Slax is a minimalist desktop live CD based on Slackware Linux. It boots into a simple desktop using the Fluxbox window manager which offers a small collection of applications, including the Chromium web browser, a text editor and a calculator. Prior to version 9.x, Slax was a Slackware-based live CD featuring the KDE desktop and a wide collection of pre-installed software for daily use together with useful recovery tools for system administrators. After releasing version 11.x with a Debian base, the project returned to a Slackware base for version 15.0.0.
To compare the software in this project to the software available in other distributions, please see our Compare Packages page.
Notes: In case where multiple versions of a package are shipped with a distribution, only the default version appears in the table. For indication about the GNOME version, please check the "nautilus" and "gnome-shell" packages. The Apache web server is listed as "httpd" and the Linux kernel is listed as "linux". The KDE desktop is represented by the "plasma-desktop" package and the Xfce desktop by the "xfdesktop" package.
Colour scheme:green text = latest stable version, red text = development or beta version. The function determining beta versions is not 100% reliable due to a wide variety of versioning schemes.
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The website to download it already kicks off with a poor impression, attempting to get your email address (but there is a tiny link to skip that).
I was always a fan of the aesthetic of this distro but after having finally using it, I'm failing to see the point of it.
There are much more well-featured and similar size portable distros out there, this one really doesn't do a whole lot of anything right out of the box, nor is it extensible in any way really either. They mention modules yet there's no way to prebuild an image that has these present? And why would you manually try to get more modules afterwards, every time?
Very out of date too, no recent blog updates in a year either but it looks like the only maintainer has their time occupied by another child.
so far good ! i downloaded the slackware version a while back [probably used etcher or some such to make it bootable] but gave up in favor of Debian. I have always had problems getting persistence to work on either debian or ubuntu and with this distribution it attempts a better method, /usr/bin/savechanges can be run at anytime, but when i first booted i followed their documentation more precisely adding to boot command line perchsize=16G (half of my usb), and perchdir=resume.
Extracting the files from the archive, and running their bootinst.sh [installing syslinux] rather than using some tool to create the bootable usb from an iso is unusual but works !. They provide the program savechanges as well which seems to work better than expecting shutdown to save the changes [which are probably in one or several of the loop files].
here is a list of packages i installed to get the wifi networks to appear in the starup->network Manager (right clicking on desktop) [which is fluxbox].
4 install iw 2025-09-14 02:55:37 UTC 1 root (0)
5 install wireless-regdb 2025-09-14 02:56:00 UTC 1 root (0)
6 install network-manager 2025-09-14 03:02:18 UTC 14 root (0)
7 install network-manager-gnome 2025-09-14 03:08:11 UTC 11 root (0)
I wanted a small distro to practise kernel compilation on without risking problems to my primary os. Quick to download and easy to install slax (Slackware based) is ideal. Startup and shutdown are quick enough and there was a lot of that every time I built a non working kernel. I am not sure of the " no documentation" comment. The web site has plenty, and the user group is very helpful. Unfortunately, there is a lot of spam on the discord and Google groups, but the answers are there with some searching. In fact, I managed to build a new working kernel for slax and upgrade from 6.1 to 6.6 .
My next project is to attempt a complete rebuild of slax using the live kit scripts.
All in all, I have been very impressed with slax, it has ticked all the boxes for this project.
The reason I have given it 9 not 10 is because cut and paste in a terminal is not available. Control shift C to cut and control shift insert to paste. Not a showstopper.