Slax Changelog

What's new in Slax 10.2.0 Beta 1

Nov 17, 2019
  • Changes include disabling apparmor, which was preventing some programs from starting properly (eg. man), and fixing chromium by installing chromium-sandbox package. Also added was dummy 'sudo' command (so you can copy&paste sudo commands from internet and it will work as long as you are signed in as root).

New in Slax 9.11.0 (Sep 16, 2019)

  • Updated to most recent packages from Debian stretch
  • Disabled screen blanking on console and for X
  • Fixed PXE server script '/usr/bin/pxe' to pick first gateway if there are more than one configured

New in Slax 9.9.1 (Jun 27, 2019)

  • Updated to most recent packages from Debian stretch
  • PXE boot from TFTP server is up to 3 times faster now, using parallel download
  • Text selected in xterm is automatically copied to clipboard now for easier copy&paste
  • Added 'start here' floating text on GUI startup
  • Wifi should now reconnect on resume
  • Added support for NVME devices during boot

New in Slax 9.9.0 (Apr 30, 2019)

  • This release contains updates for all core packages, most noticable is the update of Chromium web browser, which added 10 MB to the total ISO size for no apparent reason, unfortunately there is nothing we could do about it.

New in Slax 9.7.0 (Jan 30, 2019)

  • Set hostname to 'slax' in /etc/hosts too
  • The 'slax activate' command now copies activated module to RAM only if necessary
  • When USB device is plugged in, filemanager is open with the mounted drive
  • Adding usb-modeswitch and pm-utils
  • mksquashfs parameters were tweaked to gain better compression, this version of Slax is now 10MB smaller

New in Slax 9.6.6 (Jan 4, 2019)

  • Added forgotten intel drivers for xorg
  • Added possibility to disable automounted, either by removing 'automount' boot option, or by setting it to noautomount

New in Slax 9.6.4 (Nov 26, 2018)

  • Implemented scrollbar indicator for xlunch, so user can see if there are more icons beyond current page
  • X is now started on vt7 terminal as it is usually the case in all Linux distros (it was on vt2 before)
  • User can select text-mode boot by specifying 'text' boot parameter
  • Commands dir2sb and sb2dir were rewritten to act as conversion utilities
  • Added b43 broadcom firmwares
  • Added genslaxiso command to create new ISO file, optionally adding new modules
  • Gateway address is now properly set on PXE clients when pxe server is started in Slax
  • xLunch launcher now starts GUI applications without unnecessary terminal window

New in Slax 9.5.0 (Jul 23, 2018)

  • This release incorporates all upstream improvements from Debian stable, and fixes few small known bugs.

New in Slax 9.4.0 (Mar 26, 2018)

  • add rfkill so users can switch on/off their wifi devices
  • make xlunch in Slax search for icons in /usr/share/pixmaps too, else many apps won't show up in the list
  • if there are more rows with icons in xLunch, next row is displayed at the bottom of screen, should be on top
  • include libdrm-intel1, libgl1-mesa-dri, libglu1-mesa packages in Slax for direct rendering. Adds 8 MB :(
  • allright, add /usr/share/games to PATH
  • enable hotkeys in alsa config (enabling volumeUp/Dn/mute buttons)
  • if filesystem is not known, do not add partition to fstab, else it fails miserably
  • add xarchiver
  • remove unneded packages grub* vim* debconf-i18n installation-report
  • consider cbatticon as battery monitor
  • Setup file associations in file manager, as per this suggestion
  • add shortcuts to apps which will auto-install and then run

New in Slax 9.4.0 RC1 (Mar 26, 2018)

  • Most noticable change is addition of launchers for not-installed applications - the app will download and install on the first run. Feel free to suggest your preferred applications which you like to have included by default. You can see at the screenshot below icons for VLC (video player) and VoteCoin (anonymous crypto currency wallet), those apps are not included in Slax, but clicking the icons will auto-install them (before the first run).

New in Slax 9.3.0 (Dec 24, 2017)

  • added pcmanfm as file manager for GUI
  • added wicd as wifi network manager
  • xLunch now auto updates, to see newly installed apps
  • hard drives are mounted on boot and bookmarks added to pcmanfm
  • keyboard layout stays persistent
  • screen resolution change is reimplemented to make it work better
  • syslinux updated to newest version

New in Slax 9.3.0 Beta (Dec 16, 2017)

  • Persistent changes is now default if you boot Slax from a writable media
  • Newly installed applications have their icons added to xLunch screen automatically
  • Added File Manager (pcmanfm), set to show drives in the left sidebar
  • Fixed Slax booting from NTFS and EXT4 filesystems.
  • Added lots of wifi-related firmware drivers and wicd as network manager.

New in Slax 7.0.9 Beta (Jul 3, 2013)

  • After few months of silence, the Beta release of Slax 7.0.9 is now available for testing. It features Linux Kernel 3.9.7, KDE 4.10.4 and FireFox 22.0. It is a bit bigger than usual, since FireFox started to require icu4c for some strange reason, which is 7MB packed (!) ... I have to find out if this dependency can be dropped.

New in Slax 7.0.8 (Apr 13, 2013)

  • Some of you will hate me for this :) I've just released yet another Slax version. This one should fix the plasma task bar finally. If not, then I'll give up :) Anyway, if you do not like to download new Slax each two days, feel free to use 7.0.6 or 7.0.7 and just resize the taskbar manually to full screen width if you need.
  • What is the problem with the plasma bar anyway? The root of the issue is in the way how the settings are stored for it. If a height is to be specified, which I need for slax, then a width must be specified as well. If a width is specified which is smaller than user's desktop size, it sometimes adapts the task bar to full width, but sometimes it doesn't. However I found out that if really big width is set, which is bigger than the screen, it adapts to actual screen width properly. So I set there 8000 pixels, in the hope that all Slax users will have smaller screen.

New in Slax 7.0.6 (Mar 15, 2013)

  • Upgraded Linux Kernel to version 3.8.2
  • Upgraded KDE to version 4.10.1
  • Fixed missing notification when module is activated or deactivated
  • Upgraded all packages to reflect changes in Slackware-current
  • Updated FireFox to 19.0.2
  • Show date on taskbar under current time
  • The device notifier in KDE is now hidden since it was showing on mad positions.

New in Slax 7.0.5 (Jan 28, 2013)

  • Slax 7.0.5 updates KDE to version 4.9.5 and FireFox 18.0.1, furthermore it provides new feature which lets you upload screenshot of any application to Slax website in order to assign it to a module of your choice.

New in Slax 7.0.4 (Jan 16, 2013)

  • added 'load=' and 'noload=' boot parameter support to filter loaded modules. The first parameter (load=) affects only modules from /slax/modules/ directory - if specified, only those modules matching the pattern are loaded. The other one (noload=) affects all modules, even the core ones. You can use regular expression pattern, for example noload=kde|devel|ffox
  • better bootinst.sh compatibility with ubuntu and its clones, since those have different default shell which behaves a bit differently than I expected
  • PXE now tries to get Slax data over TFTP (from the same server) if http connection to port 7529 fails, so you don't need to have a dedicated HTTP server running for PXE if you don't need the best performance (tftp is slow)
  • fixed a bug which appeared when using from=... to load Slax from a path which included a directory with two letters, like /os/.
  • fixed URL open in KDE (using %u in exec command in firefox.desktop), so clicking a link in pidgin for example opens it in firefox instead of downloading the URL by kde kioslave. Thanks to Manfred M. for the suggestion
  • support for special files in Slax Bundles. Content of file /run/activate.sh gets executed on activate, content of /run/deactivate.sh gets executed on module deactivation. File attributes don't matter at all, so there is no need to set them executable.
  • the autobuild system now adds a file /run/requires to all modules which require other modules. This file is used by 'slax activate' command to recognize and activate all dependencies automatically.
  • even more improved X autodetection. Tries to fallback to modesetting driver if X -configure fails to produce a working xorg.conf file, and fallbacks to vesa driver if modesetting is not available.
  • deactivation of Slax module now removes the module file, unless you deactivate it with the real filename as argument - then it is kept
  • added unRAR support (compiled from official unrar sources)
  • provide rightclick menu option to activate / deactivate Slax bundles in dolphin
  • hide loop devices from showing in dolphin by udev rule
  • buildscript now requires description, it is no longer optional
  • fixed korean support (added missing font to korean module)

New in Slax 7.0.3 (Jan 3, 2013)

  • added PDF file with Slax documentation
  • added PXE server and client support
  • added dnsmasq, added httpd support to busybox
  • improved X autodetection by calling X -configure if default configuration fails
  • added xev, a tool to list code of pressed key, so user can easily remap it with xmodmap
  • bashrc file has been fixed to properly show current directory on command prompt
  • fixed cleanup of 'slax' script (remove temporary files from /tmp using trap)
  • fixed buildscipt checks to allow required bundles with + and _ characters in name
  • fixed deb2sb (and deb2txz) script to support lzma-compressed DEB packages
  • run kbuildsycoca4 on module activation to update KDE menu
  • include mc.sh in bashrc so mc remembers last directory
  • Big thanks to Manfred M. (http://www.fluxflux.net/) for suggestions!

New in Slax 7.0.2 (Dec 27, 2012)

  • I made some experiments with the firefox module which is inside Slax, and I forgot to delete 2MB of useless data inthere so the resulting Slax 7.0.1 is more than 1MB bigger than it should. No harm happens, the forgotten stuff has no side effects at all, it just shouldn't be there. I'm pushing out 7.0.2 right now. If you can live with the fact that the new version 7.0.1 you just downloaded has 1MB of unused data which wastes your precious disk space then there is no need for you to download 7.0.2 since it is the very same in all aspects as like 7.0.1 (minus the forgotten stuff). The new version will be ready in about two or three hours, and I'm not going for any release announcement this time (except of this blog post) since the change is rather cosmetic and doesn't affect functionality.
  • I didn't notice that 7.0.1 was so big unless I saw that distrowatch listed the release with download link size 213MB - then I realized something has to be wrong, since the previous release was 212MB and I didn't add any big stuff at all. So thanks distrowatch for listing the actual download size :)
  • I will also publish a diffmod, a Slax Bundle (module) with just the differences between 7.0 and 7.0.2 so everybody who has the older version can upgrade his/her Slax to newest version by just a very tiny download. I'll publish the links here when ready.

New in Slax 7.0 (Dec 11, 2012)

  • Slax 7.0 is the major update of Slax Linux live operating system. It includes newest Linux Kernel, KDE4 desktop, GCC compiler and lots of other stuff and that all in just a ~210MB download. Furthermore it's available in more than 50 localizations, so you can get a Slax that speaks your language.

New in Slax 7.0 RC3 (Dec 6, 2012)

  • Slax is now translated to more than 50 languages
  • added 'slax' use like 'slax activate'
  • avoid unwanted error warnings about missing devices
  • bootinst script fixes and improvements
  • added some firmware including radeon and some wifi drivers
  • support from=/path/slax.iso boot parameter to load slax data from the given iso
  • Firefox style improvements, Slax software Center
  • added module tools such as sb2dir, deb2sb, txz2sb
  • added development module. Total Slax size is now around 210MB (for 32bit)
  • new wallpaper, hooray!

New in Slax 7.0 RC2 (Nov 14, 2012)

  • The boot installer script has been fixed and updated. One of the most common problem (as it seems to me) nowadays is the strange behavior of some automounting programs, such as udisks, which mount FAT filesystem with showexec parameter. Due to that, only files with windows extensions (BAT, COM, EXE) are treated as executable. To make it simpler, I managed to write bootinst.bat script so it executes in both Linux and Windows. This should make things easier.
  • I've added ModemManager and related dependencies, including broadband provider info data, so it should be now easier to connect to the internet using a modem. This was heavily requested by the users, I didn't realize how many people use modem internet connection.
  • KDE desktop was updated to the latest stable version 4.9.3.
  • When Slax reboots or shuts down, it now automatically ejects CD (in case it was actually started from it), so the user can remove it before the actual shutdown. Busybox's eject command has probably no support for newer CDROM devices or the SATA interface, I don't really know. So I had to statically compile 'eject' command as external binary from sources, and this eject works just fine. If you're running Slax from USB drive then it doesn't (shouldn't!) eject any CD, of course :)
  • Finally, some of the missing or broken dependencies were fixed, so Flash Player now works in FireFox (missing libcurl and libldap was added), KDE can mount Windows shares (missing libsmbclient was added), and FireFox is no longer missing libnotify.

New in Slax 7.0 RC1 (Nov 7, 2012)

  • Stylish metal casing
  • Small form factor
  • Easily attaches to your keys
  • High durability
  • Slax 7 preinstalled, ready to go
  • PDF manual explaining Slax internals
  • Device capacity 16GB

New in Slax 6.1.0 (Apr 10, 2009)

  • Added fake XDM to 002-xorg, so it will start Fluxbox if KDE is not present - this is mainly useful if you use 'build slax' and you only include Slax Core and Slax Xorg; upgraded to Slackware 'current' as of the latest changes before KDE 4 packages were added; added new wallpaper; fixed many Fluxbox-related bugs in order to make 'Slax Xorg' partly independent; now you can see (even in Fluxbox) accurate (preferred) screen resolution and it plays a start-up sound too.

New in Slax 6.0.9 (Dec 13, 2008)

  • upgraded to Slackware-12.2
  • upgraded to Linux Kernel 2.6.27.8
  • upgraded samba-stripped, added libcap
  • fixed a bug in unsquashfs (lzm2dir) which happened on SMP machines
  • removed bluez* packagess