When comparing Google's Web Starter Kit vs Slax, the Slant community recommends Slax for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux distros that run entirely in RAM?” Slax is ranked 4th while Google's Web Starter Kit is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Slax is:
Changes you make in the configuration persist if you run from USB.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Sass support
Since a lot of web designers these days don't use the plain old CSS, instead they use a CSS pre-processor (like Sass or Less). Thanks to Sass support web designers can easily add GWK to their workflows.
Pro CSS vendor autoprefixing
Starter Kit includes Autoprefixer that takes care of vendor prefixes.
Pro High PageSpeed Insights performance score
Since the base skeleton provided by the Web Starter kit is authored by Google itself, it's pretty much understood that the template is optimized to the max, for performance. If you test a site (on Google PageSpeed Insights) built by the GWK you can be sure that it'll always achieve a very high score.
Pro Responsive
Since most of the websites that are currently being built (or any website that was built after 2012) are responsive, a 'scaffold-ed' website skeleton without any responsiveness would be pretty useless.
Pro Live browser reloading
Helps to build website faster by refreshing the page automatically as you save the source file changes.
Pro Performance optimization
Gulp script includes tools for image optimization, JavaScript & CSS minification & optimization and HTML minification.
Pro Built-in HTTP server
In case you want to try out your shiny new site on your mobile phone or another PC. Just type in the command gulp serve
and load up the provided server address from another device to see how your website looks and performs.
Pro Google-friendly style guide
Pro Includes a gulp build script
If you use the Gulp build system and are familiar with its environment, you can directly use Web Starter Kit's Gulp build script to build your next GWK based project.
Pro BrowserSync for synchronized browser testing
BrowserSync offers a browser live-update solution across multiple devices. And it works with basically every desktop and mobile browser. Even IE7.
Pro Yeoman generator
There's a Yeoman generator for Google's Web Starter Kit available. To install (requires Node, Ruby, Gulp, and Sass):
sudo npm install -g yo generator-web-starter-kit
cd project-root-directory/
yo web-starter-kit
npm install
gulp serve
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 Deprecated
Visitors to the official docs will see a warning: "Warning: Web Starter Kit is no longer supported."
Con Can't be used with Less
The framework CSS is built on Sass, which adds dependencies to the build chain. There's no option to use Less.
Con Rather poor documentation
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.