Softlanding Linux System: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:11, 4 December 2004

Revision as of 03:31, 4 December 2004

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'''Softlanding Linux System''' ('''SLS''') was an early [[Linux distribution]], founded by [[Peter MacDonald]] in mid-[[1992]]. It was the first to offer a bootstrap install disk from floppy, cdrom, network, etc. It was also the first comprehensive [[Linux]] distribution, containing more than the [[Linux Kernel]] and basic utilities, but alsoplus early [[GNU]]/Linux features such as the [[X Window System]] and [[TCP/IP]].

SLS was probably the most popular Linux distribution at the time.

SLS was probably the most popular Linux distribution at the time, but was also viewed by the community as being buggy and poorly maintained. Two of the more well-known critics of SLS were [[Ian Murdock]] and [[Patrick Volkerding]]. Murdock's frustration with SLS lead him to create the [[Debian]] project, while Volkerding decided to fix the problems with SLS and eventually renamed his work [[Slackware]].

It came in a handful of files that you would unzip and copy to floppy disks. This was Linux's first big breakthrough. SLS dominated the market until the developers made a decision to change the executable format (if you remember the a.out to ELF conversion you'll remember this). This was not well received by the user base. Just around the time this happened Patrick Volkerding had taken SLS and adapted, modified, tweaked and cleaned it up making it a different thing all together. He called it Slackware. With the unpopular direction SLS had taken, Slackware quickly replaced it and became the dominant distribution used by nearly everyone. In fact it's still in use today.

Similarly [[Ian Murdock]] frustration with SLS lead him to create the [[Debian]] project.

[[Category:Linux distributions]]