What is Reddit's opinion of Slax?

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If you have a solid/fast internet connection, I would go with a net-install ISO of any of the distros that offer them. A "net-install" version of the installer will only really install the core components and then pull the rest of what you want from the internet.

As always I recommend Debian first. Their netinstall ISOs weigh in around 180 MB. The Debian net installer won't have a magical GUI installer, but it should be pretty darn easy to do anyway. If you'd prefer something other than the GNOME default, you can pick something else prior to starting the installer by typing one of these:

desktop=kde desktop=xfce desktop=lxde

at the boot prompt. I recommend Wheezy at this point over Squeeze, since Wheezy is in a freeze right now and is going to go Stable soon. The beauty of the Net install is it will give you the most updated packages straight away, meaning that when you boot your new system it won't have packages dated from whenever the last CD release came out needing to be updated.

Arch and Gentoo default to a net installation, but those would be quite a pain to set up if you aren't a fan of the command line as you say.

I'll assume since you want to install it rather than just do a LiveCD you don't want something like SLAX.

Cheers!

Edit: link for the lazy to Wheezy net install ISOs.

Tomas is an impressive distro-maker. He's one of those detailed-oriented guys that covers all the really main (showcase) points and then some.

Light weight/small size, great graphics, lots of features, excellent selection of apps (subjective, I know). He also had created an online distro-creator where you put the pieces together and create your own, unique, slax-based distro.

Always seemed like a lot of work for one guy (I'm guessing) but he manages to surpass some other larger distros in terms of delivery, aesthetics, perrformance, user-friendliness - both on the distro itself and his website.

From his blog, the main release is going to be 210mb but... there's also a 800*kb* release that will mount the ISO over the network and download only the apps you use.

I'm not surprised that he's built this... it's the kind of really interesting (and useful) stuff he puts together. Looking forward to the initial release.

Nowdays you can spin off "live" almost any popular disto.
First one I ever got in touch with was Slax which is 200MB, got KDE desktop etc...
Now, you probably think about Backtrack which is penetration testing distribution (aka hack-pack).
My personal fav paper on this is UbuntuLiveCDCustomizationFromScratch where I learned alot about how system actually work.
EDIT: and for encryption you just encrypt preserve filespace, just try to google it

I see you have a Trident CYBER 8820. I have a machine with an 8620 with the same symptoms. I fixed it with the xorg.conf file on this page: http://www.slax.org/forum.php?action=view&parentID=74096

Mine has even less RAM, in service now as a local nameserver (running Slackware). I used it for a few weeks with dwm, and it was pleasant enough (not powerful enough to stream video, of course).

One way to replace the file without completely reinstalling Windows would be to boot up a bootable OS, either from CD/DVD or USB. You will be able to browse your harddrive and replace the file with the backup you made.

You can find many portable OSs, mainly Linux, here is one I recommend - http://www.slax.org/

I've heard good things about Slax, a slackware based portable distro. Personally I always carry System Rescue CD around with me. This is designed to repair broken systems though, but it has wifi and firefox if I ever needed something quick.

Slax is a portable KDE 4 distro that can be installed to a USB flash drive, boot the PC, and copy the OS to resident memory.

It is a very small, simple-to-understand OS. It is small enough to leave tons of remaining storage space on the flash drive for a LUKS-encrypted partition and volume where backed-up data can reside.

Further reading here.

My opinion is, no matter what you install permanently on your computer, everyone needs a portable computer + encrypted data backup in their pocket. I keep mine on my keychain.

Slax! It's specifically built to be run off a USB flash drive. You can even keep your drive FAT32.

If you want to add software to it, all you do is download a module file into a specific directory in the FAT32 file system and it'll automagically integrate it into its file system when it boots.

It even persists filesystem changes (you can turn this off to make it fresh every time) to a special folder on the USB drive.

I simply installed Debian mint on my thumb drive. Just choose the distro you like and install it. If you want a truly customized version then you can use Slax.

SLAX is the easiest distro to customise, I've found. They have a bunch of modules on their website.

You can completely replace the default window manager.

I've found it easier than remastersys, which always seemed to create an iso bigger than a CD.

YMMY, but I keep coming back to SLAX.

Grab a Linux live distribution and boot it from USB/CD and see what it makes of the drive. If you can see everything fine on there you know you just have a compatibility/settings issue in Windows - you could either troubleshoot that or rescue your important files while you're still booted into Linux.

Slax is a good mini distro for just firing up quickly on almost anything and seeing what's up.

http://www.slax.org/

You can edit your initial post with updates. Can she try going to Disk Management and see if the drive detects there. If it does and it seems healthy, see if she can right click it and assign it a drive letter.

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows-8/a/disk-management-windows-8.htm - How To Access Disk Management in Windows 8 & 8.1 [Easy]

If it's not accessible there, then you may need to see if it shows up using a Linux LiveCD. I used Slax which I had from a while back but it still helps checking to make sure.

I'd recommend Slax. It's designed from the ground up to be run entirely from a USB stick. No messing about with ISO's. Just run a .bat in windows as Admin and it'll make the stick bootable. No need for a *nix partition.

It persists changes in a file on the USB stick (you can turn this off so it's fresh every time you boot).

It also has modules you can download and put in a folder in the FAT file system that it makes part of its file system automagically.

http://www.slax.org/documentation.php

"Thanks to it, Slax runs on computers with as low as 48MB of RAM (in text mode)."

You could try X with the xfce window manager (it's included but KDE is the default). Slax does use compressed swap technology which would be advantageous in such a situation but there's no way you're going to run the default graphical environment.

Let me know if you need any help with it, I know Slax fairly well as I've customized versions of the Slax bundles you'll see under the /slax directory (.sb extension) to include such things as ~~kernel modules~~ firmware for my TV Tuner card.

I'd just like to point out the glory of a puppy linux LiveUSB. It's so small it actually loads the whole OS to ram, you can save all changes back to USB drive. It's essentially a liveUSB and a full install at the same time. On a side note, for an easier to use liveUSB/sorta full install. http://www.slax.org/ You don't even need a program to make a liveUSB. Download the USB version, put in USB, run the install .bat or .sh and it's ready.

To the update:

sda is the first drive. sdb is the second drive. sdc is the third. Got it?

sda1 is the first partition of the first drive. sda2 is the second partition of the first drive. Got that too?

Now just look at the partition tables (for example by using lsblk or fdisk or gparted) and by looking at the size and current mount points you should be able to identify which /dev/sdX is your USB stick.

While it certainly is possible to install Ubuntu (or any distro) onto an USB stick (by just selecting the correct /dev/sdX during the installation), I wouldn't advice to do so because USB sticks are small and reading from them is slow compared to harddrive. Slax on the other hand does compress the software. By copying the compressed packages over to a RAM location and then decompressing it, it may actually be faster to start that specific software than to directly start uncompressed software from the usb stick. But implementing that in an Ubuntu distro is kinda difficult, so I actually would recommend you to just use Slax (or something comparable) instead.

maybe try a live OS like slax or something?

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

I apologize if this is no help, I am years out of touch when it comes to this type of thing.

edit: link

~~libcryptro, according to http://www.slax.org/slax/modules.php?action=dependencies&id=2119 is part of slax Core.~~

~~So whoever built that slack image goofed. Did you get your slax image from http://www.slax.org/slax/get_slax.php ?~~

Wait a sec, let me re-edit.

>1) Use another linux CD with ssh enabled by default and then do a chroot >installed +chroot install is well documented +ssh enabled liveCDs are designed >for headless work -you need to know how to do a chroot install +If anything goes >wrong after install you have a ssh cd you can use to get back on For the CD i >recommended putting something together with slax as I've used it before for >headless work (http://www.slax.org/modules.php?action=detail&id=618 is the ssh >module i added, you will also need to get it onto the net)

I built a custom iso with your module works, great stuff. Thank you

Go here: http://www.slax.org/get_slax.php

• Download one (the CD copy will definitely work, don't know if your laptop will boot from USB).
• Put it on disc or a drive
• Put the disc in, boot the laptop

You may have to set the boot priority on the BIOS. Do that by pressing F2 when you turn the laptop on. DON'T fuck with any other settings in the laptop.

It shouldnt be hard to make a custome PE disk. I also just now discovered that apparently SLAX has a module for Avira AntiVir http://www.slax.org/modules.php?action=detail&id=410 which might be something worth trying.

If you install directly to USB, you have a normal Linux install that just sits on a USB flash/disk instead of an internal HDD. You can do anything you want with it.

Note, that updates would very slow as flash memory is very slow.

You might want to look at this: http://www.slax.org/

I wish! But no, Puppylite 420 didn't work out at all. Same sort of problems I ran into with Slitaz, no network and still no sound.

So I wound up trying a couple more. Vector didn't work either, but guess what? Slax 6.1.2 DID! It found everything, network works fine and even the sound is finally working now! It has Firefox 3.5.1 which isn't too bad, and videos DO play too, more or less. So I guess that Slax is the one to go with on this old brick, then.

There's only one catch, though: there's NO way to install it! Wtf? Why would anyone make a distro that doesn't have an installer? How does that make any sense? I tried looking in the Slax forum, but all I found on it so far was this, from 2 years ago:

http://www.slax.org/forum.php?action=view&parentID=4456

In there was a post that said that the installer had been removed from Slax 6, and the guy posted a link to an installer file that he had, so maybe I'll try that instead.