Lazy Slacker

Well, I'm slacking.  In more ways than one.

Rather than belabor the fact that work is making me a blog slacker, let me focus on my other bit of Slack.  I finally got round to installing Salix on my long-suffering T410s.

For whatever reason, I've been rather obsessed with fiddling with something Slackware-ish.  However, Slackware proper is a bit on the intimidating side for a less-than-dedicated yutz like myself.  So I had to work my way up.  From baby steps, like playing with Puppy Slacko (yeah, I know it's not really Slack, but it uses the repositories, so don't you start nuthin'), to dipping my foot in with a copy of Slax on a USB (even with it's kind of toyish, but clever, package system)...

I didn't have the T410s with me on the road, so I just waited till I got back home for a weekend.  (I did have the X60s, still proudly running Saluki, in all its cool glory, and backed up by a case-full of Puppy USBs.)  I used the already installed Kubuntu (which just never really tripped my trigger) to do the download and burn.

Being slightly gun shy, I only downloaded the 32-bit Xfce version.  I'm still a knuckle-dragging .ISO burner, and I just didn't want to waste a DVD-R on a system that might not work properly with my hardware.  (And, I also had some delusions about testing it on a lower spec machine later.)

However...  it worked perfectly.  Hardware was all recognized out of the box.  Trackpad, sound, everything.  Even scrolling.  There was a slight blip when setting up the wifi, but a reboot took care of that.  I have even been impressed with the included version of Midori, a web browser that has never been on my favorites list.  I may actually eschew installing Firefox, at least for a bit.

The only thing I have not tried doing is hibernating the system, which can be a pain in some version of Puppy.  (Later Thinkpads tend to sometimes be a bit finicky about sleeping.)  So, we shall see...  (Does Salix have a suspend feature?  Would you believe, I haven't even looked...)

So, all in all, if you're in the market for a lightweight implementation of Slackware, which has some lazy-slacker features (Dependency checking!  Yes!), Salix might be the thing for you.  I've obviously only used it a very short time, but I have to say I do like it.  It might compete with Crunchbang as a clean, daily work version of Linux for me.  I might even take this out on the road with me, and see how it goes.

Slackware for the Lazy Slacker.  I can dig it.