Last weekend I pushed version 1.7.0.1 of liveslak code to my git repository and used it to generate a fresh batch of Slackware Live ISO images.
Main change between 1.7.0 and 1.7.0.1 is fixing the broken Ventoy support on UEFI computers. Slackware Live ISO works out of the box on Ventoy again. The documentation will help you setup persistence for the live ISO on a Ventoy disk.
Get liveslak ISOs
The various variants of Slackware Live Edition can be found in the “latest” subdirectory at https://download.liveslak.org/ or its US mirror https://us.liveslak.org/ . A fast UK mirror is provided by Darren Austin at https://slackware.uk/liveslak/ .
You’ll be able to download ISO Live images of 32bit and 64bit Slackware proper, also of the small XFCE variant for (both architectures), and then CINNAMON, DAW, LEAN and MATE ISOs that only come in 64bits.
The DAW ISO is based on Slackware 15.0 (including all patches to date) to offer a sense of stability, whereas all the other ISOs are based on Slackware-current update “Fri Aug 18 18:37:33 UTC 2023“.
All ISOs containing a 64bit Slackware have support for SecureBoot.
Also have a look in the “bonus” subdirectory! There’s Nvidia binary graphics driver, Broadcom STA wirelesss driver, Wine 8 and multilib modules to add if you use the persistent version of liveslak.
Get liveslak sources
The liveslak project is hosted in git. Its browsable cgit interface is here: https://git.liveslak.org/liveslak/
A set of the liveslak scripts can also be downloaded from http://www.slackware.com/~alien/liveslak/ or https://slackware.nl/people/alien/liveslak/
Have fun! Eric
Woo Hoo !
Thanks for the update Eric !
— kjh
Cool, thanks! I’m waiting on an nvme drive and a new CPU being delivered, so I’m going to have to reinstall, just to be safe. I wanted to wait until the grub changeover happens…but I really want to use the new stuff, too. 🙂
Thank you for everything! alienbob
Thank you for the latest update of liveslak scripts and Live iso collection.
I don’t have a use for them at the moment, but it’s pleasant to have them at the ready when needed.
Hello, I’m trying out Slackware Live on a USB flashdrive and I’ve used the -C option of iso2usb.sh to make a persistence.img file. Then I noticed in KDiskFree that persistence.img is formatted as ext4, which I expect to be fully journaled, right? For people like me who still use USB 2.0 drives that is terribly slow! Every time a big file is saved or trashed the whole system slows to a crawl. Please consider formatting persistence.img as whatever else, maybe even ext2. Is f2fs a good choice? I don’t know.
Another related thing, I used the -C option and never anything else because that’s what made sense for me. Perhaps I’m missing out on something better? Maybe -c or -P are better? Or maybe they’re two options too many to do the same thing as -C? What I’m saying is, they’re confusing. If I’m the only one confused by them, fine.
Anyway, even if you ignore the above feedback, thanks for making liveslak. Regular Slackware is much more to my liking than Debian, Fedora and Ubuntu. So naturally Slackware Live is my go-to live distro. I’ve first used Linux about twenty years ago but I’ve always stuck with Windows. Recently I’ve returned to Slackware and I’m happy with it.
I don’t think that another filesystem than the journaling EXT4 will make your user experience much better. A USB2-connected storage device is too slow for interactive use. A live OS on USB2 will be good enough for examining the available programs and the features of the OS, and nice to have as a testing OS for unknown or possibly faulty hardware.
But you made me think. It is of course possible to make the filesystem a selectable option for the iso2usb.sh script.
I need to know a couple of things though, because I only have experience with ext2/3/4:
I tune the ext4 filesystem a bit, configuring it so that boot-time filesystem checks are always skipped and I limit the space reserved for root to zero percent. I can use these same commands for ext2 filesystems, but I need to know the answer to the following questions for filesystems like BTRFS, XFS, F2FS:
* which command-line to create the filesystem;
* and what is required in iso2usb.sh to tune this filesystem for maximum efficiency?
To give an example; for ext4 I use:
# mkfs.ext4 -F -F -L “${LIVELABEL}”
# tune2fs -c 0 -i 0 -m 0
… and sometimes:
# tune2fs -c 0 -i 0 -m 0 -O ^metadata_csum_seed,^64bit
To reply my own post, I have already updated my ‘iso2usb.sh’ and ‘isocomp.sh’ scripts in liveslak with a filesystem choice.
I will be testing this a bit and the modifications will probably be visible first in the git repository before they land in the next batch of ISO images.
Hi Eric.
Thanks for fixing broken Ventoy support on UEFI computers. I really appreciate it.
Going back now to Ventoy. It is important because liveslak current is updated continuously.
Thanks again.
Francisco
Slackware won’t boot on host installed from liveslak
This statement is only partially true. My laptop with Slackware current, installed from slackware64-live-current.iso boots and runs flawlessly. However, it won’t boot Slackware 15.0.
I got a new laptop from Origin PC. It has an NVME ssd, just like my previous Lenovo Carbon X1 had. But, unlike the Lenovo, it does not have the option to switch to Legacy Bios mode.
So I installed elilo into EFI, from the running liveslak current by using setup2hd, and it booted fine.
But I wanted the stable Slackware 15.0.
I scrapped the installation and started again with the liveslak version of Slackware 15.0.
This time around, the system would not boot. All you see on the screen is
Loading kernel vmlinuz loaded… done
Loading file initrd.gz… done
then it just hangs there.
Then I started from scratch again, this time using the stock Slackware 15.0 ISO.
Same thing, it gets stuck after loading the kernel.
I had no choice but to go back to liveslak current.
I also installed rEFInd, so I can dual boot Windows 11 that came preinstalled. (I previously disabled secure boot)
I kept trying to install Slackware 15.0 into a remaining partition as a third boot option, and experimented with elilo settings, and kernels (I did not really know what I was doing..), but nothing worked.
I am not asking you to be my personal troubleshooter, just hoping that you may have an idea what could be wrong.
I’ll be fine with current, but I’d prefer the calm of 15.0.
Karl
Looks like Slackware 15.0 is not supporting your new laptop, but Slackware-current does the job.
Sometimes there’s things you prefer (like running Slackware 15.0 instead of -current) that are hard to achieve.
If the kernel is your problem, then you could try a Slackware 15.0 installation and afterwards, install a newer kernel. That sounds simple but it is not.
– you would have to compile a new kernel for Slackware 15.0 first, and you need to do that ON a Slackware 15.0 computer. You can use the Slackware-current kernel config so you don’t have to think about what to enable/disable in the kernel
– Then you need to boot a Slackware-current based installer. The liveslak version of -current will do fine, and when selecting the package source, you need to “Install from HTTP/FTP server” and then point to an online (or local) Slackware 15.0 mirror URL.
– After installing Slackware 15.0 this way, but *before* rebooting, you would copy your freshly compiled kernel and its modules into the filesystem of that new installation.
– When that kernel and its modules are in place, edit the elilo.conf file (probably it’s /setup2hd/boot/efi/EFI/Slackware/elilo.conf if you used a liveslak) to add that fresh kernel.
-Now, rebooting should land you in your Slackware 15.0 installation, provided that it was only the kernel that was too old.
Just a quick follow up question. Which kernel version to compile? Since version 5.15.117 in slackware64-live-15.0.iso did not boot, should I use the one in -current? Version 6.1.51?
Can I follow this guide for compilation: https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:slackware_admin:kernelbuilding ?
I would take the one in -current, https://slackware.nl/slackware/slackware64-current/source/k/
Just an fyi, a freshly compiled kernel did not solve the problem.
Someone suggested that because there are no kernel messages scrolling on the screen, the problem might be with the bootloader. I don’t know much about that topic, so I’ll just stay with -current for now.
Best,
Karl
Thank you Eric, I’ll give this a try.
Wishful thinking .. perhaps Slackware 15.1 comes out soon :).