Slackware Now Available For The Alpha

keskoy points out that the top blurb on the Slackware site reads: "The Slackware Linux Project announces the public availability of the -current tree for the Alpha! This is a port of the developmental tree of Slackware Linux to Alpha-based machines. It is currently available at our ftp site (ftp.slackware.com) under the /pub/slackware/alpha directory. It may also be coming to a mirror near you." Further down the Slackware front page, there's also the welcome news that both "[OpenSSL and] OpenSSH, the free encrypted remote shell program, are available in Slackware-current."

Comments

Good job, Patrick V. and friends!

[SaDan]

As a long time user and supporter of Slackware, I have to say that Patrick V. and all the other developers who are working on Slackware need to be commended for their excellent work on an excellent Linux distro.

I hope to be able to afford a nice Alpha machine in the near future so I can play with the latest port of Slackware. :-)

Alpha.

[AFCArchvile]

Invented by Digital, shunned by Microsoft, salvaged by Linux.

Re:Slackware

[Shadowlion]

Uh, these "advanced" distros you talk so slightly of have something called "install options" to let you choose which packages you want and don't want! Gasp! Imagine it! You can choose to NOT install X or KDE if you like!

Slackware gives you that capability as well. You don't have to install everything, you can simply pick and choose what you want. Before you install, you can specify which disk sets you wish to install, where each disk set corresponds to a particular major feature. There's a disk set for X, a disk set for networking, and so on. During the install, you can subsequently go through and select which packages you want from the disk sets you want to install.

My last installation, for example, I skipped installing X and all of the GUI things (WMs, KDE, GNOME, etc.). The system worked perfectly afterwards.

But you've probably never actually tried any of them recently, or you wouldn't be making an uninformed comment like that.

Obviously, you haven't run Slackware recently, or you wouldn't be making an uninformed comment like the one above.

--

Slackware icon for /.?

[armypuke]

Hey /., when are you going to come up with a seperate icon for Slackware? You are currently using the one for Linux, but you have seperate icons for every other distribution. I could see if this was some brand new or unheard of distro, but Slackware has been around since the beginning. What's up with that?

Re:Too bad Compaq will not sell you an Alpha

[greg]

Compaq sells through distributors and resellers. If you want to buy an Alpha from Compaq and aren't from the department of defense or doing Human Genome research you pretty much have to buy from a reseller or distributor.

The Compaq rep you contacted should have put you in contact with a local distributor. Perhaps you got one of the old wintel reps who still can't spell Alpha.

... so where do you get an Alpha?

[Hobart]

OK, so this sounds excellent.

Other than a Multia, or one of those 21064/164 failed DEC desktops designed for NT -- Where do you get an Alpha box for a fair price to run this on?

If I have to pay 3x the hardware cost (Cheapest alphas I've been able to find start at $4.5K), why wouldn't I run Tru64 with the DEC compilers since they won't release optimizations for GCC?

Re:... so where do you get an Alpha?

[Raleel]

we;;. i got a pair of dual alphas with a gig of ram in rackmount units for $11k a pop from www.harddata.com. they are solid.

But the fact of the matter is, unless you are doing somthing that requires an alpha, or significantly benefits from an alpha, there is little point in having one. Desktop computing does not significantly benefit from an alpha.

Re:... so where do you get an Alpha?

[mikefoley]

Sigh.. Did nobody click on the banner ads we ran on Slashdot and Freshmeat for about 6 months? (Obviously not!)

You can get an EV67-based Alpha system, complete, for under $3k. Go to www.api-networks.com and check out the UP1100. Then visit our reseller page and get in touch with a reseller who'll sell you a system. Want to build it yourself? Go to the All American distributor page and order up the UP1100 motherboard/CPU combo and pull your old x86 motherboard out and drop in an Alpha. The UP1100 is an ATX board and uses PC100 ECC memory.

Compaq isn't the ONLY supplier of Alpha's.

Oh, and FWIW, we sent the Slackware folks a UP2000 to do development of Slack for Alpha on a while back.

Re:... so where do you get an Alpha?

[pantherace]

I am typing this on either a 533 or a 300 MHz ($450) alpha, and they are not too hard to find used. I got one from a dealer in OK www.oarscomputer.com and they are regularly sold on ebay.

However the price on Alphas is not *all* that high given what they do, compared with other similar procs. They are the fastest single processor in the world. (Not flamebait, just the results of every test I have seen) A 21264 is a 16-instruction per clock cycle core (contrast with say even the G4 - 4 or 8, or P4 - 3) 2, 4, or 8 MB L2 (or L3? I forget) DDR Cache. They are significantly faster for anything involving FP than anything else. Plus they are 64-bit processors with 160 (80 int, 80 fp) registers.

In case you are wondering why athlons did so well, it is because they use the Alpha's motherboard technology, and things like dual north bridge connections, 64-bit pci (even the one from 1995 (6?) has two. They can use standard "PC" hardware. They usually have high performace SCSI integrated into the Motherboard. If you are into a SMP based system, they work wonderfly well as they have much more processor to processor bandwidth, and something like the GS320 (32-proc) beats 64-proc SPARC systems, IBM systems, and SGI systems.

As for the DEC compilers for Tru64, I run them. They are available for download from compaq's website for Linux, and most things for tru64 can be run under Linux via another download. And there are people working on Alpha-GCC for optimization, but because of GCC's x86 heritage, it is very difficult to optimise for alpha, not that they aren't having speed increases.

btw, I am hoping that the 364 (current-1.2GHz+ will drive the cost of 264s down.) and good job slackware.

Re:... so where do you get an Alpha?

[codealot]

If I have to pay 3x the hardware cost (Cheapest alphas I've been able to find start at $4.5K),

You haven't looked hard. New UP1100-based systems can be found for about half your figure. Good used equipment regularly shows up on Ebay for $1000 or less.

why wouldn't I run Tru64 with the DEC compilers since they won't release optimizations for GCC?

A few reasons spring to mind:

• Tru64 compilers really aren't much faster, especially on integer code, compared with the soon-to-be-released GCC 3.0.
• Compaq has ported their C/C++/Fortran compilers to Linux anyway.
• People are happy running Linux/x86 without compilers from Microsoft or Intel.

Re:... so where do you get an Alpha?

[codealot]

Desktop computing does not significantly benefit from an alpha.

You might as well say "desktop computing does not significatly benefit from Linux." That would be no more or less true.

The fact is people run Linux because they want something different or better, or they are just bored with Microsoft OS's. For all of the same reasons, some prefer Alpha to x86.

Re:... so where do you get an Alpha?

[BJH]

A year or so ago, I got a PWS600a (that's a 600MHz 21164A) for around $US1200 (not a great bargain, but not bad). That said, although it's great for floating point, it is a little quirky if you're used to Intel.

I also have an old 275MHz PC64 system that I bought as a bare motherboard and built myself two or three years ago. That feels like a slow Pentium (say, around 200-233MHz) for normal use. The board cost me around $200 or so, I think; case, SCSI board, etc., set me back another $300 or so, so it cost ~$500 all up. Whether it's worth it or not is relative, but I've had fun fiddling with it.

Re:... so where do you get an Alpha?

[pantherace]

depends on which I am using, as I am sshed into one from the other, not that I don't know what the processor is.

Re:... so where do you get an Alpha?

[typedef]

I have a 233mhz Alphastation that I got for around 200 bucks. It's not incredably fast; it about keeps pace with my pentium 150 and currenlty runs OpenBSD (which crashes constantly, now that slackware is out for Alpha I'll switch as soon as I can.) I've also seen 400-533mhz alphas and alpha motherboards on ebay for as little as $500.

Re:... so where do you get an Alpha?

[Jeffrey Baker]

I know you said "other than a Multia", but the Multia can be perfect if all you want is a taste of the architecture. For example, if you wish to simply learn to program Alpha assembly, you can pick up a Multia for under $100 and teach yourself. Those assembly optimizations will be more appreciated on the underpowered Multia :)

Also, the Multia makes an amazingly capable network appliance. Because of its 1 PCI and 2 PCMCIA slots, and its external SCSI bus, you can hang several networks and a lot of storage off of it, and use it to do almost everything. I had one hooked up to two ethernet segments and one wireless ethernet segment (via the PCMCIA slot), routing, NATing, and firewalling all of that traffic across a T1 line, and hosting the DNS, email, web, LDAP, and file service for a small company. Not bad for a machine I bought for $200!

Of course, the Multia is quite slow. It requires hours to compile the kernel. But as a first Alpha, it is a good choice.

Great.

[Kreeblah]

Now Slackware runs on Alphas, too. I can put one right next to my coffemaker that runs Linux. It used to run Java, but that made the coffee too strong.

This is great, but why?

[Gendou]

I am wondering why the slack team is putting so much effort into porting slack to more esoteric platforms. The way I see it, most people that own these kinds of boxen are most likely in a corporate setting. As far as I can tell, companies don't like distros that aren't RedHat because most others don't already have "corporate acceptance." So, would any sys. admin actually be able to install slack on Alphas at their company? Most likely not. Other than for Alpha enthusiasts who can never give up slack - which I'm sure there are plenty, why bother otherwise? Especially since the Debian project has done this for us (and with Debian, you have just about no branding in the distro and everything a lot nicer with SystemV scripts as opposed to slack's BSD style).

Being a slack-to-Debian convert, I really don't see the point of this. There's many other places they could devote their energies... and somehow, this just seems to satisfy the deep-running, almost primal urge a lot of Linux junkies have to run Linux on every platform (even if it's already done). Nevertheless, I have to say "good work!" to the slack team for moving it to SPARC and Alpha so quickly!

** Gendou tosses in his $.02

Re:Teachers are idiots

[Enahs]

There's an excellent reason why: intelligent people don't want to teach. Intelligent people want to make money.

Sure, it's possible to make loads of money teaching. Head for a rich school district (the higher the property value, the more money a school gets, which filters down to teachers.) A former roommate of mine told me that, where he lived (Barrington, IL) an assistant coach at his HS made in excess of $100,000/yr.

Contrast that with my wife. She's in a school district in a small town. She makes $23,000/yr as a music teacher. That includes teaching music classes to students from kindergarten to seniors in high school, along with chourus (forced on junior high kids) and several extra-curricular activities a year. The manager at the local Pizza Hut makes $40,000.

Tell me. If you had to pick between teaching 13 different grades (a few hundred kids) for $23,000, or getting a dozen kids to deliver pizzas for $40,000, what would you do?

Re:Nice!

[Enahs]

Heh. That's funny. Try upgrading a Linux-Mandrake 7.1 box to 7.2. You will learn a new definition of pain.

Besides, all you have to do on Slackware now is occasionally autoslack the machine--just back up your config files. :-) And as far as compiling crap goes, many times you can use packages from other distributions with few problems (I'll cry when people stop making RPMs for RH6.x.)

But they give you a great compiler

[IYagami]

You must see http://www.aceshardware.com/Spades/read.php?articl e_id=147. The compiler provided by Compaq doubles the performance of gcc in floating point operations. Does Slackware -or any distribution for Alpha- provide this compiler? Are tehir packages compiled against gcc? What if you compile them against ccc?

Re:But they give you a great compiler

[PeterM from Berkeley]

Redhat 7.0 for alpha provides ccc and cxx with a "hobbyist" license, i.e., no cost for non-commercial and non-institutional work.

ccc and cxx do indeed provide huge benefits over gcc/g++ on Linux/Alpha. They compile programs quicker and the resulting programs run faster.

Licenses cost about $500, which is a reasonable price for boosting your alpha's speed by 30-70% or more.

PeterM

Re:Slackware

[Enahs]

Heh, I was thumbing through some old Linux Journals and looking at the old Best of Technical Support columns. It's funny; in nearly every published Marc Ewing quote, it starts with something like: "Go to Control Panel..."

I realize (and I used Linux-Mandrake from the day their distribution became available until two weeks ago) that it's possible to administer a Linux-Mandrake box (or a Red Hat box, for that matter) without the GUI tools...it's certainly not very well documented. I recall the first time I started up Linuxconf after having done some changes by hand...yay, it stored a backup of my previous setup, and gleefully changed everything back! I never did figure out why the system would change the permissions on /dev/dsp0 at random. The last Linux-Mandrake release, for some reason, used some wrapper app to call xmms, which I never bothered to figure out. Was it documented? Not really.

Re:Whats the big deal about different distribution

[Anonymous._.Coward]

I take it this is a troll? Why did it get modded up?

Diversity/choice/personality are all good.

Re:Whats the big deal about different distribution

[Rob Kaper]

> So could someone please tell me why people > really care about distributions?

It's more than a different installation procedure and package management system. While what I am about to say is not true for all distributions, it certainly is true for Slackware: most distro's have their own attitude and philosophy.

Red Hat for example, tries to be user-friendly and bleeding-edge. Mandrake is a nice demonstration of different attitude: it used to be (still is?) based on Red Hat, but with some enhancements to remove some of the shortcomings of Red Hat.

Debian's philosophy includes that every package must be open source. You won't find Netscape there and until recently KDE wasn't in their either due to a possible QPL/GPL license conflict between KDE and Qt. There is a non-free repository, but the main Debian distro will never contain any software not completely open source.

Slackware has another attitude, for which it is hated by some and loved by others including me: "do it yourself". Slackware is very traditional with scripts, not too bleeding-edge for software (and thus stable) and very friendly for users wanting complete control.

Yes, compiling a lot yourself takes longer, but Slackware users have that mentality and to be honest, applications compiled from source simply seem to run more stable - at least for me, on Slackware - possibly because Slackware is - by its philosophy - a great environment for compiling your own stuff.

I guess that's why people care: some distributions have character.

Re:Whats the big deal about different distribution

[tsa]

It's all about the `look and feel' of the thing. Where are the files located, how does the configuration work etc.
With SW, you have to do almost all configuration by hand. You also have to install most software by hand. This gives you a great insight in how a UNIX system work. Other distro's have installation- and configuration programs, which people who don't want to know exactly what's going on in their system (or are already UNIX wizards) can use. You just pick what you like best. No need to start flame wars over which distro is the best :-)

Enough RedHat bashing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, shame on RedHat for pioneering the way to new software releases... They come out with the latest and greatest in their distros, problems are discovered fairly quickly and resolved even quicker, and only THEN does everyone else jump on the bandwagon. They take the bullet for all the other distros and people like you show no respect for them.

That's great

[dragonfly_blue]

I think Slackware is pretty sweet. I use OpenBSD for my servers and VPN gateways, and I've grown fond of it's minimalist tendencies. Finding a Linux distribution that shares that characteristic is difficult, but Slackware is perfect in that respect. I also like the fact that they appear to be moving towards incorporating better security features than most Linux distros.

It's too bad I don't have a couple Alphas lying around the house. One of the Slackware guys has done some fascinating MP3 encoder optimizations using the Alpha, which leads me to suspect that some cool things may have been done to the OS files as well.

Re:That's great

[BJH]

Unfortunately, the optimizations he's talking about there are those done automatically by Compaq's ccc compiler (basically a port of their Tru64 compiler to Linux) with their proprietary math library (cpml). Ignoring the necessity of a proprietary compiler and library for the moment, there's no way you'd be able to use that optimization level for a distribution - he compilee with -ev6 -O4, which would only work on EV6-family Alphas (that's 21264 or better, if my memory isn't failing), which aren't exactly the sort of machines people running Slackware are going to have just lying around the house, if you know what I mean.
That said, if anyone did try recompiling most of userland with ccc (it won't work for the kernel, glibc or some other low-level components), I'd be interested in seeing the results.

Congrats to the team

[morzel]

I have a couple of alphas here, waiting to be installed with the best distribution ever ;-)
Seriously: kudos to the slackware team for their efforts on the sparc and the alpha platforms. I've been playing around with Buildslack - but so far I'm too faint of heart to actually get it all up and running on my machines.

I was wondering which would be easiest: replacing the debian SysV-style init with a BSD-style init, or trying to build a homegrown slack/alpha distro. alpha-current will be on my test machine before the end of the day :-)

I do hope that Patrick and his team can keep slackware clear of the "release fever", so that we can trust their next/first release to be as stable as the slack reputation promises. If necessary, we'll just jump from 7.2 to 9.0 ;-)
It should be better than this anyhow ;-)

Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.

Re:Slackware

[smooc]

Try and do similar on a Redhat or SuSE or Mandrake installation. You get all the bloated tools, most of it stuff you'll never use, and a system filled with software that consistantly seems to be filled with buffer overflows and exploitable flaws. I get lots of security bulletins about Redhat and its off-shoots, but not very often do I get one about a flaw in Slackware.

I do agree with you view here, but do not forget that code has to be tested. In fact Slackware probably needs other distros just to build such a bug-free distro themselves.

In the end it is all about choice anyway: You want GUI-goodies, easy-install (as in newbie) or you want a stable server setup? My choice would be Redhat/Suse for the first choice for the second Slack/Debian.

Your opinions may vary though. Fortunateley!

Bolke

Re:Nice!

[BJH]

The manual update to glibc on slack was enough hassle to convince me of that.

Patrick has almost always recommended a full reformat/reinstall for upgrades across major versions of Slackware. It's just the way it is; if you want (mostly) hassle-free upgrades, you need either Debian or FreeBSD.

(And a full reinstall isn't as bad as it sounds; backup /etc and /home, make a list of the stuff you have installed in /usr/local, and off you go.)

RedHat 7.0 bashing

[morzel]

" They take the bullet for all the other distros and people like you show no respect for them."

I have a lot of respect for the things that Red Hat pulled off on the desktop market, and the work they are doing to pave the road for linux into the corporate world. But that doesn't make their 7.0 release any better.

My point is that I expect any official slackware release to be of the same quality: I prefer stability over features for my production machines. No matter if it's a .0, a .2 or a .whatever.

There are lots of people who have other wishes, and for which Red Hat is probably a better solution, but I'm not one of them. "Release early, release often" is a good credo - that's why the 'current'-branches exist.

Anyhow - I don't dislike RedHat, but I do think that their 7.0 release shouldn't have passed QA.

Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.

Good strategy

[crow]

Slackware has lost the market for x86 to Red Hat and others. Now they want to revitalize the distribution, so they're going after the architectures that Red Hat and friends are ignoring. That way they can be the default installation for non-x86 systems. That will lead back into the x86 market, starting at sites that use a variety of hardware.

slackware-alpha mirror in australia

[jason andrade]

I've put up a mirror of the slackware-alpha
release in australia at

ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/slackware/alpha/
http://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/slackware/alpha/

If it's useful or you've got suggestions for
mirroring, please drop us a line: mirror@planetmirror.com

-jason

Re:Too bad Compaq will not sell you an Alpha

[Jeffrey Baker]

That method of sales is just so backwards, though. I don't want to have to wade through their list of resellers, trying to find one I want to deal with. Look at their list of resellers on their web site. Some of the links are broken. There is no differentiation between resellers that sell Alpha machines and those that don't. There is no guidance as to which one might be in my area. None of the linked-to resellers sell equipment directly from their web site.

In my business, the last thing I need is to spend time dealing with an opaque sales process. Show me the configurations and the prices, let me pick the one I want, and ship it to me. That's all I want! Every other manufacturer gives me that, except maybe NCR and Unisys. Guess what: I don't buy anything from NCR or Unisys either.

Too bad Compaq will not sell you an Alpha

[Jeffrey Baker]

Compaq will not sell me an Alpha. I checked to make sure I wasn't on a list of known terrorists or something, but I still couldn't get one. I don't think Compaq wants to deal with individuals and small businesses, only giant government entities that buy in lots of 1000.

I've emailed their sales people, I've called their sales people, and I've filled out forms on the web. I have never, ever, not ever once been called or emailed by a Compaq sales person. I even once decided to lie and say I was interested in buying a loaded 4-way 833MHz ES-40, and I *still* didn't get anyone to call or email. I guess I would have bought four or five Compaqs by now for the businesses I've been buying for, if their sales people were alive, but instead we have all Intel stuff from VA.

I know you can get Alphas from API and others (not to mention Ebay), but WTF is up with Compaq? Are they just carrying the long DEC tradition of not actually selling anything?

Re:Too bad Compaq will not sell you an Alpha

[kawlyn]

I may be wrong but you may have to go through a reseller. Having said that Compaq has a very agressive pricing policy if you have a SUN box.

wrong! netscape is included with Debian

[Zooko]

Debian's philosophy includes that every package must be open source. You won't find Netscape there ...

This is misleading. The Debian maintainers put non-free software under a different "category" heading in their package lists, but in practice this makes zero difference. If you have Debian installed and you want to install netscape, you type sudo apt-get install netscape, wait for it to download the appropriate packages and any library packages that are required, and wait for it to automatically install and configure, and then you can type netscape, and you are looking at the netscape splash page.

The Debian people may philosophically prefer free software over Netscape, but in practice it is faster and easier to install netscape on Debian than on any other distribution.

Regards,

Zooko

Re:Nice!

[MsGeek]

Heh. That's funny. Try upgrading a Linux-Mandrake 7.1 box to 7.2. You will learn a new definition of pain.

Yeah...that doesn't work AT ALL. I tried to upgrade with the 7.2 CDs, and I was left with a largely unusable machine.

However, when I reformatted and reinstalled, 7.2 Final was just ducky.

This seems to be the program for Windoze too: don't upgrade over a previous version.

However, with MacOS all you need to do is update the SCSI driver and install the new OS over the old and you are good to go. Go figure.

----

Re:Whats the big deal about different distribution

[telekon]

"Slackware is only for people who already have Slackware installed." -- Rob Malda I'm not sure I completely agree, but... slackware's best feature is its name... slackware just sounds cool. Now, as far as other distros, customizability, etc... As *nix goes, and Linux in particular (do you want source code with that?) ultimate control is kind of the point. The first Linux I ever ran was slackware 3.0, and i've also run Red Hat 5.1, Mandrake 7, SuSE 6.4 and now Debian 2.2 Just try to install a standard (i.e., dl'd from kernel.org, blessed-by-linus) kernel on Mandrake or SuSE (make your computer more German) without breaking things and seriously fscking things up. Red Hat... well, is Red Hat. Nobody really runs that at home, not real geeks. Okay, we have Slack and Debian. I'm not a license nazi. I tend to side with RMS on licensing issues, but, hey, sometimes you want to run something that isn't GPL'd, MPL'd or BSD-licensed. But you can install whatever you want on slack or debian... so that's not a big deal. The big difference comes down to package management. We've been over the RPM-ified distros, and RPM is nice but not super-pimp. Then there's APT. Oh, APT. Oh, pimp-ass package management that makes my life so much more pleasant. The point is, I want to be *able* to do things myself. That's why I run Linux and not some *other* OS. But I have better things to do than hand-satisfying (that sounds dirty) dependencies when there's an Advanced Package Tool to do it for me. apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade is in my crontab. every night my system updates itself. every morning when I wake up Evolution is a little more stable. And I can do all of the hand-tweaking I want... without some useless configuration tool (YaST...) telling me not to edit my rc.config. Slack is fine if you don't want any kind of package management or anything... But... come on. How many times to you want to hear you have the wrong libPropList... instead of your system grabbing the right one for you? telekon

Re:Whats the big deal about different distribution

[telekon]

That had no formatting.

I apologize to everyone for hitting Submit instead of Preview there.

Sorry!

telekon

bout time

[Kento]

but i wish i had one... damn nice machines
slack's my favorite distro... always been the easiest to mess with, the least buggy, and the simplest. started out with it with slackware 3.1, and i just keep coming back

Re:bout time

[GypC]

Yes, the simplicity is the key. Once you know your way around *nix, and you realize that you can accomplish anything system management wise with (ls, cp, grep, awk, sort, etc.) you just want all the cruft out of your way so you can comprehend how the entire system works (at least I do). Slackware is the only major Linux distro that accomplishes that for me (the BSDs are also nice this way).

And Slackware doesn't pull any of this "Let's just put in the library binaries and leave out the header files" crap that causes so much grief for newbies trying to compile under RedHat, et al.

Plus, it doesn't require Perl... heck even FreeBSD requires Perl nowadays (I think).

"Oh twap!"

Re:Slackware

[chiller2]

Quantify your statement.

Slack does everything I want it to. It has up to date packages for most things, easy to put in, if not, the source compile is no biggie. If I need a webserver, I grab the latest apache and assorted goodies (php,mysql,etc). If I want a mailserver, sendmail, dns server? grab bind. Done.

I don't have to spend time deinstalling all the extra crap these so called 'advanced' distros put on.

Then again, I use Slack for servers. If you want your pretty (?) little KDE'd desktop all there with gui tools for doing things, then great, but don't diss Pats work. It's good stuff.

chiller2

Teachers are idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot ran this on Sunday, and some "teachers" didn't like my comments. Here's a report they should read, if they can.

Re:Whats the big deal about different distribution

[mrdisco99]

Actually, there are plenty more differences than just an installation procedure...

Slackware uses BSD-style initialization scripts, while many other distributions use that convoluted mess of symlinks known as SysV-style. I personally think the BSD-style makes more sense and is a lot easier to mess around with, but that's me. This can result in incompatibilities when applications try to install themselves.

Each distribution has its own directory structure, so many "Red Hat compatible" applications have trouble finding the files they need.

Some distributions have their own package management system. Many use Red Hat's RPM format. Debian and Corel use Debian's .DEB format. Slackware uses plain old TGZ's.

Different distros may also include different sets of libraries or versions thereof. This can result in binary incompatibilities.

The list goes on and on...

+++

Re:Whats the big deal about different distribution

[prefect42]

I'm not convinced in the slightest by the argument that things run in a more stable manner on X distribution. Yes some distros might ship with a broken compiler whatever, but once that's fixed, I've not found any difference whatsoever between distros in this respect.

Compiling your own packages I would agree tends to increase your chances of having a nice stable system...

woohoo!

[ByteHog]

now i can dig out that old xl-266 that I haven't had time to mess with, install slack, then forget what i was going to use it for again!

*Drools at possibilities*

[Korgan]

Slackware Dev Team - Excellent work guys, keep the good news coming :)

This is pretty excellent news to come on the back of the Compaq announcement of their new Linux clusters. Maybe now Compaq will start putting more thought into releasing Alpha clusters powered by Slackware with a touch of beowulf...

Damn... There's something that could truly be a piece of art to have sitting in the server room... A cluster of Alpha machines running Slackware and Beowulf... Now... Time to convince the boss that the current proliants are truly useless and we need at least 5 Alphas to replace them. :)

Whats the big deal about different distributions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get why people really care about different distributions, as far as I'm concerned the only difference between them is the installation process, after that they are pretty much all the same aside from redhat having rpm and debian have apt, which you could just download anyways regardless of what you installed with. So could someone please tell me why people really care about distributions?

You CAN customise Redhat (not OT, promise!)

[Codeala]

I for one prefer Slackware over these other distros of yours because I don't need all the bloated and useless crap like a fancy GUI to do everything for me.

Shock! Horror! I think a lot of desktop/GUI oriented distributions are misunderstood as bloated by some power users. Is it possible to install a GUI-less box from a RedHat CD? YES!

It is true that the default installation contains lots of GUI based tools that may not be needed by experienced users, but it is just as easy to fully customise your installation using the Expert or similar mode.

Before I am mod down to OT, here is a though about "lean" distros like Slackware: GUI-less does not necessary means more powerful. I ofen find it useful to have a single Mandrake CD (the best Desktop distro?) that I can use to setup a fullly loaded desktop box "down" to a console-only server. This is what Linux is about, customisation.

While Slackware is one of the few non-profile distro, if in the future they want to increase their "market shares" they need to pay more attentions to the Desktop market since there are more PCs out there than all other platforms combined. Not that I have anything against the Alphas :-)

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Nice!

[tsa]

I started with SW in 1995, with a 1.2.13 kernel.
Friends of mine have tried other distro's, but all they did was convince me that SW is the best distro for me.

Keep up the good work, Patrick et al! We all love you.

Re:Slackware

[Korgan]

Either you are totally trolling or just plain ignorant, but I have to bite anyway.

Now it is a complete joke compared to modern distributions like Red Hat (Mandrake), Debian, and SuSE

I for one prefer Slackware over these other distros of yours because I don't need all the bloated and useless crap like a fancy GUI to do everything for me. Don't need tools like LinuxConf because if I use another Unix OS or clone, I don't have those tools to do my job for me. I actually have to have a clue and know what I'm doing. Slackware has never made claims of being a "desktop" distribution... In fact, its always maintained that it is for more advanced users who have a clue about what they're doing without needing to resort to GUI tools.

If I want to get a DNS server up and running fast, I find me a 486 with say 500meg hdd. I install a very basic installation of slackware (which effectively gives me the kernel and the necessities of the command shell) and then I install bind into a chroot'd environment. I then have a DNS that will do exactly what its required to do, has bugger all crap loaded on it (and thus reduces the chance of something being exploited and the box hacked) and the machine is able to handle the load without a hassle because all its doing is running as a DNS.

Try and do similar on a Redhat or SuSE or Mandrake installation. You get all the bloated tools, most of it stuff you'll never use, and a system filled with software that consistantly seems to be filled with buffer overflows and exploitable flaws. I get lots of security bulletins about Redhat and its off-shoots, but not very often do I get one about a flaw in Slackware.

These great modern distros of yours are more headache and bloatware than a sys-admin needs if they just want a server up and running that is going to be reliable and do the job they need. Most of them now won't even run on a 486. Half my servers are old 486's that would've been thrown out otherwise. They all run Slackware and attempts to install other more "modern" distro's fail 9 out of 10 times.

Get your facts straight before suggesting that a distro sucks. Better yet, RTFM and learn how to really run the software instead of relying on GUI's to do it for you. Maybe once you know how to work the system properly without relying on wrappers to do it for you, you might actually discover that Slackware isn't quite as backwards as you think.

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Note : I'm not saying that wrapper apps are bad, but my personal experience is that they make me lazy and when I do use a box that doesn't have them, I find I either miss stuff I should do or just completely blank out on what/how to do it. I use the command line and manually edit the files to keep me honest and my mind awake. Its good practice because going from say a Redhat server with LinuxConf to a SunOS server without it is a lot easier when you actually know how to edit the conf files for things like sendmail, apache and bind yourself.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are purely my own opinion. Many many other people are guaranteed to have differing opinions, and thats their perogative.

Re:Slackware

[chiller2]

Yup, you got me... I've not tried Mandrake since 7.0, RH since 6.2, SuSE since 6.2, etc. I imagine they're totally different now.

My point was that Slack was barebones and you built what you wanted on it. With the install options of the advanced distros you still mostly have to put up with a particular scenario setup ie oh you're running a server, you want x,y,z, or oh you're running your desktop, have a,b,c,d... you still have to mess around taking stuff out after.

chiller2