The more I used Bluewhite64, the more I like it. This is a really well thought out way to port slackware to 64bit platforms. Moreover Bluewhite64 has some really neat live cd’s. What it has not had until now was an easy way to install those meaning users wanting to install either had to hand-hack it on, or use the install-dvd’s which are slackware like.
Not that there is anything wrong with that of course.
But the LIVE media is very well put together and includes some really nice additional tools (like darkstar linux’s ALICE suite), for users who prefer to just run the system as opposed to tweaking it together these livedvd’s are among the best available tools out there if you want a 64bit slackware based system.
So I decided to help out, I still had the code for OpenLab’s installer which was GPL’d, and it covered most of the tasks needed to easily install a slackware based LIVE distro. But it was also buggy and old (the last version was a beta), branded for OL and coded for a much older slackware base.
So I began the process of porting it to bluewhite64 and bringing it up to date. This was quite a job and I ended up rewriting about 80% of the code, all that’s really left of the OL installer is the process, the actual implementation is almost entirely new and a lot of assumptions from OL are no longer there.
Either way, bw64installer is at it’s second release by now and in my testing seems to work very well. Arny has said that he would like to include it in the official builds so with a few days of my time I can feel that I have made a genuine contribution to a really nice community distribution.
