Preface

This book aims to provide an introduction to Slackware Linux. It addresses people who have little or no GNU/Linux experience, and covers the Slackware Linux installation, basic GNU/Linux commands and the configuration of Slackware Linux. After reading this book, you should be prepared to use Slackware Linux for your daily work, and more than that.

Thanks to the rapid development of open source software, there are now comprehensive desktop environments and applications for GNU/Linux. Most current distributions and books focus on using GNU/Linux with such environments. I chose to ignore most of the graphical applications for this book, and tried to focus this book on helping you, as a reader, to learn using GNU/Linux in a more traditional UNIX-like way. I am convinced that this approach is often more powerful, and helps you to learn GNU/Linux well, and not just one distribution or desktop environment. The UNIX philosophy is described in Section 2.4.

I wish everybody a good time with Slackware Linux, and I hope that you will find this book is useful for you.

Daniël de Kok