Slackware Linux Essentials

Slackware Linux Essentials is a book written by members of the Slackware Team. It is an introduction to Linux in general and Slackware Linux in particular. On August 18th 2000, an online version of the wook was made available, at http://www.slackware.com/book/.

However, some people complained the book was not made easily downloadable. Leaving overseas, or simply not having the financial ressources, they didn't want or weren't able to buy the hardcopy of the book, and wanted to grab that version. This is what motivated this page.

After downloading the pages and the associated graphic files, some modifications have been made:

• /book/grfx-shared contains the images found in /grfx/shared on the Slackware site, paths have been modified in consequence;
• links internal to the book have been made relative, links external to the book have been made absolute;
• the images in /book/grfx have been reduced to 16- or 2-color, depending of what was possible, instead of the 256-color used at the site -- the size of the book went from 3.1 MB to 1.3 MB, without loosing quality. Indeed, the quality even increased, as the images have been cleaned-up!

Even if it is good to be able to download all the book with only one click, I ask you, gentle downloader, to consider, once again: "Is there really no way I can buy the book?". I don't have figures, but it is clear sales of this book help the Slackware Team to continue on their mission to provide the Best Linux distribution in the world. You are your own judge, of course, and I know it is hard to resist the temptation.

If you manage to resist it, you can amend honorably:

• You can buy the book here.
• You can also buy the 4-CD retail boxed set, the book is included. Get it there.

If not, just click on the archive of your choice. Their contents are the same, except the RAR and ZIP files have an archive comment, and this comment has been put as a README file in the TAR.* files.

I have compressed the files to the maximum each program allowed. As you can see, the ZIP is not very efficient when it comes to compress a lot of small files.