Featured Comments: Week of 2012 February 12

There was one post this past week that got a couple comments, so I will repost those.

Review: Salix OS 13.37 Xfce Live

An anonymous reader said, "Good to see a review of a less well known distro. Salix is rather less newbie friendly than (say) Vector Linux and I think that is intentional. It's meant to be close to the real Slackware experience with a few conveniences, but dependency checking in Sourcery is not one of them. It's meant to be 100% compatible with Slackware, so if the base distro uses an old version of xfce then so will Salix. It does take a bit of effort to set things up just so, but the devs are very knowledgeable if you ask on the forum. The reward for your efforts is a stable, fast distro that just keeps out of your way. I'm using the installed version by the way. Testing the live version is valid of course, but it only tells you half the story. I didn't like the live version much last time I tried it."
Another anonymous commenter asked, "Did audio work? I see so many distros where it doesn't."

Thanks to those two for commenting on that post. This coming week, I intend to have another review and at least one other post out. Anyway, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

Review: Salix OS 13.37 Xfce Live

Main Screen + Xfce Right-Click Menu

I have wanted to review Salix OS for a while now. It does seem to be the one derivative of Slackware that really synchronizes itself with Slackware development, to the point where even the version numbering system is the same. I have already tried out a few other derivatives, like Zenwalk, Kongoni, VectorLinux, and Porteus; on the whole, all of those worked relatively well, but there were a few things here and there that bothered me about each of them. I would like to see if Salix OS can overcome that.

Salix OS is a derivative of Slackware that comes in a multitude of versions; it has installable and live editions with Xfce, KDE, LXDE, Fluxbox, Ratpoison, and other DEs. According to its website (which, while very slightly more on the technical side, is pretty nice to use), Salix OS is meant to be fast, easy to use, and fully compatible with Slackware packages.

I tested the live session on a live USB made with MultiSystem. I did not test the installation because although this edition is installable, it has really been optimized more for usage in the live session, so I am going to stick with that. Follow the jump to see what it's like.