What is Slackware Live?

What is Slackware Live Edition?

Slackware Live Edition:

It is a version of Slackware (14.2 and newer)  that can be booted and run directly from a DVD or a USB stick.
It is distributed as an ISO image and meant to be a showcase of what Slackware is about.
You get the default install, no customizations, but with all the power.
You do not have to install Slackware to your harddisk first to experience it first-hand.

 Liveslak:

The combination of scripts, bitmaps and configurations to generate the ISO images are called project “liveslak“. 

The stated reasons the developer had for starting this “liveslak” project (apart from sheer curiosity):

1. Provide a Live version of Slackware proper – i.e. show Slackware as it is, but without having to install it. No hiding of kernel messages scrolling across the screen at boot – no custom wallpapers, etcetera. Meant for education and demonstration purposes.
2. The target should be slackware-current – the bleeding edge. Many people want to know what that looks like but are hesitant to install slackware-current for fear that it breaks stuff and causes productivity loss.
3. Provide a way to generate a Live ISO with just Slackware packages as the source – fully scripted and deterministic.
4. Still be able to customize its content – for instance provide stripped-down or minimalist versions of Slackware but also allow for the inclusion of 3rd party packages.
5. Option to create a bootable USB stick running Slackware Live (which is different from ‘dd’-ing the hybrid ISO to a USB stick!)
6. Keep It Simple Stupid!

 ... but I had not anticipated the expansion of scope that can be attributed to the people who have been testing all the Beta versions. They came up with real-life use-cases, worthwhile additions and fixes. Thanks go out to all of you!
The “liveslak” is so much more now than when initially conceived.
Instead of being just a simple demo-toy it is now usable as a full-blown Live work environment in its own right.

Highlights of Slackware Live Edition.

The Slackware Documentation Project contains extensive documentation about “liveslak“, both for users of the Live OS and for people who want to know “how it works”  and want to develop a custom Live OS.
Check it out please, in particular all the boot options for the Live OS.
Good hardware support

The Live OS boots on “good old” BIOS computers but also on modern UEFI hardware (disable secure boot first). The kernel and userland software in the OS is fully up to date and supports modern and older hardware. If your computer is does not support a 64bit Operating System then you can just download the 32bit version of Slackware Live Edition.

Persistence

Slackware Live Edition is persistent if you install its ISO to a USB stick using the “iso2usb.sh” script. Persistence of a Live OS means, the things you change or add (or delete) are stored on the USB medium and will survive a reboot. As opposed to the raw ISO image (burnt to a DVD or ‘dd’-ed to a USB stick) which is a pure Live OS where all your modifications are written to a RAM disk and gone when you reboot.

A feature I consider crucial for a persistent Live OS on a USB stick that you carry around with you in your jacket pocket is… data protection!

Data encryption

How do you protect the stuff you are accumulating in your live user’s home
directory, such as passwords, confidential documents, GPG and SSH keys etc?
You lose the USB stick, someone else may steal it – your sensitive files will be compromised.
Therefore the Slackware Live Edition offers you the option to create a LUKS-encrypted container file in the Linux filesystem of the USB stick.The filesystem inside that encrypted container will then be mounted on the /home directory of the Live OS when it boots.
The LUKS passphrase you entered when creating the container, will be prompted for during the boot-up of the Live OS. On shutdown, the container will be locked again and a potential thief of your USB stick will be unable to get to the files in the LUKS container (i.e. your homedirectory).

Multiple OS variants or flavors.

The “liveslak” scripts are able to generate a variety of Slackware Live ISO flavors: SLACKWARE, XFCE, PLASMA5, MATE, CINNAMON, CUSTOM. The locations where you can download these ISO files are shown in the next paragraph.

• By default, “liveslak” creates a 2.6 GB large ISO from scratch that will give you a complete 64bit Slackware-current Live Edition.

• The scripts can also create a 700 MB slimmed-down XFCE version with XDM as the graphical login manager which fits on a CDROM medium or a 1 GB USB stick.

• A 3.0 GB ISO image of Slackware64-current containing Plasma 5 instead of KDE 4 is also an option. The PLASMA5 variant is spiced up with several other packages I maintain: vlc, libreoffice, calibre, qbittorrent, ffmpeg, chromium, openjdk, veracrypt.

• The option to generate a 1.7 GB ISO containing either the Mate or the Cinnamon desktop instead of Slackware’s own KDE 4 could be added courtesy of Willy Sudiarto Raharjo’s repositories.

• The “liveslak” scripts allow a large degree of customization so that you can create “your own” variant of a Slackware based Live OS. One example of what’s possible is the Live Edition of Cinelerra CV.

No custom kernel or 3rd party tools needed

The main script “make_slackware_live.sh” creates an ISO from scratch. The script installs Slackware packages or package sets into compressed “squashfs” modules, configures and optimizes the target filesystem to be run as a Live environment, and then generates an initial ramdisk that will assemble the Live environment when you boot. All that is put into a bootable ISO image file. Thanks to Linux kernel 4.x and the squashfs-tools package added to Slackware 14.2, the process requires no compilation nor does it need non-standard packages to create a Slackware Live Edition (of course, the Plasma, Mate and Cinnamon flavours do require 3rd party packages). The downside is that the ISO has to be created on Slackware 14.2 (older versions of Slackware do not have the proper tools or kernels). It follows that the only Slackware release which is supported as a Live Edition is 14.2 and the “-current” development tree. All future releases will be supported too of course.

Want to install Slackware Live? Find out how HERE