[2024-feb-29] Sad news: Eric Layton aka Nocturnal Slacker aka vtel57 passed away on Feb 26th, shortly after hospitalization. He was one of our Wiki's most prominent admins. He will be missed.

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Slackware 64bit AArch64 (ARM64) 'current' (development branch): Installation Documentation

This document lists the Hardware Models that are supported by Slackware AArch64.

These Hardware Models are installed using the regular Slackware Installer, which is the only method of properly installing Slackware.

Actively maintained support
Hardware Vendor SoC Hardware Model Hardware Model Custodian(s) Testing cadence Installation Instructions
Pine64 RK3399 RockPro64 Slackware ARM team Continuously Instructions
Pine64 RK3399 PineBook Pro Slackware ARM team Continuously Instructions
Element14 BCM2711 Raspberry Pi 4 Slackware ARM team Continuously Instructions
Work in Progress support
Hardware Vendor SoC Hardware Model Hardware Model Custodian(s) Testing cadence Installation Instructions
SolidRun LX2160A HoneyComb LX2 Slackware ARM team Continuously Instructions
Infrequently validated support

The following Hardware Models have been known to work in the past but are rarely validated and it's recommended not to have high expectations, and perhaps consider using a different Linux distribution that actively test support for them.

The Raspberry Pi 3 is not supported due to the lack of RAM.

Hardware Vendor SoC Hardware Model Hardware Model Custodian(s) Testing cadence Installation Instructions
Element14 | BCM2837 | Raspberry Pi 3 | A Hardware Model Custodian needs to be assigned | Rarely | The RPi4 documentation above can be followed for the most part.

Mini root filesystems for unsupported Hardware Models

These images are aimed at developers or those who are competent using Linux. There is zero documentation and support beyond any comments within the miniroot build script.
Slackware is not designed to be installed from disc images - this is purely for developmental purposes

Whilst Slackware ARM officially supports a small number of Hardware Models, it is capable of running on many more.

Most of the time all that is required is:

  • A custom kernel (or patches for mainline) for the Hardware Model
  • Knowledge of how to build and work with the Hardware Model's boot loader

If the Hardware Model is popular, users of other distributions such as Debian, Gentoo and Ubuntu may have already succeeded in getting Linux running on one of these devices.

For experimentation, Slackware ARM provides mini root filesystem images of a minimal/base installation.

Please read the README file which has more details, and click here to download the root filesystem images.

These file systems were used to bootstrap the Slackware AArch64 port, with the miniroot (the Slackware OS) running from RAM.

The Slackware Installer is also a featureful environment and can be used in conjunction with the miniroot to help develop support for a new Hardware Model.

 slackwarearm:inst_sa64_cur ()