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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?"
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
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
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
Stable out of the box.
Easy to configure (for the average Unix guy).
Rarely has software which contains security holes.
BSD style init scripts
No RPM locking dependancy. If there's an issue, you can upgrade from source quickly.
There's an article here explaining why one site runs Slackware, which you might find interesting.
If you'd grown up on it, or come from another Unix-alike (such as OpenBSD, etc), you'd probably find Slackware quite friendly... most Slackware-heads would find Red Hat or even Debian restrictive and unfriendly.
To each their own.
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!
...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
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."
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.
IMO, the automatic updates and package management should be used by sysadmins that know what they are doing in the first place. I learned from compiling source code and it's helped me out a lot over the years.
As far as security updates for packages that are included in Slack, what's so hard about downloading it and typeing:
upgrade newpackage.tgz
Personally, I don't trust something that "updates itself".
Don't even get started about Linux on the desktop for the newbies. It's not ready yet...but that's another discussion entirely.
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
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
This is a common misconception. pkgtool makes it very easy to add, update, and remove packages, and the simple package format makes it easy to make your own. In combination with installwatch and install2slack, maintaining multiple machines is a no-brainer.
If you want pre-built packages for slackware, you might try linuxmafia, where you can find contributed packages for a wide variety of software.
Now, if you mean that slackware's package management system doesn't check dependancies, you'd be right. It's not as if it doesn't exist, though.
*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*
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.
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
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.
>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.
It seems to me that, if one needs to distribute software to many machines at once, there are easy ways to do it besides relying on a particular distribution's packaging tools. For instance, the unix labs at UT Austin use Debian, but most software (as far as I can tell) is actually stored on a central NFS server and run directly from that machine. It works great.
I administer several Slackware servers for our UT's student union. When I need to add a new piece of software or make an upgrade, I do it on a test server first (either compile a new package, or find it on Linuxmafia.) Once I ensure that it works, I run rsync on the other servers and viola!, they 'patch' themselves! Sometimes I have to run lilo if I upgrade the kernel on the other machines, but that's it.
(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.
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.
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'm assuming userlocal.com is alluding to /usr/local. They're wrong. /usr is not "User", it's "Unix System Resources", and is pronounced "Yew Ess Ar"
Sorry, you are wrong. "Unix System Resources" is a retro-nym for /usr, much like "Packet InterNet Groper" is a retro-nym for ping; both are incorrect 'explanations' for for terms who's origin and meaning have been hidden by time.
In current Unices, /usr is where user-land programs and data (as opposed to 'system land' programs and data) hang out. The name hasn't changed, but it's meaning has narrowed and lengthened from "everything user related" to "user usable programs and data".
So, you are wrong. Deal with it.
"values of beta will give rise to dom!"
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.
I'm going to have to disagree on the "lack of package management holds it back" argument.
Current package management systems in use (rpm, deb, etc.) rely heavily on the package maintainers. You're trusting them on several issues that seem kind of hairy in a large production environment.
1) The binary package does what it's supposed to (read: trojan free)
2) The software within was compiled to an architecture that you can handle (Nothing like finding -i386 meant to your package maintainer that 686 optimizations were included (not so good on some chips, like the AMD k6-2's))
3) Everything was built with reasonable options
4) The package plays nice and doesn't replace files from other packages on your system.
Personally, I'm more than happy compiling everything from source, especially now that a "./configure ; make ; make install" describes the build instructions on a huge number of available applications.
Want to roll it out on your large production system? Build the package on your test machine, use makepkg to build a slackware package, and then install it all over your network. Slack's concept of packages may be a bit simple (yes, they're basically gzipped tarballs with a manifest), but installpkg, removepkg and makepkg have been enough for me. (If you're using the makepkg angle, it's quite a bit easier removing things, especially if you're generally bad at keeping track where all the stuff is landing to begin with)
I won't bother with all my other anti-package arguments (dependencies, etc.)
As long as there are people that enjoy slackware, it will keep going. My question to the poster of the article (not that comment I'm replying to) is "When did commercial acceptance become the _only_ thing we care about?"
-transiit
Just want to recommend that all RH users (and slackware too) check out checkinstall.
It's a utility that automagically changes tarball installs into RPM or slackware package installs.
I run it like this:
./configure
make
make test (if necessary)
checkinstall
Checkinstall first installs the build into a temp directory, builds the RPM or slackware package, and then installs the package.
I've been using it for the past 8 months and it's saved me many times from giving up on the RPM database. The developer is working on getting Debian pkgs going too.
It's available here.
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.
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
----
Open mind, insert foot.