Out of the box, Slackware ARM officially supports these systems:

• ARM Versatile platform (via the QEMU emulator)
• TrimSlice (NVidia Tegra system)
• Marvell SoC (System on Chip), including:
  • SheevaPlug (original & eSATA)
  • GuruPlug
  • OpenRD Base, Client and Ultimate.

Starting with Slackware ARM v14.0, packages are compiled for the following minimum target:

• ARMv5te
• Little endian
• Soft float
• EABI

This means that the user space will run on the majority of ARM 32-bit devices on the market today.

Unlike the x86, usually each type of ARM device requires a specific kernel. So even on an "unsupported" ARM device, the majority (if not all) Slackware ARM packages will run on the device, you will need a specific Linux kernel for your device. Please read this article for a great introduction to this topic.

Much of the good well written documentation about ARM and Linux comes from the Debian developers.

Please read the following documents to learn more about Linux and ARM in general.

• A detailed discussion regarding "old" and "EABI"
• This is a great overview of the ARM architecture and the way that Linux distributions support them.

The number of officially supported platforms on which Slackware ARM has been tested and can be installed "out of the box" is limited due to the number of ARM devices, availability of developer time and access to the hardware.

However, because the Slackware ARM packages have been compiled to run on most of the systems available today, usually all that is required is a new Kernel which can be "cross-compiled" by the user and some tweaking of the platform's boot loader.

The Slackware ARM community have helped fill the void by providing installation documentation and other useful notes to help other users install Slackware onto these devices.

Distinctions between Community Supported platforms and Officially supported platforms

A community supported platform will Is essentially an "overlay" to the Slackware ARM tree, and typically conforms to the following rules:

• Provides its own installation instructions
• Provides its own Kernel package(s)
• May (if applicable to the particular ARM device) provide its own Slackware Installer image, or provide a modified "miniroot"
• May provide replacments of a very small number of Slackware ARM base packages in the case where there are some build-time changes required that cannot be incorporated into the official packages

Users of community supported platforms are expected to use the normal Slackware ARM packages and follow any instructions and documents on the official Slackware ARM web site or in the Slackware ARM directory tree.

Users of a Community Supported Platform may raise questions on the Slackware ARM mailing list, but if the question is explicitly regarding an area that is solely related to the specific Community Supported Platform (configuring graphics, sound; booting for example) then it is suggested that they follow the contact/support instructions supplied on the web site for that particular platform because this helps build a good searchable knowledge base for that platform.

Platforms