It’s been a long time overdue, where helping to keep afloat the oldest continues Linux distro is now super easy to do!

Hi folks, Slackware founder Patrick Volkerding here. Welcome to the official page supporting the Slackware Linux Project. Slackware was founded in 1993 and made its first public releases that same year, making it the longest active Linux distribution project.

Today there are many Linux distributions available, but I’ve remained dedicated to this project as I believe it still holds an important place in the Linux ecosystem. Slackware is free, open source software that gives you everything you need to recompile the entire operating system and make any changes you like. The package system is constructed from shell scripts using standard utilities, and easily modified scripts are used throughout so that users may customize their operating system without having to recompile anything. Included software is changed very little (usually not at all) from the way the upstream developers intended. Einstein once said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” — and when it comes to an operating system, trying to make things “easy” does not always achieve that goal. Anyone who has ever struggled with a package dependency system that doesn’t like the replacement of a system component knows what I’m talking about here. Slackware users know that once you’ve learned how to use the system, it’s easier to use than something that tries to put a GUI setup tool in front of the underlying text files that actually configure the system. And they know that Slackware can be trusted not to constantly change the way things work, so that your investment in learning Slackware lasts longer than it would with a system that’s a moving target. Slackware still builds upon a foundation of the latest development tools, libraries, and applications, and is supported by a vibrant user/developer community that welcomes new users and provides well-tested build scripts for nearly any software you may require.

Your support is greatly appreciated, and will make it possible for me to continue to maintain this project. Cheers!

For me, Slackware holds a special place as just as soon as SLS became a thing it quickly fell into disrepair and rot. The final straw was trying to bootstrap that new fangled ELF thing (it’s almost impossible to find any talk of that COFF thing) and it was just an incredible amount of work. At that point just getting Slackware on a shovelware CD-ROM set was just nothing short of incredible. And it was obvious at the time of ELF that the whole ‘I can’t xyz with little to no effort, therefore dump that distro and try another one’ was born. And Linux never recovered. Look no further at the insane cruft and required infrastructure for Docker to just load an application.

With that said when building a lot of crap from source it’s sometimes nice to have something that’ll just get out of the way, and Slackware does a reasonable job of that. Although last time I really fought with Slackware 13.37 it really didn’t go so well. But at the same time I am willing to make monetary support to ensure the future of Slackware.

The project currently stands at 230 supporters. Which is pretty good, as when it comes to supporting things, few will actually put their money into it, so hopefully this will allow Slackware to continue to exist, and maybe even flourish. I for one find this anti systemd distro important for the sake of software diversity in the ‘me too Debian’ sea of clones out there. Just as supporting OpenBSD is important in the standpoint of security.

You too can support Patrick over on patreon.com.

So I thought I’d take this time to instead install SLS 0.98-1 on Qemu.

Now this was the first version of Linux that I actually started to use.  The 0.11 stuff was really a pain to install Minix then copy over enough linux to get it working.  Instead SLS gave us a more usable distro to be installed on a machine with nothing.  And thanks to cd.textfiles.com locating a download set was trivial.

Back in late 1992 I downloaded the zip files from CCUG at a blistering 2400 baud.  I remember it took a week to get the A, B and C series.  And I had to get a new box of 5 1/4″ High Density diskettes for the install (and another two for my MS-DOS / Windows 3.1 backup).

And just as back then, these zip files are missing files.  INSTALL.END is missing from the A & B sets, which confuses the installer.  The kernel source is linked to /usr1 which by default doesn’t exist and will cause that part to fail unless you use a virtual terminal (alt+f2) to remove /root/usr/src/linux so the installer will create the path itself after the installation of the A set.

SLS 0.98-1

Once it’s installed, it is pretty bare.  vi, more, less, grep, and make are not in the install set, so it’s kind of difficult to move around.  Emacs is there if you want it.  As ultra primitive as this set is, it does install on an empty machine, which for the time was a big accomplishment.

One cool feature of this installset is that you aren’t tied to Minix’s filesystem, but you can use the new and exciting extfs, or Extended File system.

While the default kernel doesn’t see my emulated ne2000, as at this point the only supported NIC is the Western Digital 8003.

wd8003

As mentioned in we.c it was heavily based on the 386bsd code, although Linux used it’s own TCP/IP implementation, and not importing the Net/1 code.

I would imagine there are patches out there that’ll  no doubt add in NE2000 support.

Also included was a very primative dosemu version 0.3, that can sort of run some MS-DOS programs.

DOSEMU 0.3

More complicated stuff like Qbasic will crash it out.  Although with a bit of work I did get MS-DOS 5 to boot from it’s “virtual hard disk”.  It really is more so amazing it works as well as it does at this point.

For anyone feeling crazy, here is my installed disk image, and here is the ‘fixed’ install diskettes.

At the time the closest one could hope in terms of a personal Unix was SCO Xenix, which with the developer packages was prohibitively expensive, or Coherent. Coherent was a clean room re-implementation of Unix version 7 ( http://www.vaxenrule.com/sls%201.05.zip.torrent ).

Iâ€m going to use Qemu, again because of itâ€s cross platform nature, and itâ€s ability to emulate the NE2000. One can only hope one day that VMWare or Virtual PC would allow some kind of interface for us to ‘hack†emulated hardware into their infrastructure…..

Anyways first letâ€s create a 200mb disk

Qemu-image create –f qcow sls.disk 200M

Donâ€t laugh, 200mb back then was a ‘big dealâ€â€¦ Really. Mine was SCSI, and probably weighed some 7lb.

Unzip your sls distro somewhere accessible from your Qemu tree. Iâ€m just going to stuff mine under a sls directory. During the install we will need a boot disk, simply copy any one of the files to ‘bootâ€. Weâ€ll touch on it later. To boot from the floppy Iâ€m going to issue:

qemu -L . -hda sls\sls.disk -m16 -net nic -net user -fda sls\a1.3 -boot a

At the LILO prompt simply press enter. Then youâ€ll be informed
Press to see SVGA-modes available, to continue….

Press space. Early Linux kernels had this annoying ‘feature†compiled in.. I know, I think Iâ€m the only person that doesnâ€t like custom fonts, nor do I like directory colors.

At the login prompt, login as root then run the fdisk command. The keystrokes for creating a primary Linux partition is as follows:
n
p
1
1
400

Now we are going to make a smallish swap partition.
n
p
2
401
406

Now we need to change its type to swap.
t
2
82

Itâ€s just a byte flag, but each operating system selects a flag to identify itself to others, a marker of what is where. Before emulation on dual boot systems this was a “big deal”… However now dedicating a virtual machine to an entire OS takes out the complexity that plagued so many users so long ago….

Letâ€s save the changes type typing in ‘wâ€.

We are then told to reboot the system. Type in ‘sync†a few times, then close qemu & restart it with the same flags.

Now we can login as ‘installâ€. We can use the color screen, so enter ‘yâ€. We are going to do the brave thing, and use floppy disk images. Thatâ€s option 1. The floppy images are 3 ½” so thatâ€s option #2.

Now we need to identify the root & swap partitions. Select #1, then type in /dev/hda1. It will want to format it, so let it. Next select #2 for the swap, and type in /dev/hda2 .
Now we can select #7 to commence installation.

To get the full experience we are going to install the full thing… 100MB of it.. Option #4. We donâ€t want to be prompted we simply want everything that SLS has to offer, so answer ‘nâ€.

You will be prompted for a2-a4 Donâ€t forget in Qemu itâ€s ctrl-alt-2 for the runtime config, and you just issue:

change fda sls\a2

and so on for the rest of the disks. Then ctrl-alt-1 to go back to the main screen.

While this may seem tedious itâ€s better & faster than the real thing. Trust me!

Once X11 finishes unpacking, place in the boot disk, and let it write to it. Next feel free to preset the video mode to -1. We donâ€t have a modem, so you can answer no. Next weâ€ll allow the install to mark /dev/hda1 as the active partition. Just press enter for the question about dos partitions. Pick a snazzy hostname. The default softland works just fine. We have no patch disks, so you can just enter ‘n†and press enter.

Phew we have just installed SLS! Press enter!

After that you can boot up into Linux 0.99.15g/SLS 1.0 . The best that 1994 has to offer.

Before we leave for now, lets get X-11 rolling. Login as root, no password, and then run syssetup. Choose 5,2,6,0. This configures the basic VGA server, a PS/2 mouse & exits the basic program. Running ‘startx†Should get you into a really old X-11. No Gnome/KDE here! The mouse however acts erradictly. Ctrl-alt-backspace will bring you back to the prompt. Iâ€ll see if I can figure this out later…

But for now that covers a basic install. Next up weâ€ll do some networking, and a game perhaps….