Slax: Live Pocket Linux

This brings back good memories.

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/

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

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.

While last update is from October 2023, I'm still surprised that this project is still going for so long. Remember using Slax almost a decade ago.

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 find it weird to base one from Debian and one from Slackware. Seems like extra work but you do you.

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.