Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog

Free distributions -- ones that contain only free and open source software, and remove proprietary blobs from the kernel -- are a rarity. In fact, the GNU Project lists only nine.

For that reason, I was immediately interested in the announcement of RMS's Mostly Slax, a project dedicated to putting a free distribution on a USB pendrive.

Unfortunately, while focusing on freedom, the project defeats its own purpose, because it doesn't bother to make that freedom very attractive, especially for new users.

The title of the distribution explains its origins: RMS's Mostly Slax is named for Richard M. Stallman, and is based on Slax, one of the oldest and most popular derivatives of Slackware. The distro is currently available as a zipped file that you can use to create a bootable USB pendrive on which you can save files, or as an .ISO image that you can use as a Live CD to explore the distribution. Either choice works without problems, and quickly boots you to a desktop whose default wallpaper shows a herd of gnus.

The choice of Slax

Contributors to RMS's Mostly Slax, of course, have the right to make any development choices they want. However, right from the start, the project seems to have made no effort to make sure that the result is convenient or creates a favorable impression of free software.

In many ways, Slax is an ideal distribution for experienced users. Moreover, like many Slackware derivatives, it is much speedier than major distributions such as Fedora or Ubuntu, which means that users will hardly notice the slightly slower response times of a pendrive.

However, Slax is not exactly the first name that comes to mind if you are asked to recommend a distro for anyone new to free software. In particular, its module manager, differs strikingly from the online repositories of either .RPM or .DEB-based distributions, starting with the fact that you have to download modules before installing them. And, so far, RMS's Mostly Slax contains only a handful of modules, almost of them programming languages.

True, the Slax site includes detailed instructions for building customized versions, but a free distribution like gNewSense would have been not only a more user-friendly choice, but a more developer-friendly choice as well, since most of the work of removing proprietary blobs would have already been done. To say the least, the choice of Slax as a base seems eccentric.

Eccentric Software Choices

Another eccentric choice is the use of KDE 3.5.10 for the desktop. I can understand that the developers would not want to use GNOME, because it contains Mono-based applications, which many regard as unfree, or at least something to regard cautiously. But I know of no similar problem with the KDE 4 series, and Slax's modules do include ones for KDE 4.3.4 -- until earlier this week, a current release.

Moreover, for all that some users stubbornly cling to the KDE 3 series, it has not been the focus of development for two years and reflects a desktop sensibility that is now long out of date. To a modern user, it looks clunky and old-fashioned. Just as importantly, the choice of KDE 3 has a ripple effect, making RMS's Mostly Slax unable to use KOffice 2.0, Amarok 2.2, or many of KDE's other leading programs.

For that matter, where are the other desktop standards, such as OpenOffice.org or The GIMP? According to the announcement, the distro is also supposed to include Icecat, a version of Firefox, but it is also missing.

By excluding such applications, RMS's Mostly Slax miss the chance to showcase the best that free software has to offer, or to give users the most advanced tools available. The software selection also risks conversion problems, since the implementation of Open Document Format in the version of KOffice supplied is not quite identical to that found in applications like AbiWord or OpenOffice.org that users might use elsewhere.

Unnecessary Sacrifices

Is it unfair to criticize RMS's Mostly Slax for its choices? After all, if you are dedicated to free software, shouldn't you be willing to make a few sacrifices?

If necessary, I suspect that few free software supporters would object to some sacrifices. Just by using free software, they cut themselves off from most of the gaming world. Nor are they likely to object to minor hardships, such as RMS's Mostly Slax using a 2.6.27 kernel -- the latest available from the Linux Libre project (http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/rms-mostly-slax). Most will never notice the difference. Similarly, while Adobe Acrobat may be the most fully-featured PDF reader, KPDF is adequate most of the time.

You might even argue that, unless users are prepared to make some sacrifices, a completely free desktop will either be delayed or never arrive. Instead, users will fall back on proprietary freeware where necessary.

However, what I question is the wisdom of asking for unnecessary sacrifices from users. Granted, a pendrive may have limited space, and software has to be wisely selected. Yet other distributions such as Fedora manage the trick without handicapping users or making free software seem out of date. So why can't RMS's Mostly Slax do the same?

I wanted to like RMS's Mostly Slax -- I really did. But I can't. The cause may be worthy, but the implementation imposes too many unnecessary obstacles.

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