As you probably noticed, I didn't release any Slax version during the last few years. I was able to put together the preview version of Slax 7, but wasn't able to finalize it since it involves a lot of work, not only on Slax but also this website. My main focus nowadays is my family (I have two kids and a big loan) and I need to work on projects which make me money. I'm used to high life standard, thus I need to earn a lot :)
Is Slax dead? Well, I didn't abandon the project entirely, but it is currently frozen. That means dead for someone. Actually I hate the idea of not being able to continue my work on Slax, but the main question is, is it still needed? There are so many Linux distributions, bigger or small, and the size limit of 200MB is so unimportant nowadays, while there are 16GB flash drives for less than $10.
Is there a chance that Slax will be recovered? Yes of course. But I need to find out the way how to make money with it. It has to be a profitable project, I don't have resources now to work on it for free, even if I would love to. I tried several ways to monetize Slax, web advertisement didn't work, public donations didn't work as well, selling Slax Drive service didn't work too. I had also an idea to let advertisers put own wallpaper to each Slax download, that could maybe work, but I don't have resources to try to bring that to life.
Maybe crowd funding could work out of the box, a brief look at kickstarter.com makes me feel it would be very easy to collect significant sum, which would even let me hire several other people to help me with it. But I am a citizen of Czech Republic and I can't use kickstarter, which is IMHO the only place where to setup crowd funding successfully. Perhaps if there is anybody in USA who I could trust, who would be willing to open a kickstarter project and receive the money on his US bank account through Amazon ... and then send the money to me (this is the most important part) ... :) If you are such a person and you think crowd funding could work through you, mail me!
But if you want to takeover the project, don't email me please, you don't need me for that. I'm not going to give the 'Slax' name to anybody, and you don't need the name anyway. If you want to build a tiny nice Linux Live OS then make one yourself, even based on Slax, but call it by your name. You do not need the Slax brand at all. I am writing this because there were several requests for that already.
for many years ago, even at first version, i was in love with SLAX!
i whant you build a Phoenix Slax, so, what you say about Slax for ARM PI? Raspberry Pi.
you can do it, and i'm sure, from that comes some big donations..
THIS CAN BE A BIG PROJECT !
all the best, and please receive my best regards !
hope to hear for a new ARM Slax distro
Slax comes back is a good news
I hope that Mr Tomas M keeps its size below 200MB ,
In the Western countries, anyone could afford to buy a usb with 16GB
but in our Eastern countries, it is not easy, 10$ is big for most of us
and the price is not 10$, at my city, it is 40$
we still use 512MB usb
I understand and I hope that you find a way to monetize Slax. Since you are overseas, consider taking donations in bitcoin.
Also, I don't see the 200MB limit as important. The reason I like Slax is the ability to run completely from RAM. Similar distros (Puppy, Porteus) just don't seem to work as well.
Best of luck.
Tomas M wrote:
Where can I get raspberryPI? I ordered one few months ago, still didn't receive it.
Farnell opened orders without reservation: I ordered other 4 units (I got already two, one from Farnell itself and one from RS) as business (individuals are still limited to one per order).
Begin with a complete re-write of the Kernel, making it better than Linux and all Unix ports. Put several layers of root users, pipeline encryption at boot. Keep your version of the Kernel open source.
Here's where the money comes in.
Design a VM/emulator hybrid that integrates as part of the OS. This VM will do several things: run windows apps, install a windows backbone like wine, an apple os emulator in the backend, and install and resolve dependencies for all kinds of linux packages, including .rpm, .deb, .tgz, and all others. Make Windows driver support standard; a smart package installer that can parse and install windows drivers is key.
Do not make your platform open source. Charge $20 for it. Kernel is free, but for all your dressing, you keep the rights to it. Anyone can modify it if they pay you royalties on all sales. The free software idea is bullshit. It's given us nighmares like debian, where you can spend ten hours troubleshooting a simple wifi connection while their elitist "support" asstards verbally abuse you for not trying hard enough. the Profit motive will produce a superior linux. We all have families to take care of. "If it does not cost anything, you are the product." Linux has made a few million suckers their product, getting years of kernel development and testing and debugging for free from sucker end users who paid fifty times the price of windows with their troubleshooting time and learning curves. Meanwhile, the shadowy figures behind linux are raking in millions to government contractors for a product that gets billions of dollars worth of debugging support from end users each year. They have brunch with Bill Gates then talk about freedom of choice. ha!
You would basically build an engine that runs on linux and integrates all major O/S and their application types. In a few years you would be buying out both apple and microsoft if you could do the corporate skullduggery with calm ruthlessness.
I would do this if I were a coder. I know how to solve problems, but the problem is finding a team where everyone does not have their own agenda. You have the bux to do something like this with slax.
Tomas M wrote:
As you probably noticed, I didn't release any Slax version during the last few years. I was able to put together the preview version of Slax 7, but wasn't able to finalize it since it involves a lot of work, not only on Slax but also this website. My main focus nowadays is my family (I have two kids and a big loan) and I need to work on projects which make me money. I'm used to high life standard, thus I need to earn a lot :)
Is Slax dead? Well, I didn't abandon the project entirely, but it is currently frozen. That means dead for someone. Actually I hate the idea of not being able to continue my work on Slax, but the main question is, is it still needed? There are so many Linux distributions, bigger or small, and the size limit of 200MB is so unimportant nowadays, while there are 16GB flash drives for less than $10.
Is there a chance that Slax will be recovered? Yes of course. But I need to find out the way how to make money with it. It has to be a profitable project, I don't have resources now to work on it for free, even if I would love to. I tried several ways to monetize Slax, web advertisement didn't work, public donations didn't work as well, selling Slax Drive service didn't work too. I had also an idea to let advertisers put own wallpaper to each Slax download, that could maybe work, but I don't have resources to try to bring that to life.
Maybe crowd funding could work out of the box, a brief look at kickstarter.com makes me feel it would be very easy to collect significant sum, which would even let me hire several other people to help me with it. But I am a citizen of Czech Republic and I can't use kickstarter, which is IMHO the only place where to setup crowd funding successfully. Perhaps if there is anybody in USA who I could trust, who would be willing to open a kickstarter project and receive the money on his US bank account through Amazon ... and then send the money to me (this is the most important part) ... :) If you are such a person and you think crowd funding could work through you, mail me!
But if you want to takeover the project, don't email me please, you don't need me for that. I'm not going to give the 'Slax' name to anybody, and you don't need the name anyway. If you want to build a tiny nice Linux Live OS then make one yourself, even based on Slax, but call it by your name. You do not need the Slax brand at all. I am writing this because there were several requests for that already.
SlaxBank. SlaxTrust Bank. SlaxBank Trust. Slax Bank and Trust.
If we could find a way to charge only a dollar for ATM withdrawals or five dollars a month for automated payee service, or even just borrow at 3 and lend at 6, everyone would be crazy not to give you their money.
Dude! i know how you feel im also houseband and father, im on it because i want to put a better worldwide class operative system in to the market where, every thing where free, and no a profit fountain like windows, mac, blackberry and also android Os that did put in minus the linux concept, right now im reading your last letter, and im interested in help the slax project so i cant help you with domain and hosting backup so tell me what is next, let me tell you something I do undertand your because we are maybe one kind of men, that wish to change the world for a easy and free way, but lamentably as Karl Marx used to say, " we are living in a world where every one depends of each other ", and above all we are family head too, but right we must to dont worry because in gonna help you in all my posibilities, maybe i cant help you with your family because i have mine too, but that dont means that we gonna give you up the project, think about it, we still can make a better world with open source.
Sinceraly your brother and partner Maximilian Samekh from Mexico City maxsamekh@gmail.com
Well, after a long time waiting I lost my interest for waiting future Slax release. I had waited for around 2 years for new release, but Slax has not been changed at all. I'm using Mint 11 for Tomcat development server, and server respond and request time on Mint 11 is faster than the times on Slax. Tomcat's requests and responds time cannot be compared with Slax. Samba 4 installation and configuration is a lot easier than Slax since I can just type "apt-get install samba4", and I don't want to "compile: make and install" all the time when I need to install a software. Slax doesn't have convenient way of software package installation. I also don't want to deal with dependencies. I'm sick of using alien tool to convert package types or compressing package into lzm file to make packages for Slax. Package installation should be easy enough to focus on development rather than dealing with dependencies and installation just for implementing the necessary software. Many Linux distros has easy package installers like yum, apt-get, and pacman installer, and we can always customize the package list by changing the source URL list. I hope future slax (in 10 years or more? or who knows how long we should wait?) has this kind of functionality.
Hi.I've a reasonable good PC that can has 2Gb RAM and a powerful processor that can take on any modern day big distro;yet I have the greatest weakness for tiny nice distros that run in RAM (and the smaller the ram usage the better).I've tried using Puppy and Damn Small Linux, but was put off by the user interfaces.I thanked my lucky stars when I discovered Slax.I fell in love with the clean lines and the very beautiful GUI. Well done. At the same time Im saddened by the fact that you will not be continuing with your work on the Slax since you have to eat.Im actually downloading the ISO as a type this ...
What you did on this distro is astounding.I will use this for the foreseeable future.
God bless you and I wish you financial success in all your endevours.
P/S consider putting up a donation page or something like that for those of us who wish to respect you labour with donations.
You said that little distros like Slax are not so important today. But I think they are still important in Linux community because most of them have old machines which can not run big distros.
I understand your state and I'm very sorry. I hope you will be able contiune your work one day and we will help you. Until that day, please don't abandon the project because Slax is great!
Hello, Tomas. I like slax, but don't know how i can donate. May be other people also did not know it? You like webmoney, liberty reserve or bitcoin?
End slax drive uncompetitive. Many people want remote crypto container with open source client, provides realtime changes.
slax7 is now my fav, i think slax needs a community and a new wallpaper like mint's(3 dimensional). just my opinion.
great work Tomas you should get young persons from your country to assist you, that should speed up
your goals as well. the modulartity concept along with kde4 is what has my attention with slax.
