Salix OS

OK, so here is Salix Xfce 14.2RC1! It's been two months since the beta, which has received a good round of testing by now and we're even closer to getting a final release. All new features are finally in and with any luck, we've found all major bugs and we'll just be able to rename this release to final in about 10 days or so.

So, what's new compared to the last beta release? First of all, we have two new GUI system tools, both developed in-house. The first one, GUEFI, is a graphical boot manager for UEFI systems and therefore is only available on 64-bit installations using UEFI. You can use it to create/delete/edit/rearrange UEFI boot entries and I don't think there is any other distribution out there with anything similar. Then, we have gtkreposetup, which is the GTK counterpart to the console reposetup tool, and which you can use to select your preferred repository mirror.

The installer has been fully localized to several languages by now, thanks to our translators. So, this release can be installed using the installer in English (both US and GB), Dutch, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish (both Spain and Costa-Rica), Swedish and Ukraine. Other translations that were only partially complete were removed at this point, but of course will be included in future releases if they be completed.

There are some things that were also removed compared to the last beta. First of all, the autoinstall option is gone from the installer. I realized nobody was using it. In fact, it has been completely broken in the beta and nobody reported it. Also, lilosetup has been removed from the iso. This tool was written by a member that is not active anymore and has fallen back on updates. Since it is more crucial to the SalixLive releases, I expect it will receive some love before those are released...

Other than that, all software has been updated to newer versions, translations to all Salix tools has been updated and hopefully all bugs found in the beta have been resolved.

So, you can download this release, either the 32-bit or 64-bit isos, using your browser through Sourceforge, or by using your torrent client. Links are:

Salix Xfce 14.2RC1 (32-bit, i586/i686)
(size: 955MB, md5: 0ad525a2aa650956f299c5310f7b509a)
Sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/salix/ ... o/download
torrent: http://people.salixos.org/gapan/iso/sal ... C1.torrent

Salix64 Xfce 14.2RC2 (64-bit, x86_64)
(size: 1012MB, md5: 7285287aece50b2ff60a574717c3ecab)
Sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/salix/ ... o/download
torrent: http://people.salixos.org/gapan/iso/sal ... C2.torrent

Please give these a final round of testing, so we can have a final release soon. Thanks!

EDIT: the 64bit iso has been bumped to 14.2RC2 to hopefully fix a problem with UEFI booting. The 32bit iso stays at RC1, as there is no UEFI support with it anyway.

gapan wrote:OK, so here is Salix Xfce 14.2RC1! It's been two months since the beta, which has received a good round of testing by now and we're even closer to getting a final release. All new features are finally in and with any luck, we've found all major bugs and we'll just be able to rename this release to final in about 10 days or so.
[...]

Thanks, gapan.

And a first note.

The following issue I wanted to report for Salix64 Xfce 14.2beta1, but someone was too fast for me. The problematic behavior also exists in the Salix64 Xfce 14.2RC1, so there is a mention necessary. It is not a significant issue, but is uncomfortable.

When using a DVD-RAM media (with UDF filesystem) a component behaves unexpectedly.

A DVD-RAM media is loaded and a medium icon appears. By clicking on the media icon, the DVD-RAM is mounted. To unmount and eject, the context menu of the media icon is called. There are two relevant menu items. If one click on the menu item "Unmount Volume", remaining data is written to the DVD-RAM and then unmounted the medium. That's perfectly fine.

If one choose the menu item "Eject Volume", then also remaining data is written to the DVD-RAM. The medium is also unmounted, but then will be no spin-down and the tray does not extend. This is bad.

In both cases, the medium is no longer listed in mtab. The media icon remains displayed. If one then clicks on the icon again, the media will be mounted again, the game can start again.

In both cases, the medium may be manually ejected. The media icon is also displayed thereafter.

Perhaps two menu items in future Salix64 Xfce 14.2 are inadvertently assigned the same function, and the function of the ejection was not considered.

On other optical media, such as e.g. CD-R or DVD+R, both menu items work as expected.

On Salix64 Xfce 14.1, only one menu item is present which works as expected. Remaining data will be written on the DVD-RAM, unmounts the medium, executes a spin-down and ejects the medium.

Unfortunately, can not say where exactly the suspected fault lies. Maybe someone can tell how it runs on other current Linux distributions with Xfce?

Thank you Salix Team.
I have a question about the kernel when 14.2 final comes out. Will the kernel stay 4.4.13 or is it going to change to what shipped with Slackware 14.2, the 4.4.14?

lucky9 wrote:Thank you Salix Team.
I have a question about the kernel when 14.2 final comes out. Will the kernel stay 4.4.13 or is it going to change to what shipped with Slackware 14.2, the 4.4.14?

Why do you think the kernel is 4.4.13?

westms wrote:When using a DVD-RAM media (with UDF filesystem) a component behaves unexpectedly.

Wow, that is strange. Unfortunately I don't have the means to test it at all. I don't think I have ever had any DVD-RAM media I think and these days my PCs have no optical drive at all...

Maybe your best bet would be to post a bug report with the Xfce project?

Why do you think the kernel is 4.4.13?

My mistake. I was reading DistroWatch.com and in the table it has linux as 4.4.13. I should've peruse further before posting. If I did I wouldn't have looked like such an idiot.

lucky9 wrote:My mistake. I was reading DistroWatch.com and in the table it has linux as 4.4.13. I should've peruse further before posting. If I did I wouldn't have looked like such an idiot.

Where? I can only see 4.4.14 in the pkglist link:
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distri ... c1#pkglist

That's what I didn't look at, I just looked at the table that compares all past and present versions. This is on the Salix page on DistroWatch.

Found this on youtube...not really a review, I'll call it a demonstration of 14.2 RC1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DosbyaKPfA

I just installed Salix64 Xfce 14.2RC1 (64-bit, x86_64), codec included.
Everything is working well and I have no problems.

Thanks for the work.