Slax is the live testimony for Linux-Live, the true pioneer Live-CD groundwork with unparalleled leading technology and vision. There are many nice distros based on them, some are base on Slax, and some directly on Linux-Live.
In the effort to widely spread Linux-Live and allow more and more distros to take advantage of its leading-edge technology, it is necessary to build a core Slax/Linux-Live foundation that all distros can based upon. This fills the gap for distros to build directly on Linux-Live, and easy the burden to build (from Slax) distros that don't use KDE as the default desktop.
It's all about freedom. Slax Mini brings the freedom to build your own Live-CD to the next level. Apart from Gnome and KDE, there are lots of excellent desktop managers that look super and run fast. For example, Xfce, Enlightenment, etc. Moreover, some true Linux geeks don't use desktop managers at all. They prefer plain windows managers like Fluxbox, FvwmII, etc, which are small, stable and super fast, even when accessed remotely.
So far, Slax/Linux-Live is still a one-man show, despite the fact that it is extremely popular and many people are eager to contribute. We see this as the greatest barrier for Slax/Linux-Live to reach the achievements that it should have. Brilliant ideas got burred in the popular forum without being noticed and implemented, because of the limited resource. Brilliant people turned away and built their own castles individually because there is no official channel to contribute back their enhancements.
Currently, the Slax community is only at user level — Slax users actively participate in the Slax forum. We want to raise the community to the next level — to have a community of Slax contributors. Although whether community-driven is a good business models for Open Source projects need some further discussions, we believe that it is good for the one-man-show Slax/Linux-Live, because we have seen many successful cases.
Instead of sit back and wait until it happens, we feel the urge to initiate this contributors' community. Whether it will eventually located somewhere else, whether it will use some version control tools other than sub-version, it is not important for the time being. What's important is we need to get started, sooner than later.
As stated in the vision section, we want to see more collaboration instead of the current stage that every talented people focuses on their own "child".
As stated in the vision section, currently the sad truth is that most Slax/Linux-Live based distros don't contribute their enhancements back to the Slax community. This project, however, its top value is to contribute back all enhancements to Slax/Linux-Live.
The ultimate goal of this project is to build a core Slax/Linux-Live foundation that all distros can based upon. So the most important question to ask before starting to make any modification is, "will the change benefit most of the distros?" E.g., this is not a proper project to add your own language pack.
Since the Slax/Linux-Live have the best modular approach, it is extremely easy to build your own modules. So the goal of this project is not to build a feature rich core as much as possible. Instead, we try to find a common ground for all Slax community distros as much as possible. In other words, the smaller the better. Another meaning is that, please commit changes as small as possible, instead of making big changes. Small changes means that changes can't be logically broken apart any further.
Although Slax and it derived distros have helped many Windows users to get familiar with Linux, this project is not meant for end users who know little about Linux and Slax. The main purpose is to make building a Slax/Linux-Live based Live-CD easy for everyone who determined to create their own version of customized, special purpose Live-CD.
As the first step, we put the slax-build, the tools that Tomas himself used to build Slax 6.04, less the 003-desktop, 004-kdeapps, 005-koffice, and 006-devel directories, into svn, and follow it. Everyone is welcome to contribute their well-thought enhancements.