I chose Minislack because of the low requirements (running fine on my Pentium II – 400 MHz with 256 Mb RAM, 32 Mb swap, on a 1.5 Gb harddrive partition – I recommend 2 Gb, though).Minislack is Slackware based. It doesn’t come with fancy configuration tools – instead you get to learn Linux fundamentals. Learning curve is a bit steeper, but perhaps it is “healthier” to learn Linux instead of learning a special distros configuration tool (that’s my opinion).
The “cut” made with Minislack (in comparison to Slackware) is focus on the Desktop user, and with only one application for each purpose (several text editors are available, though). It includes a fairly large and complete portion of programming tools. Any user can add to the installation with personal needs – preferably based on Slackware tarballs (but any other common way can be used, of course).
The desktop is Xfce, a nice choice – not too requiring, but still with eye-candy.
The choice of applications are mainstream – like Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP and so on. A very nice selection (and as a MS-Windows user who has been using OpenSource based applications for a while I am already familiar with these applications). The KDE and OpenOffice packages are available as an option (not included on the CD-ROM ISO).
Maintenance tools are not GUI, but Slackware pkgtool etc. – and then there is this new and special feature for Minislack named “netpkg” which can be used to keep Minislack up-to-date in a very easy way. It checks your installation with a package repository. You can then download upgrades and choose to install them (either on-the-fly, or use Slackware installpkg).
The limited distro means that packages are well maintained (up to date). The distro is focusing on:
1) Desktop usage
2) The programming tools
3) Newbies have an easy time with not too many options, and a great help page for the installation (on main page, click documentation, then clik
on “Minislack Linux installation tutorial“.
I have found the Minislack forum helpful and friendly.
A very light and clean distro that comes with all that a desktop and small office user wants, removing a lot of unuseful packages for this purpose. I’m really impressed with the distro’s quality.
It is simple, fast, secure and reliable
It provides one application for one task (except editors)
It is a complete development/desktop environment
It is compact
Yep, I’ve played around with the last 2 or 3 releases and it is very nice, indeed. I’m keeping an eye on it!
seems like a good rival for arch, maybe i’ll try it
Why not use a cut down slackware 10.1 install? with fluxbox
or does minislack have optimisations for older hardware?
However, I see no info on optimizations – just Slackware with different packages.
When my DSL gets activated today, I’ll download it and compare it to my slack machines.
If it is just Slackware with different packages and a different kernel, then there aren’t many reasons to use this over Slackware – Slackware has a larger packages base, and has Pat
I’m using it, since yesterday. It is a kind of Slackware Light. The most notable thing is the fact that you can istall ReiserFS 4 out-of-the box.
For me, it is great, because install only the essential, and is full compatible with Slackware packages..
I’m a 1+ year Gentoo user, but my heart still lies with Slack <3
Yes, it is a nice little distro with a promising future – would be handy if the XFce guys would sort out their filemanager though
– definately prefer Arch’s minimalism though (and pacman) – that said, it’ll be interesting to see how it progresses 
Dualbooting Minislack with Windows XP is simple
allowing people to learn Linux without getting
discouraged from installation complications.
http://minislackforum.mot-studios.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=227
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The installation cd did not recognize my external cdrom drive although I indicate the correct device link.
Slackware cd does…
If a distro can’t run well on that machine, it’s not a decent workstation distro, period.
Another low-resource distro is Beatrix. I just tried it the other day to set up a computer for someone looking for work (for email, resumes, etc). It comes with Gnome 2.8, OpenOffice, Evolution, Firefox, and not a lot else.
As it is debian/unbuntu derived, I got flash, a better PDF viewer, xmms and set up VNC server (for tech support if needed) with apt-get and that was it.
Nice a simple distro for people that just need to do the basics, without even caring about wheither it is linux or windows.
Heck, I’m even playing around with it on my “linux laptop”, as it seems to be a really good way to set-up debian and then add to it.
If I had used slackware, minislack would likely be great, but beatrix works well for those with some debian experience.
<quote>
…fast and reliable Reiser4 filesystem
</quote>
since when? last time ive tried it the thing ate my slackware for christmas. and properly configured ext3 outperforms r4 in many cases. reiser4 should NOT be included in a distro with a “focus on the Desktop user”.
my 2c…
I’ve heard that reiser hasent been stable since i started using linux (circa 99) and I was using it on Beehive Linux way back then and still use it from time to time these days. I never had a problem. Are they very intermitant (sp?)? Or constantly b0rking systems?
I keep my /home partition as ext2 just because its been that way forever though.
.adam.
reiser != reiser4
reiser (v3) is one of the most stable fs ever, just managed to bring some incompatible kernel-patches so the suse-kernel was buggy with reiser, but this was a problem of someone at suse not reading the changelogs… i use reiser for mor than 4 years on many systems and never had the slightest problem…
so i dont know much about reiser4-stability but if you dont like it you can keep reiser3 of course…
Debian unstable runs perfectly on my celeron 366 Mhz, 128 MB
Good one
for small machines and 15″ screens
half the world still tops at 800×600 pixels.
Yet modern and fast.
I am enjoing it use right now
Not missing windows at all.
I hope it will win a good place on comunity
acceptance.
Congratulations
🙂
… truly a great little distro. Slackware based, can’t go wrong there. I have used 2 releases of mini-slack, and it is a nice little distro.
/2cents
I tried Slack, but was disappointed by the lack of current docs. I also never could get my dialup working, and then eventually made my back to Debian.
I think that a Slack-derived distro could be pretty successful if they provided really well-done, current, accurate docs.
I like Debian. The docs are pretty good. Though, despite apt I always find myself installing stuff without telling apt about it (current Java stuff, for example). Sometimes I crave that spartan simplicity of good old Slackware though.
I have a machine with p2 233 128+64 MB ram multibooting XP (yes, you can disable hw check) and Suse 9.2
It’s enough fast to be usable for desktop productivity under both systems, and yes, under Linux runs KDE, being more coherent and complete than minor desktop environments for Linux. Before of Suse it was running Slack X (with KDE) and was even more responsive.
Why shoud be considered “low requirement” a system with a nearly twice as faster cpu and more ram, needing a “special” distribution?
Hi,
I agree with you that documentation is a very important point.
Minislack’s help system is probably not perfect, but most of the common problems you will encounter are addressed either in the documentation section of the website (http://www.minislack.org/staticpages/index.php?page=200503210235258…) or the “Tips And Tricks” section of the forums (http://minislackforum.mot-studios.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=8) and the developers are very active in the Minislack forums.
I’ll have to give this distro a try. Currently my favorite small fast distro is Vector. The distro I most frequently use is Knoppix because I can run it on any PC with a CDROM drive without even installing it!
I don’t see this as low hardware requirments. When I first started using Linux my home computer was a 25 MHz 386sx with 4 MB of RAM and a 80 MB hard disk which I divided half for MSDOS5/Win3.1 and half for SLS Linux. Yes Linux used to fit on a 40MB partition including gcc and development tools, TeX, and X386 (mono only because of my video card). My work computer was even more pathetic being a 16 MHz 386sx with 2 MB of RAM. I did have Linux on it as well and though I couldn’t run X I was able to run my console in 132/50 and have multiple windows in emacs. When Linux started compressing the kernel it would no longer run on my 2 MB RAM work computer so I switched to NetBSD which was happy with that little RAM.
I’ve tried some of the linux on a floppy distros which themselves are impressive accomplishments but not particularily useful. One of my plans is to make a mini-knoppix that will fit on a 185MB mini CD-R.
>Why not use a cut down slackware 10.1 install? with fluxbox
You could do that. For me, as a newbie, Slackware could provide more options – but I don’t know to choose between them. I think the choices made by the Minislack team balances very well between mainstream and user friendly. I don’t think Fluxbox would do it for me. I like the Xfce (in spite of the file manager, which more people are complaining about – it will change in the not-so-far future to another one).
Best regards,
Claus
MiniSlack *is* Slackware. I switched to MiniSlack because it gave me a much smaller system without having to fuss with all the package selections, it comes with Firefox (ahem, Patrick, I’ve been asking for this for a year and a half) and a bunch of other, useful stuff, and tries to keep to ONE app for each task. Also, it works with the Slack 10.1 slapt-get repositories (and comes with it installed, even). It works with Webmin for Slack 10.1. All 10.1 packages I tried worked.
In short, this is just a “mini” version of Slackware (thus the name). If you like Slack but want a sleeker but fully compatible version, try MiniSlack. I’m running my home webserver on it right now.
Steve (IP: —.fm.intel.com) wrote:
> it comes with Firefox (ahem, Patrick, I’ve been asking for
> this for a year and a half)
Is Pat an employee of yours?
🙂
MiniSlack *is* Slackware.
No, Slackware *is* Slackware.
I switched to MiniSlack because it gave me a much smaller system without having to fuss with all the package selections
You are kidding, aren’t you? It requires a minute, two at most, to select your package install using the menu option of the full Slackware installation. This is a ‘fuss’?
In short, this is just a “mini” version of Slackware (thus the name). If you like Slack but want a sleeker but fully compatible version, try MiniSlack. I’m running my home webserver on it right now.
Why not just perform a more selective install using the Slackware install options? Thus you can create your own “mini” Slack based the real thing.
It is not clear from the review why one may prefer
_mini_slack instead of _real_ Slack. Just because of OO,
available as an option?
Well, I think that both systems are usefull. Slackware is in my opinion a better choice for a server system, and Minislack adds many improvements for the desktop. Minislack is a young system, not perfect, but as I already said the development team is very active. And it’s also very stable and well tested, so for a developement environment it’s my choice. I run my servers (and my customer’s servers) other Slackware, I use Minislack at home for coding, and my wife is happy with it for office work. Everybody’s happy
Mario
I’ve used Minislack on my laptop, which is not hurting in the hardware department (AMD64 3000, 768 MB Ram, 5400 rpm/8MB cache hard drive). I did it because Minislack uses the 2.6 kernel standard. And, 32-bit Minislack with Fluxbox is faster than any of the 64-bit distros I tried, even using Fluxbox on them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get NDISwrapper working on Minislack 1.1 (and Slamd64, the 64-bit Slackware port, just gave me another segmentation fault during installation). Back to Debian, I guess.
Overall, I like Minislack, fast and light. It’s not tempting me to take Slackware current off my desktop machine, but I’m going to give it another shot on my laptop before I go back to Debian.
A Ndiswrapper package is available on the Minislack repository, you can download and install it with their netpkg tool.
>>MiniSlack *is* Slackware.
>No, Slackware *is* Slackware.
>>I switched to MiniSlack because it gave me a much smaller system without having to fuss with all the package selections
>You are kidding, aren’t you? It requires a minute, two at most, to select your package install using the menu option of the full Slackware installation. This is a ‘fuss’?
In my book, Minislack is based on Slackware (just like there are systems out there based on Debian etc).
If you want Slackware, use Slackware.
For a newbie like me it is nice not to “fuss” around with package selection because we don’t know which packages goes with which (dependencies) and we don’t know which are good or bad packages and applications (we are not familiar with any of this). That’s why it is nice that someone has gone through it all, and selected a composition of packages.
Minislack is optimized in relation to Slackware, by using a very new kernel, and Reiser4 filesystem support etc. Someone said, it is Slackware on steroids, not all that wrong.
Minislack is not far from Slackware, but scaled down a lot, and with great options like OpenOffice (+ Firefox) etc.
Best regards,
Claus