SliTaz GNU/Linux is a

lightweight Linux distribution A light-weight Linux distribution is one that uses lower memory and/or has less processor-speed requirements than a more "feature-rich" Linux distribution. The lower demands on hardware ideally result in a Responsiveness, more responsive mach ...

, community-based, suitable for use on older hardware and as a

Live CD A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than loading fro ...

Live USB A live USB is a portable USB-attached external data storage device containing a full operating system that can be booted from. The term is reminiscent of USB flash drives but may encompass an external hard disk drive or solid-state drive, thou ...

. SliTaz stands for "Simple, Light, Incredible,

Temporary Autonomous Zone ''T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone'' is a book by the anarchist writer and poet Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn Wilson) published in 1991 by Autonomedia and in 2011 by Pacific Publishing Studio (). It is composed of three sections, "Chaos: The Bro ...

" according to the boot screen.

Features

SliTaz uses the Openbox

window manager A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They work in conjunction ...

. Additional packages are added using a program called "TazPanel". This is due to the specific

package format A package format is a type of archive containing computer programs and additional metadata needed by package managers. While the archive file format itself may be unchanged, package formats bear additional metadata, such as a manifest file or certa ...

that SliTaz uses (tazpkg). It can still use packages from the more popular distribution though, as

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

, by means of first carrying out a conversion of these different packages. By default, SliTaz offers no persistence, however it can still be added if the user wishes. The choice of the

filesystem In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

bootloader A bootloader, also spelled as boot loader or called boot manager and bootstrap loader, is a computer program that is responsible for booting a computer. When a computer is turned off, its softwareincluding operating systems, application code, an ...

used with slitaz is then of importance however; persistence being only available with ext2 and ext3 filesystems and the syslinux or extlinux boot loader. Another useful tool is

TazLiTo SliTaz GNU/Linux is a lightweight Linux distribution, community-based, suitable for use on older hardware and as a Live CD or Live USB. SliTaz stands for "Simple, Light, Incredible, Temporary Autonomous Zone" according to the boot screen. Feat ...

, with which users can create their own LiveCD based on selected packages or even based upon the current system state.

System requirements

SliTaz GNU/Linux is supported on all machines based on the

i486 The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the Intel 386. The i486 was introduced in 1989. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the ...

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...

Intel compatible processors. The Live CD has four variants of SliTaz, requiring from 192 MB of RAM for the Core system to 48 MB for a text mode and

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

. SliTaz can even run in 24 MB of RAM and a little swap memory. SliTaz can be booted from a Live CD, Live USB, floppy disk, or a

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...

(

PXE PXE may refer to: * Preboot Execution Environment, booting computers via a network * Proof and Experimental Establishment, an Indian defense laboratory * Pseudoxanthoma elasticum, a genetic disease * Pentium Extreme Edition, a variant of Pentium D ...

), or can be installed, requiring approximately 80 MB of hard disk space.

TazLiTo

TazLito is the LiveCD creation utility in SliTaz GNU/Linux.

Common Operations

Check Root

Check to ensure UID is zero (i.e., TazLito was run by root or root sudoer).

Check Root File System

Looks for the existence of an etc. directory in the root file system directory. N.B., this does ''not'' do any further checking to ensure anything is actually in the directory. However, if TazLito is used for all LiveCD creation operations (that is, one does not create/modify the directories used by TazLito) the directories existence implies it is populated properly.

Verify Root CD

Looks for the existence of a boot directory in the root CD directory. N.B., this does ''not'' do any further checking to ensure anything is actually in the directory. However, if TazLito is used for all LiveCD creation operations (that is, one does not create/modify the directories used by TazLito) the directories existence implies it is populated properly.

Generate initramfs

# Executes scripts for packages altering the root file system # Hard links redundant files in the root filesystem to save space # Runs cpio to create the initramfs, compressing with lzma or gzip (or no compression)

Release history

As with any

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

, the route of development of SliTaz is mainly determined by the coders themselves. For SliTaz 5, some major changes seem to be the swapping of

systemd systemd is a software suite that provides an array of system components for Linux operating systems. Its main aim is to unify service configuration and behavior across Linux distributions; Its primary component is a "system and service manager ...

BusyBox BusyBox is a software suite that provides several Unix utilities in a single executable file. It runs in a variety of POSIX environments such as Linux, Android, and FreeBSD, although many of the tools it provides are designed to work with in ...

's init and

udev udev (userspace ) is a device manager for the Linux kernel. As the successor of devfsd and hotplug, udev primarily manages device nodes in the directory. At the same time, udev also handles all user space events raised when hardware devices ar ...

, hence avoiding safety risks, and more implementation of Qt. An implementation of x64 and ARM architectures are currently under development.

Reception

Dedoimedo reviewed SliTaz GNU/Linux 1.0. and commented: Dedoimedo also reviewed version 2.0.

DistroWatch DistroWatch is a website which provides news, distribution pages hit rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/open source Unix-like operating systems. It now contains information on ...

published a review of SliTaz GNU/Linux 1.0: A 2022 review of SliTaz 5.0 in

Full Circle magazine ''Full Circle'' is a free distribution Portable Document Format magazine that was founded by Ronnie Tucker in April 2007. It is released on the last Friday of every month in PDF, EPUB ebook format and also on the Issuu electronic publishing pla ...

concluded:

Gallery

File:SliTaz-GNU-Linux 1.png, SliTaz 1.0 stable desktop. File:SliTaz-Ver2.0-screenshot.png, SliTaz 2.0 stable desktop. File:SliTaz-Ver3.0-screenshot.png, SliTaz 3.0 stable desktop. File:Slitaz-4.0.png, SliTaz 4.0 stable desktop. File:Slitaz-cooking-20101104.png, SliTaz 5.0 preview desktop.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Slitaz Gnu/Linux Independent Linux distributions Light-weight Linux distributions Linux distributions Linux distributions without systemd Live USB LiveDistro Operating system distributions bootable from read-only media Rolling Release Linux distributions