Slax 6, the latest version of the modern, small and fast Slackware-based distro Slax, was released yesterday.Slax participated in the development of sqlzma patches, where the code implements LZMA - 7-zip compression - into squashfs filesystem. Squashfs now supports bigger block sizes than before. These two enhancements transform Slax 6 in one of the best compressed Linux distributions.

Zenwalk (formerly known as Minislack) is a Slackware based distribution. Don't let its previous name fool you: Zenwalk is more like Slackware than some of the Slackware-driven pendrive distributions, such as SLAX. In the right circumstances, there are major advantages to using Zenwalk over Slackware (or SLAX).

SLAX is a small, live Linux distro, based on Slackware. It aims to be light, friendly and useful. It's meant to fit onto antique USB thumb drives and run well on old hardware.

So, it’s released. I have to setup the website in order to make it usable, a lot of documentation have to be written, the Build Slax feature have to be tested, but everything seems so far so good. Please be kind to the server and download Slax 6 now only if you really need it. If you don’t, please wait few hours or days, or try a mirror (it will take some time to be updated, entire Slax 6 release is over 10GB of data, because all international versions are prepared for you as well)

I had downloaded Slax a few days ago. I should say, I am very impressed with this little distro.

I’ve already reviewed some distros based off of Slackware such as Zenwalk and Slax. Along the way I’ve come to learn about some of the appeal of Slackware and why people would base distributions off of it. However, it does have a reputation as a very hard distro to install.

I never owned a USB flash drive, until recently. I needed one not just for data transfer requirements but because I always wanted to carry an operating system with me. Luckily, I came across this really small pocket operating system, Slax.

I decided to do something new. I used countless live CD’s in the past, but it actually never occurred to me to try something more persistent. So I dug out my old 2GB USB stick and installed Slax.

I am a tinkerer. It is my nature. This is no doubt what accounts for my interest in Linux and computers. For tinkerers, one of the coolest and slickest distros out there is probably Slax.