9 ms·

Slitaz, A 50MB Lightweight Desktop Operating System

123 points by miles 5y ago

motyar 5y ago
I want to try this for my DellMini9 machine, no SSD, would boot from USB. Only need to run it latest FireFox and Terminal + Vi editor. Is it possible?
- approxim8ion 5y ago
  I ran it from USB on a very old Acer 2310 with a Celeron (old series, not new) M processor and 256MB RAM. Worked fine. I didn't try latest Firefox on it but the included web browser was alright. Terminal and vi worked.
  - motyar 5y ago
    Thanks, will give it a try
- Gualdrapo 5y ago
  The article linked says Firefox is not available in there, not in the live image nor its package repository.
- mysterydip 5y ago
  For that use case, I think one of the puppy linux flavors would work well. Some even have ubuntu package support: https://puppylinux.com/ https://puppylinux.com/
luke2m 5y ago
Web based installer? Yikes. I'm gonna have to try this!
betolink 5y ago
It used to be under 40MB on their first releases. I had it on a USB drive to boot old machines and worked great.
louib 5y ago
I was kinda surprised to see that the development repos are hosted using mercurial (https://hg.slitaz.org/ https://hg.slitaz.org/). I don't remember seeing other Linux distros using mercurial instead of git for development. The repos are apparently mirrored on GitHub but I don't see a lot of development happening there.
Causality1 5y ago
I remember having a CD of this a long time ago. I wanted to use it on my old ThinkPads but I could never get it to boot.
jmkr 5y ago
Glad to see Slitaz still alive and going well. I first used it probably in 2010, and I really liked how different it was from other distros at the time.
synergy20 5y ago
these days OSes are the base for a browser for daily use for most people, browser is essential, what browser is used? chrome alone is heavier than the whole OS image.
- asddubs 5y ago
  says Midori is installed by default, which I thought was a webkit browser but apparently they switched over to electron in 2019
  - cookiengineer 5y ago
    Note that the reason for most webkit2gtk Browsers to switch to electron is that webkit2gtk isn't receiving security updates anymore. It's basically unmaintained, apple-style.
    - asddubs 5y ago
      interesting, i thought the electron policy was also that it was not intended to be a (secure) web browser environment
passerby1 5y ago
Interesting project, will try this out. Just wondering, why is that important that the OS is from Switzerland? Does it help that much in their marketing or does it matter? Also, from the practical proint of view, what does it matter for the opensource project to be originating from specific country? Don't they accept PRs from outside Switzerland or what?
- pizza 5y ago
  Now I’m wondering why you asked that question without also offering up where you are posting from, for greater context and information in communication :^)
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    A distro needs a lot more trust than a comment.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    You're confused why the person who thinks location is unimportant didn't say their location? I don't get it. Is there a joke flying over my head here?
- FpUser 5y ago
  >"Just wondering, why is that important that the OS is from Switzerland" Maybe because people who posted feel this way. They do not need anyone's approval for that.
  - jaclaz 5y ago
    At least here (Italy) the attibute "svizzero" (swiss), used in sentences like "it works like a swiss clock" or "like a swiss railway" or even only as "swiss precision" or "swiss timetable" is a synonim of punctuality, exactness, reliability (and also means, but this is digressing, somewhat boring).
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    At best, "maybe they felt that way" is a terrible answer. But the question was why is it important. Your answer isn't even for the question they asked!
mysterydip 5y ago
While I love the concept, the fact the package manager is different from the common ones, and some of the packages they do have are outdated, means attempting to use this for my use case will probably result in a painful experience.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  Meh, I'm using Ubuntu 14.x (LXDE) today and it's quite usable. I don't think outdated packages are that big of a deal, as long as they work in the first place. I can't access some websites like Twitter, Reddit, and Slack, but I consider that to be an advantage.
  - mysterydip 5y ago
    Agreed, but the article says some do not: "However, available applications as mentioned are limited for now, in number and in version and in ability to run, as there are many outdated applications will not work after installation"
  - adrianN 5y ago
    As long as the distro has enough manpower to ensure that outdated packages are not a security risk. I run Debian stable because I don't mind old versions, and I trust the Debian people to keep my system reasonably secure.
    - forgotmypw17 5y ago
      If I'm behind NAT and only browsing a handful of trustworthy websites, where does the security risk come from?
      - adrianN 5y ago
        How many third party domains do the trustworthy websites connect to?
        5y ago
wly_cdgr 5y ago
Once I saw the spider logo feature I was sold
brazzy 5y ago
>It can run on a quarter of a GB memory. Its installation image is only fifty megabytes, full desktop included, Oh, how the times change. I remember when "lightweight Linux" meant it came on a single 1.4MB floppy disk and could run on 4MB of RAM. Yes, including desktop, though that may have required a second floppy and 8MB.
- esjeon 5y ago
  These days, locale alone takes up 100MB of disk space, in case of Debian. Even without it, it's still difficult to go below 50MB, IIRC. Welp, even USB thumb drivers are much larger than that, so it won't be a problem, practically, but it's kinda puzzling to see how things can get this big.
  - prox 5y ago
    I use to enjoy the blog of Virtual Dub, the author made this tiny video editor and talked frequently how things could be optimized without library dependencies. https://www.virtualdub.org/blog2/archive.html https://www.virtualdub.org/blog2/archive.html
    - grishka 5y ago
      Adding a huge library dependency to only use a function or two from there feels like a common practice these days, unfortunately. More often than not, you can copy the interesting part into your project as sources, or even better, reimplement it in a way that's more specific, and thus more optimal, for your problem.
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    > but it's kinda puzzling to see how things can get this big. the industry has been on moore's drug for too long and reckless software develpement practices really take their toll since the performance plateau came in effect around 2015.
    - lewispollard 5y ago
johnchristopher 5y ago
> and Faenza as its icon theme Faenza is/was the omega of icons. In an alternate timeline it rightfully became the only icons theme everyone need.
- Gualdrapo 5y ago
  The thing with Faenza was the same reason it became popular - the uniformity of their outer shapes. Some people didn't liked them because it was hard for them to tell icons apart. I once worked with the KDE VDG on what they would do about the default icon theme for their (then future) Frameworks 5.0 release, and suggested several icons going in that trend (which was originated in the rage of those days of skeumorphism on smartphones and Apple icons for iOS) - but was told that - and that they needed to use the original icons for several apps, like Firefox, so no custom versions would be appropriate - no "adaptation" to outer squared shapes were possible
leke 5y ago
The download button on the front page is broken on Brave browser. > Mixed Content: The site at 'https://www.slitaz.org/ https://www.slitaz.org/' was loaded over a secure connection, but the file at 'http://mirror.slitaz.org/iso/rolling/slitaz-rolling-core64.iso http://mirror.slitaz.org/iso/rolling/slitaz-rolling-core64.i...' was loaded over an insecure connection. This file should be served over HTTPS. This download has been blocked. See https://blog.chromium.org/2020/02/protecting-users-from-insecure.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/02/protecting-users-from-inse... for more details.
- gkbrk 5y ago
  That looks like an error from your browser, rather than a broken link. Their download server supports HTTPS for what it's worth, you just need a decent browser that will either try HTTPS automatically or allow you to download files over HTTP.
  - dubcanada 5y ago
    No it's a valid error. It means you were trying to download a HTTP file while on a HTTPS site, which is why you got that mixed content warning. And brave is a "decent browser"?
KronisLV 5y ago
Here's a few other distros that i enjoy and that are on the lighter side, even though they're larger than Slitaz. Personally, i'd look at the usability of a distro first and then the file size, which seems to work out nicely for me with the below distros, since their desktops (e.g. LXDE/LXQt, XFCE) are fully featured and there's a sufficient amount of software for them to be daily drivers. Puppy Linux: https://puppylinux.com/ https://puppylinux.com/ Lubuntu: https://lubuntu.net/ https://lubuntu.net/ (uBlock now seemed to warn me about adware, not sure what's going on) Xubuntu: https://xubuntu.org/ https://xubuntu.org/
- luke2m 5y ago
  I really have no idea where .net came from, the latest on that site is 19.04 and I would stay away. lubuntu.me is the real address.
- mysterydip 5y ago
  Great suggestions. Personally I'd put LXLE in the mix here as well: https://lxle.net/ https://lxle.net/ My understanding is they started as a fork of lubuntu when the latter moved to LXQt and changed focus away from older systems.
- Pathogen-David 5y ago
  > (uBlock now seemed to warn me about adware, not sure what's going on) The real Lubuntu website is https://lubuntu.me/ https://lubuntu.me/ (it's linked from https://ubuntu.com/download/flavours https://ubuntu.com/download/flavours)
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    Thanks for catching that! It's pretty disheartening to see people doing something like creating a shady site that pretends to be the real thing. Thankfully uBlock at least warned me about something being off, though having some sort of a reputation plugin for webpages would be nice too, with more details about what exactly is going on.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
> Unfortunately, we report here that these apps not working on our system namely .., Emacs, Firefox, MPV, SMPlayer ... VLC, ... How is it possible to create a Linux version that doesn't run Emacs? Shame, sounded interesting otherwise.
DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
looks like an interesting project. Is anyone using this in 2021? I noticed the last blog post from the official site was in 2017. The forum is also very quiet. What would prevent me from touching this however: ISO images are hosted via plain HTTP[1] and the only way to verify it is an md5sum that I have to fetch from the same domain. not only is there no transport integrity but I have no way of knowing if the binaries hosted on that server can be traced to a build upstream? Maybe I have to dig around their hg to find out or I'm missing something? Who built these images and where would be good to know before I would consider loading any of this on my hardware. I could not make sense of the info in this page[2] linked to from [download] warning about spectre/meltdown. Also the suggested mitigation techniques were odd to say the least. The project had a total of 7 contributors since 2012. Would be nice if this got more eyeballs and some serious refactoring on how they do security and build automation since this is a key element in a distribution (imho). [1] http://mirror.slitaz.org/iso/rolling/slitaz-rolling.iso http://mirror.slitaz.org/iso/rolling/slitaz-rolling.iso [2] https://forum.slitaz.org/topic/-important-info-about-meltdown-and-spectre- https://forum.slitaz.org/topic/-important-info-about-meltdow...
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  About 10 years ago, I used VMs of Slittaz when making virtual networks for school and needed multiple hosts. It was a great option for that. I will likely have to do something similar soon and Slittaz seems like a good candidate.
  - morganvachon 5y ago
    Alpine might be a better choice for you, its intended use is in VMs and containers, it's actively maintained and supported, and it gets better with each release. https://alpinelinux.org https://alpinelinux.org
    - SyzygistSix 5y ago
      Thank you! I very much appreciate that.
    - 5y ago
ThinkBeat 5y ago
I really wish new GNU/Linux distribution were titled as such: Discover Slitaz, An extremely light weight GNU/Linux distro Discover GNU/Linux Slitaz, An extremely light distro Something like that. You can drop the GNU part if that is not your thing. I am always elated to learn about new operating systems. I am always disappointed when it tuns out to be yet another distro. Now this one looks interesting and I will play with it in a VM. I just get my expectations get high when it says new operating system
- VHRanger 5y ago
  Not everyone is a Linus Torvalds or Terry Davis (say what you will about TempleOS, what he managed to build alone was awesome)
  - anta40 5y ago
    What Terry Davis did wasn't just writing an OS, but also developed his own C dialect and the compiler (HolyC). In a way, I think that guy was even a greater genius than Linus.
  - ThinkBeat 5y ago
    Yes. I am a great admirer of his. Had the world been a more tolerant, supportive, and friendly place I wonder what he would have achieved. Just for him to have an easier life would have been enough though.
- lovelyviking 5y ago
  >You can drop the GNU part if that is not your thing. Really? Then one should also drop everything it represents including gcc ... >I really wish new GNU/Linux distribution were titled as such: Here I would agree.
  - alophawen 5y ago
    herpaderp
- khaledh 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
quyleanh 5y ago
It looks good for Raspberry Pi. Anyone try on a raspberry? I'm using ubuntu server for my Pi 3+ now, and sometimes I feel a bit slow response.
kennydude 5y ago
It's a shame you can't see much detail on the screenshots about how they're using a web browser for settings and installation. Also why are the screenshots so small as well? Strange choice
known 5y ago
In my experience not all pendrives work as livecds

123 points by miles 5y ago

I want to try this for my DellMini9 machine, no SSD, would boot from USB. Only need to run it latest FireFox and Terminal + Vi editor. Is it possible?

approxim8ion 5y ago
I ran it from USB on a very old Acer 2310 with a Celeron (old series, not new) M processor and 256MB RAM. Worked fine. I didn't try latest Firefox on it but the included web browser was alright. Terminal and vi worked.
- motyar 5y ago
  Thanks, will give it a try
Gualdrapo 5y ago
The article linked says Firefox is not available in there, not in the live image nor its package repository.
mysterydip 5y ago
For that use case, I think one of the puppy linux flavors would work well. Some even have ubuntu package support: https://puppylinux.com/ https://puppylinux.com/

luke2m 5y ago

Web based installer? Yikes. I'm gonna have to try this!

betolink 5y ago

It used to be under 40MB on their first releases. I had it on a USB drive to boot old machines and worked great.

louib 5y ago

I was kinda surprised to see that the development repos are hosted using mercurial (https://hg.slitaz.org/ https://hg.slitaz.org/). I don't remember seeing other Linux distros using mercurial instead of git for development. The repos are apparently mirrored on GitHub but I don't see a lot of development happening there.

Causality1 5y ago

I remember having a CD of this a long time ago. I wanted to use it on my old ThinkPads but I could never get it to boot.

jmkr 5y ago

Glad to see Slitaz still alive and going well. I first used it probably in 2010, and I really liked how different it was from other distros at the time.

synergy20 5y ago

these days OSes are the base for a browser for daily use for most people, browser is essential, what browser is used? chrome alone is heavier than the whole OS image.

asddubs 5y ago
says Midori is installed by default, which I thought was a webkit browser but apparently they switched over to electron in 2019
- cookiengineer 5y ago
  Note that the reason for most webkit2gtk Browsers to switch to electron is that webkit2gtk isn't receiving security updates anymore. It's basically unmaintained, apple-style.
  - asddubs 5y ago
    interesting, i thought the electron policy was also that it was not intended to be a (secure) web browser environment

passerby1 5y ago

Interesting project, will try this out. Just wondering, why is that important that the OS is from Switzerland? Does it help that much in their marketing or does it matter? Also, from the practical proint of view, what does it matter for the opensource project to be originating from specific country? Don't they accept PRs from outside Switzerland or what?

pizza 5y ago
Now I’m wondering why you asked that question without also offering up where you are posting from, for greater context and information in communication :^)
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  A distro needs a lot more trust than a comment.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  You're confused why the person who thinks location is unimportant didn't say their location? I don't get it. Is there a joke flying over my head here?
FpUser 5y ago
>"Just wondering, why is that important that the OS is from Switzerland" Maybe because people who posted feel this way. They do not need anyone's approval for that.
- jaclaz 5y ago
  At least here (Italy) the attibute "svizzero" (swiss), used in sentences like "it works like a swiss clock" or "like a swiss railway" or even only as "swiss precision" or "swiss timetable" is a synonim of punctuality, exactness, reliability (and also means, but this is digressing, somewhat boring).
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  At best, "maybe they felt that way" is a terrible answer. But the question was why is it important. Your answer isn't even for the question they asked!

mysterydip 5y ago

While I love the concept, the fact the package manager is different from the common ones, and some of the packages they do have are outdated, means attempting to use this for my use case will probably result in a painful experience.

forgotmypw17 5y ago
Meh, I'm using Ubuntu 14.x (LXDE) today and it's quite usable. I don't think outdated packages are that big of a deal, as long as they work in the first place. I can't access some websites like Twitter, Reddit, and Slack, but I consider that to be an advantage.
- mysterydip 5y ago
  Agreed, but the article says some do not: "However, available applications as mentioned are limited for now, in number and in version and in ability to run, as there are many outdated applications will not work after installation"
- adrianN 5y ago
  As long as the distro has enough manpower to ensure that outdated packages are not a security risk. I run Debian stable because I don't mind old versions, and I trust the Debian people to keep my system reasonably secure.
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    If I'm behind NAT and only browsing a handful of trustworthy websites, where does the security risk come from?
    - adrianN 5y ago
      How many third party domains do the trustworthy websites connect to?
      - 5y ago

wly_cdgr 5y ago

Once I saw the spider logo feature I was sold

brazzy 5y ago

>It can run on a quarter of a GB memory. Its installation image is only fifty megabytes, full desktop included, Oh, how the times change. I remember when "lightweight Linux" meant it came on a single 1.4MB floppy disk and could run on 4MB of RAM. Yes, including desktop, though that may have required a second floppy and 8MB.

esjeon 5y ago
These days, locale alone takes up 100MB of disk space, in case of Debian. Even without it, it's still difficult to go below 50MB, IIRC. Welp, even USB thumb drivers are much larger than that, so it won't be a problem, practically, but it's kinda puzzling to see how things can get this big.
- prox 5y ago
  I use to enjoy the blog of Virtual Dub, the author made this tiny video editor and talked frequently how things could be optimized without library dependencies. https://www.virtualdub.org/blog2/archive.html https://www.virtualdub.org/blog2/archive.html
  - grishka 5y ago
    Adding a huge library dependency to only use a function or two from there feels like a common practice these days, unfortunately. More often than not, you can copy the interesting part into your project as sources, or even better, reimplement it in a way that's more specific, and thus more optimal, for your problem.
- hansel_der 5y ago
  > but it's kinda puzzling to see how things can get this big. the industry has been on moore's drug for too long and reckless software develpement practices really take their toll since the performance plateau came in effect around 2015.
  - lewispollard 5y ago

johnchristopher 5y ago

> and Faenza as its icon theme Faenza is/was the omega of icons. In an alternate timeline it rightfully became the only icons theme everyone need.

Gualdrapo 5y ago
The thing with Faenza was the same reason it became popular - the uniformity of their outer shapes. Some people didn't liked them because it was hard for them to tell icons apart. I once worked with the KDE VDG on what they would do about the default icon theme for their (then future) Frameworks 5.0 release, and suggested several icons going in that trend (which was originated in the rage of those days of skeumorphism on smartphones and Apple icons for iOS) - but was told that - and that they needed to use the original icons for several apps, like Firefox, so no custom versions would be appropriate - no "adaptation" to outer squared shapes were possible

leke 5y ago

The download button on the front page is broken on Brave browser. > Mixed Content: The site at 'https://www.slitaz.org/ https://www.slitaz.org/' was loaded over a secure connection, but the file at 'http://mirror.slitaz.org/iso/rolling/slitaz-rolling-core64.iso http://mirror.slitaz.org/iso/rolling/slitaz-rolling-core64.i...' was loaded over an insecure connection. This file should be served over HTTPS. This download has been blocked. See https://blog.chromium.org/2020/02/protecting-users-from-insecure.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/02/protecting-users-from-inse... for more details.

gkbrk 5y ago
That looks like an error from your browser, rather than a broken link. Their download server supports HTTPS for what it's worth, you just need a decent browser that will either try HTTPS automatically or allow you to download files over HTTP.
- dubcanada 5y ago
  No it's a valid error. It means you were trying to download a HTTP file while on a HTTPS site, which is why you got that mixed content warning. And brave is a "decent browser"?

KronisLV 5y ago

Here's a few other distros that i enjoy and that are on the lighter side, even though they're larger than Slitaz. Personally, i'd look at the usability of a distro first and then the file size, which seems to work out nicely for me with the below distros, since their desktops (e.g. LXDE/LXQt, XFCE) are fully featured and there's a sufficient amount of software for them to be daily drivers. Puppy Linux: https://puppylinux.com/ https://puppylinux.com/ Lubuntu: https://lubuntu.net/ https://lubuntu.net/ (uBlock now seemed to warn me about adware, not sure what's going on) Xubuntu: https://xubuntu.org/ https://xubuntu.org/

luke2m 5y ago
I really have no idea where .net came from, the latest on that site is 19.04 and I would stay away. lubuntu.me is the real address.
mysterydip 5y ago
Great suggestions. Personally I'd put LXLE in the mix here as well: https://lxle.net/ https://lxle.net/ My understanding is they started as a fork of lubuntu when the latter moved to LXQt and changed focus away from older systems.
Pathogen-David 5y ago
> (uBlock now seemed to warn me about adware, not sure what's going on) The real Lubuntu website is https://lubuntu.me/ https://lubuntu.me/ (it's linked from https://ubuntu.com/download/flavours https://ubuntu.com/download/flavours)
- KronisLV 5y ago
  Thanks for catching that! It's pretty disheartening to see people doing something like creating a shady site that pretends to be the real thing. Thankfully uBlock at least warned me about something being off, though having some sort of a reputation plugin for webpages would be nice too, with more details about what exactly is going on.

kwhitefoot 5y ago

> Unfortunately, we report here that these apps not working on our system namely .., Emacs, Firefox, MPV, SMPlayer ... VLC, ... How is it possible to create a Linux version that doesn't run Emacs? Shame, sounded interesting otherwise.

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago

looks like an interesting project. Is anyone using this in 2021? I noticed the last blog post from the official site was in 2017. The forum is also very quiet. What would prevent me from touching this however: ISO images are hosted via plain HTTP[1] and the only way to verify it is an md5sum that I have to fetch from the same domain. not only is there no transport integrity but I have no way of knowing if the binaries hosted on that server can be traced to a build upstream? Maybe I have to dig around their hg to find out or I'm missing something? Who built these images and where would be good to know before I would consider loading any of this on my hardware. I could not make sense of the info in this page[2] linked to from [download] warning about spectre/meltdown. Also the suggested mitigation techniques were odd to say the least. The project had a total of 7 contributors since 2012. Would be nice if this got more eyeballs and some serious refactoring on how they do security and build automation since this is a key element in a distribution (imho). [1] http://mirror.slitaz.org/iso/rolling/slitaz-rolling.iso http://mirror.slitaz.org/iso/rolling/slitaz-rolling.iso [2] https://forum.slitaz.org/topic/-important-info-about-meltdown-and-spectre- https://forum.slitaz.org/topic/-important-info-about-meltdow...

SyzygistSix 5y ago
About 10 years ago, I used VMs of Slittaz when making virtual networks for school and needed multiple hosts. It was a great option for that. I will likely have to do something similar soon and Slittaz seems like a good candidate.
- morganvachon 5y ago
  Alpine might be a better choice for you, its intended use is in VMs and containers, it's actively maintained and supported, and it gets better with each release. https://alpinelinux.org https://alpinelinux.org
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    Thank you! I very much appreciate that.
  - 5y ago

ThinkBeat 5y ago

I really wish new GNU/Linux distribution were titled as such: Discover Slitaz, An extremely light weight GNU/Linux distro Discover GNU/Linux Slitaz, An extremely light distro Something like that. You can drop the GNU part if that is not your thing. I am always elated to learn about new operating systems. I am always disappointed when it tuns out to be yet another distro. Now this one looks interesting and I will play with it in a VM. I just get my expectations get high when it says new operating system

VHRanger 5y ago
Not everyone is a Linus Torvalds or Terry Davis (say what you will about TempleOS, what he managed to build alone was awesome)
- anta40 5y ago
  What Terry Davis did wasn't just writing an OS, but also developed his own C dialect and the compiler (HolyC). In a way, I think that guy was even a greater genius than Linus.
- ThinkBeat 5y ago
  Yes. I am a great admirer of his. Had the world been a more tolerant, supportive, and friendly place I wonder what he would have achieved. Just for him to have an easier life would have been enough though.
lovelyviking 5y ago
>You can drop the GNU part if that is not your thing. Really? Then one should also drop everything it represents including gcc ... >I really wish new GNU/Linux distribution were titled as such: Here I would agree.
- alophawen 5y ago
  herpaderp
khaledh 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

quyleanh 5y ago

It looks good for Raspberry Pi. Anyone try on a raspberry? I'm using ubuntu server for my Pi 3+ now, and sometimes I feel a bit slow response.

kennydude 5y ago

It's a shame you can't see much detail on the screenshots about how they're using a web browser for settings and installation. Also why are the screenshots so small as well? Strange choice

known 5y ago

In my experience not all pendrives work as livecds