As a small (30 MB), quick-to-boot distro, SliTaz is entering a field well-served by the likes of DSL and Puppy Linux. When going up against such heavyweights, SliTaz must offer something truly remarkable to distinguish itself.

When someone asks you to name a small Linux distro, under 100MB, names like Puppy and Damn Small Linux come to mind. Now, the featherweight category has another candidate, a 25MB fighter called Slitaz.

When I came across the oddly named SliTaz I really didn’t know what to expect. Yet another predictable fork of some better known distro which would blaze briefly in the free software firmament, burn out and fall to Earth, spent? Boy, was I ever wrong.

In this week's Distrowatch, I read about a new, small Linux distribution called SliTaz GNU/Linux that packs itself into 25 MB of space, loads and runs quickly -- and entirely into memory with 128 MB of RAM -- and can even run with 16 MB of RAM.

"The SliTaz contributors team are proud to announce the publication of SliTaz GNU/Linux 1.0. This is the first stable release after 2 years of hard work. The system is distributed as a bootable LiveCD of 24.8 MB providing a fully featured desktop environment and a generous selection of multi-use applications. SliTaz GNU/Linux 1.0 uses..."

SliTaz 3.0 is upon us and we decided to take this tiny distribution for a spin and see how well it caters to the minimalist crowd. This distribution weighs in at an incredible 30 meg download, but does it contain the applications one needs to have a functional machine?

Slitaz has grown fat. By whole 5MB. The last time I've tried Slitaz, it was around 25MB. Version 1.0 was an interesting project. Obviously, the minuscule distro could not possibly offer everything fully fledged operating systems normally do, but it still delivered a reasonable compromise.

Today we hit up our lightest of lightweight distros. It fits in 20MB less than Damn Small Linux, when installed uses 65MB of RAM, and boots in less than ten seconds (depending on hardware). Yes. Today we try out Slitaz Cooking.

Emery Fletcher has been exploring small-footprint Linux distributions like Damn Small Linux, SliTaz, and Puppy. Since even small mobile devices have lots of RAM and storage these days, and cloud apps are everywhere, are these small Linuxes still worthwhile?