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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?"
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.
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
Hi,
:)
I've been using Red hat 5, then Red Hat 6, then Mandrake 7, then Debian 2.2, and now I'm using Slackware 7.0, which I of course upgraded a bit.
To answer to your question, I would say that slackware is the most easy-to-configure distro of all the above. But I mean this for people like me, who like to know in which file which information is stored, and dislike the graphical interfaces that write in dozens of different files without you knowing it. The slackware structure is simple, efficient. If you're seeking for something in the rc.d directory, you'll find it much easier than with Debian, not to speak about RH or Mandrake. If you can handle a console-based configuration, it's just great. The negative point for certain people is of course the quite bad packaging system, but hey, it's possible to install rpm. Or checkinstall, which I personally use. IMO, the best one.
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.
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.
A consistant package management system would be great... But then again, RPM hardly ever works right anyway. I think that I will just stick to the source. Long live Slackware.
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
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.
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.
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?
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 :)
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.
I'm also a big collector of computer hardware. My only problem with slackware is that it's so X86 centric. Though because of that, I've grown fond of running OpenBSD. (I haven't had any need to use NetBSD, yet.)
There was a sparc port but it died. Stampede (the Mandrake of the Slackware world), was going to have a fancy build system for a bunch of platforms, but I haven't seen anything out of those guys in months.
As a historical note, Slackware won because it was more extensive (it had far more package series which allowed distribution of "precompiled/preconfigured" utilities) and had a far better installation routine (you could install Slackware packages at a later date). Also, its X configuration documentation was much better (but still pretty poor). SLS was also falling behind at maintaining things current. My first Linux was SLS downloaded on 1.44MB floppies at the campus computer lab the night before leaving college freshman year (better than 9600bps at the dorms) in spring 1993. I moved to Slackware the next fall. Slackware was introduced, spread like wildfire via word of mouth and in just a few months SLS was no longer in general use (in those days you upgraded your distributions monthly because many common device drivers and utilities were just being written/ported). SLS didn't really seem to be interested in the "distribution" market, they were just a guy who'd stumbled into a key role in Linux. One thing good about SLS was it had carefully documented update logs so you could upgrade individual floppies as programs changed. Since dialup networking was very hard to use and rare in Linux at the time, downloading the disk images with xmodem was a way of life if you didn't have an Ethernet connection.
Slackware and Debian appeal to two completely different crowds.
/etc and doesn't rely on a wealth of symlinks, scripts, and automated tools. They like the fact that Slack releases tend to be very stable with relatively few bugs & updates. They like the ability to scale Slack down to a very minimal installation. Many like to be able to know exactly what is installed on their system and what is going on, and how to control it. And many like it because it is the most familiar distribution for people with a commercial UNIX background.
The people who use Slackware like having a minimalist package system that coexists nicely with software compiled from source and doesn't get in their way. They like the fact that Slackware sticks to the traditional system configuration method of editing familiar text files in
On the other hand, Debian seems to appeal to people who always want to run the latest & greatest stuff and don't want to know or care about dependencies and the details of exactly what software is on their system, and are willing to live with more bugs and constant updating. Debian users are also willing to give up some power and control to avoid learning a lot about manual configuration, although not nearly so much as Mandrake users, for example. There is also a whole separate class of Debian users who choose it primarily because it's not commercial and/or because it's called GNU/Linux.
If I were to sum it up, I'd say that Slackware primarily appeals to people who have a UNIX sysadmin backgroud prior to Linux, people who need a minimal install for older HW, control freaks, and perfectionists. Meanwhile Debian is preferred by people like to stay on the bleeding edge and the hardcore free software proponents.
If old time Slack users start jumping ship, it seems more likely to me that they will go over to the BSD side than start using Debian.
I'm not against package management tools. I'm just against braindead package management tools. dpkg and apt-get are the lonely exceptions to braindead package managment tools.
The Slackare package stuff is like the rest of the system, simple, bare bones, and assumes you know what you are doing.
When I want to upgrade, I want it done quickly.
You can do the same with Slackware.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
True, but these days, if you say you're running Debian, it's implied that you're running Debian unstable. Damn few people run Debian stable, because it's so out of date.
People who use Debian for servers usually run stable. For a server, it's usually more important to have a rock solid setup than to be running the latest and greatest. That's one of the nice things about Debian. It gives you a super stable platform to use for a server, and the latest and greatest for a desktop.
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).
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.
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I started with Slackware, moved to RedHat at version 4.1, tried to move to Debian when Hamm was released (gave up in frustration), and then moved to Debian sucessfully when Potato was released. I am definately happy with Debian. I still use Slackware for rare installations (I certainly use it more than I use RedHat).
:-)
Reasons I prefer Debian over Slackware for most systems:
* Fastest path from bare metal to rock-solid stable server
* Easier to maintain, particularly security updates
* Well thought out system configuration files and scripts
* Debian puts more development manhours into making sure the packages are debugged and working well together
* I prefer modular System V-style init scripts to Berkeley-style huge rc files
* Closer to LSB and FHS standards
* Lots of stuff (both good and fun) for my GNOME Woody desktop without a lot of work
I use Slackware instead of Debian for the following:
* Floppy-only machines that have little or no internet connectivity
* Excellent for fire-and-forget machines that will never get maintained
* UMSDOS installations (Remember UMSDOS? Slackware still supports it well)
* I need a quick root/boot disk combo for an obscure legacy system
The rest of the time, I use TomsRtBt
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Open mind, insert foot.