TinyFlux (aka PcFluxboxOS) is a remastering of PcLinuxOS done in much the same way as TinyMe, but with Fluxbox as the window manager instead of KDE.  It's the new kid on the block in an ever increasingly crowded world of Linux distributions.  Yet there's a familiarity to it that will make you feel right at home.  So let's dive into this new distribution and see what it offers you.

Right off the bat when you boot the distribution you are greeted by the PcLinuxOS boot screen.  It's slightly tailored for TinyFlux, but otherwise it's the same screen.  Initial bootup of the live cd is identical to how PcLinuxOS boots up, but with a few slight changes.  Going through this loading period however is a test of patience as it seems to take an inordinate amount of time to complete.  But once it's up to the login screen, it's pretty snappy.  One thing that may stymie some users is the need to login.  I say this because you have to go out to the TinyFlux website to find the login info.  But since this is really designed with the experienced user in mind, that's not a big deal.  A bit annoying for certain and unnecessary, but it's not something that will be earth shattering.

Once you're on the desktop, using the livecd is easy.  Everything you'd expect from Fluxbox is there, plus more.  And yet the window manager keeps it's simplicity, snappiness and ease of use.  Installing TinyFlux is also very easy.  Just right click, select setup, and then select "install to hard drive."  It's that easy.  If you're just looking to use it as a live cd, the tools included in the livecd are the same as those available to you once it is installed on the hard drive.

Since TinyFlux is derived from PcLinuxOS, a number of the original tools have come over as well, including the Draklive installer and the PcLinuxOS hardware control panel.  Installing TinyFlux only takes a couple of minutes and you're ready to go.  The first boot after completing the install was very quick and painless.  That's not to say I didn't run into a few quirks, because I did.  But those aside, it went pretty well.

The installed desktop is identical in every way to the live environment, so getting started is easy.  The desktop itself seems plain at first until you get to exploring and realize that it uses the old school way of doing eye candy, with highly contrasting lines, shapes, two tone bars and colors.  It's certainly not the kind of eye candy you've come to expect from most modern day window managers, but it will make the more seasoned user feel right at home, and almost nostalgic in some ways without actually being arcane.  There is some included basic 3d eye candy you can do via the system themes.  The selection of themes is quite interesting and you may want to explore them a bit to find one you really like.

Another interesting thing about TinyFlux is the way it does windows.  It does them in the old BeOS tab on title bar style.  A little disorienting if you're not used to that, but nothing show stopping.  Now as for applications, TinyFlux includes two browsers, Netscape (now discontinued) and Dillo, which is a very basic, low resource web browser somewhat reminiscent of the classic Mosaic browser.  Email is handled via Sylpheed, which itself is simple, but powerful enough to do everything you need.  There's also a nice selection of included editors, a beautiful, yet simple default terminal program (there are others too), Abiword for word processing, some basic graphics and sound tools, your typical cache of X-utilities, some well known XFCE file tools such as Thunar, as well monitoring and setup tools to help you make the most of your system.  

It's everything you'd expect from Fluxbox combined with some nice extras from PcLinuxOS, including programs you've come to expect.  Synaptic is present and accounted for, as well as the PcLinuxOS control center (as was mentioned before).  You can even customize your install and then remaster your own livecd for use wherever you want to go.  As far as hardware support, it did pretty good with that overall.  It detected everything correctly, save for the resolution on my card, and got me up and running immediately.  Fixing the resolution was easy, and I suspect that this "bug" is more a feature since it never asked what resolution I wanted my screen to be.  So I suspect it sets it to 1024x768 and then leaves it to you to adjust from there.

Audio management was an interesting thing to work with.  Not that there were any problems, but you might have to tinker with it a bit to understand it first.  Overall though, TinyFlux is a minimalists dream.  There's still something that doesn't feel complete on it yet, and I can't put my finger on what (it may just be my over familiarity with KDE causing this), but I wouldn't let that stop you.  If you're a new user, I suggest first getting your feet wet in PcLinuxOS or another Linux distro.  But if you're a more seasoned user looking for a minimalistic distribution that gives you the best of a bigger distro, with the light weight power of a minimal distro, then I'd suggest this to you.

TinyFlux has earned my respect, and while I can't suggest it to new users, I can suggest it to the more seasoned user out there without hesitation.  It should also be good to use on all those computers that have low hardware specs, or anything that is older and has seen greener pastures.  So give it a spin.  You can find screenshots of TinyFlux here (Sorry, don't have any of my own.  gah, I swear screenshot programs hate me) and full information here at their homepage.