Slackware Installer

Using the Installer, you can configure the OS how it was designed to be.

The Installer can also be used as:

• a rescue environment
• a development environment to onboard new Hardware Models.
• installing Slackware!

There are three types of Slackware Installer packaged:

AiO (All in One): This Installer package is what is used within the Installation guides.

The Slackware package set are included within the downloadable image. This enables offline installation. The Installer image is typically refreshed once a month. Users will use slackpkg to update the OS after the installation.

The AiO images are approximately 5GB (compressed) in size. Each image is packaged for a particular Hardware Model.

All users are encouraged to use the AiO Installers for supported Hardware Models.

Bare Installers are identical to the AiO Installers, except that they don't contain the package set. The user must supply the package set on some other media (e.g. USB stick, NFS share, over HTTP/web).

The Bare Installers are approximately 250MB (compressed) in size. Each image is packaged for a particular Hardware Model.

They are updated more frequently, with every kernel update (typically once every 2 weeks for -current).

Users may choose to use the Bare Installers when:

• They want the root file system to be on the SD card (this is more tricky when using the AiO images)
• The AiO Installer has a bug/lacks a certain feature, and you'd like to use the more recent Installer before the AiO is refreshed.
• The user already has the Slackware ARM repository locally and does not want to download the larger AiO image.

The AiO and Bare Installer packages target specific Hardware Models and enable booting from the SD card directly into the Slackware Installer.

The Naked Installer is not packaged for any specific Hardware Model. It's usually used to develop support for (presently) unsupported Hardware Models. QEMU uses this Installer package.

The Naked Installer initrd image is used (unmodified) within the Bare Installers.

You can perform the Slackware installation over three interfaces.

• Local keyboard & monitor: This is the documented method.
• Over a Serial connection: This is useful for remote installations where a serial cable is permanently connected to a remote machine. The end-to-end installation (including accessing the Hardware Model's Boot Loader) can be controlled.
• Over the network, using SSH: This is useful for headless installations where the IP address provided to machine (DHCP is enabled by default) is known.