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Warning: these images do not seem to boot to a shell prompt, you will have to boot into single user mode or use init=/bin/bash.

About Slackware

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:

Stability: some conservative choices ensure that all the packages included are reliable and well tested
Simplicity: it does not use a complicated setup or complicated tools, everything is easily accessible through a terminal
Size: a basic installation is much much smaller than all of the other mainstream distributions
It just works!

How this image was built

The packages are installed using the installpkg tool in a chroot.
For more details or to re-create the images see the installation scripts (x86 / AMD64)

The Disk Image

This 32-bit image is on an ext3 filesystem and uses just 256MB of disk space when uncompressed.
download-link root_fs (~50MB) MD5 SHA
Boot test log

This 64-bit image is on an ext3 and uses 2GB of disk space when uncompressed.
download-link root_fs (~50MB) MD5 SHA
Boot test log

(last updated on the 2009-01-25)

Keeping it up to date

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/).