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To realize this, the Slackware Live ISO 'borrows' a 3rd-party 'shim'.
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The Slackware Linux distro does not ship a 'shim' which is signed by Microsoft, so how to get around the dilemma of requiring a signed 'shim'? The Slackware Live OS boots on a Secure Boot enabled computer if created with liveslak-1.5.0 or newer, and only for the 64-bit liveslak ISO images. This complicates the process of upgrading to a new kernel further. Signing your Grub bootloader and your kernel also becomes mandatory, because the 'shim' refuses to load un-signed binaries. That would create a huge security hole and defy the purpose of Secure Boot. This is not a trivial process, Microsoft is very strict about the signing process because in essence your signed bootloader will boot anything on a Secure Boot enabled computer, including malware if that was signed by your 'distro key'. Shim must be cryptographically signed by Microsoft for it to successfully boot a computer. For Linux based Operating Systems, the most widely used solution is to place an small single-purpose bootloader before the regular Linux bootloader. Secure Boot enforces that the first-stage bootloader is signed with an encryption key known to Microsoft. From liveslak-1.5.0 and onwards, Secure Boot is supported for the 64-bit ISO images. Historic liveslak based ISOs are also not able to boot there. Slackware for instance, is unable to boot on a computer that has Secure Boot enabled. On computers with Secure Boot enabled, extra measures may be required to boot an Operating System. From that moment onwards, you are in a regular Slackware environment. Once you have passed the initial Liveboot stage and brought up the actual OS, you login as user “live”. Slackware Live Edition deviates as little as possible from a regular Slackware boot. The bootloader allows you to pick a non-US language and/or keyboard layout and (on boot of an UEFI system) a custom timezone. Also by default, the ISOs will boot into runlevel 4, i.e. They have passwords, and by default these are… you guessed: “root” and “live”. Slackware Live Edition knows two user accounts: “root” and “live”. In other words, there is no persistence of data. The changes will actually be kept in a RAM disk, so a reboot will “reset” the live OS to its original default state. Both methods will give you a live environment which will allow you to make changes and seemingly “write them to disk”. The ISO images are hybrid, which means you can either burn them to DVD, or use 'dd' or 'cp' to copy the ISO to a USB stick. In order to protect your sensitive private data in case you lose your USB stick (or in case it gets stolen) you can enhance your persistent USB Live OS with an encrypted homedirectory and/or an encrypted persistence file, to be unlocked on boot with a passphrase that only you know. The CD/DVD versions (and the USB stick if you configure it accordingly) operate without persistence, which means that all the changes you make to the OS are lost when you reboot.
The USB version is “persistent” - meaning that the OS stores your updates on the USB stick. You'll have a pre-configured Slackware OS up & running in a minute wherever you can get your hands on a computer with a USB port. You can carry the USB stick version with you in your pocket. Slackware Live Edition does not have to be installed to a computer hard drive ( however you do have that choice if you want to: using the setup2hd script). The ISO is created from scratch using a Slackware package mirror, by the “liveslak” scripts.
You get the default install, no custom packages or kernel, but with all the power of Slackware.
It is an ISO image meant to be a showcase of what Slackware is about. Welcome to the Slackware Live Edition! This is a version of Slackware 14.2 (and newer), that can be run from a DVD or a USB stick.