Wolvix is a lightweight distro that just reached release candidate stage; in actual fact, there are two releases, Wolvix Cub (243M) and Wolvix Hunter (482M). I downloaded the Hunter ISO and burned it to disk, then took it for a spin on my test machine.
Wolvix uses the XFCE4 desktop environment, with an option to switch to Fluxbox if so desired. Naturally you can add KDE or GNOME if you wish, though that makes little sense in such a minimalist distro.
As a liveCD it runs tremendously fast, and once installed it almost literally flies. And it's not some bare bones install, but I'll get to that in a moment.
If you are new to Linux/open source software, then take a look here. Alternately, you can click on my user name, and you'll find numerous diaries on this very same topic.
As mentioned above, Wolvix Hunter is an excellent liveCD that can be run from ram, from the CD, or installed to your computer's hard drive. After trying out the liveCD, I decided to install it to my hard drive.
The installer is located inside the Wolvix control panel, and there are several choices listed there: Full Install, Frugal Install, Install to USB Key, and GRUB install.
On choosing Full Install, one is greeted with a warning that this an experimental option, and installing from a liveCD is still not a finished product (or words to that effect) and the buyer should beware (again, my description).
The Full Install screen has dropdown menus where one can choose the swap file, the (optional) home directory, the boot partition, the file system, and a box to check whether you want to install GRUB. There is also a button that says 'use Gparted?', which I immediately clicked.
On launching Gparted, a tutorial window opens up, advising you on the various sizes you need to set for the partitions; I kept it open as I unmounted the drive and created them, occasionally checking the helper window.
Once finished in Gparted, I went back to the Full Install window and chose the various places for swap file, home directory, boot partition, and GRUB install, as well as noting the file system I wanted. I then clicked install.
The installation went without a hitch and was finished in around ten minutes. The start up was very fast after installation, from pushing the computer on button to being in the desktop took less than thirty seconds. Quite impressive.
Once in the newly installed system, I went back to the Wolvix Control Panel and added a user (myself), was prompted to add a password and verify it, then changed the root password, the default being 'toor', likely not the most secure of passwords.
Still in the control panel, I set the time zone and adjusted the clock, set up the firewall, and then closed it all down, seeing how the new system would run on the internet.
Firefox is included in the full install, as are all the media codecs for that out of the box experience; Open Office suite, Abiword, Gnumeric, Gnucash, several excellent games I'd never seen before (Xgalaga), wifi connection tools, really too numerous to list. This Hunter comes loaded for bear.
Using the lightweight window manager XFCE4 and only requiring 1.5G ram for the full install (and it's packed with goodies), plus the fact that it's Slackware based with the Gslapt front end package manager (Ubuntu users know Synaptic, this is very similar) and you can use this on virtually any computer made in the last decade or so, provided you have sufficient ram; my guess would be that 256 would do it, though the Wolvix developers or forums could give you more precise information on that score.
The Wolvix Cub ISO is here; the Hunter release is here; and the release announcement is here. An excellent implementation of a user-friendly Slackware based distro, one that truly shines. Well worth the download; test drive it and see if you agree. One additional note: My test machine is a Compaq Presario 2100, ATI Radeon 340M video card, 1G ram, 120G 5400rpm hdd.