Click a Nerd | Slax Guide


	What is Slax? Slax is a LiveCD which allows you to use Linux without having to install it. It is under 200 MB and can be burned to a mini-CD (8 cm). Once you burn it to a CD you can boot off of it and have a great Linux distro, without the hassles and commitments of installation. It is also possible to run Slax off a USB Flash drive, by using a very simple graphical installer. Why Choose Slax? Why would you choose Slax? Well, Slax gives you many options in a relatively tiny package. What sets Slax apart from other distros? Well, for one, most distros must be installed but Slax can be run from CD. Slax is nicer than other LiveCDs because it is small but yet has lots of functionality. Other Live distributions are usually very large (around 700MB - filling a CD) and often include many similar programs on it to satisfy as many users as possible (10 different people can have 10 different favorite text editors). Slax offers just one application in most cases. If you want to add other programs, this can be done quite easily in Slax, using modules. Despite its small size, Slax looks very nice and includes a lot of functionality. Other small distros can be too small, and not have room for nice graphics, or have limited functionality. Slax, on the other hand, has a great balance of size and functionality. What are the system requirements? - i486 processor or better is good, both Pentium and AMD should work - CD-ROM drive, a USB drive, or a hard drive to boot from. Using a CD drive is best for beginners. - BIOS capable of booting from CD-ROM or a floppy drive to use Smart Boot Manager. - To load Slax with just text you need 30 MB of RAM. To run Fluxbox (a not as nice looking window-manager) takes 64 MB of RAM. If you wish to run KDE, you need 128 MB of RAM on your computer. - keyboard - PS/2 (mouse with a green connector; standard), or a USB mouse will work (These will be auto-detected by Slax) - if you have a serial (COM mouse) it will not be automatically recognized but it is possible to use it with a bit of work - no hard disk is required What can Slax do? With Slax, you can do many things. You can use Slax without any operating system installed. You are able to surf the web on it if you are connected to the internet, or you can watch DVDs. You can play songs on your hard drive or look at pictures on it. If the operating system installed on your computer won't boot, you can use Slax to try recover important data you have on your hard drive. How can I get Slax? Go to the downloads section of the website (www.slax.org/download) and select the version that you are most interested in. If you have trouble selecting, there is a section later on explaining how the different editions are different. Intro to Linux A Brief history including different distros Linux was started by a man named Linus Torvalds in 1991. It is open-source software which means everybody can see what's in it, and change it. The code is made available to everyone, with other software, the code is written, and then compiled, and the end-user can't read the code. If you don't like something and you know what you are doing, you can change it. Windows isn't like that. If you don't like something, you most likely won't be able to change it. There are many different versions of Linux. They are called distributions, or distros for short. Each includes the kernel, and a variety of programs chosen by the creator. Distros come in many different shapes and sizes. Some are so small they can fit on a floppy disk. Others are a couple gigabytes large. Some of the more popular distros are Slackware, Ubuntu, Suse, and Red Hat. Slax is based on Slackware. Some distros, called LiveCDs, can run from a CD, without the need to be installed to a hard drive. Some of these LiveCDs can also be installed to, and booted from USB Keys. Window Managers You may have seen a couple different screenshots of Linux and wondered why some looked so different. That is because different distros use different window managers. A window manager controls the way things look. Some are small, and consume few resources. A few examples of these are Fluxbox, Blackbox, and IceWM. There are a few that are in the middle. One of these is XFCE. Some are very large, and consume many resources. These include KDE and Gnome. The large, heavy ones generally look better, though it is a matter of preference. Programs for Linux There have been many programs written for Linux. Programs are created for just about everything. In the productivity department there are programs such as OpenOffice.org, and KOffice. Browsers include Konqueror and Firefox. Multimedia applications include MPlayer, as well as the popular XMMS. There are many tools for networking and servers. The area where Linux lacks most is games. Sure, there are many fun addicting games which you can spend hours on. I do it all the time! But, there aren't as many first-person shooters, or games like Rome: Total War or Empire Earth for example. But, there are some exceptions of people or groups who have made great contributions. But, one person can't make a whole first-person shooter like Call of Duty. For a community spread out all over the world, it's hard to put together such a game. Some great games available for Linux are Freeciv, Supertux, Pingus, Frozen Bubble, and Kobodeluxe. Wine If there is a Windows program that you will miss a lot by switching to Linux, it might be possible to run that program using Wine. This program allows you to run Windows programs in Linux. Not all programs will work with it however, but helped out more than a few people. Are you missing your Windows games? Cedega can come to the rescue. Many Windows games are playable using it. However, this is one Linux program that you are asked to pay for. How do I get started? 1. Burn the disc Once you've downloaded Slax, you have to burn it to a CD. The .iso that you download is a copy of what should be on the disc. You can't just burn it to a disc as a file, as you normally would. To burn ISO files, use your favorite burning software and burn the .iso to the CD by using a special feature in your software. You should be able to find a "Burn image to CD" option or "Burn CD iso image" option. Check the programs help files if you can't find the option, and if you're still stuck, check the Slax forums for help. 2. Set up your BIOS to boot from CD To enter the BIOS, you need to hit a certain key right away when your computer starts. This key should be found in your manual. Otherwise, you can try common ones such as the Delete key, or F1, F2, or a bunch of other of the Function keys. Another way of booting from the CD is by using something called Smart Boot Manager. This goes onto a floppy which boots and allows you to choose where to boot from. This is probably the easiest way for a beginner or someone who can't find out how to enter the BIOS. You can choose the CD through this way. You can download it at http://slax.linux-live.org/dl/floppy.img.gz (the file floppy.img.gz is also on the CD, in FLOPPY/ directory, the user don't need to download it from internet) Once you've downloaded it, extract it and then use rawrite in Windows/DOS to write to a floppy. (rawrite is also in the same directory on the CD) In Linux, use the dd command. Insert this into your computer and restart. Make sure the Slax CD is in your CD drive and select it from the boot menu. 3. Put the CD in the drive and restart your computer As your computer starts, (if all goes well), you should have Slax start. When it begins, you will see a screen that shows the Slax logo and also words at the bottom that say boot. Here, you can wait and Slax will load for you, or you can add extra things to change stuff. For now, since it's your first time just hit enter or wait 5 seconds. After you wait for awhile, you will see different things on the screen, and finally it will get to a screen that says login. Type root as the username and toor as the password. This will get you logged in. At time you are running full featured operating system directly from the CD! it's nice, isn't it? And it can be even nicer! You can start Linux commands from the command line you see on the screen, or you can start graphical user environment (called KDE) Type 'startx' to get to KDE. If you wish to use Fluxbox (a less nice looking window manager which uses less resources), type 'flux'. 4. Congratulations, you're running Linux! What about the special versions? There are currently five different versions of Slax. Almost all of them will include KDE except for Slax Frodo and Slax Popcorn. The special features of each version will be available as modules. Slax Standard is a customized Slackware with KDE 3.5, kernel 2.6.x, as well as better Wifi detection. Slax Kill-Bill includes Wine, to run Windows programs in Slax. It also includes Qemu, which emulates a computer, and allows you to run other operating systems while running Slax. Again, not all programs will work with Wine, but you can certainly give it a try. Slax Frodo is a tiny version, (around 50MB) which doesn't include X. That means there's only text to look at, and type with. No graphics here. However, this is good for older computers, or to set up a server for which you don't need X. Slax Server contains tools for a server, with DNS, DHCP, SAMBA, HTTP, FTP, MySQL, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, and SSH all ready to go out of the box. All these services are added to the Standard version, so this version also includes KDE, which is useful for testing webpages. Slax Popcorn is a small version around 115MB which doesn't include KDE, but is a GTK based version of Slax with XFCE. It includes Abiword for text editing, Firefox for browsing, as well as a number of multimedia viewing apps. It is meant to be used for multimedia, and should fit on a 128MB USB key. How do I... Burning/Installing Add modules to the .iso? This can be easily accomplished in Windows, with MySlax (http://myslax.bonsonno.org/). Follow the simple guide, and in no time, you'll have a burnable .iso with your selected modules included. Installing Slax to a USB thumbdrive There are two different ways of installing Slax. The first is to install it so that it still boots and acts like a LiveCD. The second method is to install it like a real Linux install. The benefit of the second method is that you won't have to worry about saving changes, as they will stay where they have been saved after rebooting. To install use this guide: http://www.slax.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7395 Booting Copy to Ram If you want Slax to load and run faster and have at least 256 MB of RAM you can use the toram command. As Slax boots, when it says boot: type: Command: "slax toram" It will take a minute or two to copy the whole disc to run but once this is done, Slax will run much faster. Also, if you only have one disc drive on your computer and wish to watch a DVD in Slax or listen to an audio disc you can use 'slax copy2ram' which will copy the disc to RAM and then automatically eject the disc to free up your drive. This is a very handy tool. Note: The "copy2ram" command can also be used. Boot Slax from a USB flashdrive Once you have started Slax, click on the "Home" icon on the KDE desktop. In this folder, start the "Slax-Installer" program. Fill in all the info correctly, and make sure you tell it to install it to your USB drive, not your hard drive. Boot Slax from your hard drive (installing Slax) If you want to install Slax on your hard drive, make sure you have a Linux partition which is free. Then go to the "Home" icon on your KDE desktop. Select the "Slax-Install" program, and fill in all the nessacary information. Make sure you select the right hard drive partition, you probably don't want to install Slax over another operating system you have. It installs LILO with it, which means that the install could make Windows, (or other operating systems installed on the drive) unbootable. So you should only do this if you know how to use and edit LILO. Use and create a swap partition If your hard drive already contains a Linux swap partition, Slax will automatically detect it and use it. However, if you don't want to mess around with your drive and create a swap partition, you can create a swap file. However, if you have another partition, here's how to make a swap file. Type 'fileswap /mnt/hda1/swap.swp 200' for example to make a swap file on the first partition of your first hard drive. The '200' tells it to make a 200MB swap partition. The swap file will not be deleted on a reboot. The fileswap command must be used for each time you boot Slax though. The swap file won't be auto detected. Note: DO NOT use the fileswap command more than once per boot. Doing so can create major problems. Productivity/Office Write a text document To make a text document in KDE, click on the K button and go to Office>KWord. Then select the kind of document you wish to make and click OK. KWord is very similar to most other major word processors and you should be able to find your way around with ease. If you wish to save a document, don't save it just anywhere. You need to save it to a place where a reboot will not affect it. A good place is to a hard drive, floppy drive, or USB key. You could also send it to someone as an attachment through email if you have Slax on the internet. Multimedia Watch a DVD If you wish to watch a DVD and you have an unused DVD drive you can watch DVDs by start Slax, loading KDE or Fluxbox, and starting KPlayer. Then, choose File>Open URL and type dvd://1 This will load the first title of the DVD. To change the title, change the number from 1. If you only have 1 drive which is a DVD drive, to free it up, use the "copy2ram eject" boot option explained elsewhere. Burn a CD If you want to burn a CD using Slax, the best way to do it is by using K3B. Once you open the program, (you can find it in KDE under Multimedia on the K-Menu) you will find it is pretty self explanatory and easy to use. To burn a disc, you will need a free CD-R or CD-RW drive, so you either need two drives, or you need to use copy2ram eject to free up you only drive. Use MPlayer MPlayer is a very powerful media player which you can use from console. To use it in console mode, type "mplayer". If you want to use the graphical version, type "gmplayer". There are many things you can do with it. To view all the features, and the commands to use them, type man mplayer If you want to listen to music, you can type mplayer /root/track1.wma for example. Console Play music without starting X If your computer is old and slow, you can still use it to play music on the hard drive using the small console program called mpg321. Let's say you have a song in /mnt/disc0part1 called track1.mp3 To play it type play /mnt/disc0part1/track1.mp3 You should now hear the song. If you wish to adjust the volume, type rexima and move the sliders right for louder, and left for softer. Browsing the internet without X Slax includes a small console browser call Lynx. If you wish to use it type lynx http://www.slax.org for example, if you wish to visit the Slax site. Use Midnight Commander (filebrowser) MC or Midnight Commander is a file-browser, and performs the same task as a program like Konqueror in KDE or Explorer in Windows. However, it doesn't require you to be in X to start it. It is a console program. To start it, type mc at the command line. This starts it. You should see two panels in front of you to work with. One way to switch between the two is by using your mouse. The mouse can also be used with the menus. At the bottom of the screen you see familiar words like copy and view. To perform a function listed on the bottom, hit the F-key corresponding with the function. For example, to view a file you have selected, hit F3 on your keyboard. To exit Midnight Commander, hit F10. It will return to a normal console. Hardware Use a serial (COM) mouse These mice are not automatically setup. To setup, use this command: 'ln -sf /dev/tts/0 /dev/mouse' Use /dev/tts/0 for COM1, /dev/tts/1 for COM2, etc. Mount a USB flashdrive Mounting a USB Flashdrive is now much easier than previously. To do it, make sure Slax is started, and then plug in your device. Open a terminal window, and type 'fstab-create' This will make fstab entries as well as a folder in /mnt. Go to "System" on the KDE desktop, and click on "Storage Deveces" and you should see your USB Flashdrive there. Development (Linux-live scripts, modules) Install Linux Live scripts If you want to use the uselivemod, uselivemod, or other scripts like that in a distro other than Slax, you need to install the Linux-Live scripts created by Tomas Matejicek. To do this, you need to have the latest Linux-Live scripts which can be picked up at www.linux-live.org Then, you will have to extract the scripts. To do this, open a command window and type, tar -xf This should extract the scripts, either to their current directory, or to root or your home directory. Look in these locations for the extracted folder. Copy this folder to /tmp. Now go 'cd /tmp/linux-live-x.x.x' with the x's being the version number of the scripts. Now type './install' You now have the Linux-Live scripts installed and ready to use. Use a module One of the greatest features of Slax is the fact that it is modular. That means if it doesn't have something you want, you can easily add it. These additions are called modules. A module is a something you can create or download which has a .mo extension. For example, you can add OpenOffice.org or a variety of games which weren't included in Slax for size reasons. Many different modules can be found at www.slax.org/modules There are two ways to use a module: Editiso The editiso command allows you to insert and remove modules from the .iso. However, for a beginner, a great guy named Martijn Starrenburg created MySLAX Creator. Download it at http://www.myslax.rabidhutch.co.uk It allows you to modify you Slax CD in Windows with a wizard-based approach. It is very simple and guides you through all the steps. Uselivemod To use a module without burning a new CD, use this command. Uselivemod command expects one argument: a full path to the image file you wish to insert to live file system. It doesn't mater where the module is, you can download it while running SLAX to /root (root's home directory), /mnt/disc0part1 (primary partition of your first hard drive), etc. Now, to load the module, open a console, (click the black icon on the bottom KDE) and type uselivemod /root/modname.mo or uselivemod /mnt/hda1/modulename.mo If all goes well, the computer will pause for a second and display no error. To use the program, check the K-menu. If it's not in here, go to the console and use a command to start it (for example, Firefox module is started by executing /usr/share/Firefox/Firefox command). If you don't know the command you should use, explore the content of /mnt/livecd/imgro/modulename.mo. It's a directory which shows only files from your module. Make modules Making modules is really quite easy. However, it can take up some of your valuable time. Sometimes, if you're lucky, there will already be a Slackware package for the program you want. (Slackware packages end in .tgz) If you find the one you want, download it, and use the command tgz2mo /directory/file.tgz /directory/file.mo You now have an module that can be used with the uselivemod command, or by inserting the module into the .iso. To use the tgz2mo command takes even a slow typer under 2 minutes. Sometimes, however, you won't be so lucky. There are not Slackware packages for every program out there. For this, you must compile the program first and install it. This can't be done from within the ordinary Slax. You need Slax Professional for this, or a standard distro installed to the hard drive (like Slackware, Mandrake, or Red Hat). Then, make a folder with the name of the module. In here, you will place an exact replication of the files and folders created by the program. For example, in Slax, check /var/log/packages, and select a file from the list. Open it with KWrite or whatever. All the files and directories listed there would need to be copied to the new folder. It may take a really long time, but it's still pretty easy. Now, once you have everything in there, type dir2mo /root/directory/ /root/file.mo You now have a module. This could take a couple hours. (Or a few minutes if your dealing with a small program with few files.) If you wish to convert an old Slax module with a .img extension, use the img2mo command. If you make a good working module, which you think others might benefit from (they probably will) please upload it to the modules section on the Slax website. Emulation Use Wine Wine allows you to run certain Windows programs in Linux. It is included in Slax Kill-Bill, but if you don't have that, you can download it as a separate module from the module section of the website. If you use the module, first you have to load it using the 'uselivemod' command. Once this is done, it is really quite simple. All you have to do is double-click on the icon of the file in KDE. The program might work, but then again, it might not. Games generally won't work. (Unless they're old games like Chip's Challenge.) If you want to try games in Slax, you should try Cedega, which is a customized version of Wine. Use Qemu Qemu is included in Slax Kill-Bill. It allows you to run other operating systems while running Slax. To use it, open a console and type "qemu -cdrom /mnt/disc0part1/slaxpro.iso" to start Slax Professional while running Kill-Bill. Of course, you need to have Slax Professional downloaded and called slaxpro.iso and on the first partition of your primary drive for this particular command to work. Miscellaneous Save your configuration to the web One of the greatest new features of Slax 5 is the ability to save your Slax configuration to the internet. This allows you to take your configuration everywhere without needing a separate floppy or something. All you need is a Slax disc. To use this feature, type slax webconfig=password with password being your password. By using this, everything will happen automatically. All changes found in /etc, /root, /home, and /var (except for /var/log) will be saved to the Slax server. This command can be used to restore and save your configuration, no other commands needed. The password you chose must be over 10 characters long. Please make it long and complex, yet easy for you to remember. To use this, you need to have Slax 5.0.0 or newer, and also a working network card, configured by DHCP. Appendix A- Glossary of Terms Fluxbox- lightweight window manager included in Slax KDE- the K Desktop Environment which is included in Slax KOffice- an office suite created for KDE Linux- an operating system created by Linus Torvalds Linux LiveCD- a bootable CD which allows you to run Linux without installing it MC- Midnight Commander, a file browser for console Qemu- Operating system emulator, included in Slax Popcorn Slax- Linux LiveCD created by Tomas M Slax Frodo- Slax minus just about everything, but is tiny Slax Hacker- a version of Slax which contains tools for hacking Slax Kill-Bill- Slax plus Wine, which allows you to run some Windows programs, as well as Qemu to emulate a whole computer, so you can run other operating systems in Slax Slax Popcorn- Slax which substitutes XFCE for KDE, includes Firefox, Thunderbird, and multimedia apps. Slax Professional- Slax plus tools for compiling Slax Server- will include ready to use DNS, DHCP, SAMBA, HTTP, FTP, MySQL, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, SSH MySlax Creator- allows you to add and remove modules from your Slax .iso while running Windows MySlax Modulator- allows you to create modules for Slax while using Windows. You can turn .tgz files into .mo files MySlax Patch- this allows you to update you version of Slax without having to download the whole .iso. All you need is the original .iso, and the .bsdiff file for what you want to do Wine- a program included in Slax Kill-Bill, which allows you to run Windows programs XFCE- a window manager which is included in Slax Popcorn Appendix B- Commands Commands followed by an asterisk are only for Slax. Others should work with any Linux distro. cd- Change directory. This can be used to change the directory you are working in. For example you can use "cd /root" to work in the /root directory. dir2mo- converts a directory to a module To change /root/vba to a module use "dir2mo /root/vba /root/vba.mo" fileswap- creates a 250MB swap file on the largest writable partition found flux- starts Fluxbox while using Slax mc- opens the console-based Midnight Commander file browser mkdir- this makes a new directory For example to create a folder called Office in /root, type "mkdir /root/office" startx- starts KDE in Slax tgz2mo- converts a .tgz package to a module For example to change a Freeciv package to a module try "tgz2mo /root/freeciv.tgz /root/freeciv.mo" uselivemod*- allows you to use a module without having to add it to your .iso For example to use the Supertux module try "uselivemod /root/supertux.mo"