eeextra.com

Slax on the EEE PC

March 30, 2008 – 3:36 am

Slax is a linux live OS, small by size and very versatile. We tried it on the Asus EEE PC.

Slax is based on slackware, one of the oldest linux distributions.

Creating a bootable USB disk is very simple:

• Download Slax for USB at the official page. It is only 191MB in size!
• Unpack the archive at the root of your USB key, or an SD card.
• To make the disk bootable, you have to browse though to the boot folder, and run the following command as root:

sh bootinst.sh or, if you are not logged as the root user, sudo sh bootinst.sh.

The konsole output can be viewed below.

The good

The Slax USB took about 1mn 20s to boot. The first impression I had was that I didn’t knew the EEE had such powerful speakers. The sound output is much louder than the default Xandros operating system. =)

Based on KDE 3.5, the desktop fits nicely the EEE PC’s little screen. Four virtual desktops are in included in the taskbar, with big icons on the quick launch panel. The windows with a bigger Height than the EEE PC’s resolution have a side scrollbar, so no issues here.

The live OS small size was archived by including only the necessary applications. Konqueror is the web browser and Kmail works as the Email client. You also have Kopete as a multiprotocol chat client.

Open Office isn’t present, but you have KWord, which is lightweight and compatible with the vast majority of text formats.

The multimedia part is well covered with KPlayer and JuK. It worked with MP3’s and DivX out of the box. A CD Ripper and burning tool is also bundled.

The less good

The only working hotkey conbinations are for the screen brightness (Fn+F3, Fn+F4). Turning on/off the Wifi adapter didn’t work, neither the sound volume control with Fn+F8.

Worse, it didn’t recognize the EEE’s wifi adapter. I’m sure that it can be fixed looking at the work and drivers from another Slackware-based OS, Backtrack, but I didn’t have time to try yet.

Final toughts

We liked the fact that you can have such a system even on a 256MB USB key (SD card), or an 8cm CD. We were pleased with the speed, and way it fits the EEE’s screen. Besides wireless problem, Slax is a good OS if you need a tiny live distribution for multimedia and office purpose on the Asus EEE PC.