Slackware ARM (“ARMedslack”) is the official port of the Slackware® Linux distribution to the ARM architecture.

Currently, the project focuses its efforts on supporting the most popular devices such as the Plug Computers, and can also be used under the QEMU emulator. Support for other devices will be added over time.

Slackware ARM v13.1 and v13.37 are built for ARMv4t, little endian, soft float, EABI.

Slackware-current (the development branch) and future releases are built for ARMv5te, little endian, soft float, EABI.

If you are a user of Slackware ARM please consider sponsoring the project to support its future development.

Slackware ARM 'current' is now being re-based to support ARMv5te. This is because Slackware ARM only provides kernels for devices that have an ARM v5t CPU, and the user base primarily uses Plug Computers with these CPUs. Therefore it makes sense to optimise the user land for the these CPUs.

Owners of machines with ARMv4t CPUs should use Slackware ARM v13.37.

I have ordered an NVidia Trimslice and have started work on making it a supported system on Slackware ARM.

The Slackware crew have also been discussing creating another ARM port for the newer ARMv7 CPUs and devices that have a hardware floating point unit.

Slackware 13.37 ARM is released!

Thanks to all involved who have helped with testing the “current” branch, thus making this release possible!

See getslack for information about downloading the release.

Slackware 13.37 ARM release candidate 1 is released! Please test!

We have an IRC channel named #armedslack on irc.freenode.net. Questions on the usual #slackware channel tend to get lost in the noise, so this might be useful for you to drop by.

Please note that Slackware ARM 12.2 support ends at the end of this month, on July 31st. The best option is to perform a new installation of Slackware ARM 13.1 (upgrading using the usual Slackware method will not work because v12.2 is not ABI compatible with 13.1; but from 13.1 onwards, this will be an option).

Slackware ARM 13.1 is released!

Thanks to all involved who have helped make this release happen so smoothly.

This release features support for the majority of the recent Marvell SoC devices (including SheevaPlug) and also continues to allow installation inside the software emulator, “QEMU”.

All of the installation and download information can be found by clicking through the links on the left side bar of this page.

Slackware ARM 13.1 release candidate 1 is available and ready for testing!

I expect to release 13.1 in the 1st week of June.

A mini root filesystem of Slackware ARM “current” is now available from the FTP site.

I'm really pleased to announce that Slackware ARM current is now available, and is using the EABI. Please check the announcement in the changelog.

The Slackware ARM EABI port is almost complete and is up to date with Slackware-current (13.0) – just waiting for KDE to finish building. It'll probably be another month before I upload the tree since I want to do some in depth testing and rebuild some packages and libraries to ensure everything is linked against what it should be, but I'm very happy to report this progress!

The ARM EABI port is coming along very quickly! I'm currently experimenting with installing the Kernel & initrd to the SheevaPlug's NAND flash U-Boot's flaky USB support.

Important notice: ARMedslack 12.2 JFS is not working on the SheevaPlug – writing to a JFS formatted filesystem produces a Kernel panic. Any standing JFS partitions should be mounted read-only for safety, and an alternate filesystem chosen. A new installer will be available shortly. In other news, the EABI port is going well - all of a, x, n and most of l/ is built!

A few people have been asking about ARMedslack using Linux 2.6.30 when Slackware is - at the time of writing - using 2.6.29. This is because support for the SheevaPlug only came in 2.6.30.

Work has started on an EABI port for Slackware ARM current. Currently I'm building and upgrading the base packages in armedslack-12.2 to bootstrap the new port. I expect to open a new -current branch with this work in the next few months.

Slackware ARM version 12.2 is released! I'm really happy to finally make the release - it's been a long time in the making. Thanks to everybody who has helped throughout the development cycle! The next step is to begin on the EABI port – it'll take a while to get a base set of packages together for this, so a new ”-current” won't be open for some time yet, so you have plenty of time to enjoy this release