I put Salix-Fluxbox 13.37 on my Dell Mini 9 today. I've been wanting to get away from the factory-installed Ubuntu, as I've been unhappy with the direction that Canonical has been going in for some time.

I was impressed with Salix's automatic install option--after language selection and such administrivia, it partitioned and formatted the HDD and installed the OS with just one click, then went right to configuring root and user passwords. (As a Fluxbox fanboy, I was also happy to install an OS that defaulted to Fluxbox.)

I followed the directions on the Salix website for getting the Broadcom wireless working and they did the trick first time out, though I think they could have been written an eensy bit more clearly as to which script to use. I also note that wicd is the default network manager in Salix-Fluxbox.

I did find I had to turn on inetd in services--it was not on by default--to use ssh, but, once I did, I could ssh like a champ. I installed Opera and KDE base for the libraries and for konsole and konqueror, then configured up my Fluxbox keys and menu files without incident.

Salix has added a couple of wrinkles to Fluxbox. For example, there's a menu item that lists wallpapers; you can change wallpapers by clicking on one from that menu. I have not yet tested fbsetbg, which is how I normally set my Fluxbox wallpapers. Also, the "regen menu" item was missing from the default Fluxbox menu.

I also rather like the slapt-get package manager, but that did not surprise me, since, as a long-time Debian user, I like apt.

I've still got a couple of wrinkles to work out, but, working out wrinkles is how I learn.

Based on one whole day's experience, I can wholeheartedly suggest Salix-Fluxbox as a complete, lightweight distro for a netbook.

If a partition is already available, can that be used for installing salix?

Good question, once I should have anticipated.

Salix does allow you to do your own partitioning; it will probably want to to create a swap partition unless you already have one (in a dual boot, two distros can share the same swap). I should have mentioned that, but I was focused on my own little netbook, not on writing a true review.

I chose the one-click because I was already planning to wipe the entire computer and was curious how it worked. `

Salix does have official repos, something Slackware does not.

I had earlier tried to install salixlive but it did not work. It has peculiar folders in / (different from usual linuxes): /modules /rootcopy /base /optional. It seems similar to slax and porteus being live-linux based. On booting, I quickly get some 'init' errors and 'kernel panic'.

Well, I was using Salix Fluxbox.

So far I haven't noticed anything unusual about the directory structure, but I can't say I've looked at it real hard.

I'll try to take a look tomorrow and see whether I see something out of the ordinary.

Used MC to take a thorough look at the directory structure. It looks like typical first and second level directory structures.

I did use the installation *.ISO, not the SalixLive.iso.