Minimal-packages slackware install

[Rich]

I like slackware, I like how it works and I like it's compatibility.
in the interest of putting slackware on older hardware, what would be
the minimal packages in to install for having a basic slackware
system?

Given the very small size of even a full Slack install (if you leave
out kde and xfce the rest fits in about 9G or so), why bother?

But if you must, then 'minimal' has to be defined against your usage
plans for this "older hardware". You must install at least the A and L
packages (although you don't need all of L depending on intended
usage), but those two together would leave you with a system for which
you could do little beyond boot and log in.

For a more useful minimal set, you'd need A, AP, part of L, and part of
N.

While it is tedious, you can request the slackware installer to prompt
you for a Y/N answer for all but the most basic required packages, with
that prompting you can choose to install just the minimal pieces that
would need to be present for whatever use you intended to make out of
the older hardware.

[Henrik Carlqvist]

in the interest of putting slackware on older hardware, what would be
the minimal packages in to install for having a basic slackware system?

As a beginner, when I installed Slackware for the first time many years
ago I did try to choose only the packages I would need and carefully
answer the question for each package during the installation process of
Slackware 3.0. One of those packages I got a question about was groff,
described as some kind of text formatting utility. I thought I would not
need that and ended up with a system without working man-pages.

Since then I have allways made full installs of Slackware.

Do you by "older hardware" mean really tiny hard drive? Or do you mean 32-
bit processor? If so, you will need to do a 32 bit Slackware installation
instead of the 64-bit most people use nowadays. Maybe you even mean and
old CPU like 386, 486 or Pentium? If so you will not be able to use any
newer and maintained version of Slackware but find an old unmaintained
version which matches your system.

regards Henrik

[Alexander Grotewohl]

Post by Henrik Carlqvist

in the interest of putting slackware on older hardware, what would be
the minimal packages in to install for having a basic slackware system?

As a beginner, when I installed Slackware for the first time many years
ago I did try to choose only the packages I would need and carefully
answer the question for each package during the installation process of
Slackware 3.0. One of those packages I got a question about was groff,
described as some kind of text formatting utility. I thought I would not
need that and ended up with a system without working man-pages.
Since then I have allways made full installs of Slackware.

It's also worth noting as well that many slackbuilds won't work and they
don't bother listing dependencies that are included with the base system.

Alex

[K Venken]

I like slackware, I like how it works and I like it's compatibility.
in the interest of putting slackware on older hardware, what would be the
minimal packages in to install for having a basic slackware system?

You can check

https://www.slackwiki.com/Minimal_System

for some info.

Some time ago, I tried to create an absolute minimum system (with only a
shell) and I got following selection:

aaa_base: Basic filesystem, shell, and utils
aaa_elflibs: Various ELF libraries
acl: POSIX Access Control List tools
attr: Tools for fs extended attributes
bash: GNU bash shell
bin: Various system utilities
coreutils: The core GNU command-line utilities
(*14.1*) cxxlibs: C++ shared libraries
dcron: Cron daemon
devs: Device files found in /dev
(*14.2*) eudev: Manages /dev and modules
e2fsprogs: Utilities for ext2/ext3 filesystems
elvis: elvis text editor (vi clone)
etc: System config files & utilities
grep: GNU grep searching tool
gzip: GNU zip compression utility
kernel-firmware: Linux kernel firmware
kmod: Kernel module utilities
less: A text pager utility
(*14.2*) libgudev: udev GObject bindings library
openssl-solibs: OpenSSL shared libraries
pkgtools: Slackware package management tools
(*14.1*) procps: Displays process info
(*14.2*) procps-ng: Displays process info
sed: GNU stream editor
shadow: Shadow password suite
sharutils: GNU shell archive utilities
sysvinit: System V-like INIT programs
sysvinit-scripts: The startup scripts for Slackware
tar: GNU tar archive utility
(*14.1*) udev: Manages /dev and modules
util-linux: Util-linux utilities
xz: xz (LZMA) compression utility

Additionally, you need to add at least a kernel with modules and you
need to add

glibc-solibs: Runtime glibc support libraries
lilo: Boot loader for Linux, DOS, OS/2, etc.

as well. At this point, the system should be just bootable and show a
shell, but you can't even install any more stuff, so you probably want
to add

dialog
aaa_terminfo
pkgtools

also. With this, you could add more stuff at will, but do you really
want to go this way?

As mentioned by others, for a small system you can go with A, L, N (no
graphics or add X as well) You don't need all packages of these sets.

To have usefull tools like sudo, mc, tmux, slackpkg you need some of AP
To add (compile, build) software, use NIS, ... you need some of D

To have an idea, for 14.2, the compressed sizes:

127M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/a
102M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/ap
240M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/d
39M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/e
6.6M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/f
87M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/k
652M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/kde
386M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/kdei
219M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/l
85M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/n
82M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/t
5.5M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/tcl
100M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/x
222M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/xap
11M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/xfce
1.7M /mnt/dvd/slackware64/y

This is compressed, uncompressed they are bigger, (I guess close to
twice the size)

Usually, I leave out KDE and KDEi as they are the biggest sets and I am
happy with a simple window manager.


For a workable system you probably need at least 4 GB disk space. You
would also need at least something like 256 MB RAM, but this prevents
already some applications, like seamonkey, to run in a usable way.