Recent versions of Slax include a new feature called Slax Drive. This is a cloud storage service by the creator of Slax. The service offers 1GB of online storage space for free — with more available for a price — and integrates with Slax. This is quite a useful feature for a distro like Slax were while booting from a CD / DVD your changes aren't going to be saved by default. This makes it possible for one to do actual work on a live Slax disc and simply store it online to access it from elsewhere. The developer of Slax has even made a version available for Windows which will mount your Slax drive to a Windows drive letter.

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If you are booting Slax off a CD / DVD disc, you can really improve the usability and speed of the distro by using the "Slax Copy to RAM" option which will load the contents of the disc onto the RAM thus removing the performance bottleneck of loading files off a disc.

By default Slax comes with KDE 3.5.10, not the latest KDE 4 and there is no official KDE4 module available. However there this doesn't prevent you from doing much. While the interface is a couple of years old, and not as graphically rich as some of the newer distros, the OS is, as a result, fast and light on resources. Slax will run appreciably even on system over 5 years old with as little as 256MB RAM. With even 512B RAM you should be able to run Slax directly from RAM.

The package selection of the default Slax is minimal, but has enough applications to let you do basic work.  Slax includes Firefox or Konqueror for web browsing, Kopete for IM, KPlayer for multimedia playback, Juk for audio playback, K3b for burning discs, and KOffice for working with document, spreadsheets and presentations. Slax includes Samba, so it should work well with Windows networks.

Slax comes with full support for popular proprietary multimedia formats, and includes Flash Player (albeit an older version) by default. So websites such as YouTube, and Vimeo will work as expected, and you will be able to download / stream music and listen to it. If you prefer you can install VLC or some other media player on it though. By installing codec packs available as modules you can further expand it's multimedia capabilities.

Thanks to its minimal package selection, the whole distribution is a mere 200MB, which leaves you with nearly half a GB of additional storage capacity on a CD to add packages of your choice, and much more if you plan to use it off a pendrive.

Slax is meant to be used as a live OS, and it is for this reason that it supports no mechanism of installation to your hard drive. While it is certainly possible to do so using tools such as UNetbootin, there is no official support for such a scenario.

If you are looking specifically for a distro to use as a live OS, look no further. Slax is the perfect OS to carry around in your pocket. Despite its small size, it packs quite a punch and even the default installation should be sufficient for surfing the internet, playing back media, and working on documents. It's modularity and design make it secure from damage by the user, despite running on the root account, and make it possible for you to download a customized version of the distro straight from the website. It has one of the simplest mechanisms for installing removing applications. We would hightly recommend Slax as a live disto for all users. If you can get over the dated interface, this distros will impress you with its stability and power.

Slax Booting	KDE starting on Slax	The KDE 3.5 control center in Slax

Browsing the system	Changing desktop settings

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