mahesh2k 0 Report post Posted September 8, 2011 Damn small linux being popular portable distro i hardly cared about anything small or anywhere near it. But i found slitaz on monday and i must say that i'm impressed. Slitaz is so far the smallest distro for me now. It is just 30MB ISO file. You can burn it on CD or use it on vmware or the virtualbox. That way you can easily test the system. There are many good things about this distro. First thing is that it is simple and frugal install with bare minimum applications inside the distro. You will not find much unnecessary things inside the distro. It also comes up with it's own GUI. I have not yet found what it is as there seems to be its own theme and i can't figure out the way around it for now. But i am planning to add other window managers and with package manager i can found out the installed stuff. I was tiold that i should be installing cooking version of the slitaz which was 2.0. But i thought 3.0 which is stable is worth installing as it was new and stable. and it is infact stable none of the bugs or boot issues so far in virtual box. I'm also going to test it under vmware player to see if it works for me. if it is then i guess it's better for suggesting others. By the way there are some thing that i would like to add about this new small linux distro. One important thing is that it is lacking a lot in tutorial and other documentation. there is one official page for that but not much of screenshots or the information that you usually see with installation just like in ubuntu. I don't know if linux users are overly confident and hostile towards newbies and expect hash learning curve. But i hope they add documentation if possible because i was googling and bining for the stuff in case of this distro. Also there are no videos and community activity. I don't even understand my way out of their forums. I should take some time to browse the site i guess. But it was kinda confusing for me to check the site and it's section for the docs and some other stuff. Its weird design for the linux distro in my opinion. That aside, there seems to be active development from them and updates of fixes are also regular which is good thing considering this distro is likely to be more helpful for many users. But all this stuff aside. There are some positive sides to this. You have distro of about 30MB and some decent applications and excellent backup distro you can use for your work. You can download this small distro from it's official site - slitaz. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted September 8, 2011 really impressive, you are right.My next step : how to dynamically change the default keyboard (German keyboard is weird) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
H.O.D 0 Report post Posted September 9, 2011 30MB?! Wow, that's really the smallest Linux distro ever! Obviously there are not going to be a lot of features within it, but it is no doubt a good tool for quickly using as a backup tool. I just tried visiting the site but it is down! It is not opening at all. Now I wonder if that is a temporary problem or a major issue with their website. In any case, I shall definitely be checking this out again for sure. Thanks for this useful piece of info starscream Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted September 9, 2011 I just tried visiting the site but it is down! It is not opening at all. Now I wonder if that is a temporary problem or a major issue with their website. In any case, I shall definitely be checking this out again for sure. Thanks for this useful piece of info starscream Their site was up and allowed me to download the iso file. Have a look if you don't have firewall or proxy blocking problems. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
H.O.D 0 Report post Posted September 9, 2011 Their site was up and allowed me to download the iso file. Have a look if you don't have firewall or proxy blocking problems.Well you replied nearly three hours after I reported that the site was down, and seeing your reply I tried the site again, and it worked So it might have been a temporary downtime and I was just there at the wrong time! Now I've downloaded the iso too, and the large download of 30mb was over really soon Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mahesh2k 0 Report post Posted September 10, 2011 The features of linux are all there. If you're talking about window manager specific features then sure they are not going to be there. But do you need them all the time ? Especially as backup cd or for some guest OS image for vmware or virtualbox ? In my opinion i don't need it at all. Besides that there are couple of stuff is missing. For example, not many languages are supported as it is low on disk space. You will not find many packages that you're going to install on ubuntu. You have to manually find them and install on slitaz. Another thing is that they have a german developer doing all the strings work behind this project and they surely lack documentation and the native language support for other international users. As yordan suggested, there is also need for improvement on the keyboard layout. In case of frugal install it is really hard to get the packages and keep the low size. They have managed to get low size because they have done reduction of lot of files and that way they're making constant changes to have such a low footprint. You can have more packages in small linux distros like damn small linux and arilinux as well. In case of damn small linux you have footprint of about 100 MB or so and it does have more applications than the slitaz which you want to use in your regular use of the linux operating system. But make sure that in case of you needing small bootable drive, it's better to have such small distro. I also prefer such distros in vmware or virtual box imaegs. These are some handy things in linux. Anyway, coming back to slitaz. It has long way to go and improve. But i guess they did heavylifting already with such small size distro. That's what i like about the distro. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
H.O.D 0 Report post Posted September 10, 2011 One thing that I was thinking about while using this is that, do we really need such a small distro today? I mean...while it does have a distinct advantage over other distros due to its small size and functions as an excellent backup tool, it is not too hard to get a full-sized Linux distro in the form of a Live CD. These full sized distros can serve as a backup tool just as easily, and it is only a difference of a few minutes before slitaz or a full-sized distro loads into RAM and begins a Live session. So there's not much difference in the "backup tool" angle. However, when it comes to actually installing the distro, the full-sized one would seem better, because it has most of the required packages ready to use. Slitaz is a fine idea I agree, but its scope beyond the "backup tool" prospect does not seem too large, especially in these days where it is not too difficult to get hold of a Live CD.But still, it is surely a good idea and will appeal to first-time Linux users who just want to get in and quickly see what the fuss is all about Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mahesh2k 0 Report post Posted September 10, 2011 There are many users who are on slow internet connection. That includes me. I can't afford to download 700+ MB stuff ISO and extra CDS or DVD disc. I also struggle getting applications for the linux distro due to low speed connection. So most of my use is restricted to offline usage. For linux offline use is somewhat restricted due to already less apps. If there are more apps coming in market then they do have dependency and other issues of size and download speed. These are the issues from my side. So i can't rely on big size distros. I know tehre are many others like me who want frugal install and don't want some corporations to decide the apps and the settings for me in this install. In such cases such small distros are perfect. 30mB-100MB size distros take approx 4 hours or so with my mobile connection, i know it is horribly slow. But that;s the closest cheap plan i can get here. So ubuntu and other big distros are useless for me as my use is large yet a bit frugal in terms of apps. So slitaz can save me some time with features like - back up cd, frugal install, on-demand image for linux. We can't put all people into one box and decide their operating system needs, same is for me. I prefer frugal install like this for now. Until i get better internet connection, such distros are important for me. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted September 30, 2011 30MB? wow... that's awesome... going to try it out now... but it seems the latest version was released 2008, do they have updates for it to now? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mahesh2k 0 Report post Posted October 1, 2011 As per their site, current version is 3.0 which is updated this year. Before that they had release named cook. So that version 2 or so is going on even after 2008. So maybe that they're into this release and shown that in front page. Check if the version 3 has everything you want. You can even run it under virtual machine like say bochs or virtual box ? I guess it works under these two just like vmware. Also the installation is very easy and in just 10 or so minutes you'll get functional desktop. Early version of slitaz was at 25 MB. Of course some of the stuff was turned off in that. Compared to puppy linux and damn small linux it is still small. So for most of the boot related stuff and the live cd it is good option.Being a frugal distro, you have to add additional software packages inside the distro. Only drawback is that you'll hit some german text once in while. I did find it and so same with yordan :unsure:As you're using linux mint for the low down version of ubuntu. I am sure you'll like the slitaz distro. If not just turn off the virtual machine. lol. For graphics and the apps it may not be the type of distro you want to use. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 1, 2011 yea i was looking at screenshots of slitaz and dsl, it isn't the most pleasant but it does have a simple and functional OS and desktop running... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted October 1, 2011 I'm using slitaz-3.0. Very few things are missing.For instance telnetd nor sshd aren't running, so no access from outside. So it has to be seen as a client-only system, and not as partly a server like most of Unix or Linux machines. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 2, 2011 So for a stansard user like myself this distro shouls be running well on a netbook wireless drivers sound etc? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted October 2, 2011 Just boot on the iso and see if it does what you want. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 2, 2011 ok... 30MB it's quite handy as a USB bootable tool for all sort of diagnosis purposes and data backing up and stuff... 30MB wow Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
