03-09-2009, 05:35 PM
Slackware
Slackware was one of the earliest Linux distributions, and is the oldest distribution still being maintained. It was created by Patrick Volkerding of Slackware Linux, Inc. Slackware is primarily developed for the x86 PC hardware architecture. However there have previously been official ports to the DEC Alpha and SPARC architectures. As of 2005, there is an official port to the System/390 architecture. There are also unofficial ports to the ARM, Alpha, SPARC, PowerPC and x86-64 slamd64 architectures. Slackware's latest stable x86 release is 10.2 (as of September 14, 2005), which includes support for ALSA, GCC 3.3.6 (with 3.4.4 as an alternative in /testing), Linux kernel 2.4.31 (with Linux 2.6.13 as an alternate choice in /testing), KDE 3.4.2, and all the usual utilities. There is also a testing / developmental version of Slackware called '-current' that can be used for a more bleeding edge configuration. ZipSlack ZipSlack is a boiled-down edition of the Slackware Linux distribution originally designed to fit on a 100 MB Zip disk. It is currently distributed as a zip-compressed archive containing a ready-to-use, minimal Slackware Linux system. It lacks X Window functionality (which can be added if sufficient disk space is available) while making available basic networking and most of the compilers typically included in the main Slackware distribution. It has traditionally been using the FAT/FAT32 file system via UMSDOS giving it the advantage of an easy installation on a DOS or Windows 3.x/9x machine without having to repartition the hard drive. This is particularly useful for a quick and low-risk Slackware Linux tryout, or as a rescue Linux system when debugging an unbootable Linux partition. ZipSlack boots only from a genuine DOS mode and is therefore incompatible with typical Windows NT/2k/XP configurations
