Review: AUSTRUMI 2.2.9

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Unless you're from Latvia, there's a good chance that this is the first time you are seeing either the name AUSTRUMI or a review of it. So what is it?
AUSTRUMI is a Latvian Slackware-based distribution that uses FVWM as the window manager. So why am I reviewing it? Well, a couple days ago I saw on DistroWatch's ticker feed of updated distributions that the AUSTRUMI developers have released version 2.2.9. Yet DistroWatch's page for this distribution shows the last listed update to be version 1.5.0 and the last notable review to be from 2009 August of version 1.9.3 on Desktop Linux Reviews. I read that review before; it praised AUSTRUMI for its light weight as well as its numerous programs stuffed in but knocked it hard for including Minefield, Mozilla Firefox's unstable developmental branch, as its default browser. I became curious about this and wanted to see what has changed since then, so I decided to check it out. The AUSTRUMI website is quite friendly and well-done; although the distribution is Latvian, the page displays by default in English. It has a list of included programs, some history, and a link to the Slackware Latvia forums. That's certainly helpful (no sarcasm intended).
I tested this on a live USB made with MultiSystem. I only tested the live session, for which it was designed, although it is technically installable as well. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: Slackware 13.1

KDE Main Screen

I never envisioned myself trying out any of the more advanced distributions like Slackware, Arch, or Gentoo, but having tried derivatives like GNU/Linux Utopia, Chakra, and Sabayon, I think I'm ready to try Slackware and Arch, and I am writing about the former today. Hopefully, the latter can also happen soon. (I'm still not going to try Gentoo.)
Note: this review will be heavy on images, so don't be surprised if the page takes a little time to load.

LILO

Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distribution, and it brings with it, alongside its famous rock-solid stability, a couple of quirks and anachronisms. For example, it is one of the few distributions that provides no form of dependency management; users need to install all dependent packages manually. Another example is how its ncurses-based installation interface dates back from the 1990s/early 2000s. Furthermore, it still uses the old Linux Loader (LILO) instead of GRUB; LILO is quite limited in terms of configuration and the number of operating systems and types of file systems it can handle, and making it play well with other non-Linux-based OSs (like Microsoft Windows) as far as I know is still a herculean task. Finally, unlike most distributions, Slackware provides no official route to installing GNOME, though it provides a plethora of other WM options alternative to KDE and Xfce.
With all these things in mind, follow the jump to see how my experience with the grandfather of distributions (well, not quite) turned out. I tested this in a VirtualBox environment with 1 GB of RAM and an available 10 GB virtual hard drive.

Ncurses Installer