AMD Athlon 64 1.60Ghz, 2GB DDR2 and 160GB HDD.
This review is based on the 64bit version of Salix OS.
Salix OS is a Slackware based distribution originating from Europe. Its basis on Slackware distills confidence in the user, being that Slackware is a well established distribution that for a while was one of the most popular, before the rise to power of Ubuntu.
Salix sports the XFCE desktop environment by default.
Installing Salix was a new experience as most of the distributions now-a-days have a graphical installation utility, Salix does not. Despite that it was still simply a matter of press enter where applicable and the installation procedure including the formatting and erasing of the hard disks only took about 10 minutes, and when you boot up for the first time after installation there is no need for any additional configuration as with many systems, making it very easy and fast to install. Salix also has a very fast boot time taking less than 1 minute from power-up to load the login screen then about 5 seconds for the desktop to appear.
Built in WICD network manager makes connecting to a wireless network a breeze and all hardware was automatically detected.
Salix comes with a selection of software including the entire open office suite (including Base and Math, which generally is not included even in Ubuntu), Exaile media player and Transmission bit torrent client, along with a host of other software. The system is easy to configure and does not take long to get used to. Salix looks attractive. To top it off one of my favourite features is the package manager, GSlapt, which supports automatic installations and installs all dependencies as well. The repositories also include downloads of MP3 and Xvid/Divx codecs, something that systems like Mandriva do not have support for.
Conclusion:-
I love Salix! its lightweight, fast and comes with a neat selection of pre-installed apps and to top it off, it looks amazing. It is secure and stable, everything an operating system needs.
Pros:-
Brilliant pre-installed apps and package manager, secure, stable and fast.
Cons:-
The non-graphical installation utility was a bit confusing at first but if in doubt, just press the "enter" key!
Overall Rating - 10/10!
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