Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$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;
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.
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
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
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!
- 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
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 :)
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...
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
Secondly, the work hasn't been gobbled up. As one of the many people who have actually put time and work into FreeBSD, I can tell you that it won't bother me in the slightest to have Wind River use my work. And FreeBSD was not sold, it will still be available, and it really isn't major news to the FreeBSD world- a few FreeBSD developers (including some major developers) have new employers, but that's about it.
-bugg
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
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.
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)
--
314-15-9265
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
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
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.
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.
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.
there are still 179 other distributions to choose from!