Adventures in Sidux

[oldos2er]

I burned a LiveCD of sidux-2008-04-pontos-xfce-amd64-200812230009.iso, booted from it, ran md5sum check (all good), and quickly--I mean, FAST, this was no doubt the fastest-booting LiveCD I've ever seen, and I've tried quite a few--the xfce desktop is up and running, ready to go. Sweet. Fire up the web browser, tried www.google.com, oops, it appears there's no network (I have broadband wired ethernet). Try a few different sites with the same result. ifconfig only shows 'lo', no 'eth0' as there should be. That's ok, I think, I'll go ahead and install sidux on /dev/sda1, and worry about the network later.

Installer is very nice; it's easy to move back a tab or two if you overlooked something. Set the partitioner to install / to /dev/sda1 , then comes Grub config. Let me just say that I use /dev/sda1 as a sandbox to install various Linux flavors as the mood strikes me. I never allow them to install Grub or lilo, instead manually editing /boot/grub/menu.lst on my Ubuntu partition (/dev/sdb5) to whatever it needs to be.

But I can't seem to get past the Grub screen. There doesn't appear to be an option to install sidux without a bootloader, at least that I can find. Boot Ubuntu, google "install sidux without grub," but I can't find any info. Try a few other searches, but no joy. I'm disappointed. I don't think I've ever seen this option NOT available.

Sidux is SO fast to run, even from a LiveCD, that I'm tempted to install it anyway and allow its Grub to do whatever it needs, and hope that I can figure out the network failure later (I can't recall a LiveCD distro that hasn't seen my network). Yes, I know I can confine Grub to /dev/sda1 and chainload it, but I'm old and stuck in my ways.

It's so freaking FAST!

[SomeGuyDude]

I'm noticing a huge bump in Sidux's popularity lately. If you decide to install it, update the thread. It's an interesting distro, definitely one I've been periodically peeping.

[oldos2er]

I'm downloading the kde-lite-amd64 version now, to see how it works out.

[RedSquirrel]

... Yes, I know I can confine Grub to /dev/sda1 and chainload it, but I'm old and stuck in my ways.

I was about to suggest chainloading. I'm glad I read right to the end of your post!

Just out of curiosity, do you have any USB storage devices? Any trouble accesssing those from the sidux LiveCD? I recently tried out the sysresccd and it's quite good, but it didn't like my USB stick for whatever reason.

It's interesting that after months of little-to-no comments about sidux, we see two threads about sidux in a matter of hours.

[zmjjmz]

I use sidux on my old Gateway (256MB RAM, 700MHz PIII). Even with Xfce it flies.
I can only imagine how fast it would be on a modern computer.

[Sorivenul]

It's been almost a month?!? How did I miss this latest sidux release?

Time to go download.

[oldos2er]

"do you have any USB storage devices?"

I'll try one out tomorrow.

[Frak]

I've always been a sucker for Sidux. It has to be one of the fastest, bleeding edge distros I've used that was also easy to setup.

[snowpine]

Networking in Sidux is handled by a very slick little application called Ceni (invoke it from the command line or from the Network applications menu). It does not auto-connect in the live CD as far as I know.

Once installed, you can use a different network manager if you like.

I don't know anything about the Grub issue, sorry.

[oldos2er]

Networking in Sidux is handled by a very slick little application called Ceni (invoke it from the command line or from the Network applications menu). It does not auto-connect in the live CD as far as I know.

Once installed, you can use a different network manager if you like.

I don't know anything about the Grub issue, sorry.

Ah, thank you for that.

I tried the 'kde-lite' version; it wasn't quite as fast as the xfce one, but still snappy. Sorry I haven't checked out the USB issue yet.