Distro#16 Slax 6.1.0

Slax is a LiveCD system, based on Slackware. When I booted it with default option, there is a driver issue because of wrong driver version. But, the VESA mode is ok to use, just the resolution is too small for these days.

Boot-time for my hardware took about a minute. The desktop environment is KDE 3.5 and Kernel is 2.6.27.8. I checked the website, its build system is very convenient to compose your own of packages, but adding dependencies needs some clicks. I added NVIDIA 96xx driver, Firefox, pppoe-kemo, and removed KOffice. The final is about 198 MB and only took 4 minutes or less to download, the download speed is very fast. I used external USB harddrive this time, because I want it can be able to store data/session.

Screenshot of Slax' builder

I unpacked tarball to disk and ran ROOT/boot/liloinst.sh instead of bootinst.sh (for FAT-only) because the partition is ext3. It provided a clear message about what would be done:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
                        Welcome to Slax boot installer                        
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

This installer will setup disk /dev/sdb to boot only Slax from /dev/sdb1.
Warning! Master boot record (MBR) of /dev/sdb will be overwritten.
If you use /dev/sdb to boot any existing operating system, it will not work
anymore. Only Slax will boot from this device. Be careful!

Press any key to continue, or Ctrl+C to abort...

Flushing filesystem buffers, this may take a while...
Updating MBR to setup boot record...
Warning: /dev/sdb is not on the first disk
Warning: The initial RAM disk is too big to fit between the kernel and
   the 15M-16M memory hole.  It will be loaded in the highest memory as
   though the configuration file specified "large-memory" and it will
   be assumed that the BIOS supports memory moves above 16M.
Added Slax ? *
Disk /dev/sdb should be bootable now. Installation finished.

Read the information above and then press any key to exit...

This time it's in text-mode. I ran xconf, then startx, the video driver didn't work, kernel module wasn't load, because that package is for kernel 2.6.24.5. So, I set up PPPoE and downloaded the driver from NVIDIA, and deactived the module and removed it from USB hd. After running the installer, startx gave correct result. After rebooting, it also gave the correct one.

I started to explore Slax, the following screenshot is the Module Manager:

You can use it to add or to remove a module. On the website, you can directly activate a module (not in Firefox).

 Accoding to this feature list, the persistent changes to whole root filesystem is achieved by AUFS filesystem. In this current install, it took about 450 MB disk space, and around 200 MB memory in use. I think speed isn't an advantage of Slax, but portability is. By my estimation, there should be over 1100 modules (including multi-versions of a module) that you can activate on your system. The boot-time is not fast, but it's acceptable becuase it's not just a LiveCD.

Lastly, the screenshot

Distro#14 Linux Mint 6 Felicia Fluxbox CE

It has been about three month, I haven't not been trying any distribution. Now, I am back on track. Linux Mint 6 Felicia Fluxbox CE has just been released alongside KDE version, I decided to try Fluxbox because Fluxbox is relatively less seen than KDE. Just a sidenote, I am using Fluxbox on Fedora 10 and I am quite like it.

Linux Mint is Debian-based and compatible with Ubuntu packages. According DistroWatch.com, it's third popular distribution. This Fluxbox released is based on Xubuntu 8.10 Intrepid, Linux 2.6.27, Fluxbox 1.0.0 and Xorg 7.4

When you boot up the CD, the first choice is what type of LiveCD option you want to have:

• Full desktop: 300MB RAM
• Light session: 256MB RAM or 128MB & Swap
• Installer only: 192MB RAM or 128MB & Swap

From the options, we can assume Felicia Fluxbox CE is suitable for old computers. After the desktop showing up, I got the restricted driver notification. It detected nVidia correctly and suggested the right driver version, 96 series driver. It needs to get online in order to download the driver. So I ran sudo /usr/sbin/pppoeconf to set up the PPPoE. However the route table isn't correct (I may miss some settings), so I ran the following commands to set the default via PPPoE:

sudo ip route show
sudo ip route delete default
sudo ip route add default via [correct_gateway_ip]

I activated the driver, but it needs to restart and I don't know if this LiveCD can resume the session. Therefore, I continue to install Mint into harddrive. The installation took less than 10 minutes.

After reboot, it went into problem, can't get X worked. The video driver is nvidia in xorg.conf, I changed it to nv. Using mintUpdate to do first system update. I then re-installed the driver and activated it. After rebooting (30 seconds boot time), I got the login screen and correct resolution and xcompmgr is loaded and working.

This Fluxbox version is pretty lightweight. So far, except the PPPoE and video driver, everything is work-out-of-box and neat. Color scheme and style are consistent.

Lastly the screenshot:

Distro#12 gOS 3.1 Gadgets (SP1)

I downloaded the gOS, it's an i686 architecture distribution based on Ubuntu. The “g” in gOS seems to stand for Good rather than Google, even though supporting Google Gadgets is the major feature of it.

The CD is a Live CD, and includes WINE 1.0. The application dock is wbar. Using Live environment is not the purpose of this project, so I clicked the Install icon on desktop. It took about 15 minutes to finish at this phase. Here is a unusual action after the installer finished its job. It logged out X, ejected the disc tray, and rebooted! Directly, automatically did. Usually, the instally would tell you the installation process is done, take the CD, and click on Reboot button. Well, this is not how gOS does.

Anyway, after the first-time reboot, the resolution is wrong as usual. Once again, I need to pkill NetworkManager in order to get connected via PPPoE. Somehow this NetworkManager has no PPPoE to set up, I can only rely on Network.

Now, the first system update needed to download 280 MB for 218 updates. They are too many to read them all, so I just clicked to install. While updating, I tried the Gmail, it uses Mozilla Prism. So do Google Calendar/Documents and YouTube.The rest of Google services use Firefox.

The boot time is around 42 seconds at the moment. After rebooted, NetworkManager didn't stop my way to the Internet and PPPoE has been connected in the boot-time, I suppose and it should. I installed nvidia-glx 96 series package, enabled the driver, and rebooted. Now I have correct screen resolution. It's time to explore this distribution.

Desktop Effects can't be enabled due to compliz isn't installed by default. After installed, I still can't get it enabled. Flash works out-of-the-box and this I just watched.

This distribution does work like a charm for me, though there are few problems need to get resolved. But it is good indeed. I don't know if that is Ubuntu does good or gOS does good. No matter which does, I recommended this distribution, especially to the Google addicted users.

Distro#11 ZevenOS 1.0

ZevenOS is a distribution from Germany. It gives you a BeOS interface and it's based on Ubuntu. I booted up the CD and installed it. The installation took about 10~15 minutes. It boots up in about 35 seconds.

So far, a small problem is I need to re-plug my USB after booting and another bigger problem  is that you can't unlock Network and the solution to change the settings. You must do manually in order to get updates and solve this issue.

So I set my laptop as gateway and upgraded these two policy packages (didn't help), then I did system update and installed nVidia driver. Enabled the driver and rebooted. I have correct screen resolution.

I think this is it, it's not worth continuing trying this distribution. The traditional ending,

Even though this is a little bit disappointing, I still wrote this and post this on ZevenOS.

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• 2009-01-03 Added the solution of unlocking problem. (Thanks, Leszek!)