SliTaz

[Member calciumsodium]

A few years ago, my wife gave me a 62 MB (that’s mega) usb pen drive. I asked her what I can do with such a small drive. She said do something creative. I put it aside at the time. Recently, I have come back to it and wanted to find a use for it. I was searching for an OS that has a smaller footprint than antiX that I can put on the USB drive. I found this SliTaz GNU/Linux OS version 5 RC 4 published in May 2022 that has an iso of 52 MB. So I downloaded it and it booted up on one of my older laptops. It has a nice looking spider background, a nice looking graphical interface with openbox windows manager. I can connect to the internet without having to install drivers on that old laptop. There are several games. I played a nanochess game and lost. There is Midori browser which I can’t seem to launch because of TLS/SSL error/install glibe-networking. There is the TazWeb browser that I can use google. There is a web radio that has French talk and music which I can’t understand. There are many applications for networking, graphics, office, etc, kinda like a mini antiX. Impressive for only 52 MB.

I was able to install elinks and lynx text web browsers. I can install links, but that program does not launch for me on this system. Elinks is very similar to links. After installing the same bookmarks that I have in my antiX systems, I am browsing the internet just like in my antiX systems. I mostly use text browsing. For me, I get more of an experience browsing the web via text. Also, I can get past some of the paywalls. Also on this SliTaz system, I am also using the lynx browser more. I am really digging the color schemes in the lynx browser. At first, it was weird, but I am starting to like it more and more. I figured out how to deal with all the cookie and SSL messages in lynx. I had to learn how to configure the lynx.cfg file. After that learning curve, Iynx is becoming one of my favorite browsers. So I use lynx and elinks as my predominant browsers in slitaz.

A great part about SliTaz is that I can do an iso snapshot of my system that would allow me to automatically connect to the internet upon boot, instead of typing in the password every time after boot. Yes, one can do iso snapshots even on this very tiny system. It was a learning curve for me searching how to do this on their manuals and forum. My latest iso snapshot has elinks, lynx, and gnuchess. It comes in at 56.7 MB. It fits on that tiny 62 MB USB drive. I initially did this experiment on an old Toshiba laptop. Then I booted up the USB containing the slitaz iso on a Dell laptop computer. It booted up and automatically connected to my wifi without having to type in the password. On an antiX iso, it would automatically boot up with the wifi connected only on the same computer. If it is different computer, I would have to manually connect to the wifi and type in the password. I was able to automatically connect to the wifi upon boot with the slitaz usb on four different computers without having to type in the password each time.

Another interesting thing I found is that even as a normal user booted up from slitaz usb live, one can access all the partitions on the hard drive, whether it is linux or windows. I had a hard drive with an antiX partition and a windows partition. As a normal user, I can equally access all contents in both partitions. This is kinda scary. So now, I take out the hard drive when I run slitaz live to prevent myself from accidentally modifying or deleting files on the hard drive.

All in all, for about 50 MB the slitaz OS can do amazing things. If I can overcome the TLS/SSL/install glib-networking error on my system, it would be even more amazing.

I hope this info maybe useful to some members.

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