When I was in college I didn't have my own computer so I relied on the Windows machines from the library.
That's when I discovered Slax and Puppy Linux [1] and all its different variants. Such a beautiful thing to boot into these pendrive distros and discover the world of Linux through them without altering the host system.
This makes me miss the days of Knoppix. Apparently it's less dead than I thought, it did have a new release in April 2021 (and it was distributed on a DVD with certain magazines, like the old days!) http://www.knoppix.org
Slax brings back fond memories! I used to boot school computers into it to have access to OpenOffice, Firefox, ahem Ophcrack…
I never ran Slackware Linux beyond that but the simplicity of being able to build a custom live USB through their web interface was amazing. I don’t think I’d have gotten as much of a head start with Linux had it not existed.
You can also just literally install most any linux distro to a USB and use it the same way. It likely won't work on every machine, but it will work on most similar machines. I have done so for many years with archlinux
I used it sometimes when I needed a live Linux, and I liked it, because it used to be based in Slackware, and it had KDE as its desktop. Now they added Debian as another base, and that's great. Sadly, they dropped KDE.
There's also Porteus, also a Slackware derivative offering KDE Plasma -- https://www.porteus.org
Slax was and still is a great live distribution. The fact that (at least one of its flavors) is based on Slackware shows that the parent distro (Slackware) isn't that hard to use, something that few people believe. Slackware is in fact very simple in comparison to other distros.
I love the idea of this... but here is what I want - IT SHOULD WORK WITH EVERY HARDWARE PERMUTATION KNOWN TO EXISTENCE. If not... combine your energy with Fedora.
I do not agree with the parent, however the first part of your objection is not really valid. Red Hat were able to ditch Centos because they owned it. You canbase something independent on RH.
What drives me personally nuts about the CentOS saga is all the “community” hand-waving about creating a bit for bit clone of a distro.
There can be no “community just shipping builds of RHEL code as, by definition, you cannot change anything. That means you cannot contribute. In my view, an Open Source “community” cannot just be people that use things for free. It is supposed to be about collaborating to build things.
At least now we have Alma Linux which strives to be ABI compatible with RHEL but builds it themselves from CentOS Stream. They actually build something. They can actually contribute (and they do). They can innovate. For example, they have continued the x86-64v2 builds even though RHEL has abandoned them. On Alma, you can at least claim to be building a community.
I do not use any of these distros by the way, in case you think I am shilling something.
This brings back good memories.
When I was in college I didn't have my own computer so I relied on the Windows machines from the library.
That's when I discovered Slax and Puppy Linux [1] and all its different variants. Such a beautiful thing to boot into these pendrive distros and discover the world of Linux through them without altering the host system.
Good times.
[1] https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/
This makes me miss the days of Knoppix. Apparently it's less dead than I thought, it did have a new release in April 2021 (and it was distributed on a DVD with certain magazines, like the old days!) http://www.knoppix.org
While last update is from October 2023, I'm still surprised that this project is still going for so long. Remember using Slax almost a decade ago.
Slax brings back fond memories! I used to boot school computers into it to have access to OpenOffice, Firefox, ahem Ophcrack…
I never ran Slackware Linux beyond that but the simplicity of being able to build a custom live USB through their web interface was amazing. I don’t think I’d have gotten as much of a head start with Linux had it not existed.
You can also just literally install most any linux distro to a USB and use it the same way. It likely won't work on every machine, but it will work on most similar machines. I have done so for many years with archlinux
I used it sometimes when I needed a live Linux, and I liked it, because it used to be based in Slackware, and it had KDE as its desktop. Now they added Debian as another base, and that's great. Sadly, they dropped KDE.
There's also Porteus, also a Slackware derivative offering KDE Plasma -- https://www.porteus.org
Slax was and still is a great live distribution. The fact that (at least one of its flavors) is based on Slackware shows that the parent distro (Slackware) isn't that hard to use, something that few people believe. Slackware is in fact very simple in comparison to other distros.
I love the idea of this... but here is what I want - IT SHOULD WORK WITH EVERY HARDWARE PERMUTATION KNOWN TO EXISTENCE. If not... combine your energy with Fedora.
The IBM <> Red Hat <> Test horse which can ditch you at a second's notice like centos? No thanks.
You should invest into a community run or community oriented distros like Arch, Gentoo, Alpine, Linux Mint etc.
More over, each distro has its things. Why should Slax do that?
I do not agree with the parent, however the first part of your objection is not really valid. Red Hat were able to ditch Centos because they owned it. You canbase something independent on RH.
What drives me personally nuts about the CentOS saga is all the “community” hand-waving about creating a bit for bit clone of a distro.
There can be no “community just shipping builds of RHEL code as, by definition, you cannot change anything. That means you cannot contribute. In my view, an Open Source “community” cannot just be people that use things for free. It is supposed to be about collaborating to build things.
At least now we have Alma Linux which strives to be ABI compatible with RHEL but builds it themselves from CentOS Stream. They actually build something. They can actually contribute (and they do). They can innovate. For example, they have continued the x86-64v2 builds even though RHEL has abandoned them. On Alma, you can at least claim to be building a community.
I do not use any of these distros by the way, in case you think I am shilling something.