Is anyone using Salix?
 

Right now I'm running 12.2 with the KDE dektop and my hd is running out of room.
For some reason X has started to crash now and then.
Not very often but an annoyance because it only seems to want to crash while I'm working.
I do Internet Marketing and build a lot of websites.
That kind of sux when I haven't saved my work and have to start over.
I had downloaded Slack 13,, whichever is the newest and installed it with XFCE to my 250 gig hd and had no X at all.
Gave up after awhile trying to figure out why and just saw Salix at Distrowatch and am downloading it now.
Is it as reliable and useable as Slack has always been for me,,,, until recently that is.

hey
yeah, SalixOS is kinda like as Ubuntu is to Debian
it's a customized and fully compatible Slackware based distro
so it has many "helper" apps, etc

but, first, maybe you could just debug whats wrong with XFCE slackware 13 you have?

it's probably something small

I used Salix for a bit for some of the ease of use features, and I can recommend it. It's efforts to minimize the size of the install were a mild annoyance for me, but not a big deal. In the end I went back to a full Slackware. There is a good chance that the issues you had with Slackware 13(.1?) will exist in Salix, although If you got bit by this Gapan, who is one of the Salix devs has a workaround posted in that thread.

Thx for the response guys.
I have an nv card and not an intel.
I don't recall the error message I had beyond something was missing in order to have graphics.
I had checked the md5sum as always and it was correct.
I had also reburned the dvd and got the same results.
I dunno what was changed graphics wise from 12.2 to 13.1 but I know it isn't friendly to this old 486.
I may very well have the same results from Salix but I'm curious to find out.
Probably will if all they've done is add gslapt and a few other things.
Btw, it was 13.1 I installed and had the probs with.
13 installed fine but I got rid of it due to the kde.

Overall I would give Salix a thumbs up. However, it is not up to par with Slackware. I'm sure if you give it some time the things will settle out.

Cons:
- The installer (at least 13.0.2a) couldn't do an advanced install of lilo. The installer also auto quit and rebooted the computer to prevent proper setup of your customizations. Luks/LVM for example.
- Useless substitutions were made. Thunder bird was replaced by claws mail and gvim was removed. Granted, gvim is cryptic to most people and breaks the 'one program per task' concept.
- Cryptic packaging process. SlackBuilds are easy, why attempt to change them? As far as the programs I needed for my Tablet PC, I'm now forced to decide to support two packaging systems?
- There were a few other things but I can't think of them at the moment.

Pros:... From a Tablet PC point of view
- Gnome Libs for major compatibility with many good looking programs.
- Good repository of extra software
- Dependency tracking slapt-get
- Reasonable defaults
- Good documentation relating to the OS, especially for package requirements.

Indifferent:
- Nice branding
- Personally, I would have gone with fluxbox... But that requires more setup on the user's half to be useful.
- Runlevel 4 by default.

The cons were really big ones for me... If I wasn't working out kinks in a good Tablet PC setup, they would be show stoppers. I like manually doing everything.

Not a fan of derivative distributions in general (unless they differentiate significantly from their roots) but in particular things like this are putting me off.
In particular post no.13 which shows little relevance to ffmpeg.
Also the fact that the differences in packages in compare to Slackware arent stated anywhere. Theres more now than before, but noones cared to document them.
Compatibility is stated nevertheless.

Wow, that's almost disgusting....
 

um... I really hate to say this, but nectarine really is to peach, as tangerine is to orange.

Hm...

I don't use Debuntu much, but as you can tell by my little derogatory there, I note it's relation to Debian GNU/Linux, another distro I really respect and like, yet observe the subject of the sentence with rather mild aversion.

Don't get me wrong. Ubuntu and its various sub-distros, if you will (and they're forking further and further away from each other all the time), are really good stuff indeed! Just not my stuff.

Now, I run SalixOS on a couple of boxes and I've been very impressed - it has a dependency tracking packaging system and it's own package repositories which, if you take a minute to check out, are actually [almost] completely Slackware compatible.

Not only that, but You can use the Slackware package repository as well, and it's compatible with SalixOS too ;)

I like it a lot, the only thing though, is that it isn't actually Slackware, and if you're having a Slackware config issue, you're most likely going to experience a most similar issue on a distro so closely fashioned after Slackware.

@Damgar's, and in particular, @Linux72's advice to you is right on the money AFAIC, and if you're having a particular software issue w/Slackware it might just be best to work that particular issue out on your box - it shouldn't be that difficult, and IMNSHO, it isn't prudent to start Distro hopping just coz you've got one or two thangs messin' about wit'cha :)

Whichever Distro you land on, just embrace it, and make it work for you, coz regardless it's gonna be better than something by mACROSfOT.

And, when it comes to the stability and maturity of a Distro, there is indeed an awful lot to say about the candor and decorum of the maintainers, as @sahko pointed out about THIS POST HERE.

Again, I like SalixOS, but there are reasons why Zen and the others forked away from each other and those reasons aren't because the software wasn't good ;)

You might think it somewhat odd that Patrick isn't prominently on the 'scene', or all that vocal publicly, but there's been so little actually significant controversy over Slackware Linux in the last 17 years, and most of that had to do when he arbitrarily bumped the Slackware version up to 7.0 (Or when he went to ELF - Both of which are of zero consequence) just to show people how ludicrous the significance of version numbers can be in the grand scheme of things :)

It's not just the software itself that brings fresh n00bs and our fellow Slackers into the foray of professionals that stake the reputations of our companies, clients, and careers upon Patrick's [potentially free] product.

um... well I guess that's my 14 and a half cents worth on this topic.

I hope that helps :)

Kindest regards,

Not even close. Ubuntu is not at all compatible with Debian.

Fixed in 13.1.

Who's preventing you from using thunderbird or anything else? It is still available. Salix even provides localization packages for it. We like claws-mail. You like thunderbird. What's the big deal? You could even do a 'basic' mode installation and add anything you want on top of it. That's what it's there for.

Huh? Can you explain what you find "cryptic"? Anyone is free to use SlackBuilds. However we have our own system of building packages that resembles the way packages are created in Arch very closely. We like it a lot and it helped us populate our repositories with slackware compatible packages. We couldn't have done it that easy with SlackBuilds.

Your point being?

http://www.salixos.org/wiki/index.ph...from_Slackware
Happy?

Why "almost"?

Sorry, I don't get your logic here. It's because that it isn't actually Slackware, that you're going to have exactly the same issues in both?

The "It's my forum" part was obviously a joke. That's what the smiley with the tongue out is in there for. I get it, people should stop making jokes, it hurts their candor and decorum. Whatever.

LOL, your wrong
I mix many pkgs between ubuntu and debian
even between squeeze and lucid

really, SalixOS is somewhat behind Current in releases
like most derivatives; so if you are running current you
will be going backwards

WindTalker; did SalixOS boot and play or no?

Please tell us whats up and what exactly goes wrong?

On Topic ... I have had a look at Salix and its Ok but you would be better to fix your X problem and stay with the King of Distros... have you tried using the "vesa" driver or installing the Nvidia driver... ?

I use salix on my Atom-based computer. Works very well, the install is very easy and smooth (maybe even smoother than Slackware), and it runs great, very stable and nice. They replaced some packages, notably the intel drivers, which is why I am using it.

Perhaps I'm wrong. I haven't used anything debian based for ages. The last ubuntu version I tried was 6.06.

Salix is not somewhat behind current. It doesn't support current. At all. At least not now. Salix will sync with Slackware current when we feel that a new Slackware version is close. That's just based on guessing though.

I haven't got round to trying Salix yet, but I quite liked Zenwalk, so I should like Salix. I'll try it in VBox when I've finished messing around with ARMedslack.

If you like Slackware and XFCE you're pretty well on track to liking Salix. Aside for slapt-get/Gslapt, IMHO, Salix is very much a stripped down Slackware. It's had it's redundant programs removed and if I remember right, things like kernel source aren't installed by default in order to make a smaller install.

I installed salix on an old AthlonXP 1800+ machine and it seems to like it a lot. ;)

Boots actually faster than my slack box with an amd dualcore cpu.
Their package manager(spkg-pkgtool) is blazing fast.
Installer gives three easy to understand options on how slim the installation should be.
Slapt-get/Gslapt makes installing easier, though i'd like it to be able to also remove not shared dependencies along with a package - i have the impression that it doesn't do that, i may be wrong.

Sbopkg doesn't work due to different package tools, simple to fix, guidelines are on the salix forum.

edit: since i posted to a wrong thread, i erased what was not relevant to this one.

I have been using Salix ever since their version 13.1 was released.
I was interested in Salix because most of the Salix developers are current or former Zenwalk developers. I have been using Zenwalk since version 4.0, so I have come to trust these guy's work.

I have Salix 13.1 64bit and Slackware 13.1 32bit on my desktop system.
The fact that Salix packages have full compatibility with Slackware is an added plus. I have a few Salix packages on my Slackware system. I also have a few slackbuilds from slackbuilds.org on my Salix system. Everything is working just fine!!

Salix is basically Slackware with only XFCE and the slapt-get package manager. It has been working very well for me so far!!

I didn't know that. Well, it's a lot like Zenwalk, only it feels lighter, and installs faster.

I tried SalixOS for a few days just to mess around with. I seems to be a very good system. I was able to multi-lib it and install gsb & kde. Everything seemed to work perfect. Even running 32 bit firefox/flash worked.
The big thing “I” don't like about it is after the install it boots to init 4 and it will not allow a gui login to root. Couldn't get to console either. Ctl alt f6 got me a garbled graphic of some sort.. All of this stuff was fixable and the end result was a pretty snappy system that work very well.
It may be the perfect system for some, but not for me...

Got it running in VBox now, seems OK. A good distro for people with limited hard drive space, or anybody who wants one application per job.

Sorry for the delay in responding.
I installed 13.1 tonight and got I assume the same problem as I did with slack 13.1.
fbdev isn't found.
I searched on the Salix forum and found the fix as was posted here was to install an older driver? [which doesn't make sense since I made new partitions and formatted them to ext 4 or install a newer kernel.
I had downloaded and burned Salix 13.
If I have time I'll try that.
I was looking at all the responses and don't really see any major show stopper problems with Salix.
As far as I'm concerned it's still slack and I'm not interested in 'buntu or deb or arch etc.
If it ain't slack or at a minimum a derivative of slack, I ain't interested.
I've ran XFCE before and was able to make it just as gui functional as kde is.
Sorry about that to those who adore the shell, I write websites by hand with kwrite.
I have enough code to memorize without memorizing a mile of bash as well.
If 13 doesn't work I'll live with the minor crashes and what have you until a newer kernel is available on an install disc.
Thx for the input guys.

What video card are you using?

GeForce 6200a

Did you install the nvidia proprietary driver on Salix 13.1? To install the nvidia driver on Salix you will first need to install the kernel-source package, then install the nvidia driver.
Also, be sure to blacklist the nouveau driver. See this:
http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtop...4&hilit=nvidia

This thread might have a solution for you. It seems likely that it's just an xorg.conf issue loading a driver that exists in 13.1. Although one of the versions of the proprietary driver will very likely provide a solution for you as well. I don't know your stance on proprietary drivers, but I have no problems with the Nvidia drivers, and very good performance.

EDIT: It appears that the most recent nvidia driver likely supports your card.

I had tried running xorg.conf on slack 13.1.
Haven't tried it on Salix 13.1 as of yet.
Time at the moment is an issue with me and I simply won't have time to try much.
I'm relocating,,, a pick up truck load at a time no less and I have ten days to be finished.
I'm also trying to run my online business's at the same time.

[They're coming to take me away ha!ha!]

windtalker10, I believe a minimal xorg.conf should be enough for you. Something like this:
http://www.salixos.org/wiki/index.ph...ic_xorg_driver
The example in that page uses the proprietary nvidia driver, but you could use nv or even vesa if that doesn't work either.

Thx G.
I'll give it a go with the vesa driver and if it works try the proprietary driver,,, which is what I prefer.