USB drive with Slax preinstalled from the project's home page at www.slax.org

Most important changes are explained below:

1) usb-modeswitch was added to Slax

Some new USB devices have their proprietary Windows drivers onboard; when plugged in for the first time, they act like a flash storage and start installing the Windows driver from there, and if the driver is already installed, it makes the storage device disappear and a new device, mainly composite with modem ports, shows up. On Linux, in most cases the drivers are available as kernel modules. However, the device shows up as "usb-storage" by default. So usb_modeswitch is used to send a message to the device to initiate the mode switching, so it can be used for the intended purpose.

2) The 'slax activate' command now copies module to RAM only if necessary

Slax is a modular operating system, and it supports on-the-fly activation of modules (compressed files with .sb extension) by using 'slax activate' command. If the module is stored on a separate filesystem, it can be activated from there without any issue. But if the module is stored inside the current AUFS root filesystem, for example when user downloaded it from the internet to his Home directory while running Slax, such module needs to be copied outside of the AUFS filesystem before activation. Previous Slax version copied all activated modules to RAM or to the USB device it was started from, even if it was not really necessary. Starting with this Slax release, the copying is done only if it is needed.

3) Slax is now even smaller

Many years ago, a decision was made to use 512K blocks in Slax for all squashfs compressed filesystems (Slax core modules as well as other bundles). This saved some RAM, but led to somewhat inefficient compression. Since RAM is not so scarce nowadays, Slax now uses 1MB blocks to make the compression better, resulting in 10MB smaller overal size of the distribution (255 MB compared to 265 MB). There is still support for 512K block size too, so old modules created with 512k blocks will work just fine.

Happy Slaxing :)


43 comments  43 new

Releasing Slax 9.6.6

written by Tomas M. 200 days ago

Good news everybody, yet even better Slax has been released :) This version adds forgotten intel graphics drivers and introduces the possibility to disable automounting of disk drives by a boot parameter.

All the orders made during holidays were processed today, and they contain this new Slax version preinstalled. Thank you for your patience, it was worth it :)

Enjoy the new release, and happy new year!


42 comments  42 new

Slax 9.6.5 released

written by Tomas M. 209 days ago

Christmas is coming, so here is a gift for all fans - a new Slax release :)

Most importantly, this version adds long-requested feature - udev rules to automount plugged-in disk drives, so they appear in pcmanfm file manager without the need to mount them manually.

Furthermore, all packages were updated to their newest versions, and few small bugs were fixed.

Happy holidays :)


25 comments  25 new

Slax 9.6.4

written by Tomas M. 236 days ago

After a week of tweaking, I am happy to announce that a new Slax version has been released.
This new release contains many bug fixes and improvements.
List of changes include:

• Implemented scrollbar indicator for xlunch, so user can see if there are more icons beyond current screen
• X is now started on vt7 terminal as it is usually the case in all Linux distros (it was on vt2 before)
• User can select text-mode boot by specifying 'text' boot parameter
• Commands dir2sb and sb2dir were rewritten to act as conversion utilities (documentation)
• Added b43 broadcom firmwares
• Added genslaxiso command to create new ISO file, optionally adding new modules
• Gateway address is now properly set on PXE clients when pxe server is started in Slax
• xLunch launcher now starts GUI applications without unnecessary terminal window

I've also added a new documentation describing how to customize Slax

Enjoy! :-)


40 comments  40 new

Fixing persistent changes

written by Tomas M. 243 days ago

While I was repackaging ISO for 64bit version of Slax 9.6.1, I used midnight commander to extract the iso contents. Unfortunately I forgot that there is a bug in midnight commander and it does not see empty directories.

For that reason, Slax 9.6.2 ISO file did not contain /slax/changes directory, which is needed for storing persistent changes. You can fix that yourself easily by simply creating that directory. I've already pushed out version 9.6.3, which fixes this.

Lets hope I will avoidi such mistake next time. :)

You may notice that 32bit version 9.6.1 is the same as 9.6.2 and also the same as 9.6.3. Only 64bit version was affected and changed during these version bumps.



6 comments  6 new

Slax 9.6.2 bugfix release

written by Tomas M. 246 days ago

Maybe you noticed two version bumps yesterday, so I'd like to explain the reason behind them.

Slax 9.6.0 had two problems introduced in that version. Firstly, the advertised pxe script had a flaw, causing it to generate unbootable initramfs image. I am not sure how this happened since it was thoroughly tested before the release, perhaps it was not thorough enough :] Secondly, the newly installed dnsmasq daemon, which should be started only by the pxe script, was autostarted by systemd on every boot, even for users who never need pxe at all, that was not intentional. So I've fixed those two issues by releasing Slax version 9.6.1.

Unfortunately, while releasing that fix in a hurry, I forgot my custom build-module in 64bit version of 9.6.1, which made the ISO unusable. I am using this build-module to automate building of Slax, but it must never be included in the released ISO file. To fix that mistake, I've repackaged the 64bit ISO image and released it as Slax version 9.6.2.

To sum it up, you can consider 9.6.2 as a bugfix release fixing issues in 9.6.0. Next time, I should consider releasing -rc version first, to avoid such stupid mistakes :]


11 comments  11 new

Slax 9.6.0 released

written by Tomas M. 247 days ago

I am happy to announce that a new version of Slax Linux is available for download. It features updates for all included packages, and fixes PXE boot support, so it is now possible to boot Slax over network again. There is also a 'pxe' script included, which you can execute on a running Slax to start a pxe server (it will auto-assign a random IP address from range 10.0.0.x). In order to download Slax, visit the newly redesigned website at www.slax.org

Enjoy the new release! :)



5 comments  5 new

Slax 9.5.0 released

written by Tomas M. 363 days ago

I am happy to announce that a next version of Slax Linux has been released. Slax is a minimalistic, fully modular operating system. As usual, this version incorporates all upstream improvements from Debian stable, and fixes few small known bugs.

I am also happy to announce that it is now possible to purchase Slax preinstalled on an USB flash drive with hardware-based AES encryption. This device is universally usable because the encryption is performed directly by the drive itself, there is no software to install needed. Once disconnected, the USB drive automatically locks itself again. Payment is possible only with Bitcoin, because I truly wish to see PayPal and credit card companies to cease to exist soon.




You can download or purchase Slax from the project's home page.

Enjoy! :)





88 comments  88 new

Slax 9.4 final released

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

After a short testing with no problems reported, I feel it is now the right time to release next version of Slax Linux - a minimalistic, fully modular operating system.

This version incorporates all upstream improvements from Debian stable, adds several default applications and fixes several known bugs. File manager now understands file types, so it is easier for users to open files like images, pdf documents, and so on.

On top of all that, Slax now includes one-click-to-install launchers, to offer additional software to users while keeping Slax size small. If the current approach proves useful, Slax could contain lots of icons for additional programs, which will be simply installed (automatically) when launched for the first time.

Check the full list of changes

You can download Slax from the project's home page.

Enjoy! :)


88 comments  88 new

Slax 9.4 rc1

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

Hello everybody, you can download Slax 9.4 64bit rc1 here. For list of changes, see here. I do not expect any more changes in the final release, which should be available on 26th of March.

Most noticable change is addition of launchers for not-installed applications - the app will download and install on the first run. Feel free to suggest your preferred applications which you like to have included by default. You can see at the screenshot below icons for VLC (video player) and VoteCoin (anonymous crypto currency wallet), those apps are not included in Slax, but clicking the icons will auto-install them (before the first run).

By the way, VoteCoin is my other creation, if you are interested in getting more info, see https://www.votecoin.site





14 comments  14 new

Work in progress on next version

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

I've started working on next version of Slax. You can track the roadmap here, and you can suggest changes for the next version here.

A few users requested a possibility to purchase Slax preinstalled on an USB drive, so I'll offer such possibility after the new version is released. If you like, you can support Slax by buying such USB device directly from this website. And if you don't like, you can simply download it for free as usual :)

More to come hopefully soon. I expect new release to be ready in few days.

5 comments  5 new

Slax 9.3 is here

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

Most of you celebrate something today, so here is a little gift for you :) I've released Slax 9.3 just few minutes ago and I have to say that I am happy with the progress we are making.



Lets recap all the changes since previous stable version:

First of all, I've added lots of firmware drivers to support various WIFI devices. It is around 40MB compressed, so Slax is a bit bigger now due to this, but I fully understand that a computer without network connection is completely useless, so this had to happen. :)

I spent some time testing Slax to boot from many different filesystems and I was able to identify some problems, which are now fixed. Most importantly this includes NTFS and ext4 support, so Slax is now capable of booting from them as well.

If you boot from a writable media, the Persistent Changes feature is enabled by default now. Note that you may need to erase your changes.dat file if it was created by beta/beta2.

Other news include:

- added pcmanfm as file manager for GUI

- added wicd as wifi network manager

- xLunch now auto updates, to see newly installed apps

- hard drives are mounted on boot and bookmarks added to pcmanfm

- keyboard layout stays persistent

- screen resolution change is reimplemented to make it work better

- syslinux updated to newest version

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

Since there were some bugs in the initial beta release, I'm publishing beta2 now. Shouldn't it be gama? :)

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

I am almost ready to release the next Slax version. But before I do so, I would like to get some feedback on the current progress. So I've prepared a beta release, you can download Slax 9.3 beta from here:

slax-users@googlegroups.com

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

I noticed that Debian has updated to 9.3.0 so it's time to update Slax too. I plan to release update with each minor Debian release, if there are any bugfixes or changes (in Slax) at that moment. I will update this blog post as I progress through my todo list.

Currently I've implemented these changes:

- add nicer filesystem icons to pcmanfm

- make xlunch refresh on start to see newly installed apps

- mount hard drives on boot and add bookmarks to pcmanfm

- add @ntfs-3g support, add ext4 support for bootable device

- make persistent changes default when booting from writable media

   (and offer "fresh start" in boot menu instead)

- make keyboard layout persistent

- fb keys: OnDesktop Mouse1 :MacroCmd {WindowMenu} {HideMenus}

- reimplement xrandr screen resolution change, use --mode somehow

- add pcmanfm as file manager for GUI

- add wicd as wifi configurator

- update syslinux to newest version

- added wireless tools

- added firmware (free and nonfree)

- added contrib and nonfree repositories

- fixed apt-get alias parameters handling 

- write documentation

- inform users that there is a google group 

(mailing list) for slax at slax-users@googlegroups.com

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

Several people complained that I've added malware to chromium in Slax, and similar shit :) So, lets take a look at it.

The chromium module in Slax is created using this method:
1) boot fresh Slax
2) apt install chromium
3) savechanges /04-chromium.sb

That is all. Well, the procedure is indeed a little bit more complicated since I want to remove some unneded files after apt install, and I need to provide a 'chromium' script which logins as guest user and starts the chromium binary, because chromium refuses to run as root, but other than that, I make no changes. Especially I add no chromium extensions etc. You can review the build script here

If you start chromium in Slax and check out chrome://extensions URL, you will indeed see three extensions. Those cannot be disabled or uninstalled through the settings interface. What are those extensions? Well I have no idea what they do, but you can gues by their names:

- bookmark manager

- pdf viewer

- cryptoTokenExtension

To be honest, I didn't know that chromium installed with apt install has such extensions. I am not sure if all of them are really needed. But as I mentioned, I am not adding these, if you install fresh Debian and you install chromium the way I did, you'll get those extensions too. I believe that Debian developers know what they are doing, and I doubt those extensions would be any harmful.

I can assure you that if I was to add malware to chromium in Slax, I would definitely add it in a way that you could never notice. Adding malware this way makes no sense :-)


24 comments  24 new

vesamenu.c32 boot problem

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

Several people reported they have problem booting Slax from USB device, with the following error message displayed:

failed to load com32 file /slax/boot/vesamenu.c32

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

In a reply to several questions about persistence, I'd like to put here few hints. Remember that this all works after reboot only if you select "Keep changes persistent" in the boot menu, and only if you are running Slax from a writable media such as USB disk.

1) how to make sshd server start automatically?

You can start ssh server manually by running service ssh start. If you run it the first time, it creates some keys in /etc/ssh/ directory, so the first start is a little bit longer. But even after the keys are created, sshd won't autostart on reboot. It's because I manually disabled it in Slax, because root's password is well known. So, make sure to change your root's password (and password of the guest user) to something new. When done, run systemctl enable ssh. It will basically create a symlink to ssh.service in multi-user.target.wants (which is in /etc/systemd/system directory). This ensures sshd will be started on boot.

2) How to make keyboard layout persistent?

I forgot to implement such functionality. So keyboard layout needs to be set from the fluxbox menu each time and there is no config file to change. You can make it persistent by editing /root/.fluxbox/startup ... add there a line such as setxkbmap fr for french keyboard layout, etc. Make sure it is somewhere on top of the file. I will probably fix the persistence of keyboard layout in next Slax release, so if you set it this way, you may need to remove it from the startup file again at some point later, when Slax fixes this.

3) how to disable autostart of Xorg?

Similarly like enabling ssh server, you may disable autostarting of X by the following command: systemctl disable xorg. This will remove display-manager.service symlink from /etc/systemd/system and you will get only text-mode console on next boot. You can still start X manually with the startx command after login, though.


21 comments  21 new

Wifi in Slax

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

Apparently I forgot to include some wifi support in Slax. I don't have any device with wifi here at the moment, so I can't test, but there should be few things to consider. First of all, you will probably need some firmware for your wifi adapter. I'm not sure which packages to install, some of them may not be in official debian repository. Hopefully somebody in the comments will suggest something. Second, you will probably need some software to manage your wifi connections. Some people suggested wpa_supplicant, this can be installed with apt install wpasupplicant. This is a commandline utility, as far as I can tell. If you are looking for a GUI to configure your wifi network, you may try

apt install network-manager-gnome

nm-applet &

apt install wicd

wicd-gtk -t &

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

After several years of inactivity Slax project has been brought to life again in new version 9.2.1. For those who did not hear about it yet, Slax is a little distribution of GNU/Linux (in 200 MB), which runs on your computer without installing, and makes no changes to it (unless you tell it to do so).

This time, Slax uses Debian stretch as its base, and thus it can offer all the wonders of the mighty 'apt' command. If you are missing any software in Slax, use 'apt install SOFTWARENAME' to get it in an instant. I've decided to go for Debian because it made my life much easier and I believe that it will make yours too.

Graphical desktop uses FluxBox window manager and xLunch, which was written especially for Slax and with Slax needs in mind. Furthermore the development of xLunch continues independently.

There are only few applications included, Chromium is used as a web browser and video player, and there is also leafpad and calculator, just for the sake of completeness :]

You can consider Slax as a simple and minimalistic base Linux system, which you can carry in your pocket.


60 comments  60 new

Slax 9 has been released

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

I am happy to announce that after a month of development, the next generation Slax Linux has been released. Proper release announcement will follow in few hours, I'm kinda busy at the moment :)



31 comments  31 new

Tray icon for shutdown

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

FluxBox is somehow limited in the way how to customize its look. No icons on desktop, no shutdown buttons... So I hired a programmer who wrote the best application on the world - SysTray Icon Launcher. It is like 50 lines of code, and what it does is pretty simple. Put an icon to system tray and execute a command when it is clicked. Thanks to it, we now have an awesome power button in about 20KB or so :) Hell I love this wallpaper, all screenshots are so cool!



3 comments  3 new

Applications included in Slax

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

I am finishing last few bits of the next gen Slax release. I think the biggest difference for the end user will be lack of applications. People were probably used to a rich collection of apps in Slax, including GUI file manager, video player, instant messaging program, card games, remote desktop app, more card games, ... :-) None of this will be included in the next Slax release. I may prepare, in the future, a bigger and more feature rich version, but for now, i am sticking with the only necessary software: xterm and web browser (chromium).

There is also leafpad as text editor and qalculate as a calculator, those apps were like 200KB in total, so I added them. But other than that, only browser and terminal. I believe that everything (and I mean really EVERYTHING) is moving to the web. In most cases, web browser is the only software you need nowadays for various tasks. Spreadsheeds? online. Video player? Online. And thanks to apt-get (now included in Slax), most of the available software is online as well.

So for now, four icons will be fully sufficient.



7 comments  7 new

Slax screenshots

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

Here are some first Slax screenshots. The wallpaper was created specially for Slax.

Empty desktop:



Running some programs:



Logout dialog:



8 comments  8 new

Clean shutdown with systemd

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

Warning, technical post, for advanced users and developers only :) (and for me, because I will surely forget this soon)

If you were used to access files in /mnt/live/* in Slax, then you will have to change your habits (and scripts) because that is now available in a different path: /run/initramfs/* ... Explanation why this change was necessary follows.

When Slax was based on Slackware, I had to manually patch the rc scripts for shutdown, to return control back to initramfs which could safely unmount all devices and reboot. But after changing to Debian base, there are no such rc scripts (due to systemd). Systemd has some hardcoded logic on what it tries to unmount. I had to digg into systemd source codes to find out what it actually does during reboot, and I was happy to find a solution.

Previous Slax puts the initramfs-root-filesystem in /mnt/live/ by calling pivot_root. But systemd has no idea this directory is special, and it tries to unmount it (including all submounts) on shutdown, making Debian report lots of red warnings. As it shows up, there is no possibility to exclude certain mountpoints from unmounting when the system is ending, however systemd has several exclude-paths hardcoded. It is / (root directory, obviously), /run/initramfs and /usr. So, instead of pivoting the root to /mnt/live, I had to modify linux-live-kit to pivot into /run/initramfs, in order for all systemd-based distros to ignore unmounting of initrd-based mounts, resulting in shutdown without errors. In order to unmount those properly, systemd executes /run/initramfs/shutdown.

One problem appeared immediately - Debian overmounts /run on boot with tmpfs, which made the /run/initramfs inaccessible (even mount --bind /run /somewhere couldn't help). So I had to make a little change in the initial startup - mount the 'run/' directory first with tmpfs, then create run/initramfs/, and then pivot root. Debian recognizes that /run is areadly mounted and doesn't overmount it again, leaving /run/initramfs accessible. Bingo.


4 comments  4 new

Slax and systemd

written by Tomas M. 1 year ago

During the past days I've received lots of feedback for the upcoming release of Slax, by email, blog, and other channels. Some of the users welcome Debian, some of them hate it, some don't care :) I think I've explained my reasons why I choosed Debian in my previous post, so I won't repeat that here. But some users are concerned about systemd and would like to know my views of it. So I'd like to mention few things here.

To understand it better, we need to look at how your computer starts. When your computer is turned on, it checks bootable disks or CDs and loads a 'bootloader' first. This is a little software, which is located on your hard drive's first sector, and once executed, its only purpose is to find Linux kernel, load it to memory and execute it (plus pass some parameters to it).

Linux kernel is much bigger binary, it is the core of evey Linux system. After Linux kernel is loaded and executed, it takes over your computer, and provides functions for all of your software to interact with your computer's hardware.

Once the kernel initializes everything and is ready to manage everything, it calls the init. In Slax, things are more complicated due to another added layer, but lets ignore this now. So kernel finds the 'init' file on your disk, usually in /sbin/init, and executes it. So, init is the first process which gets always executed, and which takes care of the rest of the boot procedure.

This init may have different forms. It may be a simple statically compiled program, which does not require any other libraries, and which goes through /etc/rc.d/ directory and runs all scripts stored there sequentially, to perform some initial tasks (like mounting partitions, starting daemons, etc.) before you get your login prompt. The init may be also a more complicated program, which does something more advanced. Or, the init can do a hell a lot of complicated stuff, as like in the case of systemd, in order to provide some "advanced functionality", before the login prompt is displayed to the user. Systemd is not a single binary to execute, it depends on functionality provided by additional libraries such as dbus, pam, notify, and lots of others.

From my point of view in Slax, I don't really need to know what kind of init is used at all. Slax adds a layer in between the kernel and the distribution (be it Debian or Slackware or anything else) to provide a way to run Linux from a read-only media as like as it was writable. After this layer is set up, then the init of the underlaying distro is executed and continues normally, and it doesn't matter for Slax what the init is or does.

To sum it up, I don't really care if the init is systemd or something else. It does not affect me at all.

I am not sure what is the most important concern of some users who do not like systemd. I believe that there are two factors. First may be the complexity of systemd, which surely makes it hard to maintain its code, and goes against the phylosophy of Linux in general (kiss = keep it simple, stupid). By the way, is this really the phylosophy of Linux? :) Anyway, the other factor may be that the adoption of systemd seemed like it was forced to the end users, because once your distro uses systemd, lots of things start depending on it and there is really big problem for package maintainers, they would have to release many packages twice - once for systemd-enabled systems, and once for non-systemd ones, so it is easier for them to stick just with systemd and ignore the rest, which leaves no possibility for the end users to switch to different init they like.

I may agree with these arguments, but as long as somebody else prepares things up for me (by packaging it), and as long as it works and makes my life easier, I am not affected by that (as a developer of Slax!) in any negative way. And I believe that the end users of Slax are even less affected by systemd. I didn't notice any single place where systemd would affect the end user's experience (expect the fact that the system boots up faster). So after all, I don't mind using systemd in Slax. I am not pro- or against- it, my position is best described as neutral :-)

If you have faced any issues as the end user, I welcome your comments. Thank you!


10 comments  10 new