Slax author's blog

Slax update

tomas@slax.org (Tomas M) — Sun, 05 May 2013 21:02:06 -0500

I tried to make another Slax update, following the progress of KDE, Xorg and other software, but I got some issues again with KDE's task bar not being drawn properly. I have to admit that this drives me crazy :) So I guess it will be better to wait for another KDE update.

My AUFS donation - please donate too

tomas@slax.org (Tomas M) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 05:03:19 -0500

There is one project which Slax depends on, it's AUFS. AUFS is created and maintained by Junjiro Okajima, a friend of mine from Japan. Thanks to Junjiro's AUFS, Slax can support read-only modules with read-write 'changes' in RAM or on USB drive. The entire Slax future depends on Mr. Okajima's survival. So from time to time I donate some spare money to AUFS to contribute something back. Today I sent my next donation, and I would like to kindly ask you to do the same. Please donate some spare money to AUFS, be it $5 or $500, every amount counts.

If you wish to make a donation, send money by PayPal to: sfjro@users.sourceforge.net Thank you! Edit: I've updated this blog post to provide working PayPal which can receive money.

Chrome module had wrong root dir permissions

tomas@slax.org (Tomas M) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 05:01:15 -0500

One Slax user, with nickname dajiangtang, notified me regarding a problem of chrome module. It had root directory permissions set to 0744 instead of 0755. When such module was added to Slax root filesystem, it changed Slax's root directory permissions so unpriviledged (non-root) user couldn't login. That was actually just part of the problem, I got several other notices that after chrome module was activated, some other strange things started to happen. I've fixed that and chrome module is rebuilt. If you had any troubles with Slax after using chrome module in the past, please upgrade to the new module now. Thank you for understanding.

Broken modules deleted

tomas@slax.org (Tomas M) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 11:00:03 -0500

I've deleted 181 broken modules which were autogenerated from Slackware's packages but didn't work on Slax due to some missing dependency or any other reason. There were already some users waiting for that action in order to be able to upload own build scripts for some of the software, so now it is your chance :) Thank you, and I'm sorry it took me so long.

Slax 7.0.8 is out

tomas@slax.org (Tomas M) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 01:52:08 -0500

Some of you will hate me for this :) I've just released yet another Slax version. This one should fix the plasma task bar finally. If not, then I'll give up :) Anyway, if you do not like to download new Slax each two days, feel free to use 7.0.6 or 7.0.7 and just resize the taskbar manually to full screen width if you need. What is the problem with the plasma bar anyway? The root of the issue is in the way how the settings are stored for it. If a height is to be specified, which I need for slax, then a width must be specified as well. If a width is specified which is smaller than user's desktop size, it sometimes adapts the task bar to full width, but sometimes it doesn't. However I found out that if really big width is set, which is bigger than the screen, it adapts to actual screen width properly. So I set there 8000 pixels, in the hope that all Slax users will have smaller screen :)

Diffbundle from 7.0.6 to 7.0.8 (updated)

tomas@slax.org (Tomas M) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 20:24:36 -0500

UPDATE - so it is confirmed, 7.0.7 didn't fully fix the plasma panel, so 7.0.8 is on its way. Diffbundle available here: http://www.slax.org/upload/99-diff-706-708.sb

If you just downloaded 7.0.6 and noticed that new Slax 7.0.7 is released, you may download a tiny diff bundle. It is a 4KB big module for Slax which will add all newly changed files to your Slax. Download it and put it in /slax/modules/. The diffbundle is located here: http://www.slax.org/upload/99-diff-706-707.sb I didn't even test it, but it should work. It adds all the plasma-related config files so the panel no longer makes any problems. However I think you will need to remove changes.dat file in your Slax since most likely your existing Slax already overwrote the plasma*rc files and the diffbundle wouldn't have any effect (your changes would overide it). Alternatively you may unsquash the bundle to /slax/rootcopy. For me, a 200MB download doesn't make any problem, so I would rather just download new fixed version in full. Now lets see if the fix really fixes the taskbar for all users. It is pretty tricky.
Maybe we will have 7.0.8 very soon :)

Slax 7.0.7 available, even in Turkish

tomas@slax.org (Tomas M) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:18:57 -0500

update: there is already Slax 7.0.8 avilable, Download it here

In order to fix the strange issues with task bar, I've pushed out a new version of Slax, numbered 7.0.7. Furthermore I've been able to identify strange problem which happened to Slax Turkish version - it never worked at all. The reason for that was somehow unclear to me till now. Each release of Slax (for all languages) is about 50GB. But I do not upload all the 50GB of data to Slax server, instead I upload just two ISOs (32bit and 64bit) with English language and all the other languages as separate modules (it's like 800MB or so in total only). Then I run a script at the server to generate all the ISOs with all the supported translations. And that script was using LANG variable to store currently processed language. I didn't realize that LANG actually is a variable which has some special meaning for some programs, including mkisofs, which was simply not able to generate correct ISO image when LANG=Turkish was set. Anyway, this has now been fixed (LANG renamed to MYLANG in my script) and Turkish people can enjoy Slax on CD too! :)

Taskbar problems in Slax

tomas@slax.org (Tomas M) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:33:34 -0500

I got several notices about the taskbar in new Slax. For some users it is really broken. I can reproduce the problem only when I resize screen to a bigger resolution, but for some people it happens even on clean Slax startup. Will have to digg into it somehow deeply, this should really never happen.

Sign in with email

tomas@slax.org (Tomas M) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:01:47 -0500

I've removed twitter sign in to Slax website and I've added email sign in. How it works? If you wish to sign in, choose "Sign in with Email" from the available options. You'll be asked for your name and email, fill that in and click Submit. You will receive a link in email which will sign you in automatically. Next time you will need to visit that link to sign in again, it serves as a password for you. Alternatively, you may request new sign-in link each time you wish to login, it doesn't matter.

Slax 7.0.6 is now available for download

tomas@slax.org (Tomas M) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 07:20:55 -0500

I'd like to announce the next update of Slax Live Linux version 7.0.6. The main change is new Linux kernel 3.8.2 and updated KDE to 4.10.1. It was a bit harder than I expected, mostly due to some really odd changes made by KDE developers, which I had to work around to get the same functionality like we are used to. Raw changelog:
- Upgraded Linux Kernel to version 3.8.2 - Upgraded KDE to version 4.10.1 - Fixed missing notification when module is activated or deactivated - Upgraded all packages to reflect changes in Slackware-current - Updated FireFox to 19.0.2 - Show date on taskbar under current time - The device notifier in KDE is now hidden since it was showing on mad positions. Slax size has been increased by about 3MB due to new stuff provided by KDE software compilation, I'm going to reduce that somehow in the next release. There are some svg icons and some other files which are not necessary at all.