Linux Solutions

Welcome to the tutorial guide. The tutorial will provide a user with guidance and instructions on AliXe (running as a live CD, using it, hard-drive installation and configuration, running entirely from RAM and internalisation and localisation).

It is a good idea to get familiar with AliXe distribution. AliXe is a Slackware derived distribution and it is designed to be small and compact, making it particularly suitable for older hardware. AliXe also offers full support for both French and English despite its small size.

AliXe is designed to be run as a live CD. A user will be happy to hear that the iso image is less than 340MB in size. An optional installer is available for a conventional hard drive installation. AliXe also offers the option to run entirely cached in RAM provided a user has enough memory. AliXe is built with the Linux Live scripts so a frugal install, similar to Damn Small Linux, where the iso image is installed directly to the hard drive and is booted read-only, is also possible. In this way a user is able to effectively run the Live CD with the speed of a conventional hard drive.

The AliXe code base is a heavily modified version of Slax 6rc6, which in turn is based on Slackware 12. Unlike Slax, which uses KDE for the desktop environment, AliXe uses the smaller, lighter, but still powerful Xfce. In order to remain small AliXe offers just one of each type of application it provides, including the desktop. According to a test carried out for AliXe on an old Toshiba Satellite 1805-S204, which has a 1GHz Intel Celeron processor and 512MB of RAM.

How to run AliXe as a Live CD?
When a user is booting into AliXe, he or she will be presented with a menu of three language/locale choices: Français Canada, Français France, and English. The default is Canadian French.
- A user can select the language choice as provided in the menu.
- A second menu offers seven choices: booting the default Xfce desktop, Xfce with Persistent Changes (saved to a users hard drive), Xfce with Copy2ram (run entirely from memory), Xfce in Vesa Mode (useful for skipping X hardware detection), Text Mode, Memtest utility, and going back to the previous menu. A user is also advised that if he/she presses the [Tab] key, then he/she can manually edit any of the options. In this way a user has an opportunity to specify any special kernel parameters or cheatcodes that a hardware may require.
- If a user has a knowledge of cheatcodes then it will be helpful as with the help of cheatcodes, parameters can be passed to control what is or is not loaded when the system boots. Some cheatcodes allow hardware detection to be turned off in part. This is helpful if a users system locks up on a given step. There are other cheatcodes which let a user set the screen resolution or choose non-standard modules to load. An example will increase our knowledge and understanding for this. If a user prefers to change vga=normal to vga=791 to get a 1024×768 framebuffer console. This can be safely ignored on most systems and a user can just hit enter and take the default.
- The way in which AliXe is considered as unusual is because it does not use a display manager at all. By default it runs vconf, a video configuration utility from ZenWalk, starts Xfce, and automatically logs in as root.
- AliXe can correctly detect all of a users’ hardware. Wireless can be correctly configured and the madwifi driver for the Atheros chipset PCMCIA wireless card can be correctly loaded at boot. Please note that if a user wants getting Wifi-radar going requires a users to click on the Preferences button to set the interface to ath0 rather than eth0.
- If the wifi is up and running straightaway then a user should assume that every thing is ok. The removable media, whether a USB stick or a compact flash card in a PCMCIA-CF adapter, is then detected correctly and an icon popped up on the desktop when they were inserted. If a user unmounts and removes the media the icons will disappear.
- In order to keep the iso small printer, drivers are not included in the distro. CUPS is there and the daemon is started by default at boot but without drivers it is of no use. If a user clicks on the CUPS.pdf icon on the default desktop brings up a simple HOW-TO that gives step-by-step instructions for downloading pinter drivers and configuring CUPS.
- A user should note that the proper ACPI module and the Toshiba laptop support module aren’t loaded into the kernel.

How to use AliXe 0.11b?
A user should note that out of the virtual box, AliXe 0.11b gives a user an Xfce 4.4.1 desktop. Office applications include AbiWord 2.4.6, Gnumeric 1.7.10, and Evince 0.9.1. Graphics applications include GIMP 2.2.17, Dia 0.96.1, Inkscape 0.45.1, and GTKam 0.1.14.

Since AliXe comes from Canada the DMCA is not an issue to the developers. If a user clicks on an mp3 in the Thunar file manager, for example, the Beep Media Player 0.9.7 will be brought up together with the necessary support. CD burning is handled by GnomeBaker. MPlayer is installed to play a users video files. There is no quick and easy tool for removing offending codecs to make AliXe DMCA-compliant, nor is there an easy way to add any missing codecs.

Firefox 2.0.0.7 and Thunderbird 2.0.0.6, are included. For instant messaging Pidgin is included, as is XChat for an IRC client. Other network applications include Ctorrent, Transmission, Gwget, and gFTP. For those who might consider AliXe for security work NmapFE is also installed.
A user should note that most smaller live CD distros don’t include a compiler or tools for developers. AliXe includes a full blown gcc, version 4.1.2. Also included are Geany 0.11 and GHex 2.8.2. A user will also find the choice of command line text editor a bit odd: there is no vi, no Emacs, no nano, etc. mcedit is the only choice available.

If a user is looking for gee whiz 3D desktop effects then AliXe is probably not the distribution for him/her. Compiz-fusion is not included. Under the hood AliXe sports a 2.6.21.5 kernel.
AliXe is as user friendly as any Xfce based distro with only one caveat: in order to keep the distro small most of the man pages and help files have been removed from pretty much all the applications.

Hard Drive Installation and Configuration
AliXe 0.11b is the first release of this distro to offer hard drive installation AliXe uses an installer written for Slax, simply called slax2hd.
Downloading version 1.3 provides a single 8kb file: an lzma compressed Slax module. If a user wants to install and run the installer a user needs to be experienced at the command line and hard disk partitioning. A user will also need to configure the system from the command line as well.
- If a user wants to unpack the module then he/she can use following code:
lzm2dir ./slax2hd-1.3-fx.lzm .
This places the installer in executable form in /root. /root resides in RAM. In other wards nothing gets installed n a permanent basis at this point.
- A user can simply use following command in order to run the installer:
cd /root
./slax2hd
- A user will note that a blue screen appears. This screen has a message which describes slax2hd and comes up with a disclaimer warning that running the installer is something a user can do at his/her own risk.
- A user can then click OK or simply press the Enter key. Now the install will let a user know that it will run cfdisk to allow a user to partition the hard drive. Any hard drive partitions that a user has mounted will be automatically unmounted at this point. It is recommended to have a 3GB partition for installation purposes. According to this partition, it is assumed that a user is going to use a single partition for both the OS and data. It is good to /home in a separate partition. This is because that teh installer is primitive at this point and really doesn’t support multiple partitions. This can be dealt with after the installation is complete.
- After partitioning the installer recognises that a user has an existing Linux swap partition and asks a user if he/she wants to use it or not. If a user says yes to it, it will reformat the partition which includes checking for bad blocks.
- After reformatting is being done, the swap partition will be added to /etc/fstab. “OK” is the only possible response at this point. The installer then correctly detects the formatted Linux partitions. A user can then manually enter /dev/hda(x) where (x) is the partition a user will use for installation.
- A user is then given a choice of ext2, ext3, or reiserfs for the filesystem. xfs and jfs are not supported by slax2hd. After a user chooses the filesystem type, a new filesystem is created. At this stage there are no warning messages displayed. For example, there is no “Are you sure?”, no warnings that a user is about to erase the prior contents of the installation partition, and no chance to go back if a mistake is made by a users.
- In the next step, the installer then tells a user that it is going to copy the running system to his/her hard drive. This takes time to process and there is no progress bar displayed.
- After that, the installer asks a user if he/she has just Linux installed or if he/she has Windows and Linux both.
- After a user answers the question asked by the installer, the installer then tells a user to reboot the computer. Please note that AliXe is still running from memory or the CD-ROM drive at this point and in theory a user can continue to work. Once rebooted it becomes obvious that the installer has installed lilo to the MBR of the system. A user has a lilo menu with only one choice: Slax.
- When a user does the boot up, he/she will receive a message with the root password, some common commands, and a command line login prompt. Since no display manager is included with AliXe, as in not even xdm, graphical login simply isn’t an option at this point. Logging in and executing:
vconf && startx
This brings up the Xfce desktop. vconf doesn’t
generate a usable /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for the
system.

- The next stage is to configure the system manually which means that there is no aid of the GUI tools provided with most distributions. An example will make this clear. The only partitions that a users system will know about are the install (root) partition and the swap partition. A user has to manually edit my /etc/fstab file and add the missing partitions and then create the relevant mount points.
- User accounts also have to be created manually. At this state a user can chroot into another distribution root partition to put grub back on to the MBR and manually edit the relevant menu.lst file to add AliXe.
- There is another alternative option available which is to edit the lilo.conf file that slax2hd installed and the reinstalled lilo. Depending on experience, an experienced person will not encounter any problems but a new users will face problems.
- A user will note that the choice of language offered when a user boots to the Live CD is absent in a hard drive install. Whatever language a user was running when AliXe was installed will be the system default.
- A user can switch between English and French simply by manually editing the relevant configuration files, either on a user-by-user or system-wide basis. A user should also note that there is GUI tool for changing languages is offered.
AliXe does not offer security updates or notifications nor does it have it’s own package repository. If a user feels comfortable to carry out the maintenance himself/herself instead of depending on the distributor then keeping the system secure is not a problem since everything is Slackware compatible.

Frugal Install
Frugal can be installed either to hard drive or to a USB stick, by simply using a script written for Slax. This is not directly supported by AliXe. The frugal installer is the standard Slax/Linux-Live make_disk.sh script. Running AliXe as a Live CD but using a writable device in place of an actual CD allows an experienced user to easily add customized or Slax 6 modules to AliXe and also offers very decent performance.
After reboot a user can carry out the usual configuration changes and they are properly retained from boot to boot.
Running Entirely From RAM
A user can run entirely from RAM. If a user noted then he/she will be aware that a copy2ram option was presented when booting the live CD. This does precisely what it implies: it caches the entirety of AliXe in available memory.

Internationalisation and Localisation
Full localization in English or en français is complete and expertly done. If a user works in English, French, or both then a user will feel comfortable and satisfied with AliXe.
For other languages minimal internationalization (i.e.: keyboard support) is there, and adding font sets, dictionaries, and language packs will effectively support the use of a third or fourth language. A user should note that localisation for other languages is not available at all. Also, the translations to actually have the menus, help, etc. in another language are all missing.

If a user followed this tutorial guide then he/she would have learnt about AliXe (running as a live CD, using it, hard-drive installation and configuration, running entirely from RAM and internalisation and localisation).