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yes, FUD ! trying to show the worst case possible as a normal, everyday thing is FUD.

1- you CAN compile anything... but that doesn't mean that anyone must do it. Again, only people that really want to do it (developers and gentoo users) will ever do it. Most ubuntu users dont even know what compile is and they use a linux system just fine.

2- a) i'm a slackware user since 1995 and slackware DO have repositories! You have the main ftp for distro packages, you have alienbob packages, you have the slacky repository, rlworkman repository, linuxpackages.net and finally, the slackbuilds repository, where you have build scripts for many softwares (but yes, you can still compile manually if you like!)
  b) if you have a package that need a different lib version that you are using, then you are doing it wrong! binary packages are build for one distro/version, should be used on that distro/version. Trying to mix distros or version packages is a great way to have a broken system. Please note that i'm not saying that it doesn't work, most of the time it works fine, but one should ALWAYS prefer distro+correct version packages, and if not available, a source compiled. The above repositories for slackware have many programs compiled for the correct slackaware versions and if not, have the slackbuild ready to quickly compile things.
Downloading a random binary from the internet and trying to use it on a random distro is the "windows way", not the "linux way".
ps: if you are talking about gnome, forget it, that is a dependency hell... on slackware you need to use a gnome repository (like GSB or dropline) to have matching libs. For other distros its the same thing... binary packages build for set of libraries. NO MIXING... if you mix versions, its a user problem, not distro nor linux problem

3- Linux have 2 "clipboards", that work in different ways... if you dont understand then, its better to install some clipboard management, like klipper, glipper, parcellite, etc and enable the clipboards sync. It will make copy&paste more useful and consistent, specially for windows users. If you are talking about feel and use consistency, try to use the same platform for all apps (kde, gnome, xfce, etc), but as linux have more GUI libraries and no central management, the GUI is more fragment than on windows and mac... but those systems also have different GUI frameworks and so, the exact same problem . For some people that is a problem, for others is a good (promotes competition)

You can use ipchains instead since iptables is deprecated. Also, slackware package manager is not the best, and I'm a slackware big fan, if you're intrested in packages for slack, you should check http://slackbuilds.org/ and http://packages.slackware.it/ and http://www.linuxpackages.net/.
in the first one you compile the stuff yourself and only download a configuration to create the package, in the other 2 you just download pre-made packages (like rpm) - it's okay once you get used to it (with packagetools, upgradepkg, installpkg,removepkg) but it's still not as good as debian based package manager (apt-get) or gentoo repository.
I find myself compile lots of stuff that other Linux users don't even use (or know how to compile if he/she is Ubuntu users).
But the OS do exactly what I want it to do! nothing more, nothing less! and that's what Slackware is all about.
If you want to compile your own kernel, easy, exactly the same kind of easiness from other distros, but I don't know, I just felt inlove with Slackware!.

About your iptables problem, do this :


Looks like you didn't enable iptables in the kernel. I think you need to have the ipchains module enabled.
Try enabling these, and the other boxes listed below them.
Networking>Network Packet Filtering>Core Netfilter>Netfilter Xtable support
Networking>Network Packet Filtering>IP Netfilter>IP Tables Support


(from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=278456)

Goodluck,
Zuk.

A Slackware package for Pidgin 2.0.0 is now available at Linuxpackages.net.

I'm new to the linux world. Just started using it about 4 or 5 months ago. I'm not in the I.T. business. I'm that annoying marketing guy on the phone you guys mention from time to time, but I've been a "closet case" computer geek sense I got my first Apple II. I've known about linux for a long time and I finally had some extra scratch so I decided to pick up an box and experiment with an OS I've been wanting to dive into.

I shopped around for distributions. I used Debian, Ubuntu, and Mandriva. Those all left me wanting more, I guess you could say they just didn't do it for me. I found slackware, read up about and really liked it's history, the community, and the KISS system just made a whole lot of sense. So here I am now a few months later, I have my second computer up and running with slackware 10.2, my sound works, my video works. I can print, I can play mp3s, write documents using the provided software. Hell I even have a Samba server going so I can swap files between my systems. Some might call me crazy for saying this but it's been easy with Slackware!

Between google, http://www.linuxpackages.net/, and the fellas at http://www.linuxquestions.org/ any obstactle I've bumped into has been easily over come. I really don't see why Slackware is classified as a hardcore linux or not for beginners. With all the excellent documentation it has been easy for me to do the things I want to do. Pretty much everything I do with my windows system I can do on my slackware system. Infact these days I use it more often because I rarely have to shut it down!

I'll be ordering up slackware 11 asap. It's definitely an OS that I will use for a long time. Thanks Pat V, for creating and maintaining an excellent OS even a non techie noob can use productively :-).

Already done.

... for its venerability as well as its stability. It was my first, and still favourite distribution. It's not on the bleeding edge, but it has other virtues. One is that it can be scaled easily to install as much or as little of it as you need, and run on machines with very different CPU and memory resources and amounts of disk space. Great for turning a bunch of old mismatched PCs into a Beowulf Cluster.

Semi-automatic package management has taken awhile to evolve, but for some time now it has been very good indeed. There are several good PM clients; I think slapt-get has the edge right now. And if you can't find what you need in the distro, there are several sites (such as http://www.linuxpackages.net/) that offer lots of additional packages and goodies.

1. You are using an official Slackware package: this means you do not have to worry about dependencies at all, since Patrick Volkerding makes sure the package "just works" (tm). Use the command "installpkg" and you are done.
    
2. You are using a package compiled by somebody else: this is the case when, for instance, you download a package from linuxpackages.net. In that case, make sure you read the instructions that come with the package, just in case there is some dependency, usually another package to download and install.
    
3. You are compiling something from source: 90% of the time, the software will compile without any problem, since Slackware comes with the most common libraries. If the program does not compile, it's fairly easy to track down the problem and install the missing libraries. A friend of mine has made a list of common software and the problems that may arise when compiling them.
    

And what about enlightenment 0.17? Its cvs version is very functional and there is a version packed for slackware. I'm using it and can't wait to see all the features enabled and working.

it seems that you forgot to tell us that the current pgsql version (in 7 series) is 7.4.7 (link) and the newest pgsql version on linuxpackages is 7.4.3 (link)

it would be really nice to see slackware include (at least in extra) the pgsql (at least the 7 series)

I agree about the chasing dependencies, but generally most packages I downloaded included dependency information in the documentation anyway.

That is not what happened. Slackware probably has the most unofficial package contributions besides Red Hat (er maybe Debian too, but *I* don't see many unofficial packages for it). linuxpackages.net [LINK]. Pat designated a way as well on how security updates should be made while he was out. The distro did not simply get stranded -- the community would not allow that. The only reason for the talk about Pat's health and waiting for his return is from our respect of the man.

Of course. But the availability differs between distributions.

And Slackware doesn't care much for dependencies.

What's that got to do with what we're talking about?

...Debian feels less commercial to me, and it allows me to customize it without bypassing much of any built-in system mechanisms.

As does any distro -- but you sidestep the internal mechanisms and you end up with a problem where the built-in tools either screw up the configuration when you upgrade, or they fail altogether. Precisely the reason why so many people enjoy Slackware -- there are no internal mechanisms save for very few, very THIN ones used right at install time. There's no "duality" to compete with. And the lack of dependencies helps here, believe it or not.

Debian has always been difficult for me because of all the options that you're presented with during installation. That's not a negative for Debian though. Keep in mind that I have never tried Debian with the anaconda installer, but I hear it is awesome. For me, Debian's biggest plus is package management. Nothing beats apt-get. I also like that the fact that it is one of the last TRULY free distros. Debian has got to be one of the easiest distros to maintain (from what I hear from many sysadmins.)

Slackware is incredibly stable and more UNIX-like than other distros. The installer will ask you less questions than a Debian install but will give you a very stable, secure and functional system (desktop or server) with default install options. For me, I find Slackware more enjoyable because it uses a stock kernel right from Linus' tree without any distro specific "tweaks" that you would find in most other distros. I run Xandros for my wife and it is a nightmare if you want to install a package that's not in the Xandros (Debian-based) repository. I have never had a problem compiling a program from source on a Slackware box. It will even install packages using rpms via the 'rpm2tgz' command. Package management is getting better with tools such as "slapt-get" and "swaret". I believe both tools come with the Slackware isos. If you can't find them, you can look here to get any slackware packages you can dream of. If you prefer a gnome desktop, you can download the dropline gnome desktop. Lots of eye candy and GUI front-ends for Slackware specific tools etc.

I could go on for a long time about the merits of each distro, but both are excellent choices for desktop or server roles. I guess it comes down to Slackware for me because I work in a pure UNIX (AT&T 3B21D) environment at my job with the phone company. I work daily on Solaris (Netra boxes) and HP-UX as well. Slackware was designed to be the most UNIX like linux distro out there. Hope that helps

For most distros, it's easier than that.

For slackware, you can download just about anything from here, and just type "installpkg [filename]"

Gentoo, you'd emerge it, without downloading it first "emerge [package]"

RedHat, you'd get the package, and use RPM to install it.

Debian, you'd apt-get it "apt-get [package]"

Updates are even easy in Slackware. We have one server on our network which updates it's packages nightly, and then 100+ other servers collect their updates from a cron running "slackupdate.sh -nc -l 2". For us, it's much more polite to have our own repository, than to have 100+ machines beat up the publically available ones. :)

You can do something similiar with Gentoo or Debian. I'm not sure how RedHat handles these.

But, for the stuff that doesn't come in packages, ya, three commands are pretty easy. All things considered, it's faster to type those, than to unzip, and click the annoying click-throughs to get a Windows program to install.

People are afraid of the kernel, but hell, all you have to do is download the kernel, and use the pretty menu driven configuration to pick what drivers you need, and just a couple commands later, you have a kernel optimized for your machine. With Windows, good luck getting out all the drivers that you don't need.

Most Windows users that I've talked to simply won't get away from Windows because they're too lazy to learn something new. Hell, they won't stop using MSIE, even after getting the spyware or virus of the day because of it. One guy I know got a virus from a site because of an MSIE exploit, and continues to use MSIE. He was fighting with it for two days to get rid of the virus. He simply won't consider Mozilla/FireFox or Opera. Why? Because he's been using MSIE for years.

It's very similiar to the people who held out on advancing from Windows 3.1 for so long. Why change, when it does things they like? It won't be until the "killer app" shows up for Linux that doesn't work anywhere else. Unfortunately for this process, most people are porting their applications over to Windows, to let everyone enjoy, so the "killer app" probably won't ever be a Linux-only application.

Several large banks still run OS/2. Why? Because it works for them. You'll still find lots of people running Win98. Likewise, you'll find people running very old versions of RedHat, because they're afraid of upgrading.

We've only recently started a campaign to upgrade our old Slack 7.0 to Slack 8.1 servers to Slack 10.0. I made a bootable CD to make this easy. It takes 1/2 dozen commands (including mounting the cd and destination partitions), and takes 5 to 10 minutes. Users rarely notice the downtime, and appreciate than things are faster now. How much pain would I be in upgrading from say WinNT to WinXP?

I agree that swaret/slapt-get don't have that many packages. However, you can turn on repositories, or go to www.linuxpackages.net to help fill in the gaps. These aren't perfect either, but they do have bzflag, evolution...

I want the same stability that people want in a server on my desktop. If there are a few programs that are missing, usually a trip over to Linux Packages is enough. If not, take the time to learn about compiling (however use 'checkinstall' rather than just installing the compiled program--makes it much easier to maintain a clean system). Package management tools such as Swaret and slaptget have made it easier than ever to maintain an up to date system (with options to update to the latest security fixes in the specified version (say 10.0) or to the -current tree.

Slack on!

I read all the 9 answers here and felt that there was too much disinformation/lack of the right information. Here goes:

Slackware has its own packaging system - they end in .tgz. Basically, it unpacks the binaries etc into their proper directories and adds itself to a lsit of installed package. You can use pkgtool, installpkg, upgradepkg, removepkg...

The good tools to have are: Swaret/slackpkg/slapt-get for downloading packages. I prefer swaret. Swaret has optional dependency checking, where it asks you if you want to download dependencies after installing the package. Packages that aren't in slackware-current (like K3b, bzflag, foobillard, cinelerra...) can be found at http://www.linuxpackages.net.

Finally, if you decide to compile from source, you can use Checkinstall to make it into a slackware package!! Basically, slackware's package system is simple yet works very nicely.

Im surprised that nobody mention slapt-get yet. You can check it out here. Its very simple to use. It can check more then one source, official or not like linuxpackages.net

slapt-get --update
slapt-get --dist-upgrade or --upgrade

slapt-get --help

I haven't seen slapt-get mentioned. Like apt-get, it's a tool for managing packages, except for the slackware system. It is continually one of the most downloaded packages at linuxpackages.net or you can pick it up at software.jaos.org

Yup.

Two workstations and a laptop myself, on Slack 9.1 , myself.

Judging by the packages available at linuxpackages.net, there are more too. :)

In fact the distro itself contains most of the stuff I need (for production server as well as my workstation). It even comes with Sun's latest JDK. In case I can't find some specific stuff, here is a good place for me. I can also use rpm2tgz to install RPM packages, or in the worst case, I can use 'checkinstall' to install from source while still making it like a package install (which means I can uninstall it with 'removepkg', or upgrade it once there is official tgz package available using 'upgradepkg').

• LinuxPackages (formerly LinuxMafia), for user-contributed binaries not in the base distribution
• UserLocal is a 100% lynx compatible user community for Slackware.
• LinuxQuestions has a Slackware forum.
• Dropline Gnome, which packages GNOME stuff for Slackware. For a while, this was because Pat didn't include any GNOME 2 stuff. Now Dropline's packages are a replacement for the base Slack GNOME. Sometimes they're more up to date.

You can get it and a lot more Slackware extra packages
here:.

If you really want it in the base distribution, just ask Patrick. He is usually prompt and if you make a good case for a package, he will add it. It also helps if you can give some built tips for particularly onery packages.

One of the remarks that usually comes up about Slackware is the "gotta compile everything yourself" issue. Not true. Slackware still kicks Red Hat's butt in the "just works out of the box" contest.

I've never downloaded that CD myself either, I just download the install cd, burn it, and install it, and if I need X, I just go to here and search for the package I want to install. *shrugs* What is on the extra cd by the way? :)

No depency checking, but it also means that you don't have the problem of circular dependecies and the like. Plus you can open it with tar and gzip. Linux Packages is a great place to look for pre-built Slack packages.

I used to use RPM, but now that I've converted to Slack, I don't miss it one bit.

There is a site that makes binary packages of mostly everything you'll for slackware 8 and 7. You'll need some packages that are hard to compile or that you don't need much personalization or that you may want to easily remove with removepkg.

So in between official upgrade, take a loot at the linuxpackages.net site.

what about linuxpackages?

I am seriously switching from slackware to something else, for the lack of tgz nowadays.

Try here. They have a good repository of recent stuff bundled as Slackware .tgz packages.

Mozilla is great if you have enough memory and use tabs instead of opening new windows all the time. I would assume that if you're having problems with Galeon, it's probably the way your copy has been compiled, or it's using an ancient Moz or something.

For what it's worth, Netscape 4.7x, while not state of the art, still renders 99% of stuff out there. It's Mozilla's features (especially tabs) and stability that leads me to use Mozilla in preference, not its standards compliance, which is merely a nice bonus. I'd use Galeon too, but the distributions have never been brilliant on Slackware (and that gconf crap is making me wonder at the sanity of the GNOME developers, period - for God's sake people, why clone the Windows registry?? - and why create such a bad tempered version?)

du -ks /opt/gnome/lib/mozilla/ gives me 25244k. This is the standard Slackware/LinuxMafia build of Mozilla 0.9.8. There's a few k of stuff in /opt/gnome/bin to start the thing up, and there's an SDK loaded too as part of that package which takes up an enormous amount of space and can be deleted, but Mozilla itself, as a user would normally want to install it, is definitely less then 26M, unpacked, installed, etc.

However du -ks /usr/lib/netscape gives me 34252k. This is Netscape 4.78. Again not including an SDK, this time because there isn't one. Java makes up 6872k of this, so you could say the equivalent to the Mozilla figure is 27380k, 2megs or 8% larger.

Netscape has a browser, HTML editor, and mail and news package which supports POP3, IMAP, SMTP and NNTP.

This build of Mozilla has a browser, HTML editor, IRC client, and mail and news package which supports all of the above plus LDAP, search tools, etc. The DOM inspector and Javascript debugger are missing from this build (the console is there however.) It also supports tabbed browsing, a completely reconfigurable user interface with a choice of two initial UIs which are first rate, almost complete standards compliance, search engine integration, forms management, and substantial privacy controls. The package is both a browser and a platform for user programs written in JavaScript and XUL.

And if it didn't have to unzip and parse XML files every time it created a window or put up a dialog, I'm pretty sure nobody would dream of using the word "bloated" in connection with it...

This is one reason why I like Mozilla...