[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 ARM 32bit version 15.0: Installation Documentation

Directly Supported Hardware Models for Slackware ARM

Please note that the documentation for Slackware ARM remains as plain text, due to the amount of configuration detail required during the initial setup. There are no plans to migrate these to this wiki.

Specific Hardware Model numbers are identified at the head of each installation document.

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

Vendor SoC Hardware Model Hardware Model Custodian Testing cadence Installation Instructions
Le Maker Allwinner A20 Banana Pi (BPI-M1), Banana Pi Pro Stuart Winter <mozes@slackware> Continuously Instructions
Orange Pi Allwinner A20 Orange Pi v1.2 Stuart Winter <mozes@slackware> Continuously Instructions
Orange Pi Allwinner H3 Orange Pi Plus (H3) v1.1, Orange Pi Plus 2E (H3) v1.1, Orange Pi PC (H3) v1.2 Stuart Winter <mozes@slackware> Continuously Instructions

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 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.

To help with this, 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_sa32_rel_15.0 ()