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nice SUPER lightweight Linux distro as a hacking base


h3%5kr3w

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SliTaz (Super LIght Temporary Autonomous Zone) - Wicked ass linux distro weighing in @ 28mb (full compressed ver.), turns into about 96mb in memory, AND packs a nice light interface (openbox).

It looks great, runs great, is uberfast, and would be a great distro if your looking for a lightweight linux base distro to build your own hacking distro.

The reason why I'm telling you all this is because I checked it out and I REALLY like it. Darren should check it out too. I know about half of you are saying right now, why do I want this when I can just go get backtrack? Well... reason why is compatibility and speed.

Put it to you this way. The reason why I tried it is to run it as a web server on an old trash machine I got off someone (700mhz amd w/128mb, 10gig hdd (scrapped that one and put in my old 40 gig). It actually boots faster on this machine than my Linux Mint install on my regular desktop (2.8 ghz AMD 5600+ 2gig ram, 1Tb WDGreen hdd).

So maybe this will help some of the po-folk white/grey-hats out there that has an old laptop laying around with a wifi card in it.

I don't like puppy linux because they seemed to just want to jam pack as much crap as they could into a tiny distro. This sounds good, but it looks like crap, and I noticed the hardware compatibility of Puppy just isnt that good. (but I aint hatin' on you folks that likes puppy though)

I'm just saying check it out and see what you think. Only real downside is it's mainly a German distro, but that's not much of a problem either because they have an English forum as well.

here's a link and a pic. w00t!

http://slitaz.org/

slitaz2-shot.jpeg

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Funny you say that, I came across SliTaz last night while I was looking for new distros to play with in VMs, I think I was looking for thin client distros at the time, seems very very light.

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it's very nice, but the only thing. I will warn you that there are alot of comforts (administratively) that you have to do by hand in the cli. I found this out with creating users. For a little security by obscurity, I deleted the tux user (but it defaults on sign in as that username so I'm not messing with the settings on it) and created a standard user for myself, which is easy enough by cli, but you have to set all your permissions and create (or copy and paste as I did) the .xinitrc file from an old user or root to the new user directory so that you can log in to openbox.

It's really nice though. And truthfully I like it this way because I can learn the core linux commands through practice, but not start from ROCK bottom like Arch.

btw... the login command doesnt have a set alias by default, so if your in the cli and need to change users, you have to go to /bin to use it. and there is no groups command installed that I know of. And it's not in their repos either but I'm sure you can build from source somewhere.

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*glances at mem usage... 97mb*

Hmm... it's got me beat by a mb... but I don't think you had firefox, conky, and urxvt open when you took that test ;p And personally I hate gnome-panel. Just me though. PyPanel ftw.

Still might have to try this distro out in a VM though.

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just trying it out while writing this reply , seems a nice base O/S that you can build on , an 29Mb is not to be sniffed at.

there seems to be a list of get-(app name) on here.

not tried installing anything not on the list tho, worth a look for custom live cd's or alike i would say.

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*dr0p - that's not gnome panel but openbox for the environment, pcmanfm for the background and icons and lxpanel for the panel.

Oh and btw, 96mb is the full blown live part of the distro. Installed it's running around 81mb. Also this distro is in it's infancy, so I can see it getting more efficient in time. And don't get me wrong, I could probably install Arch and get it even smaller for this old computer mainly because it just has a via integrated video card so no overhead from nvidia or ATI drivers, but for such compatibility right off the distro with no adding drivers, and the fact it is so easily remasterable for a live distro you can shove on a mem card or thumbstick to load very quickly and easily on a notebook, it's definitely good for this purpose.

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