SliTaz Forum

1. 

   Slizzard
   

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   Member

   Greetings Ean;
   You wrote...
   Please let me know where "Using the "Create a Live USB" menu option...comes from.
   Also, do you mean I need to do a persistant installation from an existing installation?
   Reply:
   Second thing first: You shold create a persistent Live-USB from within Slitaz - especially if you consider yourself a beginner. The other utilities may or may not get it right. This is exactly the issue I had when I first started using Slitaz and other live distros with persistence.
   First thing second: Once Slitaz is booted, from the "Start Menu" (AKA Applications), choose "System Tools", then choose "Create a Live USB" near the top of the list. This is the partly-GUI-based tool that does part of the command-line tazusb's job, and does it better.
   Another thing: Before you start the "Create..." operation, download the latest desired ISO and have it conveniently nearby (eg on Desktop or in Downloads). You will need to select it from within the "Creator" app. There are two boxes in the "Creator" app that you will need to fill out - one is for the source ISO file - that's what the fresh/current ISO is for - and the other is for the TARGET drive. Make SURE the target drive is correct. I once accidentally re-formatted my C: drive because I got this wrong. Any sda# is your hard drive. USB sticks will appear as sdb# or sdc# (assuming you have only one physical hard drive).
   Fat32 format works fine for the target USB drive. Fat32 also lets you edit startup files, or access your entire HOME directory with your notes etc,, and the boot directory, from Windows if there is a boot problem (more on that below).

   You wrote:
   I don't understand the stuff about .gz files and Abiword not working, etc.
   Reply:
   (1) Ignore the part about Abiword not working, for now!
   (2) About gz files: When Slitaz boots from a FAT32 drive, it has to create a virtual linux file system in memory (Linux doesn't run directly "in" fat32 systems). So the booting procedures create the virtual filesystem in memory, then flesh it out with all the data and executable and configuration files that it needs to run. All that essential stuff is recorded in "squash files" that in Slitaz are lebeled *.gz. These are compressed files, like a ZIP archive, that retain the structure and content of the operating system filesystem. Slitaz rolling comes with 4 such files, called rootfs1.gz, rootfs2.gz, rootfs3.gz, rootfs4.gz. LATER, I can explain why there are four, but for now, just remember that is the DEFAULT condition (OEM) of your operatng system all zipped up. Once Slitaz is booted, it is running in the virtual system, like a RAMdrive in DOS. But like any volatile RAM system, all the changes you make evaporate when you power off. To preserve the changes, the virtual files have to be written to disk, as a file that can be reloaded on next boot, recreating the changed files. Thus, the files persist - though they are killed and then are reincarnated, they are functionally the same. The new squash file is always called rootfs.gz. If rootfs.gz exists, Slitaz will always boot from it, and ignore the other 4 OEM squash files.
   Slitaz does not just save the changed files separately from the original files and add them on the next boot - it saves the whole shebang at each "writefs" execution, as a single (fat32 on disk) file called *** rootfs.gz *** with the whole linux filesystem including system changes inside it. Only the BOOT directory, and your HOME directory and its contents remain outside this file and on disk as themselves, so they can be accessed from other operating systems for backup, referral, or editing.
   The editing function is important - if the squash file gets corrupted, you can delete the faulty one and rename the backup (last good rootfs.gz file will have been backed up as "previous.gz") to rootfs.gz from Windows, and Slitaz will boot again, minus the changes that caused the problem. Slitaz makes these backups automatically whenever you write a new rootfs.gz file. All the boot-up files, syslinux, rootfs.gz etc, are in BOOT.

   You wrote: I tried your suggestion on making the desktop more visible, and this works well.
   Reply: I am glad the font-size tip helped!

   Yet more:
   Other USB-creation utilities do a good job of creating the intial SLITAZ booter to use for installation to HD or USB. But this booter is not a persistent system - some of the utilities will even write it as an iso 9660 filesystem, which is intended for CD-ROMs only, and is read-only. There is no way to do persistence on a read-only system. Whenever I intend to write a new live USB, I like to use the netwoork boot item of the startup menu, which always gives you the most current system.

   I hope this is not all too pedantic - I was a newbie not long ago and know that some of this might be necessary, but some of it will be unnecessary, but I don't know which is which - so excuse me if it seems too much like hand-holding.

   Slizzard

   Posted 1 year ago #
2. 

   Slizzard
   

   offline

   Member

   Ean:
   This post is going off-topic - moderator may want to move it.

   You wrote: I would have thought it important for any OS installation to be straightforward.
   Reply: This is only a priority for commercial systems! Welcome to Linux!
   For many Linux distros, installation is now actually much easier than for Windows, partly because you do not have to go through all the ?is-this-legal? and ?who-tf-are-you? hoops. The last time I installed Win-10 on a refurbished machine took over 90 minutes. The last time I installed Slitaz as a Live-USB with persistence took maybe 10 or 15, including booting up the Slitaz USB and downloading the pristine ISO. Linux Lite is pretty easy, yup. So are all the other mainline Linux distros. Slitaz is very different from the other distros.

   You wrote: Although I've been happily using Linux Lite for over a year as my main OS, as I prefer it to Windows for nearly all tasks, I consider myself as a beginner. I've learned the hard way to use only "beginner's distros".
   Reply: I started using DOS at version 3.3, 30 years ago, and had a lot of help from friends or I could not have learned it. It was a very simple and elegant OS that was easy to learn IF you had some human assistance at the start, were able to unlearn a whole pile of real-world assumptions, and RTFM, as people used to say a lot. But the manual for DOS was very simple and straightforward, and unified.
   Linux is a conglomeration of systems, Linux, GNU, several alternate bootloaders, multiple filesystem formats, myriad desktop environments, and other complications. The information about the system as a whole is scattered all over the place, is hard to find, and is written for geek-heads, not normal humans. My first attempt to use Linux was about 2000(?), when I tried repeatedly, and failed repeatedly and ultimately, to install CALDERA-Linux on a PII. It asked a bazillion cryptic questions that I could not answer, nor, with research, find the answer. Some of those questions I still could not answer. This was at a time when I was moonlighting fixing other peoples' DOS and Win 3.1 machines and doing some Basic programming. So yeah, Linux is different.
   I don't use Windows at all now, and haven't since Vista expired, except for some legacy-related reasons. Occasionally a USB-stik will go sour that Linux cannot easily fix, so I will try the Windows utilities.

   I still consider myself a Linux beginner.

   You wrote: Otherwise, I may have been put off Linux altogether.
   To paraphrase Mark Twain about smoking: Quitting Linux is easy. I've done it a thousand times.

   Slizzard

   Posted 1 year ago #
3. 

   Ean
   

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   Member

   Hi Slizzard,

   Many thanks for your generous help and advice. Will the method for installation you suggest work without extra complications? I've learned that solving one problem can introduce two new ones!

   Abiword works with my installation, but there's an issue with fonts, possibly they're not True Type (except maybe Times New Roman which reproduces correctly in other word processors). Abiword is good for drafts, though. On the subject of packages, Midori and Slitaz browsers don't work with many sites, neither does Pale Moon. Possibly because of website bloat. Firefox, my favourite browser, is fine, but this takes time to harden, (for privacy and security). I'm just commenting here, and don't want to bog you down - I can work round this.

   I take your point about being very careful which drive I install on. So far I've been OK. I also now understand why Slitaz is difficult for persistance re: CD ROMs. The detail is a bit over my head. I'm competent with hardware but learned long ago that programming, like mathematics, is not my thing. Things need to be linear and simple.

   Windows 10 is indeed a handful, but I could have done several installations with the time I've spent on Slitaz. I vaguely recall starting with MS-DOS v2.x, I think. DOS was indeed straightforward, very well documented and worked well. Windows 3.x was awful. In late 2025, when support for W10 is withdrawn, I'll have a couple of Windows 10 installations, with full ISO HDD backups, for occasional offline use only. I don't plan to give up Linux. For one thing I'm very keen on FOSS. I can't offer anything technical, but at least can donate and very good value it is too!

   Ean.

   Posted 1 year ago #
4. 

   Slizzard
   

   offline

   Member

   Ean;

   You wrote:
   Will the method for installation you suggest work without extra complications?
   Answer: I can't promise that! What I recall about the other ways I tried to get persistence was that they did not work as well or did not work at all. There is still an issue with reliably writing the new rootfs.gz file - if you try to do anything else (eg run an app such as Abiword or the file manager) during the minute or two that the file is being written and compressed, the file may be corrupted. SO, close all windows before running "tazusb writefs" from the desktop R-clik menu, and keep your hands off everything while the file is being written. But I assume this precaution applies to however you are currently supporting persistence as well.

   You wrote:
   Abiword works with my installation, but there's an issue with fonts.
   Reply: This may be beyond what I am competent to answer, but I think thats probably just a lack of shared fonts between systems, not an issue with Abiword itself, or with Slitaz. For most word processors, there is an option to embed the fonts in the document, precisely to overcome this lack of shared fonts (font data is normally posessed/stored at the system level, not the doc/file level by default). I can't remember if Abiword offers the option to embed the fonts in the doc itself.
   When a system does not have the same fonts specified by the doc, if they are not embedded it consults an equivalents chart, and displays the document using what it thinks is the nearest font to the one specified. Sometimes you don't even notice any difference, but sometimes the result is not vey close at all, especially if the original doc used an unusual, uncommon, and fancy font. As an example, Arial, which is copyrighted, is often substituted by free *SANS lookalikes when displayed on Linux systems that restrict use of non-free material.
   Embedding the fonts increases the size of the doc file quite a bit.

   Abiword is a useful program, but it is extremely buggy. Most of the bugs will show up when you try to share files between systems, which unfortunately is exactly what it is most useful for. You will get abundant formatting issues if you transfer files between systems/apps. Very simply laid out docs are usually OK.

   You wrote:
   ...Midori and Slitaz browsers don't work...
   Reply: And most other browsers available in the Slitaz repos don't work either. Some won't run at all. This is a long-standing problem in Slitaz. For me, Firefox doesn't even work entirely right. But the way I use Slitaz (as a portable repair system), this is not a fatal flaw. I would be surprised if anybody was using Slitaz as their daily regular system.

   To return to a much earlier question of yours, "How do you pronounce Slitaz?"... I don't know. But it is amusing to think that, although this is a very simple word and you would expect it to be orthographically orthodox, there probably IS NOT a single correct pronunciation, because the devs for this distro are from multiple linguistic traditions (I assume the devs rule supreme on this point, tho not necessarily unanimously). Many IT/dev people only work together remotely and often by text, so they may themselves not have an agreed pronunciation for something that is usually rendered in print. I only speak English fluently and French rather poorly, and the orthodox pronunciations of this word for each of THOSE languages seem different to me. I think that most anglophones would accent or emphasize the first syllable, whereas most francophones would accent the second, though both would keep both vowels short. Germans or Peruvians might assume different default pronunciations - is there any language whose speakers would assume one or both vowels were long? Opinions, anybody? Devs? Maybe its in the FAQs!

   Slizzard

   Posted 1 year ago #
5. 

   Ean
   

   offline

   Member

   Hi Slizzard,

   One thing; if I type: slitaz home= usb at the boot prompt, (with root access set), this is said to provide persistance. For really old PC's presumably you use the 32 bit version. There may be differences between this and the 64 bit version. This distro is not for beginners such as myself, it's for intermediate (or advanced) people such as yourself. For me to take it further will lead to an endless succession of hoops and bugginess, and deepening the hole into which I've dug myself. Really, Slitaz needs to be modernised and many bug fixes applied, but this is a very tall order. I'm prepared to experiment and have tried other lightweight OS's, but Linux Lite has provided me with a practical and reliable live USB with persistance. Thank you for all your input.

   Your comment "Linux is a conglomeration of systems, Linux, GNU, several alternate bootloaders, multiple filesystem formats, myriad desktop environments, and other complications. The information about the system as a whole is scattered all over the place, is hard to find, and is written for geek-heads, not normal humans". This is quite true. I have great respect for geeks; I regard them as clever people who develop the FOSS that I use! By the standards of people I know, I do a bit of geeky stuff myself. It's a pity that there isn't a "Linux Central" type website to advise people on the easiest way into Linux. Then those such as myself can find a user-friendly distro. Those who have the right mindset are free to develop their technical skills with more flexible and challenging distros and maybe become devs.

   Posted 1 year ago #

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