When comparing System Rescue CD vs Slax, the Slant community recommends System Rescue CD for most people. In the question“What are the must have rescue live systems to have on a USB pendrive?” System Rescue CD is ranked 1st while Slax is ranked 7th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro It's UEFI compatible and often updated
Pro Cross-platform
System Rescue CD can troubleshoot both Windows and Linux systems.
Pro Supports a lot of file systems
System Rescue CD supports quite a lot of different file systems, including network file systems (like NFS).
Pro Persistent changes
Changes you make in the configuration persist if you run from USB.
Pro Pretty fast to boot up
It was considerably fast to turn on when booting from cd.
Pro Modules
Standard tar archives plus some simple shell scripting produces modules that you can load dynamically into the OS for added apps and functionality.
Pro Modern desktop
Pro Small footprint
About 200mb, but with a full KDE4 environment and loads of useful apps.
Cons
Con Went through a bad OS migration
Dropped all useful features when it migrated from Gentoo to Arch. has been mostly useless for a few years now.
Con Not very user friendly
Sometimes graphically-challenged machines will force System Rescue CD into a text-only mode which can be a bit of a challenge to use.
Con Overly complicated HDD/SSD installation
While it has a nice layout Slax's lack of an installer tool like Tinycore's just can't be justified. It seems strange that it comes built in with programs that some users may not want, yet it doesn't have an easy way to install it. Due to its heavier use of RAM, built in software, and lack of an installer its hard to choose it over TC.
Con Works slowly on old computers
Con Infrequent releases
Since Slax is maintained by only one person, releases are not that frequent. So it may take a while to get bug fixes or new features once you start using it.