Salix Forums

Hi everyone! Here is salix xfce 14.0beta1 release. As usual, there are two iso images, one for the 32bit architecture and one for the 64bit architecture. The list of changes since the alpha1 release is huge, so I won't even bother with details. Most importantly the iso is almost complete now. Everything that should be included in it, is there already and it all should be working fine. Although this is a beta release, it is unlikely important bugs went through, so it should be safe to install for everyone. It should be only small fixes until the final release from now on.

One important thing that might change until the final release, is that there is no java runtime environment included in the installation. We are working on openjre/openjdk packages, which may or may not be included in the final iso releases. They will certainly be part of our package repositories though.

Hundreds of packages have been added to our salix 14.0 repositories by now and more are to come. You can read the repository changelogs for more details.

You might notice that the 32-bit iso is a lot bigger than the 64-bit one. That is because the size of the initrd file in the 32-bit release had grown over 32 MBs, which seems to be a limit for initrd files and resulted to the iso not booting. The initrd is bigger in 32-bits compared to the 64-bit one anyway, since there are modules for two kernels in there, the i486 non-smp kernel and the default i686 smp kernel. So I had to split the initrd to two separate ones, one for the i486 non-smp kernel and one for the i686 smp kernel. That leads to a duplication of about 25 MBs of software in the iso, but it is working with no problems anymore.

These iso images are hybrid images, so you can either burn them on CDs, or use dd to transfer them to a USB stick.

Please report any issues you might have with this release, so we can squash any remaining bugs until the final release.

Salix Xfce 14.0beta1 (i486, 32-bit):
(size: 668 MB, md5: e320afa6e91ffacb0bb12080cc77b48b)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/salix/f ... o/download
torrent: http://salix.enialis.net/i486/14.0/iso/ ... a1.torrent

Salix64 Xfce 14.0beta1 (x86_64, 64-bit):
(size: 627 MB, md5: a984e0dc67af91ac8aadc27da4c50508)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/salix/f ... o/download
torrent: http://salix.enialis.net/x86_64/14.0/is ... a1.torrent

Thanks for testing!

First Approximation: Looks good.

64bit XFCE downloaded, burned with unetbootin, and installed (with auto-partition) with no problems.

Once I remembered how to move the panel from the bottom to the top, my normal configuration went as expected (I know you have no idea what I do there, but what worked in 1337 works in 14 .

nVidia driver 304.43 installed and booted with no problems.

In fact, the only things I can see that are not perfect are:
1) QT VL2 test Utility in Multimedia appears to do nothing.
2) gpa in Accesories fails with "Calling the crypto engine program failed" error

All in all, not bad for a beta

Ok, more observations on SalixOS 14b1-64:

1) I installed using the auto-partition option. On 1337, iirc, this meant (on my system, I really don't know if the partition sizes were hard coded or calculated from a percentage of available hdd space) that / was ~6gb (of which ~2gb was free after installing the os and what apps I installed). On 14b1, however, the auto-partition gave / ~14gb, of which ~11 gb was free. This is quite a difference. Does SalixoOS <really> need that big a root partition now?

2) VLC, unetbootin and gparted were missing from the repo(s). Is this just a matter of "they'll be there for the release", or have they been depreciated from SalixOS 14?

I installed using manual cfdisk during setup.

I arrived to the question about selecting the "/" partition. I pressed [space] (although in this step there was no specific indication about [space] and [return] keys) and then [return] to continue. I was expecting the next step to be related to format the partitions, but the setup went back to the beginning.

So I had to go through all the steps again (except that cfdisk recognized my previous partitioning, so I just quit cfdisk this time) and I arrived again to selecting the "/" partition. This time I pressed [enter] (or [return], as the setup program calls it ) and this time I arrived to the expected step: formatting the partitions.

Now, I don't know if I generated the unnecessary second loop of steps by pressing [space] instead of [enter]; or if the selection was correctly performed by me and the problem is in the setup program itself.

Of course, if my actions were correct, then the second loop is a bug.

Whichever the case, for someone with more partitions and devices to choose from (for whichever mounting points, "/" or any other one), I think that in this step there should be more clear instructions about available keys and their respective resulting actions. In some previous step, this type of instructions were specifically present. For this specific step (selecting mounting points), the keys and their respective resulting actions should be clearer and clarified for the user, again.

And BETA based on stable slack 14.0?

And BETA based on stable slack 14.0?

As usual, of course

++

Thank you very much.

Salix Xfce 14.0beta LiveCD following ?

Downloaded and installed i486 beta over the top of the existing one.

What's with this /run directory? I'm sure there's a good reason for it, but it makes Gmountman a lot less pretty to look at.

Lilosetup recognised my mismatched assortment of kernels and worked flawlessly.

LiloSetup says "NAME=SLACKWARE". Is this the way it should show it? In addition, unless I first make some change in the main window of LiloSetup, the "edit" option is not "selectable" (so to open and edit the configuration file manually). Before changing some setting, the only possibility is to "quit" LiloSetup.

@Adys

That behaviour is normal. I suspect the config file is only generated once everything has been set by the user in the GUI, so till then, there is nothing to edit.

I did wonder about NAME=SLACKWARE, though. I think the same happens with Slackel. However, everything worked just the same.