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Is Slackware Fading Away?
A reader writes "I just read over on userlocal.com about how David Cantrell announced he is no longer actively developing protopkg and autoslack (these are 2 apps that could have brought slack out of the stoneage but still kept to slacks philosophy of K.I.S.S.). So is it almost "game over" for the first commercial linux distribution which used to be the heavyweight champ?"
I haven't used Slackware for years although it was in fact the first Linux I ever installed. I found it quite unfriendly at the time compared to other distros I later sampled.
Has it changed or is it still a "bare knuckle" distro?
in my haste to get a first post, i clicked the logout link...when i went to the front page to try again, this story wasn't here.
do different stories show up for anonymous/logged-in users? or anonymous ppl don't see stories with under a certain number of comments?
Just because one program isn't being actively developed by one man in no way spells the end for an entire distribution. Sure Slackware will never be a widely used desktop OS, but big deal. Slack has many die hard fans who couldn't care less about package management. I'm sure someone will pick up the Slack (pun intended, laugh)
God i hope not... i started with slack, and Im still using it now. Its been over 5 years i think... It may not be the easiest installation, but you learn from using and installing slack.
And just cos a couple of apps are no longer going to be developed, the distro doesn't end. It'll keep on going for as long as the project developers want to, simple as that.
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
There will always be slackware fanatics to keep it alive.
;-)
There will always be linux hobbiest that will have slackware installs.
There will always be one developer working on some part of it.
It might not always stay up with the rest of the distros (especially large ones like debian, redhat, and SuSE), but it won't "die".
This ask slashdot sounds a touch like the *BSD is dying troll
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
So, the other day i'm trying to install linux (a linux with some sort of package management abilities) onto a firewall (486sx, 40meg HD, 8 meg ram).
:)
The kernel killed debian's setup program shortly after startup.. But trusty 'ol lightweight slakware rose to the challenge to breathe new life into that machine.
I was impressed.
dave.
...which is fine as long as quality is the only determinant of a successful OS.
I could even suggest that K.I.S.S. is, in part, a decision to pursue quality. But it does mean a less comprehensive product - 'right out the box'.
Linux will likely never die, because those want control over the lower layers of their OS, AND who have the skills to manage it, will always choose Linux-like systems.
But lots of non-technical people want to install their OS once, and never have to worry about recompiling the kernel because they didn't have SCSI support and wanted to plug in a new device they just brought home.
Perhaps, in the absence of a single first choice of a distro among the Linux users, there heeds to be a single *second* choice.
....cjs
switched back to Mandrake the next day cuz I couldn't get sound working for my isapnp card (yeah, I was pretty green back then) but mostly because I didn't like the packaging system.
I've since switched to Debian...
slackware was the first distro i used as well and in my prolific distro trying out faze i got very used to the standards used in most other distros for things like /etc/rc.d/init.d symbolic links.
now i have it (slack) running on my router because i wanted it to be simple and "bare knuckle" as one user expressed it. and it is. everything seems like a huge deal to get it going over there.
cron is not working properly, and has no default logging. (they don't use vixie).
but most other problems i have worked out.
it's just not as shiney, but as a DIY kinda guy i gotta say i like it that way. for all the power and ease of the big distros they have stuff that is big and just gets in the way sometimes.
I don't think Slackware is quite dead. I switched to Slackware 7.0 after Red Hat screwed up my partition tables. I now use Slackware 8.0 and haven't looked back since or regretted my dicision. Sure Slackware takes a little more time to maintain, but the people who use Slakware aren't above using ./configure; make; make install to get the programs they need/want.
I've never had a problem with the stability of a Slackware distro because Patrick Volkerding puts out a quality distro with out a ot of bloat.
Thanks for such a good distro Patrick.
Adam
The packages created by the slack distribution are a step above anything I've ever seen pumped out by Debian, and of course not even comparable to the joy of RH package management.
Slackware is not for grandma or script kiddies. But it is absolutely beautiful when you want to know exactly what you are installing, and know that things will be done in the standard way instead of bizarre custom config tools per distro.
--
Lady Xiombarg of Chaos
Patrick Volkerding is a very resourceful man. Besides... To some people, Slackware is the only real Linux distribution. I seriously doubt that this will cause any major problems for Slackware.
From the: But-we-need-you-around,honest! dept.
Slackware has been a stalwart distro for me ever since I discovered Linux, and continues to be the #1 distro I run on my machines. Now, I have many, many vintage machines, as I'm into collecting and restoring older machines. Slackware works very well for this, as well for various servers that I maintain.
Mind you, the setup and interface has never been stellar, and leaves most normal users coughing in the dust. However, for those who need max flexibility and a thin system (like these 386 machines and such need), this is an excellent one. I personally don't see any huge loss by not having these tools....come to think of it, I've never used them anyway.
On the other hand, if Slack exists because of commercial sales, then the loss of these tools and others will be its demise from lack of revenue.
Blog,Twitter
Like many people, Slackware was my first distro, back in 1996. There is nothing wrong with a minimal distribution - I downloaded the disk sets one at a time over my 14.4 modem. You learn a lot from having to work with the minimum.
I play with NetBSD today for the same reason. The default install doesn't even set up networking for you.
If I want something on my system, I will download the source and compile it. That way you know exactly what the dependencies are and what is on your system. Its more fun that way.
We just need to figure out if it will rise again. Basically, Slackware is a great distrobution for nerds and intelligent novices. However, the lack of package management holds it back. Consider a large installation base. If there's an update in one of the packages you use, you can publish that onto an ftp server, and then have the debian boxes patch themselves. Slackware can't do that, to the best of my knowledge. I used slackware intensively up to and including 7.1. It is a GREAT distrobution. Really. You're on your own, and if you fuck up it's usually you fucking up, not some inconsistent package management system. Use it if you want to learn Linux the hardcore way.
Again, you end up spending a lot of time just keeping the system up to date. The major distrobutions are becoming easier to maintain. Basically, Slackware has an ever decreasing market niche. Too bad.
Oh - I write this from a slack 8 desktop.
Stop the brainwash
I've used Slackware forever. It was my first Linux install around 6 years ago and it's never failed me since. I tried RedHat and a few others, but they were just too fluffy for my liking. KISS is a great philosophy that most people don't apprieciate anymore.
I have to say I'd still consider myself a newbie when it comes to linux, well not quite but definetly not an expert. I love slackware because it's what you make of it. It isn't bloated like many other distros (Mandrake SuSE, etc...). It comes with a good assortment of apps and doesn't take 2 gigs of your drive installing things which A) aren't documented, B) aren't referenced and C) you have no clue they're there till you go digging and find out they are just peices of crap. It's simple, and it is configured exactly how you want it. People say it's dying because it doesn't cater to the brand spanking newbie like windows does or mandrake is trying to do. I did not start out on slack and would like to thank mandrake for giving me that start in linux life, but at some point you have to take off the training wheels, and move to that 10 speed.
So what if one developer is stopping work on some tools? It's opensource right? Isn't part of the point that if they are needed and people want them someone will pick it up and finish them? 2 tools don't make a distro, and 2 tools stopping development by their primary guy doesn't kill a distro. GO SLACKWARE!
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
Yes, off-topic.
I say My S Q L
etcetera
you-zer
but then I'm Scottish and you're an idiot.
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
Even though my philosiphy is that every distro can be made into what's needed, slackware was one of the easiest to do this with. Many distros are X oriented by default these days (needn't I say Open"Linux") which is something that drives me nuts because it requires even more tweaking before you get it to where it's comfortable. Slackware is also one of the last large distributions to use gzipped tared files, I beleieve even SuSE switched over to RPM a while ago. (Last ver I used of SuSE was 4.4.1, it was a quality distro, I liked it as much as slack myself) Slackware was one of the last large distros that wasn't try to go "desktop." Even though I think this hurt them in the market, I also think this is what made them so popular among "professionals" and "elitists," the very people who don't care if it looks good. I'll be sticking with 8 I guess untill something better comes along and just patching up. Anyone got a good bead on a nice replacment distro that's got the style of slack?
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
Just another Sys5 drone, nowadays.
...somewhere in between the "full desktop" linuxes and "build your own linux." Slack doesn't need fancy apps or installations to justify its existence. All it needs is, every few months, to:
-Upgrade to the newest kernel, make sure everything is compatible
-Upgrade to the newest compiler and basic libs, and make sure everything is compatible
-Make sure the system is compatible with the latest, greatest hardware.
A bonus would be up-to-date GNOME and KDE, but is it really necessary? For Slack fans like myself, it's better to get a simple, basic OS and then add whatever desktop stuff I see fit. It's build-you-own, without most of the pain of build-your-own.
Redhat, Mandrake, and SuSE have been pissing me off lately with installs that take 1800 MB of disk space, and 10,000 background daemons that eat up 80% of the available RAM. If I want to install a useful system with X and FVWM to do Web browsing, check e-mail and log into remote UNIX boxen, all on a Pentium-90 with 16 MB RAM and a 600 GB hard drive, the ONLY current distribution good for the job is Slackware.
Slackware is for folks like me, who remember when Linux was *Linux*, and not a Windows wannabe.
dinner: it's what's for beer
The reason for having a distro is to differentiate one Linux from another. These days, people are more interested in standardization a la RedHat, than having the most bang up to date kernel.
Probably we will see the market split into a few big name 'play-it-safe' distros like RedHat, and several specialist distros for people who want the bleeding edge features.
So in short, although its sad if slackware dies, that does not mean the end of linux. Roll on world domination!!!
Slack was my first distro, and I still love it. Redhat didnt do it for me.. Debian seemed good, but I figure, why give up a good thing.
Sure Slack doesnt have the fancy "package" managment tools, but if you organize things properly, it matters not.
Keep up the good work Slack! Keep keeping it simple.
Slackware goes through its slow times (more like lulls), but overall it's a distro that's best suited to server admins and people with a Unix background. Slackware isn't a distro for people who love RPM or apt-get, but if you prefer downloading tarballs and building the app yourself (and the extra control you get by DIY), it's the stuff.
Autoslack was cool, but not essential to the "mission" of Slackware. And perhaps someone will pick it up. I've been using Slack 8 since release, and I prefer hand-building anyways (then again, it's stable enough that all I've done is upgrade kernels and Mozilla so far). If you want it all done for you, you can always use Mandrake or Red Hat, and if you love apt-get, then go ahead and use Debian.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I would have thought it was just "Kewro-szhin"
When the site was still in its infancy, Rusty stated that it's a homophone with 'Corrosion'.
With slackware, I was able to poke, prod, and tweak everything about the system to do anything I wanted.
Installing new software usually consists of:
And I was HAPPY with that... it was cool, and I didnt have to wait for an RPM to show up, I could easily use pre-final release software, and configure the build options to whatever I want. If the build didn't work, I went in and tweaked the make file or even the source to get it to compile.
But now with SO MANY shared libs and other dependencies, it gets to be a major pain in the ass to get one package then have to go get 15 other libs to get it to work. RPM solves all that, and I've come to accept binary distributions as making sense
Times have changed I think. But if you still want to work with linux at the lowest level (excellant for learning) go seek out the Linux From Scratch (LFS) project. It's where you take a kernel and assemble your own distribution from scratch, making it work how YOU want it to, sort what slackware did for me back in the day.
Point of fact; TAMU was the first packaged Linux, then SLS was the standard for quite a while, THEN came Slackware (with some overlap with SLS).
I got my start on SLS.
Kuro5hin is pronounced corrosion.
;)
MySQL is pronounced my ess que ell.
As for the others, I usually say
et cetera profile
user local bin
etc (ha ha) when I'm talking to people. It's just faster (even though "et cetera" has more syllables than "ee tee see", it rolls off my tongue faster. I don't say et see because I don't like the sound of it..
I've used Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake and Caldera, but I far prefer Slackware for avoiding bloat. My old Firewall machine used to run Mandrake, and it was a dog. The poor little P120 had disk space problems and performance issues, so I 'upgraded' to Slack and it's been no problem ever since. Now I have Slackware on 3 out of 5 machines. I've never had a problem with the install, and I think the package management is just fine the way it is. Sure, it's not as convenient as apt, but with tools like rpm2tgz, I've never had a problem finding and installing packages even if they're not available as a Slackware package.
I hope they can keep up all the good work they're doing going forward.
Slackware was NOT the first commercial distribution of Linux. SLS was there long before Slackware, back in the kernel 0.96 days, maybe even earlier. Like Slackware, it came as a big pile of .tgz files with 8+3 filenames so that any idjit could download it onto MS-DOS floppies (about 20, as I recall).
SLS cratered before the kernel hit 1.0. But it proved the concept.
Slakware beats the tar out of Dead Rat. I have been using Slak for the past 6 years and I refuse to use any other Linux. Everytime I get someone calling me up to tell me that their Dead Rat distribution will not install I tell them to try Slak and gee.... it works. Imagine that.
I think we need to stop playing all these BSD wannabe games and just go *BSD.
Isn't Patrick the chief Wiggums of the distro? I'm sure someone will pick up the "linux" ball. I've used Slack since 1997. I've tried to use the rest, but Slack is best! Now only if I could learn to contribute to Slack.
Slackware is still alive. I started using slackware have tried different others and sticked with slackware. Just select the series you want to install and select install all, and within no time you will be finished. It is also the only distro that will install even on a 386 with 40mb hdd to build a router. But you can also install 1.6 G Desktop.workstation.
Every once in a while slashdot comes up with a story that says things like "the distribution that just won't die" (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/01/13162 22&mode=nested), as if it should have died long ago!
I fail to understand why there is such an attitude against slackware.
It is a really good distribution. It is simple, it is smart, and it is up to date!
The only thing that is not present in slackware are things for which MS windows is (in)famous for). Fancy installs, dumb control pannels, etc.
Slackware is as close to unix you can get using linux. There are no fancy 'linuxconf' like security holes, and wverything works as advertised.
I use Slackware 8, and have switched to it AFTER trying Redhat 7.1 and Mandrake 8. Before this I was using Redhat for many years, and I regret the time I have wasted with it.
And oh yes, like MANY others, I started linux with slackware... back in the days of kernel 1.2!
Don't Panic
My first dist was slackware, way back. I used slackware exclusively up till a couple of years ago, when I switched to apt-^H^H^H^Hdebian.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I still use Slackware because it allows me to only install the base package for my firewalls etc. And unlike RedHat it doesnt scream unable to install on a pentium processor because it's too slow or too little hard drive space.
Linux has had so much potential since I started using it in '95 but it will never live up to the hype.
Even if they stopped developing it, made it illegal in the lower 48 states, systematically jailed or impounded Slackware users or fed us to ravenous wolves, I'd not stop using this distro. It has everything I want on the CD, plenty of office suites and window managers, no shortage of development tools, and a small/fast enough footprint to still work on an i386 with 16 megs of RAM. That's not half bad for software I started using six years ago.
Lacking really ultra-advanced package management has never been much of a problem either. While the setup programs weren't quite as "saleable" as the pretty GUI frontends, they were colorful, used an easy-to-follow menu system, and gave a very detailed description of what they were doing, when, at all times. Compare that to, say, the Corel setup wizard, which kept crapping out on even slightly non-standard hardware.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
Slaskware was not the first commercial distribution of Linux. Slackware
just started as a set of patches and fixes on top of SLS (Soft Landing
Software IIRC), which I believe was the first commercial Linux
distribution (but not the first distribution). Yggdrasil also had an
early release available about the time of the first public Slackware
release.
I first installed Slackware years ago. (I tried to find the version, and all I could find was "March".) Yes, if you don't know Linux, it is harder to install. If you're willing to read a couple of HOW-TOs, you'll be fine.
I've been trying to install Red Hat for 2 years now. I have never been 100% successful. If you want the "standard" RedHad distro, you can just do a next-next-next-finish install. But, if you're willing to do that, why not just install Windows.
Slackware allows me to have complete control over everything. The init (rc.d) file structure is easily understood. Only solid deamons and applications are included into the standard distribution. Slackware doesn't rely on RPMs or any sort of post-install binary package.
If you want security and to run Linux, Slackware is for you. Few script kiddies have heard of Slackware... can you say "security through obscurity"?
Slackware lets - and expects - you to do things yourself. There are no "add hardward" wizards. (For the love of root, I saw this in RedHat and almost kicked my monitor.) If you are interested in learning Linux, Slackware is the distro for you. If you really want to learn, disable module support.
If you want a distro that can boot faster than any other, use Slackware. If you don't want a bunch of useless daemons running when you first boot, use Slackware. If you want a distro that runs fast, even on a 486, use Slackware.
If you want a distro to hold your hand, and second-guess you, by all means, use RedHat.
Beware tpb
I doubt most slack users would even take notice of such questions. ho hum.
Cantrell says he's back at school full time and he no longer has time to maintain autoslack and protopkg. Not that these projects are dead. Most people who use Slackware use it for its simplicity, and could live just fine without these programs, anyway. If Volkerding was doing this for the market share or the money he would have stopped years ago.
Wasn't the Ports collection mechanism recently ported (no pun intended) to Linux? Slackware should use that, especially since they are known as the most BSDish of the Linux distros. That would totally kick ass!
I don't use Linux anymore (OpenBSD & FreeBSD), but Slackware was always my favorite. I wish Patrick & Co. all the best.
Just asking ... deb's fans always make a similar claim ... do fans of slack move to debian etc. Ah, the market trends we'll never know ... :-)
C
*Flame on*
I've noticed the majority of posts on this topic seem to be against distro's that use package management. I say wtf is wrong with package management? I use Debian for one reason, I like to use my computer, and not spend time compiling and configuring. When I want to upgrade, I want it done quickly. Call me lazy, I know I am...but I just feel I should spend more time enjoying my computer, and less time trying to get the software to work.
*Flame off*
Slackware is a great, balls-to-the-wall distro and doesn't try to make life easy for people who can't be bothered to read a manual or a book on how to use operating systems properly.
Debain is of course the only exception, but even Debian has more fluf than I want in a linux distro.
I'm a student at Northeastern and the computer science department here are big fans of Slackware and use it for our linux machines. Everyone else I know are big fans of slackware. It is in no way dead and it's userbase is still large!
...As long as my cd-rs don't delaminate or oxidize.
I started out with zipslack because it was the only way i could try out this new Linux thing without destroying my happy little compaq term-paper writing machine. Of course I discovered FIPS a few months later. (College kids living on air and sunshine don't have the privilage of buying a new hd just to learn how to fsck.)
Since then I've tried several other distros but none gave me the flexibility of Slack. Even the latest greatest Mandrake sucks the bilges when it comes to compiling a new kernel and configuring oddball hardware. With slack all the config files are easy to find and in plain english.
And besides, this is just a message posting of one guy saying he's too busy to maintain one nifty program. bring on the tarballs!
"I want peace on earth and good will toward men." "We're the U.S. government. We don't do that sort of thing!!"
Wow. Slackware was what got me started with linux. Ive been using it since, umm, 94 or so i guess. It seems like just a short while ago that I got into the linux thing. Guess not. Its what got me away from windows, and started me off learning about unix and unix variants. I still use slack too. its the only linux distro I can stand. But it isnt going away. Just because one package management setup developer goes byebye doesnt mean the whole thing will die. Thats whats great about open source. Just like The Church, and Dobbs himself, its immortal. :)
Hey, Slack is A Good Thing, right?
i started with slackware, then after a few years of jousting with redhat and co, i nearly gave up on linux.
then i remembered slackware, grabed slack 7.0 and have not looked back since. i like the bsd scripts, the lack of rpm, the console. as long as i am around, so will slackware.
.
.
look somewhere else for a sig... *** ** *
Seems the headline opinions of the slashdot ignorant are at it again.
This is not news, this is hate speach.
Slackware is an up to date distro, with educated users who refrain from this sort of slashdot, juvinile, drivel.
I've never heard of protopkg and autoslack in the 10 years I've used ONLY Slackware, so they must not be very important to its survival. Unlike the lies of Hemos would lead you to belive.
No one cares about the opinion of the juvinile tyrant trying to mold public opinion by using the media front he may have access too.
The opinions of the morons in charge is why slashdot will never be a reputable news source
Slackware won't die. It just won't have a large marketshare, as it should be.
RedHat, Mandrake focuses on desktop-computers and will therefore be installed on a lot more computers while slackware - which focuses on servers - won't be installed on as many computers. And since the desktopmarket grows much faster than the servermarket RedHat and other "graphical" distros will grow faster.
I don't see any problem with this at all, every distro has its niche and slackware is a server-distro.
I recently installed Slackware on a 386 I acquired. The other distros (except tomsrtbt perhaps :-)) simply aren't viable on older hardware. The Red Hat Installer won't even install anything, and the APT database updating/searching/indexing and whatnot will keep low-end machines busy for years (in my experience). You need Slackware's KISS philosophy -- hell, it isn't a bad idea on high-end hardware either. I don't think I'll install it on my new 1.4 GHz Athlon, but there's no REAL reason I can't. So, to summarise -- leave Slackware in the "stone age" -- it's helping the cavemen get the job done.
protopkg and autoslack were interesting concepts, but really little more that than in my view. As a long time (5 years) user of The Slack, I have come to know how to maintain the package database with simple tools like ls and grep, how to build new packages from source with only 1-2 minutes overhead on the normal build time, and how to use rsync and wget to keep my package store current. David's tools were just a way of automating what I do automatically anyway.
I don't mean to down-play his work, just emphasise that these were tools to make life a little easier -- especially for those with a little less time and/or experience. They were not there to bring Slack "out of the stoneage", and the are not necessary for the continued vitality of the distribution.
(By the way, what stoneage is the poster talking about? The lack of framebuffer eye-candy in the install? The lack of a package management system that can't handle alien packages? The lack of non-standard compilers, kernel and C library?)
I don't see Slackware dying any time soon. Things have surely slowed down on the official development front since the developers stopped being paid to work on the distro, but security patches and updates to important packages (kde, vim, emacs) are still coming out.
Slack has gone through some slow periods before, but often there is work going on behind the scenes. Just recently there was a long but very active "unstable" cycle, with many updates and improvements, leading up to the release of 8.0 (which contrary to popular belief DOES contain recent versions of core software). I think it is understandable that the distro is now in a "maintenance" phase, keeping important thing up-to-date but not embarking on major changes or attempting to keep every package at the bleeding edge. I'm confident that development will begin again when Patrick sees value in it.
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
Why must every linux distribution be for the mass, and if it is not designed for the mass or stops heading towards that direction, it is labeled as dead or fading away? I am a geek, not your average internet geek. I dislike Redhate for the same reason I dislike MSWindows, made for the mass. The same reason I loved slackware is the same reason I like netbsd/openbsd. It kind of defines my geekiness, not most people use it, it might be more painful to others but it is more exciting for me. I do not think Slackware is dying or is fading away cuz it is not trying to appeal to the mass. For the hardcore geeks, it will always be a favorite. I only run 2 linux distributions, slackware & SuSE. Just my 2 cents. :-)
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Slackware was the first Linux I ever installed, and what I liked about it at the time was the UMSDOS installation. I didn't have to take the drastic step of repartitioning my hard drive to try it out. I repartitioned later as soon as I found out that Linux was the goods. Are there other popular distributions out there that can do this?
Long Live Slackware!
Well we can't have a distro discussion without mentioning Joe Sixpack. Of course like Joe Sixpack would give a shit about Linux at all.
Slackware follows the KISS principle to the T. I can (and have) installed it on all my computers. From the dumb 486 terminal to the pentium (soon to be) router to my P2 w/ KDE and flashy graphics. Never once has the installation crashed/hung/etc if I didn't provoke it/did something stupid.
:)
e -c urrent/ for Slack 8 updates)
The packages are great also; just tar --list-the-stuff-your-favorite-way | less to see what the installation will leave. Simplicity is it's strongest um... aspect... main GOOD thing
-Tim
goto http://www.slackware.com/ NOW!
(ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackwar
Slackware is an excellent distribution, which I hope never goes away. I prefer it over anything Red Hat, Mandrake, or SuSE have to offer.
However, it's not the qualities of the distribution that have me worried about its future (so what if it doesn't do RPM?). After the "layoff" Patrick's helpers (David, Chris, Logan) have been forced to get paying jobs elsewhere and only help out on a part time basis, leaving Patrick to handle the bulk of development by himself. He's started a slackware-current which has a few package collections in there, but nothing close to a new distribution tree. I'm also concerned that the latest patches put out for 8.0 were in August.
They've always been on time with security patches, but they've yet to release a patch for the kernel issues found a couple weeks ago. While, I don't mind so much downloading the new kernel source and recompiling it myself, I imagine there are many out there who don't know to do that. And yes, the newgrp exploit thing doesn't work in slackware because it uses shadow passwords instead of PAM, but the kernel bug is still there for exploitation by other means (su perhaps).
The fact that David is no longer developing autoslack and protopkg is unsettling, but it doesn't concern me as much as the seeming lack of activity at the slackware site. Please, Patrick, tell me I'm wrong and that you've got something big cooking up back there...
+++
NO CARRIER
...and that is the reason why it will live on.
Slackware is the distro for people that knows UN*X. Let the converted windows user use Red Hat or whatever...
That's my 2 cents...
Because most Slackers are fairly self sufficient to start with and aren't afraid to roll up their sleeves and get involved with their OS. Some non-coders even find it easy to contribute, albeit in a small way, by packaging and distributing a few of their favorite apps.
Will Patrick Volkerding become a household name? I don't think so. Will Slackware IPO and make waves on Wall Street? Not likely. But there will always be a solid core of users that can't be convinced that there is a better distro and will continue to keep it so.
Well judging from the comments here, I doubt Slackware will ever die. I recently came across a laptop (Midwest Micro) with a 486 @ 66Mhz, 8mb RAM, and 500Mb hard drive. I decided to dump DOS on it, because it's a pain in the ass even to play DOS games on the thing (the trackball is busted). It ONLY has a floppy drive, so that right there limits my choices. I have this feeling that Free BSD will blow up in my face, so that leaves me with Linux. My question is, should I go with Debian, or will Slackware work. Lets face it, I'm doing a floppy install. I'm going to have to build everything up from scratch anyway, I'm just wondering if either distro has an advantage in this case.
Slackware was around long before David. Slackware will continue to be around long after David. He made some good tools, and I'm sorry he's decided not to develope them anymore, but se la vi.
To be quite honest, as a long time slackware user, I've never used his tools, and I never saw the need. It's slackware's lack of "sophisticated package management" that distinguishes it from the others.. and whether you agree with that or not, some people like it. And will continue to use it.
And I don't think the -real- driving force behind slackware, Peter, will be giving up on it anytime soon... even if he's no longer getting paid for it.
pm.
- --
"I Hate Quotes" -- Samuel L. Clemens
just had to say it :)
My company uses Slackware exclusively on all our servers all over the world, and on the desktops of the technical department (apart from me, I use RH). Nothing gets us worked up more than the release of a new Slack version.
Part of the reason is habitual, but Slackware's simplicity and UNIX-ness is also very appealing for a large, complex network that needs a lot of work to operate. Its lean install (if you don't want it, you don't have to install it, if you do, put it on yourself) is perfect for mission critical stuff where security is important.
That's why Slack will always have a place in our hearts and on our boxen.
3 years ago, i tried redhat, debian and slackware (most popular in 98) the only one i could figure out how to get working was slackware. Slackware is IMHO the easiest distro to install, one of the toughest to configure and get working. Because of the lack of GUI tools (thank god!), slack users are forced to edit bash scripts, learn slack for your first linux distro and redhat and the others are a piece of cake. I do like the other ones, but Slackware is it for me..
If development does stop, I'll just take the last official release and maintain my own distribution of it by updating packages myself. It's simple =]
Slackware wasn't the first. I believe SLS Linux was the first. It got the whole idea of commercial distributions started. Then there was Yggdrasil Linux. That was a very good distribution, and I'm not sure why they didn't continue work on it. Slackware has a long history, but it is not the oldest.
First I run it on 4 desktops & one laptop, the reason? Gaming. Slackware is minus the bloat, so I get a few extra frames per sec under it (yes I've tested versus Mandrake 8.1 & Redhat 7.2. It makes gaming much more enjoyable, and it is a desktop OS for the true Unix enthusiast. http://loserboys.dynodns.net/work_desktop.jpg
As long as there's a few hackers somewhere on the planet who want the Slack tradition to continue, it will.
I myself have almost a dozen boxen installed with Slack, and it's about to be one more.
I've used Slackware off-and-on for a couple of years; it's one of three distros I've installed on a regular basis. Right now, though, I'm trending toward two distros: Debian and Mandrake.
I use different distros for different purposes. My laptop, for instance, has a Mandrake 8.1 install, because I didn't want to spend lots of time making exotic hardware working with Debian or Slackware. Mandrake installed perfectly the first time, enabling all the laptop's devices without even a hiccup.
My servers and cluster, however, run Debian-testing, because I can install a simple, tight, focused Linux for Beowulf or web hosting. I don't need KDE or X or any exotic drivers on my cluster nodes; I do need a reliable and concise install. Mandrake is too "fluffy" for my cluster... ;)
As it stands now, Slackware is fading from my systems because it doesn't give me anything I can't get from Mandrake or Debian. If Slackware is going to survive, it needs to provide a unique value not found in other distros.
All about me
I can't believe this crap. Slackware in the news because the developer is taking a break from the message forums. Dave and Logan were let go months before. It is unreasonable for them to stop development on features that WERE NEVER parts of the official distribution? SHEESH
/. was not.
How about this Slashdot report on the fact that Kuro5shin was dropped by OSDN while
Maybe posting bullshit pieces like this to keep your page hits up is the reason.
Go find some news
A better one is "How many years ago since it became irrelevant?"
Slackware was a nice advance from SLS. It was surpassed by Red Hat Linux in 1995, 1996 (RHL has kept it leadership position since then - fundamental and important changes happen there first (not counting "newer version of irc client foo")), and Slackware has been pretty irrelevant since.
Slack is the only distro I use. I use it as a base install and go from there. I guess it's just the fact of how much you actually want to use the CLI instead of a GUI.
Slack still has a good following and I'll continue to use it.
-------
People are great... When they don't come near me.
(with apologies to Barry White)
Slackware was the first Linux distro I installed, more than 6 years ago. Since then, I've flirted with the GUI-package-oriented distros (Red Hat and Mandrake in particular), acquired disks of several others (tradeshow giveaways and the like), been exposed to Debian on servers someone else installed, but I've come back to Slack, to stay.
Why? Several reasons really:
I think I'll go along with what others have said about this: even if Slackware, by name and/or business, were to go away, there are plenty of people in the Slackware community (myself included) who have the wherewithal, interest, and capability to "roll-our-own" Slack-like distros. I would expect, if it were to happen, to see all sorts of "children of the Slack" proliferate as a result, perhaps none with the singular momentum of the parent, but all with a specific niche to fill.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
Some of us here remember SLS 1.02 of the 100+ 5 1/4 inch floppies, and SLS 1.03 of the broken jewel cases. And we also remember the broken promises for an update for SLS, as well as the outright fraud of taking advance orders, and then claiming that the computer with the CD masters and the payment records had been stolen out of his car.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
This isn't technically true. SLS was the first "commercial" distro (in that it was available for purchase). Slack was the first commercial distro to break out of the unknown.
For the trivia buffs, Slack was the 4th distro out (not counting HJ Lu's Boot/Root floppies). It followed MCC, TAMU & SLS.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Troll much?
i love slackware, it's stable, secure, fast, simple, and it doesn't get in my way. i use it on all my servers and desktop machines and i hope it stays around a long time.
Right now i am typing away at my laptop which has booted many an os: ,qnx (if it supported my wireless card i probably would have stuck with it) and even wrote some things with ostoolkit and used oskit with click to actually see if it could get the performance they claim.
Windows 98(that is what came installed on it), FreeBSD, NetbSD/OpenBSD (they didn't fork that long ago),Linux (Debian/Slackware),beos, exos(www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu),plan9
Unfo., for now I will stick with debian. Not because i am some linux fanatic, but because it is the best tool for the job(atleast for me).
I hope and will continue to work on other oses so that one day i can use something technically superior to linux. Maybe it will be something (less/more) flexible, maybe you wont communicate with pictures or words but instead "brain speak". Atleast I know my brain doesn't use pictures or words to represent ideas.
IMO as time goes forward slackware will fade away, along with almost every single piece of software used today (atleast every OS). It may take 20 years or maybe even 1000, but they will be gone, hopefully...
I see the misconception of Slackware being an antiquated, outdated operating system still exists. Remember, that idea died with the introduction of 7.0 and GLIBC2. The fact is that Slackware now stands among the most feature-filled and up to date Linux distributions, and it's damn cool at the same time.
Avoid associating a worthwhile operating system with one that carries a package manager or method of keeping the system updated automatically. Slackware maintains its position as a niche distro outside the general hoi polloi fanfare. And it has BSD-style inits! I've lost count on how many times I've had to fix X servers or busted simlinks for users brought up on the Redhat philosophy. But don't get me wrong; Redhat may not neccessarily be bad, but simply different.
Threads like this almost serve to convince people that Slackware dying is the case. If I recall, Slackware still runs on a fair number of servers on the 'net. Simplicity is art, and Slackware ships with all the fluff cut out. Thanks, Pat!
Y'all need to join the family.
An anonymous, Slackware-using coward.
That story seems to just be trolling. i mean, the slackware forum at www.slackware.com is always buzzing. doesnt seem like its dieing to me. i use slackware 90% of the time on my workstation to do just about everything i want. it runs the apps i want, i can install them no problem. the slackware community has been going fine for years without a package manager and still keeps its userbase.
what does that tell you.
Just because some apps are no longer being actively developed by the lead maintainer doesnt mean the distro is dead. thats the beauty of open source. if alan cox or linus decided that they no longer had time to work on the kernel, would people shout that linux was dead?
i think not. as many people have said here, they are still using slackware, lots of people are. just because it isnt keeping up with the 'latest and greatest lindows distro' doesnt mean its dieing.
As another poster said, slackware's goal is not to ipo, make a huge amount of money (although im sure patrick wouldnt mind that, heh), and take over the world. its to have a linux distro based on KISS. and it works.
slackware lives on, and always will.
While i think Slack will always have its place, i do believe it is fading...
.rpm and .tgz) to actually freakin install on it.
I just downloaded Slack 8 last week, hoping to replace Caldera on my main system. I couldnt get Caldera to install very lightly, and after that i couldnt get a whole lot of programs(both
So load the ONE cd into the drive.. go through the install. Not quite as nice of an install as other distros, but i managed to get it going.
To my amazement, it seemed to install everything i wanted, KDE, XMMS, X, sound support, usb support, mozilla, and the latest and greatest versions of the kernel, libraries, etc. So i thought: Great! this'll be perfect, everything i need, nothing i don't!
Then i rebooted, WOW what a fast boot time. Logged in, typed "startx". Nothing.
Basically none of my hardware was set up, except my NIC. Now i do like Slack's KISS philosophy, however, if i want to install an OS, i want it to actually use the hardware i install it on.
Every other current distro i've thrown on that machine(Athlon 1.2, SBLive, Geforce2, USB mouse, Linksys NIC) like RedHat, Mandrake, Caldera, SuSE... all the basic hardware worked after the install (granted to get 3d accel on the geforce i had to set it up with the detenator drivers, but at least X came up)
So if slack is going to stay fairly used, I'd say it has to have better hardware detection at least.
It has everything else going for it, but i'm not spending an additional 4 hours setting up my hardware post-install, its not worth it.
However, I didnt waste the CD-R i put slack on, I had an old k6-300 i put it on to act as a router. So, yes, Slack still has its place, so i dont think it should just dissapear, but its not my first place for a workstation machine.
I always thought SLS and Yggdrasil were prior to Slackware, or at least very close contemporaries.
Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure that Slackware was a modification of SLS.
Anyone remember? Does anyone have SLS disks anymore?
If you read closely the post he made on the slackware forum, it states nothing more than the fact that he is in school and does not have time to maintain these apps (perl scripts really).
Honestly, autoslack is kind of neat, but could have been done a whole lot better, and protopkg works (sort of), but is not the proper way to build a pkg in Slackware. It not only contaminates the build machine (it physically installs the pkg to the build machine), but it also basically uses smoke and mirrors to accomplish the packaging of the stuff afterwards...for example if a pkg adds something to a config file, protopkg will not catch this 'addition' but it will put the entire new file into the pkg!! It takes a 'snapshot' of all the files on your drive (except the dirs you set it to ignore) before and after the installation and it compares timestamps on the files. (ack) Not exactly and elegant approach.
No offence to David, but neither of these scripts will make or break the future of Slackware.
As far as a _real_ Linux server I would run absolutely nothing else but Slackware. It is the most Unix like of the Linux distros available today. Call me old school, but Patrick's strong ethics when it comes to distro building make me a happy camper.
yeah, it was my first too. Does that mean I want to stick with my 486 too. It's just a distro!
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
Those of us who prize Slackware, prize it for its minimalist *and* do-it-yourself approach.
Automatic package retrievers, while nice and certainly useful and welcome and needed by other distros, aren't really needed by us.
I think the discontinuation of those efforts are more an indication of the lack of need of *those services* by Slackware users, rather than a lack of interest in Slackware.
---
Information wants...you to shut your pie hole.
'Nuff said.
When I got a new computer, I just decided to run it root-initrd against the old one (now the server), instead of taknig the opportunity to install a new Slackware. So I don't know what's happened to it over the last five years, but I really don't care: Slackware as it was five years ago was absolutely PERFECT!
BTW the "packaging" things which apparently brought it out of the "stoneage" are rubbish (install_pkg or something like that?). The first thing you should do after installing a Slackware machine is remove them. I made a script (complete with ncurses/X menu-ing system) to automate the './configure && make && sudo make install' process (useful for remembering 'configure' options, too), and it's much nicer and much more versatile than that glorified 'cp -a' install_pkg garbage.
As I'm now playing with the Hurd, I'm playing with Debian (since Debian is the only distro available for the Hurd right now). I must admit I do like apt-get (especially since I don't know what I'm doing in the Hurd yet!), but there's so much that's very un-Slackware-like, and it annoys me. If I ever get comfortable with the Hurd, I'm going to have to rearrange the file system and init scripts and whatnot just to get rid of that icky Debian feel :)
Well, it wasn't that many 3 1/2 disks :) Luckily the university had a computer lab next door to my dorm and I had to run back and forth with 5 floppies while installing the system :)
does anyone still have a copy of SLS laying around? It might be interesting to show to these newbies how far distributions have come...
Slackware "..the first commercial linux distribution"??? Ah, how soon we forget. Slackware was NOT first, the SLS distro was. And long long before.
TA
I have always found the whole "Slackware has no package maintenance tools" debate to be a joke. I mean, give me a break. If you want to use a package system, and you can't figure out pkgtool and removepkg, you've got problems. I don't care what distros package management system you are using, if you are counting on it to not totally screw up your system and not backing up your data, you are a braver person than I am. Besides, if the stuff at linuxmafia isn't your cup of tea, you should be capable of compiling your own stuff. Slack is a highly stable distro with a firm base and a package management system that works perfectly well.
If it ain't a Model M, it's a piece of crap.
Yes, they certianly have.
If not, then some of the people submitting stories (and those who are approving said storys) are looking pretty ignorant.
Cantrell did a lot of things for Slackware, but Patrick V. is the man in charge of this distro. Some areas of development in Slackware might be slowing down, but the distro is far from fading away.
Anyone who knows anything about Slackware knows this.
Perhaps a single unified distro could be the future? As it is essentially each distro is trying to sell the same thing with their own configuration tools, and even these config tools are becoming more and more similar..
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
I've used many different distros over the years - Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Storm, Caldera, etc. While they all had their good points, I didn't truly like any of them as much as I like Slack (although Debian did come close). Why?
Part of it is simplicity. With distributions like, say, Mandrake, you get a lot of decisions made for you. That's the whole idea behind Mandrake and its kin. To hide the complexities underneath from the average user. But in so doing, they weave a tangled web that can be quite annoying for a power user to undo or modify to their needs. This is the opposite of Slackware - it gives you a powerful base of core software, with a few extra goodies thrown in. But if you really want to only install 50MB of stuff, you can do that. Don't want X? Gone. No KDE? No problem. And so on, and so on.
For people like me, Slackware is a wonderful distro. It allows one to start out with a very functional system with more than enough to get started, and build their system from there. Unlike the other newbie-ized setups, KDE and GNOME are not thrust down my throat. I happen to like WindowMaker, and even before the installer nicely offered that as an option, Slackware was more than happy to oblige my choice of window manager. And while many would cite the fact that Slack is a non-RPM distro as a weakness, I don't miss it. In the past, compiling things would be a more worrying prospect for me, especially during the turbulent times when glibc wasn't yet standardized across the distributions. But honestly, I'm not bothered by compiling my software, and I generally don't have the problems I occasionally had with RPM systems (ever try to upgrade RPM itself? how many times have you had to upgrade tar or gzip?).
All distros have their place - Slackware's place is with the power users, who don't want to be stuck with a Windows-wannabe setup. Slack harkens back to the day when men were men, installers were text, and Linux was Linux. And that's just the way I like it. ;)
Mozilla's a nice operating system, but it needs a better browser.
Yup, one can really trim down an install of Slackware to run on pretty much anything with a couple megs of RAM and about 40megs of HDD space.
I installed Slackware on a 486DX-33 w/12Megs of RAM and a 100meg hard drive to act as a print spool for an old laser printer on our network. Shut down all services except what was needed for printing, installed SSH for remote admin, and let it loose.
You can pretty much shape Slackware for whatever job you need a Linux machine to do, and you can do it easily.
We don't hear much about Slackware very often, that is true. In the last couple of years we've seen Linux IPOs, the domination of Red Hat, and many other flashy distros with neat logos and nice web sites (Corel, Mandrake, and so forth). Slackware has kinda stayed in the background of the Linux world, so to speak.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Patrick V. doesn't get enough credit for the great work he does putting out a quality Linux distro like Slackware.
Slackware is consistant, stable, and has a very small footprint when it comes to memory useage and disk useage. Its just much less complicated than other Linux distros, and much more efficient.
If the submitter had bothered to even glance at the slackware forum, he would have seen that David Cantrell and Chris Lumens have gone back to school now that Windriver dropped slack. Pat (who has always been the main man) has been busy shipping slack 8 and other business details he didn't have to worry about when wccdrom/bsdi was doing the publishing. He still updates -current occationally, and other than the latest fancy kernel, it's still one of the most up to date distros out there right now.
This ask slashdot sounds a touch like the *BSD is dying troll
Yeah, it certainly doesn't sound like a half assed attempt to start a distro flame war with lots of posts, does it? Banner ads ahoy.
Fucking Christ on a pogo stick, this site is going into the toilet fast. As you can see from my UID, I'm a relative newcomer but even I can see the signal to noise dropping. And to think I wasted all that time gathering karma, eh?
(You know, I really hate these "Slashdot is suckier than before" posts. But this story is just blatant dogshit.)
--saint
Redhat, Mandrake, and SuSE have been pissing me off lately with installs that take 1800 MB of disk space, and 10,000 background daemons that eat up 80% of the available RAM. If I want to install a useful system with X and FVWM to do Web browsing, check e-mail and log into remote UNIX boxen, all on a Pentium-90 with 16 MB RAM and a 600 GB hard drive, the ONLY current distribution good for the job is Slackware.
:PM
I was doing all that with debian, on 486dx 100MHz with 20 MB ram and 200 MB HD. Hell, I even managed it on 486dx 33MHz with 8 MB ram and 200 MB HD. It was a bit slow, but it worked
I've always found Debian to be pretty lightweight. Maybe not as much as slack, but since my only basis of comparison is Windows it seems hella lightweight to me =)
Hell I used Debian for over 2 years without running X. I just browsed web, read email, mudded, wrote text files all from the console. I also went the same period of time without using apt or dselect. I just ftpd to the server to grab a package, downloaded it and installed it manually.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
So, the other day i'm trying to install linux (a linux with some sort of package management abilities) onto a firewall (486sx, 40meg HD, 8 meg ram).
One word, baby. NetBSD. I ran a web/file/mail server on a Quadra 700 with a 200 meg drive for months.
The hardware has since been changed over from the Mac to a Dell 486. Seamless and fast.
--saint
...someone else just picks them up.
If Cantrell drops those packages, why doesn't another Slackware enthusiast pick them up?
Isn't that the beauty of OSS? If Linus totally quit developing and opened "Torvald's Pickled Herring Stand", Linux would still carry on.
-dc
I don't think i've ever used autoslack... i mean, i appreciate the concept, and i'm sure it'd be useful... i just don't see how autoslack being on hold marks the demise of slackware. personally i use slackware because it was the first distro to *make sense* for me. personally, i think that slack could only disappear with the demise of linux... there will always be supporters to carry the torch
besides... what other distro is endorsed by the church of the sub genius?
eh... i'm not sure that's a good thing...
//radiotakeover.
I think we should send this link to David Cantrell... I'm also a loyal Slack user (since version 3.4 I believe). It was my first linux experience, and I have tried just about every distro under the sun, and still keep coming back to slackware, for many reasons already mentioned in above posts... Not to mention that I've had the best luck on many different laptops with slack. We can't see slackware go!! I'm running it right now on the machine I'm typing this message even...
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
i started off with redhat 5.2, it worked but i didn't get it, went on to mandrake, it worked easier but i still didn't get it and i thought it was way too bloated, tried some niche distros but they didnt have what i wanted, tried slackware for a 386 firewall i wanted to build, it worked so well i use it on all my linux installs now, AND i get it
you know exactly what you put into a slack system and what is running on it, its not as easy as redhat (at first) but you have more control...
When I heard about the shakedown at Walnut Creek with the whole Wind River debacle, I was on the phone with all my other Slack devotees looking for ways to help fund Patrick (Volderking)'s continuation of the Slackware project.
I have used Slackware since its infancy when we are all excited to load up a new box full of floppy disksets on our boxen. There were long nights spent swapping floppies out as the install progressed. It wasn't easy or quick or (especially) fun, but it ALWAYS worked and it was ALWAYS stable.
Slack continues to run my boxen since it gives me a really granular level of control over what gets installed and what doesn't in a way that I've seen VERY few other distros replicate. Not only that but I don't have to feel crippled or out-of-touch by using RPM (or RPM-like managers) for installing software. I just donwload the source, edit what files I need to, and run a 'make' on it. I thought this was what Linux was supposed to be about - easy access to source and the tools to set it up on our boxes. One look at the directory trees from other distros (like SuSe, for instance) makes me cringe for anyone who has to admin those boxes from the CLI.
When I got my Slack 8.0, I moved into the 2.4 kernel era...there isn't ANYthing stone-age about ANY of my machines. I run just as current (if not MORE current) code than most of the Red Hat fanatics I've met. Heck, most of THEM rag me about no package manager...to which I reply that Slackware has had (its own) package management for longer than RPM has been floating around. People claiming that Slack is out-of-date really should step back and analyze just what "out-of-date" means.
Slackware is the closest Linux derivative to a "real" UN*X or *BSD. In fact, it is very easy to switch from on to the other. It is also one of the cleanest distros in terms of where things are put in the directory tree. I don't have to wonder where everything is at 'cause it is very close to POSIX. Allright, I could keep rambling onandon..but why???
I would really hate for Slackware to go away but if it did, I'd be lining up for my latest El Torito from Free (or Open) BSD!!!
-PONA-
"Make Mine Slakware!!!"
+that's funny...I don't FEEL tardy.+
Much like every other Linux person on the face of the earth, my first Linux dist was Slack. That was back in the 3.x days, I think. I used it because my "Linux god" friend used it and that's what he gave me. It was on a laptop and absolutely nothing worked. I couldn't use the modem, because it was a built-in winmodem. I couldn't use X, because my built-in chipset wasn't supported. I couldn't use sound, because (help me) I didn't know what the built-in sound chip was. The good ol' days, aye?
Hehehe...
I used it more and more, and more and more stuff got supported. That's when Slackware stopped updating regularly. Now it's a year or two between releases. I understand that you can download kernel updates and lib updates, but I'd personally rather not have to install an OS, and then turn right around and download 200MB worth of updates and spend the next day compiling. I've played with Slack 8 and I still can't get my sound (AWE64) to work, regardless of how many HOWTO's I read. For some reason, PPP keeps saying there's no kernel support, regardless of if I use modules or built-in support. And on top of that, I can't even install Slack 8 now, because I have a Promise Ultra100 card and fdisk doesn't recognize a hard drive.
Now don't flame me. I know that I could take out the card, install, recompile the kernel with support for the card, reinsert the card, reboot, and it should work. But seriously, folks, shouldn't something like that just be working from the start? That's one of the reasons why I don't use Debian. It doesn't support the Promise Ultra100, either. RedHat and Mandrake have supported it for multiple releases so I use them.
I'm all for learning stuff the hardcore way, but there are limits to how much the user should "have" to do just for it to work.
Slackware started out as a set of patches to make SLS a bit nicer. After SLS development stopped, Patrick released Slackware as a complete distribution.
BTW, there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about the state of slackware. Slackware has been a one-man company for years, and last I heard, it has always been profitable. For a while, it was a subsidiary of Walnut Creek CDROM, which was bought/merged with BSDI. BSDI pumped a bit more money into Slack, allowing Patrick to hire additional developers. When Windriver bought out BSDI's softare business, Slackware split off and became a seperate company again -- just Patrick.
The other developers, like David Cantrell, are still members of the Slackware development team who contribute in their spare time. They have to have day jobs doing other things to pay the rent now, so they aren't full-time slack developers. Development may slow down a little as a result, but it does not mean Slack is dead.
For those who haven't checked their favorite Slackware mirror lately, slackware-current is live again. Updates are coming slowly, but that is normal so soon after a major release.
-- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
How does RPM solve all that?
Part of the reason I switched from Mandrake to Slackware was because RPM wasn't solving all that, and I just couldn't keep my system up-to-date. I was spending lots of time hunting for RPMs and finding out about new dependencies (which restarted the cycle). And then half the time, there just weren't any RPMs for the stuff I wanted, so I had to build from source anyway. Then the RPM database would gradually start drifting away from what was really installed on my system, and then I got into the habit of force-installing every single RPM, because 99% of the time, the dependency messages were false-negatives. Then the 1% case would bite me in the ass, as some program crashed because something it needed wasn't installed. ARGH!!! I HATE RPM!
(How do Mandrake and Red Hat users get by? I really don't know!)
I keep hearing that Debian's apt-get is so easy, and I've been tempted a couple of times. But fear will protect me: Fear that someday I won't be able to get something I need in package form, so I'll install from source, and then the package database will be wrong and I'll have the same problems I had with RPM. As long as I keep that fear in my mind, I'll be safe from Debian's temptation.
I'll steer clear of package management systems, thankyouverymuch. It's not "eliteness" or that I enjoy watching gcc do it's thing, justifying the cost of my Athlons. It's purely because of convenience and a desire to keep my hair instead of pulling it all out.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
That's the cool part of open source... those maintaining it can throw in the towel, but others can pick it out of the trash and start again..
Me? I've switched from RedHAT to slackware because of Redhat's new rules.. (EULA? no! and I dont accept any EULA redhat.. nor will I ever.)
If redhat starts acting like a linux company again then I may change back, but I do not accept any Opening signifies acceptance EULA or any click through EULA, nor do I accept robbing users of $60.00 for just a few CD's and a couple of books... They removed Tech support, the ONLY reason to actually buy redhat in a retail box.
Yes I own 7.2, no I do not accept or agree to any of their terms, and I no longer reccomend redhat to any newbies or companies because of that.
And it's peachy. :-)
Slackware rips on high end hardware. I've been playing with RedHat 7.2 on the same machine, and it's noticibly slower with all the disk thrashing that takes place.
Back to Slackware 8.0, and life couldn't be better.
I find slackware to be a refreshing distro. Personally, I will sacrifice speed and features any day for reliability and flexibility, which slack provides quite well. It is straightforward, clean, and stable. Seems very well thought out overall.
There seems to be this big push to make linux the new desktop of choice for novice users. That's a good goal, but realize that by making something easy, you give up a lot of flexibility and simplicity. Remember, it's taking something that is astronomically complex like a computer, and making it 'one-click easy' for the non-techies out there. It will have to bloat, and it will have to become unwieldy. It's just the nature of the beast. There will always be a need for small, stable, and flexible distros like slack, for those that need a reliable tool to get a job done. Much praise to slack!
Learn how a CPU works before you learn to program. Seriously.
Ximian has problems figuring dependencies under Slack. See their explanation.
Then you can install almost any major distro via the network. Slackware can install from an NFS served filesystem, RedHat can install via FTP. Don't know the options for the other distros...
Good luck!
I think the package management has slowed. I have been trying to get the 2.2.2 build of Samba for Slack 7/8 but can't find it anywhere. usually I can get it from the site within 3 days, or even a few hours after it is released.
:) but I have never had any problems with it, packages breaking etc... Like I did with the RPM management systems.
I really enjoy using Slackware. Im still using 7.0 version (oh yea, its updated)
Also I would just like to add that I think Slackware does packages better than other distros. Its funny how redhat may have.... lets say around 2,000 or so packages (not really just a guess), and then you have Slackware that has around, 150 packages at most. Which one is easier to manage? Probably Slackware since its bare, and doesn't give you extra crap you don't need.
Ive been very satisfied with Slackware. I continue to support them, and buy every major release to support their efforts.
--------------------------
Is this a sig?
--------------------------
Want X to work? This normally works great for me:
/root/XF86Config.new"
Log in as root.
Type, "XFree86 -configure"
Type, "XFree86 -xf86config
If X fires up and you get the generic X screen. Congrats. Copy that "XF86Config.new" file to "/etc/X11/XF86Config".
Type "startx".
Don't like what X has set up for you? Edit "/etc/X11/XF86Config" to your liking.
Done.
I was just reading on lwn.net about SlackPack, it provides basic package management with Slackware.
Take a look at:
http://freshmeat.net/releases/60961
I'm doing the same thing for a school. They were going to throw out a lot of old Pentium-1s that they thought were obsolete. Since Mandrake doesn't have much lower system requirements than Windows, I went with Slackware did what I needed it to:
There'll always be a place for good old Slack.
Red Hat's almost dead too...
Unix is a standard, DOS is a standard, windows XX is not.
Last year, I tried Debian because I was getting sick of the lack of package support for slack, but I then spent most of my time learning how to use dpkg and trying to figure out what the hell got installed to my system on my last upgrade.
I have had nothing but nightmares since I first tried Debian. Eventually, I simply gave up on the package system, after I decided to try out some toy component, and it broke several essential systems and refused to fix them.
Red Hat (my first distro) was considerably less frustrating, but I regularly had to edit source code to get things to work.
You have to know what's going on in there, and I always end up fighting any system that tries to simplify the process.
I started with Slackware, and I love it. I don't care so much about package management and I ususally compile most software I run from source instead of installing binary packages. There are tools that let a person build a piece of software from a source dist, then track its installation for later easy removal.
/etc/rc.d. Granted, you can do this with any disto, but there are no assumptions made with Slackware about how you'd like to setup your box.
I like Slackware for a lot of reasons, one of which is "YOU" get total control over the look and placement of everything. Want to change the way the system boots, edit the scripts in
I view Slack as a robust, full-featured distro, with a "Do-It-Yourself" feel. You get to decide how you want to build it. And, like a Jedi Knight building a lightsaber at the completion of their training, when done this way, you are much more familiar with the internal goings on of your OS. That really helps to not only fix problems faster, but broaden your understanding of Unix.
Reading the docs of the latest Slack, it seems Patrick Volkerding and his group of active developers were excited about the new changes developing in Linux, and eager to keep Slackware the quality product it is. I'll wait to hear from him, when the distro is at an end.
USNG: 14TPU4605
I started on slackware 2 with the 1.1.47 kernel. It'll always have a place in my heart, if not on my computers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's good! Lots of your problems with Mandrake and Red Hat don't exist in Debian.
Just a thought from a Debian zealot...
Grumble, Grumble
7 years later and its still a piece of shit. Anyone who goes to linux expos can see that each year the number of patrons gets smaller and smaller. linux was considered a major competitor to microsoft in 1999. Now hardly anybody gives a shit. Is linux fading away?
The answer: yes. All pages of slashdot are equally customizable. If you go to your user info page (http://slashdot.org/users.pl) and click "homepage", there's a list of articles and types of articles you can exclude or include. Obviously, if you check something, it's going to change the default behavior. I, personally, ignore all of the "your rights online" and anything by jon katz. It saves me having to get in the flame wars that ensue.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
SlackWare is dying.
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered SlackWare community when last month IDC confirmed that SlackWare accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that SlackWare has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. SlackWare is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict SlackWare's future. The hand writing is on the wall: SlackWare faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for SlackWare because SlackWare is dying. Things are looking very bad for SlackWare. As many of us are already aware, SlackWare continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. SlackWare is the most endangered of them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
SlackWare leader David Cantrell states that there are 7000 users of SlackWare. How many users of SlackWare are there? Let's see. The number of SlackWare versus SlackWare posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 SlackWare users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of SlackWare posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put SlackWare at about 80 percent of the SlackWare market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 SlackWare users. This is consistent with the number of SlackWare Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, SlackWare went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.
All major surveys show that SlackWare has steadily declined in market share. SlackWare is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If SlackWare is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. SlackWare continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, SlackWare is dead.
Looks like a lot of people around here have fond memories of Slackware. Quite by coincidence, we just finished setting up a Test Drive of Slackware today. For those who want to try out the latest version, we've got it up and running in the Compaq Test Drive Program. It's on a dual-CPU Compaq ProLiant 5500 with around a gig of RAM. Feel free to let us know what you think, including any ways you feel we can improve the program to be of better utility to you.
You forgot the bolds and hyperlinks. Also the redundant repitition of SlackWare makes you look like an idiot.
You are dying
I can't see how anyone can assume Slackware would "fade away" because two applications cease development. That is similar to saying that if Netscape and IE decided to stop development, the Internet would "fade away." Slackware was not built or marketed for its new and innovative package management system, but for it's similarity to a truly GNU/UNIX environment and it's ability to show the user/administrator what goes on "under the hood" of a linux box. There are no bloated and clunky interfaces to hide the operating system from you, what you see is what you get. Some of the distro's out there (I'm not mentioning any names) are beginning to take on many of the aspects that keep users/administrators in the dark about the inner workings of Windows.
My workstation is RedHat 7.2, My general purpose servers are either Solaris 7 or RedHat 6.2.
However, when it comes to building a simple machine for a particular use, nothing beats Slackware. Shoot, just try and install RedHat 7.2 on a machine with a 540MB disk, it can't be done. You can barely install it in 800MB, but what you wind up with isn't very useable.
There are specific purpose Distros that work well for thier intended use. But if I try and do anything beyond what they are built for, things get diffecult very quickly. Slackware has all of the pieces you would expect in a modern distro, and a better ability to pick and choose what pieces get installed. When I need an OS to install on a Laptop to turn the Laptop into a network monitor, or I need to build a DNS server, etc, Slackware Rules!
_____________________
Dum Vivamus, Vivamus! (sp?)
I recently decided to pull out an old toshiba laptop (p133, 16MB RAM, 800MB HD) that had been running win95 (slowly) and install linux on it. I tried a burned copy of redhat 7.0 and it stated there wasn't enough RAM.
I had been downloading other distros, just to collect really, and decided to give slackware a try. I had only installed linux twice before, and each had been Redhat 7.0. I figured what the hell.
I threw in Slackware and played around. It was a two-day affair, but I got it installed. I know little about the inner-workings of computers and even less about linux, and I was surprised that I was able to install Slackware, which I had always heard was the 'hardcore' linux user's distro of choice.
Slackware (minus X) runs beautifully on the laptop and gives me everything I need to really learn linux (specifically vi and C). To me, slackware embodies what linux was meant to be -- a no-BS OS for coders. What does Redhat do for me (feature or hardware-wise) that I can't get on OS X or Win2k?
I used to live and die by Slackware, but the lack of package management does start to eat up a lot of your time. I can't afford to sit around rebuilding new versions of my applications, and I didn't want to head over to Debian.
:)
:)
I found PLD.
PLD is developed in Poland, and it uses RPMs with the APT front-end - very slick, very clean. They are constantly updating packages, and all I have to do is a simple $(apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade) to get the newest versions.
Best of all, the base install is as "bare-knuckle" as it gets. PLD's philosophy is opposite of RedHat's. PLD will install only what you need to get working system up. From there, you can "apt-get install" your way to the exact system you want, without fighting with dependencies. It's swell.
BTW, for the record, I'm still a huge Slack fan. Patrick has done a fantastic job, and I will pick Slack over RH any day of the week.
I think slackware is great, and as I read through all the replies the one I see the most is this. "I want a distro that will run on my old 386/486". And really these machines are great for nat and what not.
:)
Maybe something else to look into is OpenBSD. I started out using slackware, and that is probably what got me started with my love for *BSD. Do an install, get what you need, compile the rest.
OpenBSD has some great man pages, is stable, secure and is a product that is making new releases. Not to say that slackware isn't, but oh well.
So yeah, I think Slackware is great, but if you really want a small distro go with a BSD. They run linux apps, and can do anything that your slackware can do.
I use slak for a long time, never used any other distro. I don't remember my first distro's version, bu I remember that the lernel was 0.3. something it came on a bag full floppies. slacl rulz.
Slack is not going anyware. If by definition you are dead from the moment you fall asleep until you wake up than I suppose Slack is dead since it just released 8.0 (åtta) and is as current as anything else. So now it's in for a small nap before next release...big deal. And all this shit about package management. Slack has package management, the tools are called installpkg and removepkg and together with a wonderful tool called checkinstall I really don't see why we have rpm...What's wrong with doing a ldd if you seem to be missing something?
I am one of several student sysadmins at my fairly high-tech high school. We run a very nice computer lab with 30 workstations, a 16-machine cluster, and some servers and extra machines. With the exception of our BSD fileserver, all are Linux boxes and all except one or two experimental machines are running Slackware.
We've debated switching from Slackware to Debian because of its alleged ease of use (at least compared to Slackware) and because our younger sysadmins are all fans of that particular distro. But we're not going to do it, at least in the foreseeable future, because we decided that being student sysadmins should be a learning experience and there's no better way to learn Linux than by using Slackware's do-it-yourself mentality. (Well, Linux from Scratch might be better, but we can't afford to make our own distros in case they crash in the middle of a class.)
When I finally installed Linux on my former Win95 box at home, I also went with Slackware for the learning experience. I learned the vast majority of what I know about Linux from trying to install it, getting my HP Deskjet 720C (for which HP only released Windows drivers) to work via pnm2ppa, recompiling the kernel every time something went horribly wrong at that level, installing useful software, and so on. I had to actually configure almost everything by hand, and it taught me a lot more than package installers and other niceties would. And I'm sure there are lots of others out there who want the same thing. As long as people actually want to get to know from experience what their computer is doing, Slackware will thrive.
I was recently very grateful for Slackware. I wanted to install a modern, up-to-date distro on an ancient 486 laptop with a ~300MB hard drive. Red Hat, which is what I use on my desktop and on all my machines at work, just laughed at my naivete, thinking that I could install Linux on a drive so small. Slackware, however, worked without a hitch. See http://www.sonic.net/~rknop/linux/canonib150c.html .
-Rob
Maybee slack isn't dying, ever think that you just don't hear from many slackware users because they generally don't need much help. 2cents :)
ALOT of work went into making you wanna-be's feel like powerusers when you type configure, make, make install.
:)
So get over yourselves slackusers, standard compiles work on any distro.
You people swear you dont have package management. Actually, the easiest newbie-friendly package management I've ever run across. I would say that slack is the easiest distro out there, stuff works from the get go. I dont know where it got this reputation as being difficult, Redhat is far more difficult. Slack is so easy to use its almost no fun, no 5-hour-pat-myself-on-the-back-worked-up-a-hack sessions on slackware, everything just works, perfect for newbies. The advanced users need to be on Redhat, where shit dont work, users like myself
We use here Slackware for our production servers and they are stable and well behaved. We didn't have to upgrade them a lot. We also use some RH and I have to tell you it is a nightmare trying to upgrade something like apache or mysql. It has all kinds of dependencies that have others and so on and you end up spending all day trying to figure out what to get from where and what config files would be changed by the dependent packages updates. SO I do it Slackware style. Simply compile the package from source, make install (do not involve rpm at all in this). It works for me and I will swich to Slakware more and more machines as they need to be upgraded. Also when some piece of software gets upgraded I don't find the rpm right away and I have to wait till one is built by somebody so I just grab the tar.gz and do the install.
Now, I see this theme about Slackware fading away over and over on slashdot. Let me tell you: Slackware is not dead and it will never be, like it or not. It is a simple and clear distro and that is why is liked by people like me.
there will always be a need for a minimalist distro just because all the new kids that read slashdot don't use it doesn't me it is fading away. just because slashdot is continuing to push away veteran readers with ridiculous "ask slashdot" questions doesn't mean slashdot is fading away. just because 2 tools aren't going to be developed for slackware doesn't mean it is fading away.....
i can go on and on with this...but i'm wasting my time!!!
Soorry, maybe im a bit stupid on this one but what means: "the first commercial" Distribution?
I always thought my Slack was free as in beer an freedom?? Did i miss something??
What makes me use Slackware even on my laptop is
its simplicity and functionality! Slackware is a simple and functional SERVER!
bringing back memories:
I downloaded SLS over ftp onto floppies via macs over a localtalk connection in the schools computer center. I used three computers at a time and it still took 2-3 hours. I remember this cool postscript file to print out SLS disk labels on special avery pages. It took forever trying to get X to run on my NEC multisync graphics engine. Kernel 0.98 patch level 12. yeah... those were good days.
> 'unix-like' ???
huh? pico? You can certainly say this about vi, but pico is *very* recent. Pine didn't start until the late 80's, and then pico came out of thaqt.
hawk, who used the True Editor on unix long before pico was conceived
'nuff said
Really. Slack is the best out there for serious server work. I refuse to install something that uses unstable or alpha compilers or bizarre packaging for a production box... it's irresponsible. Slack is stable, it lets you do custom compiles and installs of software without complaining, and it doesn't cram a lot of unneeded junk down your throat. As for the "difficulty" of installing Slack, if you need a GUI installer, you're not ready for a *nix OS, stick with Windoze.
(Slashdot forgot my cookies, and I certanly don't remember my password.. =)
It's quite possible to install over PLIP, at least in FreeBSD (I have done it), and I would imagine anything else with a reasonably sane installer. Sure you might have to compile your own install-kernel, and you're certainly going to need another machine as server, but basically there's no problem. (Or SLIP of course, but that's even slower..)
Thanks for admitting that "unix-like" == hasn't changed since 1984 :) Pine/Pico have been around for at least a decade.
Are there any sources of statistics on the popularity of various distributions?
Slackware is the Linux answer to the Ford F-150 (with 5 speed). > on the other is Linux answer to the "gas guzzling fully loaded" SUV. Oh yeah and one other thing if you think "Slack" is a "tough" install .... Don't even think aobut OpenBSD.
LET THE DISTRO FLAME WARS BEGIN
Just wanted to say, I really hope Slack doesn't go down the tubes. It's been a great, stable distro for me for many years. I've been using it pretty much right from the get-go, and I've had surprisingly few issues with it.
I currently run Slack 8.0, which I'm finding to be a truly great distro. *Very* few problems with it, everything runs quite smoothly, even on my fairly whacked hardware (dual athlons, 3 net cards, GF3, etc.)
I don't really bitch out other distros, I ran RedHat for a while (the 5.x series) and I've tried SuSe and Debian too. My problem with those distros was that they just somehow seemed "fragile" compared to Slack, and the init schemes seemed very complex and non-intuitive to change. For example I installed RedHat 7.1 on my laptop recently (an old Dell Latitude CPi) just to check it out. I had many problems with gdm; sometimes it would run, sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes it would start up again after I logged out; sometimes it wouldn't. If I took out my PCMCIA modem or ethernet card I'd be bugged on bootup.
I know RedHat and others have a lot going for them, but I gotta say I still really enjoy the simplicity of Slack. Just my two cents.
"Caffeine is not an option. Caffeine is a way of life."
long live slackware! why search through billions of broken dependencies and broken scripts when you can have a straight forward installation that just takes a lil bit of reading to learn how to use ? Things are installed where they're supposed to be, configuration files are simple and WHERE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE, the distributor doesn't break the programs included with the distro, and you're not caught within a web of scripts that throws a hissy if you do anything interesting with your box.
That's a good point -- Writing a makefile that targets 10 versions of commercial Unix and 32 Linux-based OSes and 5 versions of BSD is difficult.
Typing make install is not difficult.
What the hell do u mean, I've always used slackware coz it wasnt bloated like other distros. Thats a personnal choice to use one or the other but saying that they are in the stoneage becoz they dont have a click-click install shows a lot of cluelessness from the poster of that news.
I mean slak 8 comes with all the latest things such as qt2 and all the end-user things, add to that openssl, both 2.2 and 2.4 kernels and I dont see why this would be called stoneage.
Come on, slashdot has already enuf enemies out of the linux community, please try not to make some in it!!!!
I remember when the book Linux for Dummies came out. My first thought was "well, now I have to make the switch to BSD". While that may not have been bad in and of itself, I did then come to my senses and realized "Oh wait, I use Slackware, never mind".
Uh Oh! There's a Slackware for Dummies now, too. Maybe I'll have to switch to BSD afterall? Well, as long as Patrick doesn't try to make Slackware be the replacement for Microsoft Windows, then it will remain my choice.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I've used several distros, and I'm not happy with any of them OOTB. RH and its brethren have a Windows-like look and feel, and seem rigid. Debian has a sophisticated package manager, but I've seen it choke, Potato is too old, Woody too unreliable. And LinuxFromScratch is a god-awful amount of work just to get something that barely boots! That leaves Slackware. It has problems OOTB too, but I've found it much easier to get things done my way, without an "advanced" package manager fighting me every step. If I want program XYZ, I can just install it without bringing in a bunch of cruft that I may not need. If I do need some of that cruft, it takes more effort, but I'm rewarded with a more relyable system than either RH or Debian. If I ever create a "MyLinux 1.0" it will have a noticeable similarity to Slackware.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Your lack of research is appallingly obvious. A simple look at the Slackware website overturns many of your imagined 'points'.
What have you been smoking?
Not in this lifetime.
All this talk about packaging and update pains gives me an idea.
.tgz files instead of RPMs would give this autopatching ability to slackware, or at least distribute the files properly. If the boxes are fairly homogenous you might even be able to get away with auto-configure'ing and make'ing the packages.
Does anyone remember the old Fidonet-technology file echos? They were automated distribution networks of shareware and other public-domain files that BBSes would carry to always offer new files to users. You would dial up to your master server, it would download the files to you, then you would run a program called a file tosser to import them into the file areas of your BBS.
Something like this that passes around
Just a thought..
Anyone who's been using Slack for more than a couple years knows that it's a slow and methodical maintenance process, most of the time. The Linux kernel and security issues are kept at the most current levels, while fringe and development stuff are packaged (yes, the package manager is called pkgtool and it really is a package manager), for implementation only after careful review and testing. Recall the libc5 to libc6 transition.
This approach makes for reliable systems with high uptimes. Remember, only the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Things that don't make a lot of noise don't tend to get as much attention. My Slack boxes make very little noise; unless they hear a bunch of noise around them from other things like CR-infected non-*n*x machines.
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
Slackware is the perfect counterpoint to Red Hat, Debian, etc: and shows just what a problem package management has become. Only after you've tried to install an RPM on a Debian system (or vice-versa), can you appreciate the classic BSD ./configure system.
I use Slackware because it doesn't have a package manager. Linux is more divided then ever and IMHO the main reason is the many distributions with their incompatible package systems. A pox on all their houses.
hawk
For me, SlackWare is the more flexible Linux distro into terms of installing. Because of its 8.3 install file format, Old school DOS applications like INTERLNK.EXE can be used to transfer install files to a partition on a PC without a CD-ROM. With every other distro, this is not possible to do since they have long file names. It may sound very un-Linux to use 8.3 file format, but it allows me to install Linux on my old P133 laptop which does not have a CD-ROM or network card.
One of the initial draws to Linux was that it could run on hardware the was old or not all that powerful. Slackware still fills this part of Linux. A low end Pentium laptop, 32mb of RAM, and 2gb do nicely with SlackWare (even 8.0).
I hope the distro keeps going... I'll continue to use it on the best equipment 6 years ago had to offer.
Although the real way to keep a project going is to jump in and help, but since I'm not all that accomplished a programmer yet... all I have given to Slack is $$$ for the distro disks, which is probably something users who enjoy a piece of software should do. Pay for what you like, don't use/pay for the stuff you don't. If you like Slack and want to see it survive, then help keep it going (either with coding or cash).
(void) signal(SIGALRM, (alarm_fired=1)); if (alarm_fired) printf("Revoke is clueless!\n");
Could it be that the Slaktool project has a better system, and thus he gave up? Here is what the Slaktool people have to say about themselves:
.tgz format. It does this by way of a generic library that links into the various GUI (or textmode) package managers.
"Slaktool is a project to improve the Slackware package manager with all the features of the more advanced package managers while retaining the classic
The library handles all the package operations transparently, and does not base around any GUI or text console."
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I started with slackware, then switched to redhat.
slackware itself may die, but people will write other distributions like slackware. Just because the demand is there.
Lately, redhat seems buggy, mandrake was *way* worse, (I was really disappointed in mandrake actually) so I switched back to slackware on one of my machines.
Slackware is less convenient, but more stable. The damn thing works.
Trying something like manually configuring networking in redhat would have been insane.
Either the redhat installation scripts work, or you go without networking in redhat. (or you look through the hundreds of init scripts trying to make sense of how it's loading)
Slackware: write script, networking works.
Uhhhhh....NO. Nobody here even seems to take into consideration the fact that Slackware and Linux-From-Scratch are almost the same beast. RedHat 5.0 introduced me to Linux, Slackware 4 TAUGHT me Linux. I've used Slack ever since, until I found Peanut and Vector - small distros that are based on Slackware. There are more and more of these out there. Peanut and Vector, IMHO, are what Slack 'should' be. Even if Volk stopped making the distro, somebody else would carry on with the same idea. Come to think of it, Slackware8 isn't really Slackware any more...it's too Gnome-centric and getting more bloated. Even though I don't use S8, I do continue to use distros similar/derived from Slakckware. These people will carry on if Slack doesn't.
Peanut Linux - www.ibiblio.org/peanut
Vector-Linux - www.ibiblio.org/vectorlinux
I'm not a coward..just don't want to register. Flames to kenboyte@yahoo.com. Don't worry...I'll filter them when I pull them down to my Peanut 9.0 Laptop!
I d/l'ed the slack isos for 8.0, burned 'em, installed. Beauty! Sound! Printer! And X fired right up and worked the way it is supposed to work. That is the best, sweetest install I ever have had. Hell, even the screensavers in Gnome work OOB, something I don't think ever has happened before.
In sum, I'm totally happy with God's Own Distro (tm) (using God's Own Editor (tm), emacs).
mp
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
By almost veryone's definition these are methods of installing software but not packaging systems, Packaging systems (that is EVERY one I know of with the exception of Slackaware's) are designed to manage software in small chunks with some kind of metadata describing how packages relate to eachother - i.e. dependencies.
I've been sold the slackware `packagaing system' doesn't have dependencies. If that's true, it isn't a packaging system. Nothing wrong with that, but less call a software install method a software install method.
Oops, wrong topic.
Slackware is dying!
Just about a month ago, I was sitting there wondering what had happened the 25 or so slack linux boxes that we have running at the local isp I helped start and consult for, I had not heard from them for weeks, they had all but disappeared. I went home and sure enough all my boxes seemed like they had disappeared to...it was scary.
I located one of my boxes by touch then installed Redhat on one of my boxes to see if it would be visible, and SuSE on another. Sure enough they both bitched and wined and were not even slightly faded. I worked on the SuSE box and basically edited the files and made it more like its slackware roots (after all SuSE was a product of building on slackware, so its the "package manager slack" you nuts all dream about)...and it too faded away. The Redhat box however still bitched and moaned and crashed until I reinstalled slackware and that box disappeared also.
On a more serious note, You see we Slackware users (I have used it since 1.2.8) are proud of Slackware. We all avoided autoslack and it was NEVER wanted or needed in Slackware as slack users have a clue what Slackware is and we all gave the author of autoslack a good cursing from time to time and are all glad he failed in his silly attempt to redhatize Slackware, if we want that kind of shit, we will run SuSE! Autoslack was a piece of crap no real Slackware user wanted or needed anyway. Slackware users would just as soon use the source to build things we use, and use ldd or README and INSTALL texts to check to see what we need. If we need a package we can install rpms just fine, as slackware comes with rpm package manager, using the nodeps flag fixes that problem.
does slackware have any relationship/roots in the church of the subgenius and their encouraging people to get slack?
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Slackware is the ONLY distribution for people like myself who had been using UNIX since many moons before Linux existed. Most Slackware users know the ONLY way to install new software is from a source distribution. RPMs and GUI-based config tools are for reformed Windoze users, not those of us who cut their teeth on Mainframes and Super-minis.
Slackware is used by more people than gets reported, because almost ALL Slackware users download their distro.
Thank the computer gods for Volkerding and company!!!
I too got my real linux start on slackware.
/etc/rc.d/init/network" script
Slackware was the first major Distro with MicroChannel support. Back in those days I had a lot of micro channel machines to use, and not much of anything else.
I always appreciated the direct and to the point aspect of Slackware. It would take me only minutes to configure any complex network/routing configuration, where as with RedHat I've wasted time in the past trying to get the needed routing/net configurations set up properly using their F**ked up GUI interface. I actually wasted a bit of time reading through the networking config scripts only to decide it was better to throw out everything and write my own, "straght and to the point
and simply not use their "over complicated, it doesn't work the way you want it to anyway" scripts. It was the only way to get the "route" and "ifconfig" entries the way I needed them. With Slack it was always a snap.
Chances are that, no slack is not going anywhere. I have used about every distro I could get my hands on and nothing is like slack. If you can use slack than better chances are you can update your own applications to what they need to be.
IMO regardless if 8 is the last release, slack is going no where for a very long time.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
there is a good chance I will stop using linux. Seriously, I have found very few distros that make as much sense to me as Slackware. There are some things I wish Slackware did differently, but I certainly am not looking to put Mandrake on my personal computer anytime soon. (or redhat, suse, turbo, etc...) This is of course my opinion, but if you want a system that you can get your head around, and really know what is going on when it comes to resolving problems, you simply can't beat Slackware. The absurd startup scripts in some of the distros I've seen lately make my head whirl with their complexity. With Slackware, the entire system is comprehensible. Everything. As best I can tell, the only thing that would make sense for a Slackware user like myself is to start using FreeBSD, as it makes a lot of sense too.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
What makes a distrobution different anyway. I like to think linux is linux. Because i guarantee you i can make my slackware linux distro do anything that a Red Hat distro can do... and vise versa. The difference between linux distrobutions is all in what they come packaged with. So why does distrobution matter? It really doesn't. Its all in preference. Makes it kinda a moot point huh... which distro is better which distro is dying.... who cares?
I've only been using Linux for about 2.5 years or so, but I am so happy that I learned on Slackware instead of other distro's. Learning on a vanilla distro like Slack really teaches you more about the in's and out's of Linux, as opposed to upgrading your kernal with an rpm.
I use primarially Slackware for my personal servers, as well as almost all the servers that I manage at my office (about 20). Sure, sometimes you have to fight with something when you wouldn't have to on RedHat or Debian, but if all you know is rpm --install, you're going to run into a wall at some point and not know where to go.
A company I colocate at (Hurricane Electric), uses primarially Slackware for all of their web hosting services. They've found that when you're managing a lot of servers, a basic distro is exactly what you're looking for.
Slackware was my first distribution too (with happy memories), and I have taken a recent look at it again for much the same reason as others have mentioned (nannyware and bloated distributions).
What I missed was the concept of dependencies in the package handling (I know that others like this minimalism), and realised that I was really looking for a Linux distribution with a *BSD approach (minimal and small base distribution, and powerful, build from source capable package system with dependencies).
I'm taking a look at Gentoo Linux at the moment, which is bootstrapping itself under VMWare as I write. Looks quite hopeful. Anybody else have experience with this?
May stop me considering replacing Linux with BSD.... (Although there are just a few too many Linux binary only apps that I do not fancy fighting with under emulation libraries).
Slackware is a hands-on system. I've used other systems why try to do everything for you but fail to, and then require hands-on work. Slackware doesn't provide that false veneer. It does however provide a good curses-based UI for managing basic configuration tasks. It could use more work, like anything, but for my purposes it is perfectly fine.
I'd agree these tools are useful, but lets face it, Slackware has always been more for the "gimme a screwdriver, I wanna see whats inside this thing." kind of person. While the other distros all have their merits, I would suggest they share a common goal of easily migrating Windows users, not so the case with Slackware. How many times have you seen people join IRC and ask the most basic questions that involve building something from source, yet are quick to point out they've been using linux "for years.."?
Slackware demands more of it's userbase than the typical Windows user. For that reason, there will always be people running this distro.
Maybe we should understand just what "package" means...
package
n.
b. A commodity, such as food, uniformly processed and containerized.
SO uhh.. yeah, under definition 2, these things do qualify as packages. Terribly sorry to ruin your soapbox. Do go on though, it was *almost* interesting.
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
Thats not true! Maybe you don't have to, but if you do the net install it will configure your network adapter in order that it can fetch the base system.
In fact I would rate the NetBSD installer as quite straightforward. Unlike OpenBSD, you do not have to mess around with the disklabel editor, which removes the one truly scary bit of the installation. The real fun begins once you reboot.
(/me remembers spending 20 minutes trying in vain to add my user to the "wheel" group in order to su and install the pkgsrc tree so I could get lynx. This was after several years of using FreeBSD, Slack and Debian...I thought I knew what I was doing...but no)
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
Under definition 2, PKZip is a packaging system.
/etc/shadow is filled with some sort of intoxicating resin, chopped meat, or something chopped into pieces.
/me wets himself.
If you ask anyone whose remotely familiar with packaging systems, they'd naturally tell you it wasn't.
Lets follow this logic, and look up a non computer dictionary for more computing terms.
Oer, apparently my
Is it possible, just possible that non computer dictionaries don't know anything whatsoever about specific technical terms with well accepted meaning?
Keep your own special definition of packaging system. I'm just letting you know that everyone else who makes packaging systems doesn't agree that appending `pkg' to an application makes it a packaging system.
Terribly sorry to ruin your soapbox. Do go on though, it was *almost* interesting.
Oer, feel the provocation!
Terribly sorry to ruin your soapbox. Do go on though, it was *almost* interesting.
What I found unfriendly was trying to get my sb1000 to work under the 2.4 kernel in Mandrake/Redhat for two whole weekends. After finally determining that the new ISA/PNP kernel support combined with the sb1000 driver is a completely broken combination, I decided to pull down an older Mandrake with the 2.2 kernel. Sadly, I could find no such beast, as all the older versions have been pulled from distribution.
A little searching around, and I find that the latest Slackware actually allows ME to choose my kernel! Pulled down Slackware 8, installed what I wanted, and was up and running in less than an hour. Thanks, Slackware!
I have the first-release Infomagic 'UNIX' CD-ROM, which came with, I believe, 386BSD, NetBSD .9 something, and SLS Linux, I think. That was the predecessor of the 'Linux Developer Resource' set they put out for a long time that always included the latest Slackware release.
My first Linux, however, was the first release of Yggdrasil, which was called LGX at the time (I think they wanted something they could trademark themselves). When I found Slackware I never went back again to the 'plug and play nightmare' called Yggdrasil.
go out and buy a package today!
Wait, hold up. Stop everything here.
I really have to ask a question. When is the last time the moderators of this site actually posted anything remotely positive about Slackware? I have used Slackware for something around 7 years now. I have tried Redhat, Suse, and Stormix. Nothing against any of them, but they are not for me. I was taught BSD style UNIX, and I find Slackware fills the functionality I need. Yet it constantly gets negative press from this news site. I haven't even HEARD of the tool that was mentioned in the headline. Alot of Slackware users haven't either. It just simply amazes me, that, because a developer of a tool that isn't even very known amongst the users of a distrobution is some how the equivilant to the distrobution dying, or fading away.
This shows a severe lack of responsibility on the part of the person who posted this story, not to mention, it's extremly insulting to the thousands of people who use slackware. I honestly think that there should be a public apology posted. This is utterly rediculous, and I am getting sick and tired of having to read about how Slackware is old, dying, useless, or whatever. It is still one of the largest used Linux distrobutuins in existance, especially in an enterprise/server market.
This is specifically the sort of infighting that is causing problems with any sort of possible true unification of the GNU movement. If people could at least pay a little respect to other peoples methods and thinking, than I think that Free Software as a whole would go considerably further. Who cares whether or not a certain distro does something the way you want it to? It's more important that the code is free. And since Slackware, like a considerable amount of other distrobutions is GNU, through and though, it should be celebrated. So for the love of god, Download Slackware, Red Hat, or whatever, play with it to your hearts content. Crack open a beer. Smile. That's what it's all about, isn't it? You have the Freedom to do so.
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d- s: a-- C++ UL+++ P+ L+++ E--- W+ N+ o K- w-- O M V PS+ PE Y+ PG
Slackware's packaging system includes the capability to add and remove packages (without removing files and directories shared between packages), which I'd have thought is pretty much the basic functionality that would define a "packaging system". PKZip, tar, etc, are not examples of this. Your definition is pretty useless in any case. Dependency checking is pretty much pointless unless it includes dependency fetching which is much more difficult. Using both Slackware's packaging system (which you don't think is a packaging system, because while it manages packages, it doesn't ring a bell if the user installs something without installing something else.) and RedHat's (which does), an installation will fail if you haven't installed a dependency. The difference is merely when you find out that the installation has failed. Is RPM also not a packaging system? Or is your definition really dependent on when an installation fails? Personally, I don't think something should be called a "packaging system" unless it has a command line flag to tell you the time. After all, what's the point of installing something if you don't know when you installed it? (Sarcasm BTW)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I've played with a handful of other distributions, including RedHat and SuSE, but always come back to Slackware.
Slackware was my very first Linux distribution, back when my home system was a 486/66. I had just bought a used computer, booted it, found that it had Windows 3.1 on it, marvelled that people actually paid money for Windows, bought a Linux book that came with a Slackware CD, and the rest was history.
Slackware hasn't fallen into the all-too-common trap of assuming that a GUI app is a priori good, or that a character-based application is a priori bad. It assumes that you know what hardware your computer actually contains. This is bad?
Just because Windows uses a thinking-optional GUI install program doesn't mean that Linux has to.
...laura
I don't know about anyone else, but I use and like Slackware (8.0) and don't think I've ever used either of these things that are no longer being maintained by whats-his-name. I like slackware for a number of reasons, and in fact wrote up an article about it a while ago, when I was tired... I never went through and cleaned it up, but you can read my take on distributions at this address:
http://aaron.penjar.net/distributions.html
If I can get my databases going on a 486 with one user, it should have no problems on a much much more powerfull machine with many users and a much higher load.
Slackware is the one TRUE Linux distribution.
Dependency checking is pretty much pointless unless it includes dependency fetching which is much more difficult.
That's a seperate issue - see below.
Using both Slackware's packaging system (which you don't think is a packaging system, because while it manages packages
Archives. And the level of management is doubtful
and RedHat's (which does), an installation will fail if you haven't installed a dependency.
By the common definition downloading dependencies is not part of a packaging system. By common definition discovring and recording those dependencies is. Neither Red Hat or Debian or Solaris packaging systems (nor any other I know of) include the ability to automatically download packages. Instead, higher levels tools like up2date, APT, or pkg-get perform these functions. However, the packages in each contain dependency information, and dependencies must be met before software in installed, enforcing a well maintained and cohesive system.
The debian install is only about 160 megs though, base files plus apache, php, and mpg123.
YIKES!
160MB??!?!?! ONLY ?!?!?!
I can install the same thing with slackware in less than 25Megs..
160MB is NOT a "minimal" install.
Like so many of you that have posted here, I've been using Slackware for at least five years in the production environment. I've strayed from the distribution when we started ordering pre-fab servers that came with a flavor of RedHat pre-installed in the past few years, but at the end of the day, I just keep coming back -- and what's funny is, I ask myself, "why?"
/etc/rc.d/. I didn't realize how much I liked rc.inet1 and rc.inet2 until I started configuring /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1:x on a RedHat box -- yikes. I don't need Lava soap after tooling around with RedHat, I need 800mg of Advil.
One reason I think that we Slackware-heads like Slackware so much is because it's about as bare and yet, as fancy as we want an install to go. I don't like GUI installations. At first, I disliked them because they required a mouse (which none of our servers have). Secondly, I disliked them because they used colors -- once, on a Mandrake install, I couldn't tell if an option box was "checked", because the only way to discern this was to know if red or blue meant "selected". I popped out the CD, tossed it in the trash, and popped in Slackware. (very true)
I like to get my hands dirty. Hell, I've never even used RPM before September of this year (on a box, of course, that someone else installed RedHat on). After I build out a new box, I like to break out the Lava soap.
And you know what I like most about Slackware?
Other distro's put package managers and admin tools that all have bugs and glitches... eventually you find yourself digging into the init files manually to make everything work right. Slackware just skips the pretense that Unix can be managed from X or curses.
I bought a Slackware cd several months ago because I was sick of rpm dependency hell and I tryed it after killing my system while trying to upgrade glibc. The installation was not so hard. Just specify the usual locale, etc. You do have to make your own partitions with a program such as fdisk but this is calmly explained in their excellent manual. If it is your first Slackware definitely buy their manual or if you are cheap read it on their website. The rest of the installation is like Redhat and I would guess most other distros. After installation I could use my sound card by uncommenting one line in one of the init scripts. Warning: old BSD style init scripts are used but now I actually prefer it. Enabling or disabling things such as ssh and sendmail only require greping around /etc/rc.d and [un]commenting a couple of lines. Printer support is easily accomplished with lpr and apsfilter. Apsfilter has a good/huge shell installation script that is kind of hidden in /usr/lib/apsfilter which I don't think is mentioned in the Slackware manual. X setup was simple with xf86config (the non-graphical one). Slackware has most of the software I use every day such as KDE, GNOME, xmms, ogg/vorbis, mutt, and four bowsers. It also lacks a lot of software that I don't use.
As many have pointed out, the success of Slackware will not depend on one or two programs that have not even been finished yet.
I just started using Slack after a long series of distro changes while I tried to find something I liked. I started with Redhat - as I think many do, but after becoming familiar with Linux I wanted something that would mesh better with many of the howtos out there. It seems to me Slack is about the cleanest distro out there. I guess if it looks to be shuffling off this mortal coil I'll have to go back to Debian. Apt-get sure is a nice thing to have and it seems Debian is thriving as much as ever.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
Anonymous Coward writes:
/usr/bin/vi is a link to /etc/alternatives/vi, which is itself a link to the vi-compatible binary of your choice. There's a tiny bit of overhead to bounce through the two symbolic links, but no extra processes are generated and you run a binary executable directly.
and here is a gem for the minimalistic: did you know that "vi" in debian is a script that runs a version of vi accordingly to the user's preferences? Really. When you type 'vi' you fork another bash!
I don't know if that was the case ages ago, but in Potato and later vi is not a script, and doesn't fork an additional bash.
Debian does give people a choice of vi's (vim, nvi, elvis and elvis-tiny, possibly more). It does it with simple symbolic links.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Reading through the posts I see alot of package arguments including cutting edge and amount of software packaged on install. The true power of Slackware doesn't exist in any of these. I view the packages on the slackware Install as a degree of lazyness, difficulty, or experience. Those who want fast, fat installs can take the lazy trail and use as much of the pre-packaged software as they deem necessary to get the OS going. But by no means should a system be considered done because it came with software. As for me, I ignore most of the prepackaged programs with exception of vim and with Slack 8, sshd. My network server is Slack 8 now, and serves 7 boxen and 33 users (I know thats not very much) with file services, sendmail, pop 3, personal ftp and http, ssh access for the more gifted, as well as controlling all the network access on a shared IP. Most of these services come with Slack as pre-packaged .tgz's, but I chose not to use any of them at install time save the fore-mentioned. I downloaded the source for all my services and make'd them as to set any install options I wanted as well as the destinations. This server has no Gnome, KDE, not even an X. It has no keyboard, mouse, or monitor, why would it need a preinstalled X? It is controlled, changed, updated, and monitored remotely with the sshd. Even the kernel was built via ssh. I know that this method of building an OS is availiable with other distros as well, but Slack seems to be best for this type of custom building (CRUX Linux, built on the Slackware mold, may be even closer, but only for the strong.)
The true power of Slackware is in it's simplicity, stability, and control, not in it's packages. I doubt any advanced linux users would argue that a make'd package is a better and more controlled install than a pre-pack tgz or RPM.
As most linux users, I don't consider myself as an expert by any means, but I might push for the rank of intermediate. Even the X on my personal workstation was make'd from source rather than selected as a package at install time. I will concede that this is not always best for users workstations, and other distros with a more plentiful package set often fulfill the workstation role better, but servers should be as simple, sturdy, and dependable as possible.
I prefer this method for some reason, and I assume many other Slackers do as well. Many advaced Linux users have told me the install isn't really yours until you build and boot on your own kernel, and control the make of your services and software. It took awile, but I finally believe them, and view slack as one of the best methods to get there.
I don't think Slackware will fade away due to the loss of some packages because it is my opinion that most of the serious Slackers don't use the majority of the packages that are already available. The Slackware Distro is nothing more than a frame to most it's user's, not a complete instant OS. The tools and packages are there to help the novice advance to the level he/she would like to be, and in my experience less of the packages are used with every new install.
Going to the Slackware Site's Forum will show anyone that Slack, as much as any other distro, has a good following of users that help the beginner, and they are very dedicated to (almost to a prejudiced extreme) the distro of there choice. Long Live Slackware.
Opinions Expressed by Me should be Forced on Others - PbHead
Many of the comments have implied Slack is not for the newbie, but in fact Linux is not for the newbie; slack is just more honest, in not trying to bolt inadequate GUIs over a system that was built to be adminstered from the command line and text file.
Maybe if you're buying new hardware the more commercial distros are the way to go, but you can't beat slack for installing on old hardware: I'd tried to install SuSE 7.0, RedHat 7.1, and Debian 2.2 for an old Compaq server before I downloaded a pre-compiled kernel kernel off a slackware mirror, which worked like a charm. Short account of my adventures here: http://www.carnall.demon.co.uk/prosignia_linux.htm
And the lean installs are good too. You have to know what you're doing, but then you have to know what you're doing anyway. So far I've not felt any pain because I had a .tgz rather than a .rpm to install. As for Debian, well, ideologically it's the distro I'd most like to use, but the pain of the UI of the package management database they use ("dselect": the 'd' surely stands for 'devil') has always made it impossible for me to do anything useful with it. Instead it makes me feel physically sick. Presumably they don't update this because they want to keep the riff-raff out. Well, they've succeeded in my case.
I'm aware of Debian's theoretically greater prowess: my dream distro would bolt apt-get like updating over a network to slackware's spare elegance. Maybe one day I'll know enough to it myself (don't hold your breath).
You can never eat too much, only cycle too little.
Let's be honest. This is gonna happen with the open source development model. For that matter, it'll happen with the shareware model, or any similar scheme. If the sole person responsible for the care and feeding of your favorite piece of code chooses to move on in life, you're out of luck.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
only meant for the guys/girls who have, umm, rather large things, you know, er, endoved or somethin. rest of you cute lil jokes dont matter so now go away quietly, OK?
Beer math is: two beers times 37 men = 49 cases.
Kinda funny, eh?
...the funniest part is, this makes more sense than that gibberish you just spouted...
A PC without Windows is like Coffee without Ketchup...
I argee the learning curve is steep using Slackware but thats the key... LEARNING. I am merely a novice with Linux but I started with Slackware (3.4?) and started learning.
/, a 4GB SCSI drive for my Windows applications, and 2 30GB WD's for MP3's and misc files exported to a RH box for my local web server content.
In fact my first machine which I still have and use daily went from Intel DX33 --> AMD DX2/66 --> AMD DX4/133 --> P133. I mainly use it for file sharing and domain logins with Samba for my house with roughly 8 other machines. It has a Quantum 120MB mounted at
When serving files for my Win amchines, I get more throughput with it (about 3MB/sec) then I do with my RH7.1 P200 MMX with the same 128MB (about 2MB/sec).
When something new and improved comes around, I grab the source, compile, and install.
It runs and runs great. I average roughly 200 days between reboots and it has been running 24/7 since 1995.
yuser:~$ uname -a
Linux yuser 2.0.35 #21 Wed Nov 13 00:09:39 EST 1996 i586 unknown
yuser:~$ last |more
--cut--
wtmp begins Mon Feb 9 20:03
that would be 1995...
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Slackware sucks, it has no advantage over any other dist.
Do people forget about update/upgradepkg, pkgtool or the sorts? As far as I'm concerned that is plenty package management that is installed on a Slackware system.
Although the package management isn't nearly as strong as apt or rpm (which I might add can be added to any system), it is package management.
---
Mike
I'm going to kick the next person that I see with their karma rating in their sig.
Personally I've been using Slackware since like forever. It's perfect for me. I prefer a simple, straightforware installation. For a user who knows something about Linux/Unix, it's pretty simple to configure. I'll admit, however that it's not as easy to install/configure as some other distributions; I've tried a lot of others for shits and giggles. RedHat, Storm, SuSE, Mandrake... They're a _LOT_ simpler I'll agree. But I can't tell ya how many times friends of mine have asked me "where can I find an xyz server?" to which I reply "It's not installed; check /usr/sbin."
Linux distros are no different than other software packages... they fit niches too. The "common" end-users, servers, development platform, etc... I guess what I'm getting at is that we shouldn't be condemning a distro, this distro, to death because of what it hasn't got in relation to the other distributions. Slackware fits nicely in its niche and I'll keep paying for _my_ subscription. Pat V. gets my support. It's a shame he won't getting David C's.
just my .02
-mrbob
Let me just say that I love slackware. It's the first Distro I used, and my last. Not to say I'm an old-school hardcore Linux-God, I've been using it for about 2 years now as a server.
Don't even run X.. just console with various servers running. Stable as a mofo, and easy to update and maintain. I wouldn't dream of using anything else.. With my needs, Slackware is perfect!
Here's hoping they keep it alive... =/
here's some - Debian 0.91 (basierend auf Kernel 0.99.14w Download (34MB) - SLS 1.05 (basierend auf modularem(!) Kernel 1.0)Download (41MB) - MCC Interim 1.0+ (basierend auf Kernel 1.0) Download (54MB) - Slackware 1.1.2 (basierend auf Kernel 0.99.15) Download (77MB)
Full plate and packing steel! -Minsc
I successfully put Linux 1.2.13 using Slackware on a 386sx 6 MB Ram 40 MB HD laptop with X windows. I just had enough room for Mosaic. It actually worked not too bad. Had to go to 1.2.13 and compile on a Pentium but it worked. If you want to learn what's really needed for linux to run, give something like that a try.
Can't do that on another distro.
Under definition 2, PKZip is a packaging system.
/var/adm/packages. The Slackware packaging system can then use this metadata do upgrade or remove the package.
No, it's only an archiver. The key word is system. A packaging system actually installs the package. The Slackware packaging system unarchives the package, installs the contents, runs any postinstall scripts that happen to be in there, and records the metadata for the package under
Including dependencies in the metadata would be nice, but they aren't the only metadata. (actually, dependency information is useless for installing packages if it won't fetch the dependencies, but it's quite handy for removing packages)
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
for older machines.
I needed a linux distro to go on 4 486's with no CD-ROM, 12MB of RAM each and with around 300MB of HDD each. They just needed to run Apache behind a P-75 running IPVS - this was a test rig for a clustering setup.
My main server and desktop distros, Redhat and Mandrake wouldn't even think about installing on a machine with 16MB RAM, but Slackware fitted perfectly.
I could download a basic Slackware install in 100MB, install via NFS and it only took 3 floppies and an afternoon.
Slackware is a great example of an easy to install and elegant flavour of Linux for the user who knows what they want from a simple server appliance, it's worked flawlessly and seems very consistently and logically arranged.
I don't want to see Slackware disappear, it's one of the only 'mainstream' distros left that is really focussed on providing a 'no-frills' setup, which is often exactly what is needed.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I've been in the process of installing a new Linux based firewall for my ADSL connection at home. I had Slackware 7 previously on a P133, but since I got a P90, I thought I'd dedicate the P90 for fw and make the P133(96Mb RAM) a Linux workstation. I installed Mandrake 8.1, just to see how it was. It's OK, but it eats up almost all memory with KDE running, starts a load of daemons I've never heard of and eats up 1.3Gb of disk! Geez... And how the heck does one compile a new kernel without modules? I know what's in my puter, I don't need modules! Sooo, I suppose Slackware 8 should be downloaded when I get home tonight, burnt to CD-R on Saturday and installed on Sunday. Slackware will never die as long as I'm alive & kickin'! And as an extra bonus, it uses an understandable rc.d structure!
I love slackware. Started with redhat a few years ago, couldn't get some things working so I started to RTFM. The way most of the configuration files are laid out in the linux HOWTO's are NOT how they're laid out in redhat, or suse, or mandork. I had a shit time trying to work from documents that seemed to be for a different O.S.
/etc as opposed to /etc/sysconfig/networks/someothershit. Finally my compiler could actually compile stuff I downloaded without fucking around with libraries and dependancies for hours, Finally I had a working linux system.
Then I discovered slackware. Finally the config files are actually in
I use it for desktops at home and all the linux boxes at work (ISP) run slack. I made a LFS once (linux from scratch). Spent days working on the perfect linux system for myself to use. Eventually I ended up with something that was so close to slackware it was unreal...I love this distro and it will never die, if it does I'm going to ditch linux and just use BSD.
Thank god for xp? XP is pussy sys admin bullshit. How about using a real operating system. And how about Microsoft stops paying people to post crap like that?
It would seem you met up with some opposition, hey? Slackware people tend to be a very patriotic bunch, and loyal to boot. But more importantly, they're well informed about things... especially when it comes to their computer and the processes that run on it. Including package management. That said, why dont you read the following...
.rpm, Debian .deb, and (funnily enough) slackware .tgz
"Package Management" is not a computer term... its a label given to the process of managing packages. I can go look up meanings of words for you again, but you'd probably ignore them anyway, so you can deal with my paraphrased versions. (Real definitions available from dictionary.com).
Management is the act of supervising something and ensuring that everything is handled correctly. Management does not have to ensure integrity of the final outcome, only ensure that the work gets done. Now maybe you might say that GOOD management ensures outcome integrity, but that would just specify the quality of said management, and what *you* expect from it.
I dont know about you, but I've had some pretty terrible job managers in my time, and that certainly didnt stop them from having "Manager" in their job title.
Packages are a group of something, wrapped up in a convenient holder. Like a box, or a baggie, or any other of a huge number things you put something in.
so a package manager (following definitions) is something which manages the process of packing and unpacking a group of things wrapped in a convenient holder. Ie: Redhat
Listen to reason. You are defining the extra features that a package manager ought export, but that doesnt mean that they HAVE TO HAVE THEM by definition. Definiton defines a purpose, not an implementation of that purpose.
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
The other day upper management came to me asked my opinion of various Linux "flavors". We're migrating from SCO Open Server, and they wanted the Sec. Admin's opinion on what they should go with. Of course, Slackware is were my heart is, but I'd already been denied due to its name ("How can we sell a customer on an OS named SLACKware?") After strolling through CERT's site for a while, I jumped over to LinuxSecurity.com and had a look at their numbers. The results of my report were astounding, and I thought I'd share it with my fellow /.ers....
2001 Red Hat vulnerabilities from LinuxSecurity.com : 76
2001 Mandrake vulnerabilities from LinuxSecurity.com : 86
2001 Slackware vulnerabilities from LinuxSecurity.com : 5
Being the stubborn ass that I am, I went ahead and put Slackware into the report with management's two fav's, Red Hat and Mandrake. I'm glad I did, since they have now done a 180 and are FINALLY seriously considering Slackware. If all goes well, our clientbase of 573 servers will change hands from SCO OpenServer to Slackware. Yea, I'd say its not dying out...
Heml0ck
"Experience the door to your mind, no matter how bizzare. You create your own brave new world."
I was using unix before the mac came out (but not by much). When I bought my first mac in 84 (the 128k, but with the second drive), the other alternative was building my own AT (and not from a pre-made motherboard). I decideed I'd had enough of that.
I went back from mac to Unix over lyx (and there were several things I still missed), and actually toyed with the idea of a Mac with OS/X for my next worstation--but it wouldn't match the raw horsepower I can get with dual athlons on the budget, and this is a pure number cruncher. I still see X as a way to manage my xterms and the only way to display lyx.
Still, though, it seems a bit odd to want the absolute, bare-bones control, and at the same time want hte eye candy
hawk
I've installed various flavors of Red Hat (starting with 5.1, now at 7.2) on dozens of computers and have never had it "screw up a partition table".
David Cantrell is *not* the Slackware project leader. It's Patrick Volkerding and he still works on Slackware. And if people still buy the CD-sets I think Slackware will live on...
Mats
If you like to cultivate insomnia. Bed down with a pretty girl. Amor vincit omnia.
Didnt need it, got the hardware installed witout it...
see "clarfication" above
Been there, done that... not exactly the newbie type...
NOT my point...
Sorry to give you all the "newbie" impression...
:) And it makes an AWESOME router on my network right now...
:)
My point isnt that i _Cant_ get it to work. I can and i _did_ using the Detenator drivers and external drivers for sound, and manually configgin them...
My point is, rather, that I shouldn't _have_ to do that fore most hardware. Shure my hardware is current, but by no means do i consider it 'bleeding edge'. And guess what? Slack 8 was release long after my hardware was supported by most all other distros.
However, i _do_ agree with you on this point:
Some of us like setting up our hardware the way we want it to be set up. And that's why Slackware isn't "fading out" - as long as a few people still like having control over their systems, it will always be around. By all means, be happy with your auto-installing software - I'm happy with my "roll-your-own" system. Isn't that freedom what the whole Linux/OSS movement is about?
I guess i would like a distro that is as simple and lightweight as slack (DAMN the boot time was PHENOMINAL!) But withough the hassle. Hell, even the extra software that came with KDE didnt show up in the KDE menues! Simply for the reason, that i need to do multiple installs very frequently on a few of my systems, and really i dont have time to mess with'm (by the time i get an install done its already to reload and destroy my previous data.. dont ask y.. i'd hafta shoot you)
And, as I said, Slack _WON'T_ dissapear, just for the fact that it is very customizable, and great for control freaks
I sorta subsribe to the philosophy stated by Linus in a recent interview i read... paraphrased: He was responding to the question if linux should have some type of 'device manager' like windows. He basically said 'no way, the divices should just work'
And, yes, that's what the Linux/OSS movement is about... giving me the ablilty to bitch and complain and flame about one distro, then go and use another... and bitch and complain and flame cuz it sucked...
BTW.. anyone have distro reccomendations, please lemme know
Man same experience here. I started using linux by using RedHat. I thought it was bliss getting all the power of linux, and not having to jack with config files. Then one day something went terribly wrong. I got hacked, several times I got hacked. Then I had a need to look at teh config files. But it made no sense. When all the damn configs are located under /etc/sysconfig/network/2moredown/1moredown/yourher e/sorryhadyoufooled
oops that's just a symlink to /usr/lib/net/home/tv/device/dev/cpu/mem
Forget that. Then I installed slack, I neerly jizzed my pants. For a distro that is "minimal" this god damn thing was sure easy to figure out. All the configs in /etc all the startup scripts in /etc/rc.d (as opposed to /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc.0/stupid service
I can just easily comment services out of the rc.d files, instead of chmod the startup files themselves.
No damned buggy framebuffer install that probably won't work anyway. Just straight simple textmode gui.
Anyway now that I run slack, I'm much more able to keep a handle on what's running on this box, and what's not, what get's installed, and what doesn't. If it's in my box now, it's because I've downloaded the source, configured, maked, installed it. And then edited a few config files to make it work. I know how everything that matters to me went into this machine. And I dind't even have to mess with any symlinks,libs,dependencies to make it all work. Except the small symlink I mysell make for my linux source tree.
The packages slackware does have, are extremely simple. installpkg somepack.tgz
upgradepkg somepacknew.tgz
removepkg somepacknew.tgz
Just freaking simple I love it.
If slackware went away, I'd have to use LFS and build my own distro. Every other distro has too much for me. Slack is the only distro that gots it just right. Just enough "extra distro" stuff to be helpfull, but not enough to be downright intrusive. And now that slack 8 is out. It's just awesome Being able to install slack clean to a reiserfs partition without having to monkey around is a very good thing. I'd be happy with the 8.0 distro for a year. I can just upgrade my own kernel in the meantime.
Windows = codebloat, security risks, instability, standards-corruptor, cycle-waster, yadda yadda
;)
Red Hat's identity crisis: To be open source, yet to maintain profitability for the shareholders...
Caldera: I wanna be NetWare - wait, no I don't, wait...
Mandrake = 'All the crap we can stuff into these CDs, but without all the stability...'
NetWare: I wanna be NetWare - wait, no I don't, wait...
But Slackware, sweet Slackware... After technology sector downturns, after the Wind River fiasco, without the marketing budget, in the absence of venture capitalists, despite the hype of how our 'computing experience' is supposed to be, Slackware is still there, a rock-solid distribution, after all these years, staying true to form, yet making available (not mandatory) the niceities for those who want them. No, Slackware is not dead. Rather, it's in it's finest hour. Non-Slack users just can't see it.
No. He's a Microsoft Windows XP Home user.
--- "pero toda poesía es hostil al capitalismo"
Slackware isn't dieing, in fact it's right behind redhat on the linux counter. So don't give in that Slackware will stay small either.
No package system? You're joking right? it's the most flexible package system I've ever seen.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I have grown to love slackware in all its glory. Who the hell needs apt-get? And dont get me started with RPM and all its flawed wonder. I have no problem with downloading things for myself. and who says you cant just make a script? and of course yes the simple upgradepkg utility will work wonders. and if you REALLY need direction the pkgtool. besides which if you partition your system right you wont need much work done if you do need a good ol reformat. and the new 8.0 offers 2.4.19 or a 2.4.x kernel choice. I dont think every dist offers you a choice. I dont install many packages at any rate but .tgz is fine for me, ive also noticed slackware packages have been worked on a bit adding things to some of them that are useful, no examples at this time for i have the memory of a nat =] id like a good valid argument as to why slackware would die out. I dont want any of that "oh its not userfriendly" bull. Its plenty userfriendly for me. Hell even as a newbie i installed it fine. And it still has apps to "do things for you" somewhat. all done in ncurses. And the work fine, what more do you need? If your running a server why would you in your right mind install an X server. And if someone really needs to be ridden in excess GUI to configure his system then fine, go use redhat. But ill be happy with my distro. I know plenty of people who use slackware religeously. Sure maybe they dont release new versions as quick as others but when its out you can sure as hell bet its worth it. Slackware is here to stay for a while, dont count us out yet.
every dark cloud has a silver lining, but lightning kills hundreds of people every year trying to find it.