Linux is really a great operating system, and probably none of you would argue with such opinion. Its features are almost endless, and with little effort and skills you can perform just any task using this OS. The times when one couldn’t fully use multimedia, do sophisticated text-editing or graphics on Linux are far in the past. But the question is, what can we do when we have a really old computer? And what about the situation when our system suddenly starts to behave quite strange and we are forced to rescue our data from the hard drive? Special rescue discs might be used in such situation, or… a Linux Live CD.

Author: Łukasz Ciesielski

There are lots of live CD/DVDs. Let us imagine a perfect full of features rescue system. Well, it should use little RAM memory, it should be able to read different filesystems, e.g. NTFS, and of course it should be damn small — to fit in every pocket. No reason to imagine! Nowadays the so called mini-distros have all the mentioned features. This article presents the leading distros of this type: Puppy Linux, Slax and Damn Small Linux.

Puppy Linux 3.00

Puppy is a really good and functional operating system. It has a set of codecs and it tries to fulfill most of typical users’ needs. During the systems’ startup it enables some advanced options which can help you adjust Puppy to your hardware needs and make it a really proper home PC distro. Below some of those options are listed:

1. acpi=off — this option is really useful for machines produced before 2001
2. pfix=ram — will run Puppy totally in RAM, making it work faster provided that you have a lot of RAM (more than 256 should be enough)
3. pfix=nox — only terminal (command line mode), no graphical environment
4. pfix=clean — cleanup of the filesystem
5. pfix=purge — cleanup and fixing the filesystem

To run one of the options you should type: puppy command, e.g. puppy pfix=ram (copies the system into the RAM memory) or puppy pfix=ram,nox (system will be copied into the RAM memory and then will run in the terminal mode only).

The option of running a system from the RAM memory is a great advantage of Puppy. It gives a lot of possibilities. Let us imagine that we have to cope with an older machine which has not been in use for some time. Thanks to Puppy Linux we can bring it back to “life”. The only thing needed for this is proper amount of RAM memory, e.g. 256 MB. We copy the system into the RAM memory and we can start our work. Why is it so important? Because even if we have a weaker processor, it will not have a great effect on how fast Puppy Linux works. Puppy Linux authors picked those applications which are small but extremely functional, and since the applications are read from the RAM memory, not the CD drive, it makes them run really fast and the systems seems responsive

Basics

The default graphical environment of Puppy Linux is JWM. It has been well configured so it seems a really good solution for the system. Small Fluxbox size gave authors the possibility to increase the number of programs available in Puppy. The minimal requirements are: 100 MHz processor and 64 MB or the RAM memory. Again, it is really worth running the system with pfix=ram option. Another reason for this is quite simple: in such case we have a free CD-ROM drive, since when Puppy runs from the RAM memory you can eject the Puppy Linux CD. A good idea is also to have a pendrive. We can use it as a portable memory disk if we don’t want to save our data on the hard disk. Still Puppy Linux has NTFS support and can read and write on Windows partitions as well. We don’t have to worry about multimedia, either, since playing DivX movies encoded or listening to music in MP3 format is supported by default.

A really great thing about Puppy Linux is the fact that it can be a rescue system as well as a — so called — desktop system.

Puppy features

In bottom left corner of a screen we can find the main menu (the same menu is available upon right mouse click). The menu is divided into a clear categories.

Following those categories we can see what applications are available in the standard Puppy Linux distribution. But before we do this, it is worth saying that we have the possibility to install additional software using PETget application. You can find PETget icon on the desktop.

And regarding the menu:

1. Desktop — we find here applications for configuring the look and feel of our desktop and perform some other configuration.
2. System — We can check the system configuration and hardware information here. It is worth to mention some programs here, like: GParted, Memtest, Pdisk (partition manger).
3. Setup — a set of programs for configuring of devices like mouse, keyboard, CD-ROM etc. We also find here the aforementioned PETget (package manager).
4. Utility — a rich set of applications for producing backup copies, like XArchiver which can create *.tar or *.zip archives. Unfortunately there are no additional plugins installed for files like *.rar or *.ace. We can of course install them using PETget.
5. Filesystem — it contains applications for monitoring the hard disk (e.g. check the available free space) and applications like ROX (default file manager) and MUT (Media Utility Tool), which is a simple but powerful tool used to display information about all available disks (including CD-ROM and flash drives).
6. Graphic — here we find programs for viewing and editing graphics. There’s also mtPaint app for taking screenshots.
7. Document — set of great text editors like AbiWord, Geany or Leafpad. Additionally we have the Composer (which enables *.html editing), puppyPDF (it converts files to the PDF format) and ePDFView (PDF viewer).
8. Calculate — here we can find tools for managing home personal finance (Gnumeric, HomeBank).
9. Personal — few useful applications, like AddressBook and Ical Calendar.
10. Network — firewall and Samba configuration
11. Internet — simply speaking all the things you need to use the Internet (web browser, BitTorrent client, Pidgin instant messaging client).
12. Multimedia — full set of applications to use with multimedia. The key ones are: Gxine (multiplayer), PBcdripper or ripperX (ripping audio CDs), pupdvdtool (great application for ripping DVD movies), and tools for burning CD/DVDs, preparing and burning ISO images.

At the first glance you can notice, that there are shortcuts for the popular programs on the desktop. In fact, Puppy Linux would do for the most of computer users. But it is not a perfect system for sure. It has several weaknesses, major one being the look and feel. Well, I guess we cannot get everything. Puppy authors focused on providing a fast, functional and simple to use system, how the system looks was not so important. If we consider the number of applications together with systems’ features and the fact that the size of Puppy Linux is not larger than 100 MB, we can say that Puppy Linux is a really great system in its class.

SLAX 6.0 — the basics

The one thing that differs this system form other of its kind is the modular architecture. This solution really speeds up its performance. On the projects’ homepage (www.slax.org) we can find few version of SLAX available:

• Standard Edition 6.0.0 — KDE with Fluxbox,
• KillBill Edition 5.1.8 — this version is enriched with Wine (for running Windows applications),
• Popcorn Edition 5.1.8 — with XFCE graphical environment,
• Server Edition 5.1.8 — it contains servers: DNS, DHCP, HTTP, FTP, MySQL, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, and SSH,
• Frodo Edition 5.1.8 — only text mode environment.

During the startup, Slax offers a few options. You can choose them a simpler manner compared to Puppy Linux, since Slax displays an active menu. One of the most important options is — just as in Puppy — copying the system into the RAM. As the author of Slax says, the basic assumption about the system is that it should fit into a small CD. It is thought of as a Live-CD. There’s an option of installing Slax on the hard disk but there’s no really need for doing this, unless you want to use it as an every day system (but then, a few better choices are probably available).

Slax features

The default environment of Slax is KDE with Fluxbox. It is quite a strange choice, since one may say that e.g. XFCE would do better here. The system includes some codecs. There is no problem with *.mp3 files and movies encoded with XviD. Look an feel is a bit more sophisticated than in Puppy. We have a nice and clear menu (quite understandable, since we have KDE here), that groups programs by their usage.

The selection of programs is well thought, what you can easily see while looking through the menu. Unfortunately you’ll also notice, that the number of applications is smaller than in Puppy. We may mention few important ones in Slax:

1. Graphics — Kuickshow (viewer), KolourPaint, KSnapshot (screenshots), KPDF.
2. Internet — Konqueror, KMail, Kopete
3. Multimedia — KPlayer (mediaplayer), JuK (music player), K3b, KAudioCreator (ripping CD audio).
4. Office — here we don’t have a great choice… KWord, KSpread, KPresenter and Kontact.

These are only key applications. There are a lot of other programs available in Slax, of course. It is worth noticing that you may customize Slax using MySLAX Creator. We have also the possibly to install additional software — using so called modules. Modules can be found on Slax homepage.

You can read a lot more about Slax in the recent two articles by Keyto, published on polishlinux.org:

• SLAX 6.0: How does it work?
• SLAX on USB Drive

Damn Small Linux 4.0

I think that everyone who has ever had something to do with Linux knows DSL. The main developer of this nearly-legendary system is John Andrews. What we have here is about 60 applications and a graphical environment, all pushed into a 50MB disk. The default graphical environment is Fluxbox. DSL is based on Knoppix and Debian. You may easily install DSL on the hard drive getting preconfigured lightweight Debian stable distro.

At the first glance you may notice some “shortcomings” of DSL as for the application set. But you should not look at DSL from this perspective, since the developers had only 50 MB (this is the projects’ main goal). They managed to put a web browser, Vim editor (there’s no AbiWord), XMMS and a lot of interesting Internet tools despite the restrictions. DSL is not a good system for multimedia, since for e.g. there’s no movie player here. No codecs, either, since they take too much space (w32codecs package is 31 MB).

Damn Small Linux is a rather experimental system. I mean by this, that the authors wanted to simply check how many applications can be put into 50 MB space. Assuming, that we want to burn DSL as our rescue system, we “waste” some 150MB of valuable CD space (unless we use a Business Card CD)! Perhaps it is a better idea to use Slax or Puppy Linux, then?

Summary

My aim was not to point the weak points or failures of the described systems. I wanted to show you, dear reader different points of view on Live CD distros. I’ve presented three key Linux mini distributions. There’s a lot more, of course. For example NimbleX and Parted Magic are worth mentioning. Each of the described systems is almost perfect but only in particular aspects. The authors of those systems had different goals and we should remember this when choosing one of them for personal use.

This text is based on the article published in Dragonia Magazine, a Polish online magazine about Free and Open-Source Software. You can download the latest Dragonia issue (first one in English from our mirror). The article has been slightly modified compared with the original version by the PolishLinux team.

Translated by Paweł Łupkowski, Proof-read by michuk