Softlanding Linux System: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:31, 4 December 2004

Revision as of 04:54, 6 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, plus early [[GNU]]/Linux features such as the [[X Window System]] and [[TCP/IP]].

ItSLS camewas inprobably athe handfulmost ofpopular filesLinux thatdistribution youat wouldthe unziptime, 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). Thisthat was not well received by the user base (a.out Justto aroundELF). the timeDuring this happenedtime, [[Patrick Volkerding]] haddecided takento modify SLS and adapted, modified,by tweakedtweaking and cleaned it up making it a different thing all together. He called ithis finished work [[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.

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

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.