It's pretty solid. The only cons are that some drivers (especially wireless drivers) may not be available, so be prepared to install some yourself.
The other con is the lack of a "major" packaging system (like Debian/Ubuntu DEB, Fedora RPM , etc. binary compat support). I know they have their own, but...
Otherwise, I like it quite a bit - very clean and simple. :) The "light" OS that I currently use though is Puppy Linux (http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm), which may be a bit more user friendly at the cost of a little more resource usage. ISOs are around 90-150 MBs each, and RAM usage is quite low.
EDIT: I should also mention that you should download the Slackware version of Puppy. That's the binary compatibility I was talking about that I like. ;)
SliTaz is nice, but I prefer Arch. It is complicated to set up and maintain. SliTaz while lighter than Ubuntu is in my opinion TOO lite. I mean it could be different and you might love it, but personally I didn't like it.
You could check out Bodhi Linux as well, which is based off of Arch with the very nice Enlightenment. Ubuntu has gotten very bloated over the past few years (well I guess it is meant to be packed with programs for noobs).
SliTaz is OKAY but it is very lite.
Just my two cents.
As was said, drivers were my main problem. Also the package manager was lacking. I preferred managers like yum and apt.
I don't know it is also just a feeling I had. Its just hard to explain. Just one of those feelings that I just didn't like it.
As like Juju said. Plus Arch has an amazing beginner's guide and amazing resources on installation and on pretty much EVERYTHING you want to do.
EDIT:This is a... ehh, tad bit risky. I have doubts that you can take any package and do that, unless I'm wrong and this thing is smarter than I think it is.
Oooh, guess what i found:
http://hg.slitaz.org/tazpkg/raw-file/tip/doc/tazpkg.en.html#convert
EDIT:This is a... ehh, tad bit risky. I have doubts that you can take any package and do that, unless I'm wrong and this thing is smarter than I think it is.
Oooh, guess what i found:
http://hg.slitaz.org/tazpkg/raw-file/tip/doc/tazpkg.en.html#convert
For instance... say you try to convert the meta-package, kubuntu-desktop. Will it download all the dependencies and convert those?
(Although that is indeed an extreme case, many packages require dependencies in order to run. You probably don't want to run around downloading them!)
As everyone has said, SliTaz is a nice light distro if you have a very standard setup. But if you have non-standard drivers, you're going to have a bad time... Wireless is a little bit of a pain to get working and for some reason, x refused to work on my last computer even with the drivers, so everything had to be done from terminal.
The alien tool was written by a Debian developer, who not only understands his project's own dependency requirements, but also other package managers as well.EDIT:This is a... ehh, tad bit risky. I have doubts that you can take any package and do that, unless I'm wrong and this thing is smarter than I think it is.
Oooh, guess what i found:
http://hg.slitaz.org/tazpkg/raw-file/tip/doc/tazpkg.en.html#convert
For instance... say you try to convert the meta-package, kubuntu-desktop. Will it download all the dependencies and convert those?
(Although that is indeed an extreme case, many packages require dependencies in order to run. You probably don't want to run around downloading them!)
Yeah,i guess. However, I do not see any programs right now that i want to install that are not in the slitaz package manager.
Also, I have used the "alien" command in ubuntu to install rpm's before,and it seemed to work fine, so I dont see how this is different.
The alien tool was written by a Debian developer, who not only understands his project's own dependency requirements, but also other package managers as well.EDIT:This is a... ehh, tad bit risky. I have doubts that you can take any package and do that, unless I'm wrong and this thing is smarter than I think it is.
Oooh, guess what i found:
http://hg.slitaz.org/tazpkg/raw-file/tip/doc/tazpkg.en.html#convert
For instance... say you try to convert the meta-package, kubuntu-desktop. Will it download all the dependencies and convert those?
(Although that is indeed an extreme case, many packages require dependencies in order to run. You probably don't want to run around downloading them!)
Yeah,i guess. However, I do not see any programs right now that i want to install that are not in the slitaz package manager.
Also, I have used the "alien" command in ubuntu to install rpm's before,and it seemed to work fine, so I dont see how this is different.
Not saying that the person who wrote that tool is not capable of writing a good tool, but it's kinda unlikely that success will occur. Also, the alien tool's man page does say that this conversion is done with rebuilding the entire source, so... and Ubuntu highly discourages this method of installing packages due to the possibility of dependency problems.
If you'd like to put it to the test, here's a package that you'd might like:
http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/tilp2
Download the DEB that matches your architecture, and then convert and install the package. I'm quite curious as to whether SliTaz can install this guy without a hitch or not. If it does, it will be quite the technological achievement! :)
arch really is probably the best other choice. you can make it as light as you want, and there is plenty of forum support.