When I was in college I didn't have my own computer so I relied on the Windows machines from the library.
That's when I discovered Slax and Puppy Linux [1] and all its different variants. Such a beautiful thing to boot into these pendrive distros and discover the world of Linux through them without altering the host system.
Slax brings back fond memories! I used to boot school computers into it to have access to OpenOffice, Firefox, ahem Ophcrack…
I never ran Slackware Linux beyond that but the simplicity of being able to build a custom live USB through their web interface was amazing. I don’t think I’d have gotten as much of a head start with Linux had it not existed.
This makes me miss the days of Knoppix. Apparently it's less dead than I thought, it did have a new release in April 2021 (and it was distributed on a DVD with certain magazines, like the old days!) http://www.knoppix.org
I used it sometimes when I needed a live Linux, and I liked it, because it used to be based in Slackware, and it had KDE as its desktop. Now they added Debian as another base, and that's great. Sadly, they dropped KDE.
There's also Porteus, also a Slackware derivative offering KDE Plasma -- https://www.porteus.org
Slax was and still is a great live distribution. The fact that (at least one of its flavors) is based on Slackware shows that the parent distro (Slackware) isn't that hard to use, something that few people believe. Slackware is in fact very simple in comparison to other distros.
You can also just literally install most any linux distro to a USB and use it the same way. It likely won't work on every machine, but it will work on most similar machines. I have done so for many years with archlinux
I love the idea of this... but here is what I want - IT SHOULD WORK WITH EVERY HARDWARE PERMUTATION KNOWN TO EXISTENCE. If not... combine your energy with Fedora.
mongrelion|2 months ago
When I was in college I didn't have my own computer so I relied on the Windows machines from the library.
That's when I discovered Slax and Puppy Linux [1] and all its different variants. Such a beautiful thing to boot into these pendrive distros and discover the world of Linux through them without altering the host system.
Good times.
[1] https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/
i_v|2 months ago
I never ran Slackware Linux beyond that but the simplicity of being able to build a custom live USB through their web interface was amazing. I don’t think I’d have gotten as much of a head start with Linux had it not existed.
TazeTSchnitzel|2 months ago
butz|2 months ago
sombragris|2 months ago
There's also Porteus, also a Slackware derivative offering KDE Plasma -- https://www.porteus.org
Slax was and still is a great live distribution. The fact that (at least one of its flavors) is based on Slackware shows that the parent distro (Slackware) isn't that hard to use, something that few people believe. Slackware is in fact very simple in comparison to other distros.
unknown|2 months ago
[deleted]
unknown|2 months ago
[deleted]
dahngue|2 months ago
metalman|2 months ago
knowitnone3|2 months ago
system7rocks|2 months ago
unsungNovelty|2 months ago
You should invest into a community run or community oriented distros like Arch, Gentoo, Alpine, Linux Mint etc.
More over, each distro has its things. Why should Slax do that?
knowitnone3|2 months ago