Slackware was one of the very first Linux distributions. It is ideally suited for use as a UML guest operating system.
It does not have all the bells and whistles of the newer distributions, but it has some
very strong selling points:
The packages are installed using the installpkg
tool, specifying the root path using the -r
switch.
This tool requires a specific version of tar (version 1.13 which is no longer provided in the latest Slackware packages),
so we obtain a copy from an old version and untar both the pkgtools and tar into a temporary directory (Slackware packages
can be manipulated with tar -z
)
For more details, see the full installation log.
This 32-bit image is on a reiserfs filesystem (v3.6) and uses 1.5GB of disk space when uncompressed.
root_fs
(~70MB)
MD5
SHA
Boot test log
This 64-bit image is on an ext3 and uses 2GB of disk space when uncompressed.
root_fs
(~70MB)
MD5
SHA
Boot test log
(last updated on the 2009-01-24)
We have installed the slapt-get
package which allows you to keep the distribution up to date
using a simple automated tool similar to Debian's apt-get:
slapt-get --update
slapt-get --upgrade
Should keep a system up to date.
To find slapt-get and install new packages which are not part of the standard distribution,
visit linuxpackages.net.
Note: the mirror specified in the image has been chosen because of its proximity to our servers,
please ensure that you use an appropriate mirror
(modify /etc/slapt-get/
).