Slax - pocket operating system (part 2)

In my previous post, I talked about Slax, a compact Linux-based operating system designed to run from removable media (such as flash drives, CDs, etc.). In this post, I will describe the process of installing Slax on the media, as well as the initial setup, which includes Russification, and I’ll present some useful modules in my opinion. Let's start ...

1) Distribution
Since the previous post Slax managed to change several versions, for today the current one is 6.0.7. We will use it:

Download Slax 6.0.7: for CD | for usb media
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In principle, there is no difference between these options, just the CD version is presented in an iso image, and USB in tar, which is easier to unpack. I will consider installing to a USB drive.

2) Installation
So, the distribution kit (the slax-6.0.7.tar file in our case) we downloaded, proceed to the installation. Unpacking the contents of the archive to a USB-drive with the help of your favorite archiver, there should be 2 directories - ./boot and ./slax.

Now you need to make the media bootable. There are 2 scripts in the ./boot directory - bootinst.bat for installing from Windows and bootinst.sh for Unix-like systems. Run the one that suits you best and follow the instructions in the console (which comes down to pressing any key =).

Now the system from this carrier may start, but this may not be enough. It is necessary that the computer BIOS was provided for the initial boot from USB-drives before booting from the hard disk. This is done in different bios in different ways, in general, Advanced BIOS Features -> Hard Disk Boot Priority (the media must already be inserted, there will be something like this ), if not, then search for the keywords "Hard Disk Boot Priority" .

3) Russification
In principle, the system is installed and ready to run. If you want to get Russified Slax, copy my rus-slax.lzm module into the ./slax/modules directory. In principle, the Russification can be done by step-by-step instructions [1], but it is simply more convenient to install a module that already includes the Russian UTF-8 locale, KDE Russification, and the working switch of the layouts.

4) Run
If you have completed all the steps above, then you can already boot into the system. Reboot the computer with the USB drive installed. If successful, the Slax boot menu should appear:



Basic boot modes:

Slax Graphics mode (KDE) - normal system boot with KDE
Slax Always Fresh - in this mode, the system does not save files and other changes to the media after a reboot
Slax Copy To RAM - here Slax will copy all the data into the RAM, which will increase the speed and reduce the load on the USB flash drive, but only if you have a sufficiently large amount of RAM (advise more than 300 MB)

Select one of these items and wait for the system to boot. After launch you should see the default KDE desktop.

If you copied the rus-slax.lzm module during installation, you should complete the Russification. Run the console and execute the command

./install-rus

( Advice to beginners: the Tab completion works on the console, so you can just type in "./in" and press Tab - the command will be entered completely)

Now end the session (KDE Menu -> End Session -> End Current Session). KDE will reboot, and after that you will get a Russified system with switching the EN <-> RU layouts using the Ctrl-Shift keys.

5) The underwater stone in Russification
On removable media and HDD partitions, files and directories with Russian names will not be displayed = (. The official forum was beaten over this problem, and no fully working solution for UTF-8 was found (to solve this problem, you need to rebuild the kernel). Therefore I included a small crutch in the Russification module, manually remounting the device in the desired encoding. Its syntax is as follows:

ru-mount [vfat | ntfs] [DEVICE]

The first argument is the file system of the device, FAT or NTFS, respectively (use vfat also for flash drives), the second is the name of the required device. You can learn it after the device is automatically mounted:



Those. for this flash drive, the device name is / dev / sdb1. Therefore, in order to make Russian files visible on it after this, you need to run it in the console:

ru-mount vfat / dev / sdb1

And open the USB flash drive again in the same section (System -> Storage Media). All this, of course, is not as convenient as we would like, but so far nothing can be done = /.

6) PROFIT! Done!

Now we have a ready-to-use pocket operating system. You can do customization of KDE and other environments, as well as install modules that extend the capabilities of such a system. You can install them, as I have already written, by copying the module file to the ./slax/modules directory on the media, after which the module will be activated each time the system is booted. In addition, the module can be included in the system and without installation, for the duration of the current session (before rebooting), simply by clicking 2 times on the file.

Here are a few modules that in my opinion can be useful:

ark-plugin-3.5.9.lzm - add-on for Ark archiver. Enables integration with Konqueror, adding items to the context menu of files for archiving and unarchiving, as well as unrar and rar binaries, to support the RAR format



Krusader 1.90 is a convenient two-pane file manager.
mozilla-firefox-3.0.1.lzm - latest version of Mozilla Firefox browser
GParted is a program for partitioning the hard disk, along with all the required libraries. It is strange that such a program was not included “in the box” - it is very convenient to partition the disk using the Live distribution (start: KDE menu -> System -> Gparted)

I also advise you to visit the unofficial Slax module repository - there you can also find a lot of useful stuff.

References:
1) Install and Russify SLAX to USB Flash
2) Official repository of Slax modules
3) Discussion of Russification of Slax on the official forum