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WindRiver Will Not Keep Slackware
jolan writes: "Patrick Volkerding posted an announcement saying that Wind River is not planning to keep Slackware after the merger." Patrick writes there: "This isn't going to take out Slackware, though. Development continues," and goes on to say "I'm working on setting up a company so we can handle the publishing ourselves. Unfortunately, I'm broke. I can get funding to publish and ship the release to all the subscribers (and anyone else who wants it), but have no money to pay my fellow friends (which sucks) until we make some." Since Slackware has perhaps the most loyal users of any product (just happens to include Linux distributions), and with a new release upcoming, certain reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated. Maybe we're about to enter a whole new Slackware era.
Well said! After programming Visual Basic for Applications in Windows, I never want to go back. It's so much simpler to get things done.
See here on the slack forum: a post by Patrick in response to some guy posting his un-official paypal donation site. (in all fairness I think the Nanux guy was trying to help, I noticed several posts by him offering to do this, I guess Patrick didn't notice them)
I'll have to admit, it seems odd that they are surprised they got canned? Maybe one of these bleeding hearts should send them a donation of a calender, so they can see how friggin long it has been since they released something!
... ? ... ?
Hell yes your on the street guys and I am sorry, but the fact of the matter is that if ANY of us sat around for a goddamn year without producing anything, we would be toast too!
They got Slackware to the big league, only to find out they didn't really like playing the game, just thought that wearing the uniforms would be cool. "We'll have it out in October, somtime around Christmas, first of the year, FEBRUARY!, first week in April, sometime in May... this summer we hope
I'm a newbie, and purely by coincidence, I just got Slackware up and running on an older desktop last night.
/. thread where someone said they'd sooner hand a newbie Slackware and a good book rather than a distribution that automated more of the installation details. That opinion stuck with me; I took it to heart and finally got (really) the Slackware Dummies book/CD. After screwing things up twice, I've now got the machine up, running and (mostly) configured. Granted, I'm writing this from my Windows machine, but once I learn enough to make sure I can expose the Linux machine to the web without any dangerous services running in the background, I'll be posting from that machine instead.
I once read an old
As a new user, I not only want to use Linux, I want to understand how and why it's working. Anyway, so far so good with Slackware, and I didn't have to lean on a Corel-like glossy installation program.
Plus, I like Slackware's background (if that's worth anything).
Anyhow, to answer the question "So who is using Slackware?", put a check mark in the new user column for me.
Damn. I followed the exact same path, except starting from Yggdrassil.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I use RH & I know pretty much what's going on with my system (hint: I do expert installs, turn off unnecessary services, update packages as needed, etc.). ANY admin with half a clue will do the same regardless of OS or distribution.
Not entirely true.
That Doug Miller interview sure did have lots of "Why we're better than you open source hippies" spin to it.
But you wouldn't be the first person to say slashdot was biased, and you'd be right. But so what? :)
Like Dick Stallman always said, you shouldn't expect to make money on software. If you want to make money you should go into business or marketing. Software is worth less than the CD-R's it's backed up on right now. It's time we started viewing programmers more as starving artists than any kind of vital payroll component.
Maybe one thing to think about is the possibility that Slackware (and Linux) were successful in the early days because noone threw a limitless amount of money at them.
While a little more money might help, I suspect there are limits to the process.
I'm still trying to figure out if the direction Gnome is going (with a lot of imitation-windows apps) is a good idea.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
Moderate the parent up!
Seriously - I bought a couple of versions of Slackware back in the 3.x days, then went over to RedHat and SuSE for a while, now I'm back on Slackware. Where do I send the money for the 7.x versions I've downloaded, now that it's quicker for me to download than buy? Seriously. I still have a tech job () and I can't think of a Linux/free software/Open Source project which deserves more support. I've got a Slackware penguin sitting on top of my monitor at work, and a t-shirt and snapshot version of Slackware for Sparc - all given to me by various Slackware people. I want to pay for them now that they can't afford to give this stuff away, and I can afford to pay for it.
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
Ouch!! I was able to dial in to my university's modem pool so I saved $$ on the phone bill. But I did have a few problems on the install. Two or three times I would get half way through and find out one of my disks was bad. (Back to the download...)
They'll take my CD burner away from me when they pry it from my cold dead hands!!!
-Derek
How much does it cost to make all those diskettes these days? :-)
When I first installed slackware I spent about $5 on diskettes and I was up all night downloading the disk images. Ahhhh yes, *those* were the days.
Anyway, kudos to Patrick for his fine work and I hope he finds the money so that he can pay those who work hard along side him. (One more reason for a standard internet micropayment system.)
-Derek
I've attempted both debian and (blecch!) Redhat, and I always come back to slack. /usr/local is HUGE.
Clean, raw, basic *nix.
I cannot stand the endless wait for RH to boot. I can't stand how arcane the text file configurations get. Linux conf? PLEASE! No Way.
I compile *everything* from tarballs, with no probs whatsoever; even generic stuff not targeted for linux. My
If slack goes away, I'll have but one honorable alternative: FreeBSD.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
Beautiful links, man.
The first one, especially.
(sniff!)
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
I'll have to wait for validation on this, but if true, I will definitely contribute.
Slack means more to me than PBS.
Hey! How about pledge drives?!
Oh! We could have Celtic Kitsch and...
(slaps self) OW!
Never mind.
I will, however, give gladly to the cause.
Shit, man.. I've never really HAD a cause before!
Guess I do now..
Wow.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
That point is the one I make to all my linux lusting colleagues.
Slack is *THE ONLY* linux distro that actually looks and acts like a commercial distribution.
Commercial distros are user hostile for an excellent reason: USERS SHOULDN'T BE USING THEM!
LUSERS FSCK THINGS UP!
Slack is the *ONLY* linux distro that actually trains you for the larger *nix world.
And it does so well!
Learn slack, and you can easily hop over to any commercial *nix distro whatsoever.
Slack=Clue, my friends.
Never forget that.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
If you've been using slackware since the 1.2.13 kernel, I wouldn't say you're new to linux. That's longer than probably 90+% of current linux users. I've only been using GNU/Linux since the 2.0.(28?)kernel and even then it still seemed more like a hacker/hobbiest thing, at least compared to today.
I do. Two computers at home and one at work runs Slackware 7.1 (patched, of course). The reason it simple: you have full control over your system, and can remove anything you don't like. A file server here doesn't even contain the ls, rm, rmdir etc commands. It serves files, and does it very well. Runs 24/7 without attendance other than installing security patches, and only if it affects the setup in my machines.
Tried Debian, didn't like it. Not sure why. A friend prefers it though, but everyone is free to choose their distro.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
- Linux boot / root floppy images (via ftpmail/uucp)
- SLS 1.0 (kernel 0.99.x days)
- Yggdrassil (first usable distro IMHO)
- Slackware 3.0 (ELF!!)
- Slackware 3.1
- Redhat 4.2
- Redhat 5.1
- Redhat 6.0 (They finally convinced me to look for something better)
- Debian 2.2
- Debian Unstable...The Holy Grail
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
su - root /etc/inetd.conf
:wq
vi
-- comment out undesired services --
$killall -hup inetd
Sheesh! It's not rocket science...
--
"In the land of the brave and the free, we defend our freedom with the GNU GPL."
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
Has Debian even gotten to the 2.2 kernels? I am sure Debian is the new 'chic cool' distro for 'hardcore' Linux guys, but their update cycle is way too slow, IMHO.
--
"In the land of the brave and the free, we defend our freedom with the GNU GPL."
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
--
"In the land of the brave and the free, we defend our freedom with the GNU GPL."
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
Most distributions compile for the lowest common denomenator PC architecture (386,486,Pentium - depends on distro). Most of us run P2, P3 - a big difference in processor architecture. The compiler 'knows' which type of processor you have, so when you recompile software, the compiler can take advantage of the new technology in the new processors. Hence, your program is compiled with the new technology and the net result (generally) is that you get faster programs.
--
"In the land of the brave and the free, we defend our freedom with the GNU GPL."
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
And I was worried that I was the only control freak left. ;)
and the Internet
--Moo
How Smart Things Think(tm) my ass!
I hope Slackware goes out on its own and makes a TON of money. It was the first distribution I ever installed (from floppy!) and I still use it today.
Cut those ties that bind and see which way the wind blows.
Slackware is also a handy base to start a new ditribution from. At my employers, I simply make new tag files, burn CDs, and I have automatic slack installers. At home, I have created an LDAP-authenticated distribution off Slackware. Again, no headaches, no unstable libraries, no balky compilers.
Is it possible to install Red Hat without installing X? I tried once, on a Multia, but gave up after 30 minutes of trying. It seems like enabling any package brought in a dependency on X (and/or tcl/tk, WTF?)
Sorry for the crass reply to myself, but I forgot to relay my latest anecdote. I started a new job a few weeks back. First day on the job, I notice a lot of wanky shit happening on a development machine. Took a closer look, and the machine had been rootkitted. Took a closer closer look, and EVERY machine had been rootkitted. They were all default RH 6.2 "Server" installations, and they had all been rooted through a bind hole. Slackware, of course, doesn't start bind unless you specifically add it to the init procedure. Solution: replace r00t hat boxes with Slackware boxes. No more worries :)
P. Volkerding:
I always mod up spelling trolls.
We have a few Slack servers, this machine is SGI RH with XFS, but it was Slack 7.1
It was a bit more work, but I knew everything going on with it. Now I am learning about RH and when things don't go smoothly it is very frustrating because I don't feel as in controll over whats installed.
Might just be that your more comfortable with what you know.
Filter
.
"better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07
As a lot of the people who has been using linux for a while. Slackware was the first one that I used. I remember downloading it on to 30 diskettes (I had a lot of AOL diskettes) Slackware will not go anyware alot of people will still support it and use it. Good Luck to you guys
You know, your trolling is becoming annoying. You are also ethics major and social major. You have posted countering viewpoints in the past couple of weeks and were modded up. People should be made aware of your multi-account trolling and modding scheme.
Stop it now.
I think people still didn't realise what is killing the soft. Lack of funds? No. Lack of support? Either. Lack of users? Of course not!
It's lack of care that is killing the soft. You don't care for the future. You don't plan. You don't see. You are a selfish boom waiting for the next piece of soft. If any one is killing the soft then it is 90% of you people for being too lame to help.
Linux was a movement. It was born of hundreds of thousands helping each other. So it progressed with no big needs for cash exchanges. It was a pure barter market. Today this movement was caught by corporations and millions of users. Corporations expect to make money, users expect that someone offers them the next "hot" product. That is how the movement was transvestited. Today Linux is an hybrid between its originality and the "classical" market. So it is dying due to its internal contradictions. And no one is caring to help. No one cares to suit the old and new conditions. No one is beating his head to find general mechanisms to save the system.
Is there anyone that will make the next chapter of the "Cathedral & The Bazaar"? Better to write it soon or the computer market will turn into eXPired cans...
I'm running Slackware servers, and desktops at work.
I've got it running on my Vaio SuperSlim at home.
Where can I send a check to Patrick?
domc
I wish I had some moderator points so I could mod you down as "doesn't get it."
Linux does not exist for corporations to make money off of. If corporations do make money off Linux, then all the better, but Linux's primary focus has never been and never will be (I hope not, anyway) making money for corporations. The aim of Linux is to be a free-as-in-speech kernel. If a Linux company wants to do the things you describe, but says to itself "Damn GPL, how am I supposed to make money?" then maybe they are in the wrong business. And even if all the Linux companies fail and the only people left using Linux are your so-called "hobbyists," and the only way to get device drivers for new devices into the kernel is to either sign non-disclosure agreements which would violate the GPL or to bust out the logic probe and reverse engineer the driver, then someone who likes that hardware stuff and believes in freedom of information will write that driver and Linux will live on.
I hate to tell you this, but there's more to life than money. Sorry.
Dysprosium
P.S. Sorry for the run-on sentences, but I'm trying to make a point.
Yes, this is understandable. If you look through the forums on the site, you will see several threads about the PayPal account. Patrick has mentioned it several times. We don't want to make an announcement on the from of the site, because then it's going to look like some official Slackware Company thing, and we don't want anyone to be able to claim a chunk of it.
So basically, I cannot really do anything on Slashdot to prove that the account really goes to the distribution. I can tell you that Patrick himself set it up, after quite a lengthy email exchange with the rest of us. All I can do is give you my word that it's legit. If you'd like to email me privately to discuss this, feel free.
Due to *lots* of user inquiries and requests, we have set up a PayPal account for the Slackware core team members. It's been set up with the email address of paypal@slackware.com. Any donations recieved there will go straight to supporting the Slackware project - no companies are going to be taking a cut of this.
So if you're looking for a way to help us out, this is a good opportunity. Of course, buying the next release would also be helpful. But for those of you that download it or are just feeling generous, here's your chance. Thanks.
After seeing Windriver dump slackware I fear for FreeBSD. I don't think they have any intention on giving back to the FSF and opensource community.
They will use and take advantage of FreeBSD because of it's license. It bothers me that all the hard work that went into FreeBSD is going to be gobbled up by some M$-like company. If freeBSD goes into that trap I won't be able to handle the loss of Slackware as well. That's way to many blows.
I believe Slackware is better off without them. I always felt they were held back. It's like what another poster said we may have just witnessed the demise of one of linux's most classic and bloatfree distro or a whole new era of slackware.
This is an excellent opportunity right now for a company to take it over. They'll immediately get their hands on one of the most popular linux distros.
Simplicity is divine. Goodluck Slackware!
"If a show of teeth is not enough, bite
That HAS to be a phony! The spelling in that quote was correct, and he managed a compound-complex sentence using proper grammer and structure. There is no way CmdrTaco could write such a sentence without making mistakes that would have a first-grader shaking his head.
Before I get flamed for the preceding sentiment, I have to say that was one of the funniest jokes I've seen this month.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
ME ME ME!
Actually, I started with Slackware in 1997 or thereabouts, because the Linux-Installation HOWTO, or whatever document I found at the time, had step-by-step instructions that were Slackware specific.
I've tried all the others, but nothing beats Slackware's DIY mentality.
Slackware is the Ramones of Linux distros -- it ain't complex, and it ain't pretty, but it works for me.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Don't take this as a flame .... it's just a rant.
:)
I would just like to say that anybody who claims Slackware Linux is "irrelavant", only used by 7 people in the world, or that it "sucks" is blind to the awesome power and beauty that is Slack.
The Red Hat users will never understand that editing a easy to find config file to turn on the BIND is better than having some 31337 h@X0r script kiddie root your box because you didn't even know you were running BIND and don't have patchlevel 8.1-pre1-alpha4-test7-ac3 or something. They will also never comprehend why anyone would want to run Linux without X windows, because anything useful must have a GUI, right?
The Debian users will never understand that computers with 8 megs of RAM *are* useful. They will also be stuck with shitty installer that craps out early in the install where only later do you realize that the messup was fatal (my experience). It will also be nigh impossible to download ISOs or make a pseudo-image, because the listfiles, MD5 sums, and packages will always be in separate FTP/HTTP sites. Only two of the sites will have the files you need, the third will carry the last part only when Debian has issued 2 more releases past the one you want, because they rushed and botched the job (See Debian 2.2R2). The ISOs are never to be found because rabid Debian followers would download them like crazy.
(ok, I'm just poking fun here on these last two...)
The Mandrake users will belive that computers that don't support a 256 color framebuffer aren't worth installing Linux on.
The SuSe users will trash hard drives under 4 gig, because there's no way you can install 6 disks of every Linux app on the planet on something like that.
Slackware is the ultimate Linux distro from which all others merely add crap on to. It is the height of configurabilty. What other distro will let you NOT INSTALL binutils (things like 'ls' and 'cat') so you can cram a complete DNS server or router into a RAM disk. I will probably never run another distro (save maybe Debian if they clean up their act). Slackware lets me count the buttons on the shirts of all my software just like I used to do in DOS. I can cut out whatever crap that I don't need and reclaim my disk space or speed. Trying that in Red Hat will probably end up breaking some obscure tool that you need 2 months later.
The percentage of people using Slackware may be low, but this does not diminish its usefulness. If you ever find yourself bitching and moaning about Your Favorite Distro, it's almost a guarantee that somebody can come up and say:
"Oh, well, Slackware does that just fine..."
Who said this was a popularity contest? If all you're concerned about is how many people are using an OS, then stick with Windoze. As for me, I'm sticking with Slackware.
I'm thinking the Slackware, FreeBSD and freesoftware guys should all band together and take their stuff with them. You know, bring Walnut Creek back...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
RedHat has contracts totalling billions of dollars. Does that sound like a poor revenue source? If Linux companies fail, it's either because they were depending too much on the stock bubble, or their business simply failed.
Remember - these are ALL startups, and four out of five startups fail. Shall we recite the past of failed (died or merged) computer companies that had their moment of glory? Digital, Tandy, Cray, and many many more.
every linux company (even media-based ones, like VA Linux and OSDN) is facing bankrupcy in the near future.
I don't see VA Linux doing *anything* media-based (yes, many of their subsideraries and side-projects are)... they sell hardware and clustering solutions. Period. And other than their stock tanking, I don't see anything that says that they are going to go bankrupt. If their business plan is *based* on the income from their stock, they are going to have to rewrite (okay, they will have had to rewrite it awhile back), or their going bankrupt is a function of poor business practices.
-blink- -blink- And what the hell does this have to do with Slackware?
I'm just pissed because they stopped printing Dobbsheads on the CD-ROMs. Bastards. They turn their back on the great salesman, and they lose karma (the mystic kind, not the CowboyNeal kind). Gee... I wonder why?
Praise Bob!
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
how is that 2.4 kernel working out(thinkin of upgrading my p-75 40megs ram thinkpad to Slack-current)
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
oh, I already have slack 7.1 going(X 3.?, KDE1.something, kernel 2.1?)--I mostly use it to ssh back to my home box and check my mail(kmail) I have just been trying to figure out whether I would be better off with X 4.0.3, etc--also still gotta figure out if the damn mwave modem/soundcard/everything else works or not with 2.4!--I just hate to mess with something that works, even if it is just barely works!
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
Me Too!
</slashdot>
Seriously, it's my favorite distro. Hands down.
What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?
Still not dead.
I use Slackware on 7 servers (including one
running Oracle) and 2 workstations (one a laptop).
Rock-solid stable, and elegant in its simplicity.
It doesn't try to do everything for you, and
that's a definite plus if you want/need to know
what's going on in your system and want to make
your own choices.
Rebooting only when you determine you want to or need to for an upgrade or major change is acceptable. HAving to reboot due to performance or stability problems or not having a choice because of a crash is not. Consider t he most common fix for a Windows box witha problem "Reboot it". That is not a fix that is just clearing the sympotms until they inevitably return.
this space for rent
You don't understand the service industry.
Industries can and do make money on services alone. What do you think Health Care is?
The information about how your body works and how to fix it are publicly available. Physicians make their money because they offer a service - they keep up with modern medicine and recommend healthy courses of action for you - based upon a price. If you have the time to do your own research (which most people don't), then you can figure out what is wrong with you and what you need to do about it. Health Care is a service industry, and it does quite fine.
Don't argue that the little bit of hardware used by most physicians eliminates them from the service industry. Overall, it is a minor portion of their duties.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
So let me get this straight. I should release my code under BSD so that some corporation can make money off of it? Is that what you are saying? What's in it for me?
War is necrophilia.
Red hat does not profit from my code. They profit from service and other code that they themselves own (some of which they have given back to us). Bill Gates has enough money and does not need my puny code. He has thousands of very well paid programmers that are perfectly capable of producing their own code. I have absolutely ZERO interest in making MS products better (that's their job). I have ZERO interest in helping Bill Gates make yet another 100 billion dollars.
Screw MS they are just another corporation. They hire PR firms and advertising agencies to tell the entire world what a bunch of swell people they are and how their servers never crash and how their products play nice with others (all lies of course). But if I tell the truth then I am "bashing" them. Well they are lucky I am not a billionaire and I can't afford PR firms because then the truth would be broadcast on the airwaves.
Nike does not need my help making sneakers (they have 14 year old girls for that), Miller does not need my help to make their crappy beer, and MS does not need my help to write their crappy software.
What kind of moron advocates that we help corporations make their products for free? Why don't you go to Ford and mop their floors or paint their body panels for free? I am sure they would love to fire their janitors and have you do their work.
War is necrophilia.
And yes, Gobe Productive is a great "office" appl. The developers were involved with Apple's ClarisWorks and have come up with the ideal, lighter weight "works" package. It's all 90% of "office" users will ever need in an efficient, easy to use package.
Oh, wow... my install went a slight bit easier than that. It turns out that the little machine couldn't handle gunzipping packages in any reasonable amount of time, so I used Slack's default "Setup" program on a workstation to install to a subdirectory, then copied via NFS from that subdirectory to the /mnt directory on the laptop (after booting with just three slack boot disks!). Then again, the laptop came with a XircomII 10Base2 PCMCIA ethernet card, so that made things a lot easier. I wouldn't dare run X on the thing (custom Toshiba, crappy video card, no RAM...) but in 200 MB I've managed to fit a full development environment (glibc, gcc, vi, along with apache, mysql, php4, all on a 2.4.2 kernel) plus other niceties like w3m, pine, and ssh. God, I love that laptop...
Actually, it's surprisingly responsive on such old hardware. I wouldn't call it "fast", but for a Pentium with 40MB of RAM, I'd recommend it. Does the video card on that baby have Linux Framebuffer support for (say) a cool boot process like the one from the Linux Progress Patch project?
Unfortunately, my laptop doesn't. I think the video card only has 512K of RAM; I don't know, because I wasn't (and still am not) suicidal enough to throw X on there. However, I did manage to fit glibc, egcs, mysql, and apache on there... a full server in less than 200 MB of space, all running from a laptop! it's insane. I'm a walking UNIX server! : )
Hey, man - I use slack all the time. From a 486 laptop to a dual-P!!! based rackmount server (thanks, dell!), it is seriously (IMHO) the best Linux distro ever.
Have you ever tried to run a Debian installer on a 486 laptop with 8MB of RAM? How about RedHat, or Mandrake? The greatest thing about slack is that it *works*. There's definitely still places left for Slackware - low-end machines that can't handle the latest stuff, and any machine for a user who wants to actually understand Linux, not just use it. Slack taught me a lot about UNIX in general, and I'm going to definitely support whatever Pat does with it.
Hmm...
Did you mention a real upgrade system with dependency checking?
Open mouth, insert foot?
I have been using Slackware since.... well since 95 or so. Even though I have installed other distros: RedHat, SuSe, Debian, TurboLinux, its just not the same and raw as Slackware! Yup, where do I send the $$$? I just subscribed to the latest distribution.... Its sad to see the demise of no frills players like Slackware....
SIG ALERT
Oh and I have 6 Slackware systems, located in different parts of the world, yes Linux, especially the Slackware distro, is widely used outside of North America.....
As mentioned in one of the replies, Slackware is indeed the least "fix after all" prone, and one always knows what and where the configuration files are... And yes, my experience with other distros been quite the opposite, which is that trying to tweak/secure distros like RedHat, SuSe and Debian can cause major frustration....
SIG ALERT
This shows nothing of the sort. Wind River plans to continue supporting the FreeBSD community, and FreeBSD is also open-source. If Linux were closed-source, you can bet that developers would
drop like flies.
However, you're right about the fact that Linux developers need to start thinking heavily about the GPL. I'm as much in favor of free information as the next guy, but licenses like BSD allow for much more flexibility when dealing with those who want to make money. Encumbering code with the GPL makes corporations run away from it, which no doubt is why BSD is Wind River's license of choice.
Let the religious war commence.
-t
So you rather not have the help of non-American, like myself?
Internet and nationalism doesn't mix well I guess. Sorry for the rant, but this is just the kind of "we are the world"-ies that make me want to throw up.
Don't try to bend this sig. That's impossible...
I think this is a troll but I'm not sure... The call to action seems to be "Lets spend half a billion federal dollars developing slackware because it worked for FDR."
This isn't a completely obvious troll because many people still believe that FDR saved America from the great depression through The New Deal (though it's now generally agreed that only World War II really turned things around-- look it up if you don't believe me).
That said, the overall feels seems to appeal to emotions (Do the right thing, Be American, etc.) so I'll label it a troll. Respond accordingly...
-Ted
I hate to sound ungrateful, but who is actually using Slackware these says? Yes, Slackware was (IIRC) the first *big* distro, but the techy users have mostly switched to SUSE or Debian, and the corporations seem to like RedHat, Mandrake, and the like. It seems like most Slackware fans are loyal for "old times sake", rather than for reasons like Debian's apt-get. Just like old-time businesses losing ground to others that evolved to the market needs, this happens to Linux Distros as well. Part of life in the free market of open source, I guess.
:)
Perhaps its time for another "What's your favorite Linux Distro?" poll. Will CowboyNeal have his own distro as well?
-Ted
Sure, $1m is for slackware development is peanuts. But then some guy wants $1m to develop a new technology to reduce industrial waste for the logging industry, and someone else wants $1m to study the effects of drugs on New York Pidgeons. And there are tens of thousands of people asking for "Just a measly 1 million dollars". There are only so many kickbacks to go around, and politicians can have trouble telling the real stuff (slackware) from the scams (effects of marijauna on college students).
Yes, there's a lot of inefficiency in the beaurocracy. But it's become a difficult task to even determine which money is wasted money, and without cutting meaningless projects, well meaning studies can't get their funded.
That said, I still believe that the government funding for slackware development idea is a troll.
-Ted
"You 'ave been trolled", I suppose.
Or maybe you will just realize that some people want pretty GUI's and thoughtless setup while other people actually LIKE doing the down-and-dirty.
One really nice thing about Slack - when I learn how to do something (say, setup sound), I can do it on any other linux box. Sure, the packaging system won't like it, but it'll work. That means more to me than "click here a presto! you have sound!" what about when it stops working in 10 days? Is there a "click here and presto! your sound is fixed!"
(taken from real expereince. shit does up and break in linux on pc's. cheap ass shit hardware, ya know.)
"A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street." - Doug Linder
Of course, there are bound to be tons of "why use slackware?" posts. Well, I'll tell you why. At first, I hated it too; the first place I set it up was in my dorm room, connected to the bare internet, before they even set up the university firewall. I didn't know how to do ANYTHING. I had to scour the net just to get my vid card up so I could get out of text mode (twm! whoo hoo!).
The point is, on slackware 7.1, I can still use all those techniques to get the distro up and running 5 years later! I learned slackware well and my knowledge still applies. Of course there are new packages now, like KDE and GNOME, and I don't mind learning new stuff. But i DO really like that all the stuff I learned then, still applies on newer and more powerful systems.
I prefer this to redhat because, although it came closer to running out of the box, it didn't quite, and I never did get my soundcard working with redhat 6. Not to mention slackware is one of the better systems on which to compile and install your own kernel; I tried it with redhat and it just broke EVERYTHING. I got frustrated and switched back.
This is starting to sound like a guy whining about liking it the way things were "back in the day," and I guess to an extent it is. I don't know that i'd recommend slackware to a new user. But it's my personal favorite, and it's still really powerful and stable as hell.
Your argument has a point. But its a democracy, which by nature, can't make everyone happy. My solution would be a dissolution of the nation into small representative democracies. Bumpkin Idaho doesn't want New York, and clearly, New York doesn't want Bumpkin Idaho. Just call it quits and have everyone agree to secede peacefully from one-another. Its grossly unmanageble as it stands.
Bush, War on Drugs, "you know... for kids!", Tax free Religious organizations my ass.
-Daniel
I'm not talking about the nuclear anihilation of Bumpkin Idaho... (is there such a place?) I'm talking about the right to self-determination. Their own laws fit for their own customs and ideal, NYC for NYC and Bumpkin for Bumpkin. Clearly, if now Bumpkin is selling food, and NYC is buying food there's no reason being seperate nations would upset the ballance. Is your pen made in China, your clothes in Mexico or Italy, and your hard-drive fabbed in Japan?
On the other hand I'm sure NYC is not Bumpkin's most important consumer, nor is Bumpkin NYC's (a sea port) only food source.
-Daniel
Regardless, $500 million is nothing in respects to the cost of one new plane, fueling/arming an existing miliary training excercise or test, or the cost of a single use offensive weapon. Personally I'm surprised with the limitless military budget that more /research/ hasn't been done in energy/cost efficiency that might have trickled down by now to better electric vehicles or the like for the people.
BTW, Patriotism and nationalism are entirely misplaced sentiments. We should be concentrating on what can be done for the greater humanity rather than attempting to appease conservatives with boldly colored fabrics.
-Daniel
And maybe Slackware will slowly slide further into irrelevancy because it turns out that sophisticated packaging systems, installers, and the ability to upgrade from one release to the next are all things that people actually want.
Goodbye, karma... (flinches)
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314-15-9265
I have a pre-order in for next 7.X with walnut creek--will they still be doing that distribution?
We already realized those golden drops of communism. How I long for the days of being sent to gulags because I said something distasteful with the premier. Oh but not just me, but also all my family, friends and neighbors. I miss being executed within three days of conviction then having the bullet used to kill me charged to any of my remaining family. I miss the 60+ million killed in big government enforced purges. We killed more than you Hitler (you patsy)! I miss the forced breeding of athletes. Isn't eugenics great?! I miss the forced drug use by athletes as well. Come on! I'm sure you remember Hairy Chest Helga and those good times in Stink Finger Park. Don't forget Uncy Pol Pot and the Khmere Rouge! Nice guys. I would trust them with my daughter. Cannabalism and Genocide = Good. GI Bombers = Bad.
Oh yeah and the absence of capitolism is great too. At least we all starve together. I don't want the opportunity to provide for my family just because I'm more intelligent and entreprenuerial than you (well if the govt allowed that trait).
mod this up!!! :)
On the other hand, if linux were to go closed source, there'd be an even greater amount of users who would stop using it, seeing as they won't be able to fix stuff that inevitably comes up and they won't be able to audit the code themselves.
As for your comments about intellectual propery and Linus having the copyright to linux, You'd be tter do some research before opening your mouth and proving yourself a fool. Why not check out the list of kernel authors, and see if anywhere they've assigned their copyright to Linus?
My first install of Slackware 3.4 that I did probably three years ago is the very same desktop from which I post right now. Of course I've greatly modified it, but the base install is Slackware!
I use it everyday. Granted, I don't install it everyday because I don't need to. It has been running stable on my desktop for years...
Yes, my preferred method of installation is compiling from a tarball. It might be more work to allocate all the required libs, but it is certainly more fun. :-)
Slackware 3.5 was my first Linux to get on the net (RH 4.2 my first install, 5.1 my first X session) I left slackware at 7.0 for hardware reasons. Now I'm sick of redhat (xinetd was the last straw) and I can't get past the political shit every time I try debian (and apt-get scares me). SuSE uses YaST, Mandrake is for kids, and Novell sucks. If Patrick could concentrate on making the slack installation a little easier to customize, there could be a ton of slack-based distros a la Mandrake, Stormix, etc. I'm not talking about an arrow when you're installing, I mean pluggable components and a fully fledged scripting language to glue it together. It's almost there already. And as much of a fan I am of the xvzf installer, it just isn't practical over the long run. Neither is RPM, but it could be if done right.
New York doesn't eat without bumpkin Idaho
Just when you thought the command line would finally just die.... Slackware comes back.
it's called FreeBSD.
-- Sean Chittenden
Isn't it our government that would already like to peek into our computers using systems like Carnivore?
Hey Uncle Sam! We know that you have lied, cheated, stolen and murdered in order to advance the corrupt ideals of a small percentage of high-profiled people! Since you know exactly nothing about creating operating systems, and since we trust you implicitly with our computers and private information, would you be responsible for helping us create an operating system, using our tax dollars, so we don't have to run Windows? Please? We trust that you won't be as mindless as the Marketing and Sales droids that we're always complaining about, because Heaven knows that you are responsible enough to only create good, wholesome programs for people that don't help line anyone's pocket.
No thanks. I'll take what I've got over that kind of control any day.
--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
Relying on uptime measurements as the sole determinant of how stable some OS is is a fallacy. I notice that not one of those high uptime sites seemed to be a place that I'd ever heard of. Not one. Far more interesing would be the uptimes of very popular and loaded sites.
Also, I think uptime is a bit over-rated in any operating system. Sure, having it not crash is nice, but there are reasons to reboot machines.
(This is not to say BSD is bad, I like Open quite a lot. I just that that finding out that Y version of BSD can stay up for X days on some J. Random's machine is trivia at best.)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I sometimes think BeOS is the perfect counterpart to free Unixen. I mean, it's polished, performs great on the desktop, easy to use (by non-gearhead users), and interoperates very well in a standards-compliant manner. And it runs on cheap hardware. And it's stable. And it costs way less than Win9x or NT-W/2k-Pro.
I don't know much about office productivity on BeOS, but I heard nice things about Gobe Productive.
I think in my ideal office, in an ideal world, I'd have all the non-techies running BeOS on their desktops with network infrastructure running on things like Linux or a *BSD.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
yes, or somebody trying to be funny
Still, the basic idea striped of trollness and hyperbole does have merit. Linux is something a lot of agencies and schools and whatnot feeling a budget pinch could use (not with the students or teachers directly perhaps but certainly to replace expensive NT or Novell servers, expensive both as software cost and because you aren't going to get the dusty 486 in the corner to run NT). Furthering the development of linux (say Slack for the sake of the arguement, Mr. Volkerding is an American and Slack is a good baseline "serverish" linux distro that any Unix oldschooler that a school district or agency had would feel comfy with) would be extremely cheap compared to most of the things our government does. Arbitrarily setting the "Slack Development" budget at $1,000,000 a year, that's 1/16th what we pay for the helium fund (I think the helium fund was 16million/year. May be 30 mil.)
Heck, triple that and pay folks to develop software on linux to meet agency needs, like educational software perhaps, or tools for a farm agency, or a slick admin interface that's really foolproof so even an elementary school teacher could admin a Slack box powering the classroom network most of the time without having to call the school admin. And since the OS and the developed apps are open source, every agency could benefit (unlike buying commercial ware for one agency in need at time X). 3million equates to less than a penny per person in the US per year.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Intellectual property control in the Linux kernel? Your comments are so trollish I wonder why I respond--you sound like Microsoft. When has this ever been an issue in the Linux kernel?
but in the event that all the major Linux distros go under ... This also proves that you haven't even read the article in question. WindRiver is dropping Slackware because it competes with its BSD offerings, not because it doesn't make any money. In fact, Slackware is one of the few profitable distributions out there, according to Mr. Volkerding. And if you're talking about distros going under, I see the publicly-traded corporate firms like Red Hat and Caldera going under long before I'd see Slackware or Debian go south.
Also, you must realize that very few corporations actually write device drivers for Linux. Drivers are written from published spec sheets and open chipset manufacturers. Case in point: My Hauppauge WinTV PCI, which uses the Brooktree Bt848 chip, a chip set is remarkably well-documented and supported.
Closed source helps copyright laws, but that's when you're trying to make a profit out of copyright and be just like Microsoft and Apple and Be and all the other "OS-sellers" out there. And I hope I don't have to reiterate this, but it's not going to happen, and it would be a fundamental slap-in-the-face to the thousands of dedicated Linux programmers who have labored for countless hours bringing an incredibly useful product to market--for free. Your shortsight and foolish mindedness is an insult to them all. You also ignore the fact that if the kernel were closed-source, it would lose ALL of existing developer base--who the hell would contribute to a corporation that has sole rights over their works, can sell it, and wouldn't even pay them in return?
with a closed-source license, and better control of the kernel, Linux could finally defeat those arguments M$ brings about You actually think Linus would bow down to baseless Microsoft FUD and do what would be immediately M$'s best interests? And I'm not even going to go into how Windows {NT,9[58],2000} is such a far superior product when compared to Linux because it has the good old Microsoft we've come to know and love over the years standing so fully by it, ready to do what it takes to ensure customer satisfaction.
Ass.
I know the idea of this isn't something people want to think of. I don't have to think about it because the whole concept is ludicrous. And I'm done debunking your noisy tripe, I've proved what a crock of shit this argument is already.
For next time, please don't post such crap like this. It makes you look stupid and it gets me all riled up. :P
--sean
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
Tell us where to send the $, there are many loyal users who will donate either time or money to keeping slackware alive.
BSD is the best thing that ever happened to Linux. Linux is the best thing that ever happened to BSD. This has NOTHING to do with licensing, but with the business decisions of Wind River. Do I like this decision, NO! Was this a good decision by Wind River, I DON'T think so. Does this have anything to do with BSD vs. GPL licensing? NO! If you want to argue to merits of GPL vs. BSD, please do so on reasonable grounds. I will point out that one of the reasons for Slackware's popularity is that it was the most BSD-like Linux distribution, instead of the System-V style most other distributions have taken. Go fight againt Microsoft, the real enemy, instead of the close allie BSD is. After you take out M$, then you can worry about BSD,
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The demoscene is not dead, just got a little crotchety as the kids all grew up. Check out scene.org for a starter.
I wrote trax and hung out in #trax as Ned Funky. hehe.
-Elendale (its either that or a BSD, take your pick)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
Ok.... I remember the days when i got my first linux , (1996) ,slakware 2.3 with kernel 1.2.8 ,and everyting....And I still can't find distibution that is this well fitted for router. I mean, ok, I'm great debian fan, I use it on all of my servers, but the combination of a SysV init and no daemons - only sshd and some routing/firewalling on slackware takes a lot less space than on any other distro, and you don't need any packaging system or sth. else...
I say - let's help them a bit :)
Okay, I'm going to throw this out there, and I know that there will be some pretty strong opposition to it, but I ask you, just hear me out...
I believe that if any of these young, innovative, linux-based companies are to survive, one very important thing has to happen:
Linux has to go Closed-Source.
Now don't get angry, this is just the truth. We need Linus and the kernel developers to seriously take into consideration a major license shift. Of course it couldn't possibly happen overnight, but if there isn't some type of intellectual property control for Linux by the 2.6 kernel, than you can pretty much kiss it goodbye.
Now, I know there will be those of you who argue "But Linux will never go away, since it's Open Source, hobbiest can keep it alive." Well, that's true in a sense, but in the event that all the major Linux distros go under, how quickly do you think all other device manufacturers and software companies would quickly forgot that Linux even existed? Sure, Linux would probably live on, and it could live on forever, provided that the hardware these "hobbyists" have it installed on now lasts forever.
Closed-source allows us to use the world's various copyright laws to our advantage. Siddenly, instead of having to charge a fee for updates and services, Redhat and the like can just charge for Linux itself. Heck, since so many of the developers are volenteers, you're looking at a wide enough profit margin to charge much less than M$.
That's another thing, with a closed-source license, and better control of the kernel, Linux could finally defeat those arguments M$ brings about it "possibly mutating" and "not having reliable corporations behind it". Linus, being the copyright holder, could maintain a much stricter control over the kernel, and with the distro providers making money, it's a win-win situation.
I know the idea of this isn't something people want to think of. Still, the bubble has burst, and every linux company (even media-based ones, like VA Linux and OSDN) is facing bankrupcy in the near future. The previous versions of Linux could always stay GPL'd, and they would remain for the hobbyists and those who just must have free software. The Linux of the future must protect itself with the security of intelectual property law, though, or else we might as well all pack up and leave right now...
--
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
-1 ? Moderators ? I forgot they use Debian.
How to contact me - http://www.pervalidus.net/contact.html
Frankly as an old fan of the demo scene I find this is a sad time. Hornet closed it's doors in 1998 and stopped accepting new submissions, and many of the older sites have shut down.
It's a shame that we can't get kids into the demo scene and keep them away from the stupid script kiddie stuff.
Oh well I'm an old fart... oh and Slackware 3.0 was my first linux distro, debian & redhat are better. Who needs dozens of Linux distros, Linux is evolving and the ones with something unique to offer will survive.
- subsolar
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Now I am not trying to say that I think this is fake. I just won't believe it until it is posted somewhere where I can be sure only Patrick could have put it up.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Tell that to the people suffering with rolling blackouts in California.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Ummmm, yeah, that's exactly the problem, at least for those of us who live in a democracy.
I know the parent post was a troll but it's not such a bad idea, minus the flag-waving BS.... $500 million is nothing to the fed govt (though they could do it for a lot less) and we certainly spend way more on that to build weapons we don't need. And the gov't would save $ in the long run - a lot of it - by not having to pay M$ licenses....
Comment removed based on user account deletion
MacOS X!!!
Through MacOs X BSD will eventually gain more desktop users than Linux as Apple has a marketshare of 4% of the desktop wheras Linux only has 2% marketshare.
I took a stroll through the latest TPC benchmarks and was shocked to see Unix systems getting pushed farther and farther down the list in favor of 2000/NT systems. I was actually hoping to find a Linux/BSD system lurking around (especially with the 2.4 kernel out), now I'd be happy to find anything Unix in large numbers.
sigh...
We now return you to more on-topic posts...
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
That would be a great way for the gov. to punish M$...create an open source OS that is as good/better than WinXX.....they could tack onto the military & education budgets, because it would help both of those areas immediatley(sp?). Or they could just buy Be and Open it up.....wishful thinking I know....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
At least I know I'm not the only person who uses this great OS this way...ok, ok, I still boot Win for some games....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
It is easy to use isn't it? Almost Mac-like...oops shouldn't have said that....now the Mac police will be going after Be, to defend their "familiarity IP".
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
(laughter from audience)
Thank you, thank you.
I am currently not obliged to divulge that information as it might compromise the agents in the field
Slackware is perhaps the only real linux distro that keeps Linux simple, yet includes all of the important utilities. Other commercial companies need to get with the picture. Red Hat... Cough cough.
Additionally, NT4 uptimes cycle back to zero after 49.7 days, and give timestamps exactly as if the machine had been rebooted at this precise point, while HP-UX, Linux, Solaris and recent releases of FreeBSD also cycle back to zero after 497 days
The 50th server has an Avg uptime of 597.
So the fact that Linux doesn't make the list seems irrelevant, no?
"I'm about to drop the hammer and dispense some indiscriminate justice!"
Slackware makes a profit! You really should research stuff before making an ass out of yourself.
Oh one of noble but misguided intentions. Before dispensing of wisdom one must learn wisdom. After slaking thy thirst at the fount of freely available knowledge. Go forth and spread thy wisdom and your newly aquired conception of liberty throughout the mind of humanity.
And no it wasnt my First Dist, that was Redhat..
I like to install a bare Slack without X and all, and install all the stuff my self from ground up.
What happend too those fools who compile everything them selves ? Just to prove they can!
I got three Slack-Boxxes running, the installer really beats all GUI based installers...and or redhat like text installers...
And who am i ? Just some CowboyNeal lover, what you saying he got his own Distro ? WHERE CAN I GET IT!...
You ment "I dont care, i think slackware sux. I dont use it." and prolly you never tried it either....
He LOOK its a "Newbie Friendly" Bunny!
I didn't really look at any other comments, so please don't moderate me down for redudancy if someone has said this already, but how can someone make a donation, I am one of those loyal slackware users and would like to help out a little.
what next after redhat yadda yadda. large corps likely to go for sun boxen and that means solaris. now running slack on your old systems is the best training for solaris. that means JOBS in the hard times to come. nothing happen to slackware. something certainly happen to MS, redhat more likely.
And think of all the neccessary gov workers we would need to hire if we split all cities into nations, just triple everyones taxes why dont you
Man, the mere thought of my Slackware dying away at the hands of some indifferent c0rp scares the bits out of me. I've been using this thing since Day One. I suppose I could look forward to using Debian if it does croak, that is if Debian itself hasn't croaked by then.
Resist, valiant Slackware!
ICEPHREAK
I don't think *BSD is in too much danger of being dropped, since the BSD license doesn't force them to publish thier code (compared to the GPL).
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M0571y H@rml355.
I really can't comment too reliably on _why_ Wind River chose not to hire the Slackware team, but I am still unhappy about it. I can find no links that better explain the situation. I believe choice is a good thing, and has helped Linux and other free Unix-like operating systems evolve so rapidly. This announcement comes after Wind River needlessly ruffled feathers with their stance on GPL'ed code and Linux. These actions don't seem like smart PR moves for a company operating in a niche that Linux and the GPL created.
"tick tock tick tock ... counting down to a -2 troll from the Linux loving mods who don't see the underlying facts in this post."
The above statement is a self-realization that your post is flawed. This was an article about Wind River dropping Slackware, not an invitation to proclaim your BSD beliefs. Please don't find me harsh, but you are trolling.
"Linux has become a novelty within the past few months and no version no matter which you name, Debian, Slackware, Redhat, Mandrake, etc, has any standards regarding anything, desktops, package managers (RPM, PKG_ADD, etc, etc), and ALL of them have many security risks associated with them. "
For starters, Linux has been available since 1991 and has enjoyed great acclaim and status since then. KDE, GNOME, RPM, DPKG, X11, the Linux kernel itself, GNU tools, and the LSB are all standards. Don't confuse standards with lack of choice or being locked into one vendor/distribution. Everything from TCP/IP to POSIX to the BSD Ports system has security issues, so that remark holds the least weight.
"One of the biggest problems also surrounding the use of Linux, is their repeated effort to try to make it a better system by releasing a kernel revision just about every other week, instead of getting it right the first time around. Why would I want to subject myself to this?"
So I guess you don't upgrade your systems ever? I suppose you are running the same Free/Net/OpenBSD version first publically released? The Linux development effort makes things better and is in a constant state of revising and adding. Such is the same in acedemic, medical, and engineering environments. Such is also true of the BSDs. Also, the 4.4BSD that the modern BSDs came from was not written a single time. It was and is a multi-decade effort consisting of revisions, updates, and rewrites.
"The problem with Linux is simple, the creator (Linus Torvalds) dictates what should or should not be installed into the kernel source which is rather unfair as opposed to the BSD's which most have an unbiased input from the developers as to what should or should not be included."
I hope you don't belive that. Free software isn't controlled by anyone. There merely is one person/vendor that is the de facto standard. I suppose there is only one single BSD varient right?
Using one single benchmark as reason to claim 3 operating systems are superior to 1 is stupid. That would be like me saying the BSD varients are usless as they have little native software.
The saddest remark: "Its shameful to see Slackware go under for this short time, being it was the first distro of Linux I started with..."
You seem to be yet another bile-spewing ex-Linux user who has found an iceberg of exclusivity to hold onto. Your attacks are unfounded, untrue, and unfair. If you get modded down, I would completely understand.
Some people out there probably dont know what slackware is: this site is very informative for those who have no clue. Anyway it seems we have entered a new slackware age. I hope its for the better
Diplomacy is the art of letting people have your way
It's a shame that public financing of private efforts like Slackware is so passZ now, because they could benefit a lot from true Public ownership and financing.
In the 1930s, Roosevelt spearheaded federal subsidies for the arts and sciences, and the postwar economic booms can be directly traced to these government programs. Though some of the very best (such as the Federal Theatre Project) were slashed in bouts of partisan bickering, the system as a whole benefitted greatly from FDR's vision and the Federal purse.
Free software is ideal because it doesn't belong to any single individual. It's a golden drop of communism that can be realized in our time and under our terms. With true Federal subsidies and ownership, we wouldn't have to worry about whether WindRiver will keep the project going or whoever buys them out next. (Whether that would be an antitrust concern is a different matter entirely.)
Each one of us would be able to run a truly American operating system emblazoned with the American flag flying in the wind and symbolizing freedom and liberty. We would call it "AmericanX", a play both on the words "American" and more specifically on "Americana", which the system would be a hallmark example of in all its glory.
It's time to look past the lost battles of yesterday. Distribution wars are a thing of the past. We can either continue hating Microsoft and try punishing them through the court system, which we can't seem to do without violating their rights or each other's, or we can just do the right thing and make a public operating system a reality. If Microsoft wants to compete with AmericanX, then they can do so, just as the private schools compete with public schools.
The answer is clearly more government. We need to show the rest of the world that America still has what it takes to lead into this next millennium. For about $500million in annual fiscal expenses, we could pull it off. I don't think that's too much to ask.
Slackware could attract new interest in the publisher; I can't believe they would throw free publicity away.
:)
It is the second greatest distro (after Debian)... My first go at linux was on some beta of Slackware 4... ahhh, the memories
--
--
bash: help: Don't be so weak.
Digital River must be fanatically sticking to The Microsoft Code of Business Ethics. Here is the message I got when trying to access my local Simtel mirror
No more quick transfers for me.
Of course, Simtel.net is still up, but it's now a slick, flashy reincarnation that stinks of corporatism. No more of that simple layout we held close to our hearts.
Wonder where all this is leading to...
"The problem with our economy is that our budget is balanced by people who aren't" - A.E.N.
... I want to focus on this current trend of how the big guys move in, buy out the smaller ones and terminate them [virtually].
"The problem with our economy is that our budget is balanced by people who aren't" - A.E.N.
I've used Slackware for four years and it is sweet. There is a reason why it is a popular distribution. It is because Slackware has no gimmicks. It can be installed in twenty minutes, and configured in another hour including the X-Windows drivers, dialup connection and other personal preferences. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a real Unix-like system that is not dumbed down for Windoze users. I am not a distribution zealot, just an extremely satisfied customer. Redhat could take a few lessons from Patrick. Good job dude!
Sorry, no clever sig.
gp@nmtyourleftnut.edu (remove yourleftnut)
there are still 179 other distributions to choose from!
My guess is
"yet another blatant troll"
*sigh* back to work...
SLS has been dead for years. Oh wait! It evolved into Slackware, it didn't die.
&subj. I'm using Slackware 7.1, and I'm proud of it. Do I'm every going to use that RedHat for newbies? You bet I wont.
This is funnies crap I've heard today!
You are an idiot. First of all, you are not 'programming', there is no 'apps', there is no
'windows', and you don't even exist.
You can hear the sound of the other shoe dropping...
You can hear the sound of the other shoe dropping...
Bos20k says Slackware rules all.
If you haven't used it lately, do so now!
It is laid out and runs correctly.
A lot more than can be said for most other Linux distros.