was one of the earliest
Linux Distribution s, and is the oldest distribution still being maintained. It was created by
Patrick Volkerding of ''Slackware Linux, Inc''. It has a policy of incorporating only stable releases of applications, standing mainly for stability and ease of use. For a good while, other Linux distributions that came after it were in fact evaluated for their "Slackware compatibility."
with pipe]]
The first Slackware release, 1.00, was on , founder and lead developer. It was based on the
SLS Linux distribution and supplied as 3½"
Floppy Disk images that were available by anonymous
FTP . Slackware is the oldest maintained distribution to date.
The name "Slackware" stems from the term "Slack," as defined by the
Church Of The SubGenius .
In the early releases of Slackware, the distribution had three user accounts, "satan," "gonzo" and "snake." These were provided as examples, but were removed from later releases as they were a potential
Security Risk .
In
1999 , Slackware's release numbers saw a large increment from 4 to 7. This was explained by Patrick Volkerding
{Link without Title} as a marketing effort to show that Slackware was as up-to-date as other Linux distributions, many of which had release numbers of 6 at the time.
In
2004 , Patrick Volkerding became seriously ill and the future development of Slackware became uncertain. He has since recovered and the development of Slackware has continued.
In
2005 , the
GNOME desktop environment was removed from the pending future release, and turned over to community support and distribution. The removal of GNOME was seen by some in the Linux community as significant because the desktop environment is found in many Linux distributions. In lieu of this, several community-based projects have filled the GNOME void in Slackware, by offering
Complete GNOME Distributions For Slackware .
Throughout Slackware's history, there have been distributions and
LiveCD s based upon Slackware. Some popular distributions derived from Slackware include
SUSE ,
College Linux ,
SLAX , and
VectorLinux .
Slackware is primarily developed for the
{Link without Title} architectures.
Slackware's latest stable x86 release is 10.2 (as of
September 14 ,
2005 ), which includes support for
ALSA ,
GCC 3.3.6 (with 3.4.4 as an alternative in /testing), Linux
Kernel 2.4.31 (with Linux 2.6.13 as an alternate choice in /testing),
KDE 3.4.2, and all the usual utilities.
There is also a testing / developmental version of Slackware called '-current' that can be used for a more
Bleeding Edge configuration.
ZipSlack is a boiled-down edition of the Slackware Linux distribution originally designed to fit on a 100
MB Zip Disk . It is currently distributed as a
Zip -compressed archive containing a ready-to-use, minimal Slackware Linux system. It lacks
X Window functionality (which can be added if sufficient disk space is available) while making available basic networking and most of the compilers typically included in the main Slackware distribution. It has traditionally been using the
FAT/FAT32 file system via
UMSDOS giving it the advantage of an easy installation on a
DOS or
Windows 3.x /
9x machine without having to repartition the hard drive. This is particularly useful for a quick and low-risk Slackware Linux tryout, or as a rescue Linux system when debugging an unbootable Linux partition. ZipSlack boots only from a genuine DOS mode and is therefore incompatible with typical
Windows NT /
2k /
XP configurations.
KISS , which stands for ''"Keep it Simple, Stupid,"'' is a concept that explains a lot of design choices in Slackware. In this context, 'simple' refers to the viewpoint of system design, rather than ease of use. This is the reason there are so few
GUI tools to configure the system. GUI tools are (as the theory goes) more complex, and are therefore more prone to have problems than simple command line tools. The overall result of this principle is that Slackware is fast and stable, at the cost of user-friendliness. Critics generally say that this makes things too time-consuming and difficult to learn. Advocates say that the flexibility and transparency as well as the experience gained from the process more than make up for it.
Slackware uses
BSD style
Init scripts, while most other Linux distros use
System V style init scripts. Basically, with System V style each runlevel is given a subdirectory for init scripts, whereas BSD style gives a single init script to each runlevel. BSD style advocates say that it is better because with this system it is much easier to find, read, edit, and maintain the scripts. System V advocates say that the System V structure for the scripts makes them more powerful and flexible.
It is worth noting that System V init
{Link without Title} compatibility has been incorporated into Slackware, starting with version 7.0.
Slackware employs a minimalist approach to
Package Management . Its package management system can install, upgrade, and remove packages as easily as other distributions. But it makes no attempt to track or manage what are referred to as "dependencies" (i.e. ensuring that the system has all the supporting system libraries and programs that the new package "expects" to be present on the system). If required prerequisite(s) are missing, there may be no indication of this until a program is executed.
The packages are
Gzip ped
Tarball s whose filenames end with
.tgz. They are constructed such that, when extracted while in the root directory, their files go to their installed locations. It is therefore possible (if inadvisable) to install packages without Slackware's package tools, using only tar, making sure to run the doinst.sh script, if one was included in the package.
In contrast, Red Hat 's RPM s are CPIO archives, and Debian 's .deb s are Ar archives. In addition they contain detailed dependency information and their package management utilities can use it to find and install the prerequisites.
Slackware's approach to the problem seems to be well accepted by its often technically adept user base.
While Slackware itself does not incorporate tools to resolve dependencies for the user by automatically downloading and installing them, some 3rd-party software tools exist that can provide this function similar to the way APT does for Debian GNU/Linux.
Some of these tools determine dependencies by analyzing installed packages, determining what libraries are needed, and then discovering what packages are available that provide them. This automatic process is time-consuming, and more primitive than APT's hand-tuned method. However, it generally produces satisfactory results.
Slackware 9.1 included Swaret as an extra on its second CD, but did not install it by default. Swaret was removed from the distribution as of Slackware 10.0 but is still available as a 3rd party package.
Slackpkg is included in /extra starting with Slackware 9.1.
Slapt-get does not provide dependency resolution for packages included within the Slackware distribution. It does, however, provide a framework for dependency resolution in Slackware compatible packages similar in fashion to the hand-tuned method APT utilizes. Several package sources and Slackware based distributions take advantage of this functionality.
Stratdate also does not provide dependency checking. Rather, it allows users to easily use rsync to download the Slackware -current tree for use on their computers. As an extra feature, it is able to upgrade these packages using official Slackware tools and by using officially mandated upgrade methods for a safe upgrade.
Slackware is the topic of discussion on many dedicated channels ''#slackware@irc.oftc.net'' and ''##slackware@chat.freenode.net'' .
A repository of user maintained, third-party Slackware packages are provided by linuxpackages.net , which include more recent versions of of some software, and some software that are not released in any form by the Slackware maintainers. It is also possible to obtain these packages using third-party package-management software, including Swaret and Slapt-get .
Freerock GNOME, GWARE and Dropline GNOME are projects intended to offer Slackware packages for GNOME . These projects exist because Slackware official does not include GNOME , but a large number of users would prefer to have GNOME installed without having to go through the lengthy process of compiling it from source code.
- Austrumi Linux - A business card size (50MB) bootable Live CD Linux distribution.
- DARKSTAR Linux - Aims to be a desktop, gaming, and multimedia system for novice users.
- DeepStyle Linux - A distribution with complete Ukrainian localization
- GoblinX - A live CD with standardized themes targeted at novice users.
- Klax - A live CD based on SLAX that features KDE 3.4 RC1.
- Mutagenix - A suite of Live CDs .
- Pocketlinux - Another lightweight Slackware-based distro from Germany.
- RUNT - The ResNet USB Network Tester. Runs from a USB Keydrive .
- [http://www.sysdev.org/site/ SlakbootEBS] - An Embedded Slackware SDK designed for ease of use.
- Slackintosh - An unofficial port of Slackware to the PPC architecture.
- Slamd64 - An unofficial port of Slackware to the X86-64 architecture.
- SLAX - A Live CD that uses KDE . It can also be stored on a USB Keydrive .
- Stux - A Live CD that has a feature to remember configuration between use.
- [http://topologi-linux.sourceforge.net/ TopologiLinux] - Topologilinux runs within an existing Windows system.
- Truva Linux - A Turkish Slackware-based distro.
- Ultima Linux - A lightweight distro based on Slackware (maintained by Martin Ultima ).
- Lorma Linux - A Samba file and print server based on Slackware 10.1.
- Tukaani Linux - A Slackware based distro with improved pkgtools and LZMA compressed packages (.tlz).
- Vector Linux - A distribution aimed at usability and speed.
- Zenwalk Linux (formerly MiniSlack) - Another lightweight distribution.
- Syn-3 business server - A Dutch ready-to-use Business installation, based on Slackware.
- lg3d Live-CD - A SLAX-based Live-CD demo of Project Looking Glass .
