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Slackware 8.1 rc1 Announced
Demerol writes with word that "about 12 hours ago, Patrick announced the that Slackware is now in Release Candidate stage in preparation for the long-awaited 8.1 release. Hundreds of updated to the current tree in the last few months have had all the slackers drooling, and now it is almost upon us. Now, I don't want to hear any more talk of Slackware being dead. Thanks. ;) Here is the ChangeLog
and the Userlocal announcement"
Gentoo's where its at now.
Hail to the king, baby!
... and I just download SlackWare 8 last night!
sigh..
I just pooped your party.
I can't wait for this next release!
Have you looked at the package list? It is one of the most up-to-date Linux distributions in fact; just look at the package versions and compare to any other Linux distribution. All this coming from one man, and offering the most stable and understandable Linux distribution is truely amazing.
okay, what newb submitted this to /.? the whole beta/rc thing has become a running joke, and this submitted to to /.. brilliant.
one word:
gentoo
I really am ashamed of this decision. Fortunately the Greens, which I have voted for the last four elections, decided to leave the government rather than stay with the bastards who made this fateful decision.
wow, everyone's putting out a new relase, even slackware(never realized how apropropriate the name was until now.) maybe I'll have to fire up a test box and try it again.
...and now she's ready to learn.
The question is; why?
slackware has a new one, redhat, mandrake, suse, debian(shortly)... even the packages like mozilla and kde are having long awaited releases....
maybe we're about to stumble on the turning point on the computer era... maybe 10 years from now we'll look at the 1995-2002 as the dark ages of the operating systems.
As a side note, I showed my girlfriend the article about sherwin williams, and she replied, "this linux thing isn't going away, is it?"
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
You can check your email and receive messages from the world wide web! Slackware will help you stay in touch with all your friends by making a buddy list. I know that I instant message my friends all the time. Plus the new Slackware comes with bright shiny buttons, surprising sounds that make you excited about the interweb and being in-touch with folks from around the world who are just like you!!!!!
"Slackware's tech support has been nothing but patient, understanding and helpful!" says grandmother Eunice Haversham.
"It's so easy even I can use it!" says Michigan resident Robert Malda.
The best thing of all about Slackware is the fact that it's FREE !!! Just pick up a copy at McDonalds in their Tux Happy Meal or download it from your favorite website or give us a call at 1-800-LUNIX4U right away and we'll tell you about our other great offers!
It's simple, quick, has a decent interface for installing (non-graphical, non-slow) and once you get it up and running, it is running. It was one of the few distrubutions left where you can get it up, upgrade the kernel to whatever the hell you want and it will [b]still[/b] run. It knows it's target group and delivers.
Packages are good, decently up to date (now) and are not overkill. I couldn't be more pleased
I'm a slackware whore. I sure wish someone would update slackware.com once in a while, pretty sad that some other site has news on this before there's a peep of it on slackware's own web site.
I've used 8.1-beta2 at work, I love it.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
What really amazes me about slackware is that it really does seem to be a one-man show.
This is reassuring to me. It's good to know that there really is one authoritative voice on at leat one distro.
It lacks bells and whistles and requires some expertise, which is why I couldn't stick with it, but philosophically, it appeals to me.
evanchik.net
I was going to download Slack so I could install the base and just do the ./config, make, make install dance for a buncha stuff I like to use, like evilwm. My intentions was to pull something together from installing just the bare libs and packages I need, and create a desktop box for myself that just plain works.
Slackware may not be for everyone, but that doesn't make their efforts any less relevant. They're a proven distro. Looking forward to this!
spam, spam, spam, spam, e-mail, news and spam.
Really?
I had already given up hope of finding a distribution in which I wouldn't have to wait for the official kernel upgrade package or upgrade the kernel with a www.kernel.org version and face a totally fucked up system.
Some people may be wondering why someone would use slackware when there are distros like Mandrake which have a graphical configuration utility for everything. There is a very good reason: to learn about Operating Systems and about Linux. To change a configuration in Slackware, you have to edit text files. But that's not really bad, because Slackware has amazing comments in the config files. You are encouraged to learn the filesystem and the config file structure. If you want to learn Linux as opposed to simply use Linux, run Slackware!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Latest's of every thing I need:
Apache-1.3.24
php-4.2.1,
with all the php packages I have to move over,
MySQL-3.23.49,
LOTS of standard stuff (Nautilus, Mozilla etc.)
I should be able to upgrade my box, install ZendStudio_Server, use the journalling file system to mirror my drives and have the bullet proof system I need to support my Community Wikis.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
We need to face the facts. The Linux distro business model just doesn't work and sooner or later, a lot of the distro people are again going to be amateurs doing it for love and not money.
All that might be a good thing as the emergence of a clear commercial leader can only help Linux in the business world - it still looks like too much of an anarchy at the moment.
My first distro was a shrinkwrap job, but now I know I'd never do that again - there is no money to be made out of me or anyone like me. My contribution is in code and similar efforts.
When the shakeout comes then the hacker community are really going to be tested - without that money it is back to people in their bedrooms churning it out. Are they/we up to it?
All the Finns around here hang out in this one sauna.. I pee'd on the hot rocks.
This may be a dumb question, but what is Slackware? I mean, I assume that it's a linux distro of some sort, but I've never heard of it? Can anyone please enlighten me?
why is slackware using .gz? bz2 offers at least a 30%-40% better compression ratio than deprecated .gz
Whatever happened to Walnut Creek CD-ROM? I bought my first linux distro, Slackware 3.0, from them. That was around 1995. Back then, they had tons of different high quality CD-ROM compilations available when so many other CD-ROM vendors just released pure crap (e.g., the 3000 games CD's would have a thousand 8086 games that ran in CGA mode!)
I remember logging on to ftp.cdrom.com and they would tell you about the machine that the FTP server was running on. And it would always be impressive and state-of-the-art. The disk space that server was seemingly enormous... 75GB, 100GB, it just kept on going up. Of course, right now I'm sitting in on office where each machine has over 100GB's of hard disk space on it, but still. It's funny how the great dot.com boom hurt the companys we were really fond of.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
The New Testament was written 400 years after the events it described allegedly took place. A bit of artistic license maybe?
This is the release I've been waiting for. I've tried Redhat, I've tried Mandrake, but I fell in love with Slackware. The Sys V init on the redhat-ish distros annoy me... I really love Slack's BSD style init (and it supports Sys V style too if required!). It's much easier to edit.
Hooray for Patrick and gang! A job well done.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Finland's alliance with the Nazis in WW2!!
And people still win the lottery, so I think you've lost most of your point... get over it!
He's authored more than a couple programs I use day-to-day (fetchmail, for one), and I hear he's got a bit of free time on his hands.
Anyone who has actually tried gentoo, and isnt using it instead of every other distro to-date, is simply an idiot.
i'm still waiting on a woody I'd piss my pants if the Debian team had the balls to name the next testing branch 'chubby' or something
Gosh! Maybe the police should start using Bible artists for photofits!
Really? Are your ducks genetically engineered or just naturally big?
It's the most update distro's because its the newest released distro. What's the time line between 8.0 and this one ?
You want outdated ? how about that tgz packaging system ? how much outdated can you get ?
I hear you man! If something's not happening soon I'll have to leave my Colorado hideout and drive my cement truck full of fertilizers and diesel into a federal building or something.
I used to be a Slackware user. I'm fairly advanced when it comes to Linux and UNIX in general so I don't care at all about graphical interfaces or configuration tools. However, I have fallen in love with advanced package management tools and distro companies that are really quick to update packages.
I just don't have the time to spend a few hours grabbing the latest source patches and doing a recompile. I use to like to compile everything from source so that I could optimise it for my machine but real life eventually got in the way of that and it stopped being fun.
So for the past 3-4 years I've been using Mandrake. But the first thing I do is 'rpm -e linuxconf drakx* kde* gnome*' etc. The reason I like it is not because of the ease of use but because Mandrake is really quick to release security updates and all it takes is a simple urpmi command to download them. Plus every release comes with tons of new toys that I like to play around with when I'm bored.
There's lots of other reasons I choose Mandrake too but I mean this as constructive critisism towards Slackware so I'll leave those out.
Comming from a BSD background I always felt right at home with Slack but when you just want something that you can use and keep up to date and secure with minimum effort then it just doesn't cut it.
I don't feel that you need to be user friendly and geared towards windows and mac users to fill this gap. Just a few command line tools that make a UNIX administrator's life easier when it comes to managing what's installed on the system (and the pkg_* tools are not up to speed on this IMO).
So I'm going to go off on a limb here and get ready to be flamed by all the Slackware lovers. I would probably switch back to Slackware if they were to switch to rpm or deb pkg. They can keep the "no easy configuration tools" or the bsd-style init scripts which I love so much. But I really need a way to customize my system and keep it up to date with minimal effort.
I know Slack has come with rpm installed optionally for a while but all of the system stuff like glibc, bash etc. should be installed as rpms so that it's really easy to updgrade them without taking hours to recompile.
--
Garett
Heh. Slackware is the distribution I learned on, and I learned a lot. By being console mode, by making you use fdisk instead of pretty little "auto-allocate" in disk druid and alike, you learn the ins and outs of the system. You get to edit stuff in /etc, not just push a few buttons. For a while I was wondering where the f*ck "XConfigurator" or all the other utilities were located. Hah! I had to do it all myself.
If you're serious about learning Linux the way you should learn (by experience, not paper) it, slack is the way to go. It just goes to show why paper MCSEs and RHCEs are worthless... you gotta have experience before you get hired for a real job.
I use .bz2 extensively and would benefit from a PCI card for encoding/decoding .bz2 files.
Try Gentoo, I can't see how you'd go back.
And I just rsync'ed and upgraded everything up to "beta2" level a couple days ago. Now I have to go and update more stuff. Oh well, updates are always good....
Slashdot is full of ultra right wing
That is ultra left-wing you retard. How many slashdotters do you know are gun-toting coon-hunting Ted Nugent-types?
Libertarian is to the left, although they support what they call "freedom" -- i.e. support of the bill of rights to its fullest. That's why ESR likes guns.
For producing a distribution that's rock-solid and doesn't get in your way.
:-) which was the release that got me started with Linux. If you _really_ want to learn Linux, I think Slackware is still the way to go.
I still have the CD for 3.2, from 1997
I've tried Red Hat and Debian, but I still come back to good old Hackware.
Roland
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
The best Linux based server operating system is soon to see yet another fine release.
Ciryon
Hey, maybe they should call the next distro "Erector".
The highest risk is on client systems. 0wning your own machine... that is soo cool!
Fully agree. I like being the person the few linux people at work come to. For the same reasons you stated.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
This actually should be modded up, and marked as funny.
And I say that as a slackware user.
Nice.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
I've been using linux on and off for the past few years, didnt have a clue at first. Once Slackware 8.0 came out I was all set. I was confused a bit at first since I was used to redhat rpms, guis etc, but soon enough I loved slackware. I've been using 8.1 Beta 2 for a few days, and I'm loving it so far. If you want to learn linux, slackware is the only way to go.
---
Always standing, I am a tree awaiting the lightning. -Samael, Crown
Anyone got a mirror for an ISO?
And after you did that, they first dragged you out of the sauna, kicked your ass and threw you out to the snowbank - naked.
used slackware for about 4 years and i was a gentoo lover within seconds :)
But this doesnt mean i wouldnt use Slack if i need a system up and running fast, cause gentoo is still a slow bastard with all the nice compile time needed...
A few years ago, I installed Slackware on a spare box and thought it was a nice distro. As you said, this is really nice if you want to learn how your OS works rather than just using it.
I don't use it anymore because all of my boxes (including my server) are running linux from scratch which while being much longer to setup (especially the first time), it is the ultimate learning experience. Everything on my workstation was compiled manually by me, including the shell, the compiler, X, etc...
One good thing about slack and linuxfromscratch is that you *know* exactly what is installed on your machine.
IP Therefore I am.
The new slack is coming. Great.
But what is more important - it still has users that loves slack.
Look at comments here! There are no angry posts. Almost everyone claims almost love to slackware, even users that had to go away from slackware. They were made to leave slack, but they still love it.
There are no post like BSD is dying, there are no troll or flamebaits commonly accompaning RedHat or Mandrake releases. Everyone seems to have warm feelings about Slack.
I think that slackware has one of best userbase around here.
Go slack!
:wq
The planned plant is not capable of producing weapons grade plutonium.
what about linuxpackages?
Sign, they let just anyone work in the mailroom
these days.
Slackware's not dead, it just smells that way.
I abandoned slackware years ago in favor of redhat because of how ridiculously difficult it was to upgrade. Hopefully, things have changed in that regard.
So what? Nuclear power is not an option for a civilised, environmentally conscious nation any more than fossile fuels are.
Death to the lame distros. Real SA's do Slack.
Stupid RedHat and other GUI installs suck. If I wanted GUI I'd get a Mac.
I was there from the beginning. Slack is the best.
Give me Slack or give me Death!
hey earl ray, shouldn't you be changing the tire on your house...?
Slackware is unquestionably the best distro for linux newbies. It was my first distro and it forced me to learn all the nitty gritty details of linux. Now its nothing but debian for me, but I must pay homage to their roots. Way to go Patrick... and praise Bob!
I looked in the changelog yesterday and it's really impressive to see so much important software beeing up to date.
Slackware isn't anymore using old outdated software. Take a careful look in the changelog and drool.
Also note the boot/root disks supporting the new journaling filesystems directly from a fresh installation.
//Pingo
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
Damnit! Now I'm extra proud of being a Finn. Our parliament made the right decision. I'm happy they weren't swayed by all kinds of luddites with absolutely no clue about the issues regarding nuclear power.
Oh, please. As you know, Slackware has its own package management system, the same one it uses to install with. glibc, bash, and so forth *are* installed via binary packages. No need to recompile. Just follow slackware-current.
I upgraded KDE 2.2.1 to KDE 3.0.1 just by downloading the packages and using upgradepkg. I've also upgraded the kernel, a bunch of my X apps, and even X itself. All without compiling.
I should probably point this out--I'm an idiot. I probably shouldn't even be using a Linux system. But someone like me got Slackware Linux up and running and using all my devices. Wasn't hard at all. And now I have no reason to use Windows except to run certain games.
Then again, maybe I'm just ignorant since I haven't used any other distros since I first used Slackware 4.0. I guess I don't need to try the others when I've already got the best. :)
(shameless plug) Slackersguild will always use Slackware... ;)
STOP: 0x007B SAMBA_Crashes_NT!
Alright!! We're finally fighting back!
Sometimes I like to ask her if she's almost Finnish.
Mandrake was the first linux distro I ever used but I keep finding myself always falling back on slack. I don't need graphical installs or wizards for everything I just need a fast and trim distro. and slack is that distro.p ?id=28573
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view.ph
It's all Politics
I have been trying some linux distros for 5 years or so.
I am a programmer (I used delphi a lot - but now I use Java) and a windows l(user).
The motivation to install gentoo was to (a) get a winmodem working (mandrake 8.2 was making it very difficult to an inexperienced linux user like me) and (b) see if Eugenia's (osnews) reviews of Gentoo were true.
For my pleasure, I did not only get the winmodem working, but found a great distro that is *fun* to use.
I do think linux is much better than windows (98, 2000 and XP).
bye bye windows.
Beleive it. Suse do this just fine.
I abandoned slackware years ago in favor of redhat because of how ridiculously difficult it was to upgrade
You mean you LIKE how difficult RH is to upgrade?
I guess you're right, I switched my desktop from RH to Slack because RH is too difficult to upgrade... and I wasn't even trying to upgrade.. I just wanted to install a package (it wouldn't compile on the version of RH I had.)
The package wouldn't install because I had the wrong version of another package.
I couldn't upgrade the already installed package because it needed an update of glibc.
glibc wouldn't upgrade because everything depended on the old package.
So the only answer was to wipe everything and reinstall.. seeing as how all the servers were Slack, I decided to give 7.1 a shot.. and I've never looked back.
You're 100% correct, RH is WAY harder to upgrade than slackware - thanks for warning all us non-masochists.
I agree. From now on hamster powered engines equipped with free-range unionized hamsters will be the norm. We should implement this immediately or dire consequences will result.
You have been warned.
peace.
Really the funniest thing with this nuclear power stuff here in Finland is that one of the biggest argument against nuclear power is/was that it isn't cheaper than other energy sources.
Now here comes the funny part: the greens now request that the environmental tax paid on electrical energy should be raised because energy will get cheaper and thus it would raise the usage off electrical energy and thus hurt the environment... where's the logic? Did I miss something??!!?
I've been waiting for this a long time - Gives me a good reason to reinstall. I was expecting it to come during the last few weeks and I've been trolling the slackware ftp to see if anything had changed - and I was kinda hoping to be the first to post it here on slashdot. Heh, only to find that somebody else posted it first and it even had more than 100 comments already... makes me wonder how you ppl are spending your time.
Great this is good news!!! This is cause for a celebration!
The right way is a negative or - at minimum zero - growth in energy consumption.
I can't believe how thoroughly people have been brainwashed into believing the capitalist dogma of the unlimited economical growth. There's no such thing as unlimited growth anywhere in nature! Yet, when this decision was discussed in public and in the parliament no-one even questioned the need for continuous growth and consumption.
Yes, your own logic is confused. As someone who has always voted for greens (not really because of environmental aspects but because they really are the only socially liberal party in Finland; witness, for instance, the recent vote on same sex marriages or the attitude towards legalising soft drugs) I can understand this logic very well.
a) Nuclear power is not any cheaper than the other energy sources. This is bad because for the same money we can get a less dangerous and harmful plant.
b) If, however, we still build a nuclear plant we need to tax that energy more because we have opted for the more dangerous, environmentally unfriendly form of energy.
Well.... I for one have no idea who this Ted Nugent fella is, but I am what you might call a gun-tottin', coon-hutin' redneck. Doesn't mean I don't know my way around a computer though.
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
Linux Users
By the 31st July for PAYE services you will be able to use:
Linux (Red hat) latest version v7.1 (Both Gnome and KDE) with the following browsers:
Mozilla v0.9.1
Netscape v4.75
Opera v5
Browser Settings
To use the Government Gateway, you must also have the following options enabled in your browser:
Your browser must be set to accept cookies
Java must be enabled
Javascript must be enabled
http://www.gateway.gov.uk/html/bad_browser.asp
As All slackers know "Simplicity is the Divine" A LinuX distro who really saw linux kernel 0.99.15 in its first release!
Now troll on this if you can!
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
What the hell does that have to do with Slackware?
slashdot!=valid HTML
*yawn* In irc.openprojects.net #slackware That non-existent slackware users even built a unofficial mirror list to take the load on main slackware mirrors. As you can figure out slackware has the best linux community.
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
I still want to know what those alternatives are. I happen to own about 2km^2 of land in the archipelago of the Finnish gulf (near Porvoo). And know I don't want to see any wind energy on any of the 14 ilands I happen to own. I already know a few people who happens to have wind energy mills (or whatever it is in english) close to their summer houses. These monsters keep a very disturbing sound.
Well if you happen to live in the city (like most of the people who vote for the greens do) then this is not the problem and you probably think it's "environmentally safe" because it doesn't bother you. Well that's how people behave so it's completely normal. Then we've got our waterpower. Do you actually know how much harm these things have made to the amount of salmon in the Finnish waters? Water owners used to plant fish (whatever it is called) every few years. We stopped doing that because of a nice law that lets everyone fish on your water by paying a little fee to the Finnish state (the people who actually own the water doesn't get a penny from it). This is a direct result of the fact that most people live in the city -> most people don't own water the water gets practically stolen from you (except the fact that you still pay the same property tax because you own it). Most of the greens voted yes for this law, causing damage to the environment.
Well how about cole or gas? Well we have Kyoto. So what are you going to do? I've still to get any good answer to this question, that would actually be a working solution. Much of the debate actually takes place because the majority of the voters doesn't understand anything about theoretical limits.
Instead you should stop cooking your food, it's perfectly fine while cold. Stop using the sauna, stop using your car, don't even take the bus, use a bicycle and keep your house temperature at about 18 degrees celsius. It's no use talking shit, while you could be active yourself. And actually you caused harm to the Finnish forests by voting for the greens, that vote was printed on paper.
I'm a happy Slackware user. I've been a Slack user for years - and not just out of "being used to it". I used Slackware in my first job, I built mailservers on it in my second job, I used it to run a complete ISP in my third job, and a complete domain registry in my fourth job (incidentally, I'm still on a heck of a salary and really enjoy my work).
I've actually looked at other distributions to make maintainence easier, but:
- Debian I found was populated by anal freaks who were real religious fanatics - we had a department full of Debian people and I said "ok, let's do Debian then" and two years later I'm finding it hard to work out just where they put everything [1].
- RedHat just had too many problems and decided to SetUID root a load of crap (plus there's the obvious rootkits).
- SuSE fell apart at the seams.
So I went back to Slackware.It's quite funny when someone came along, found a security hole such as the recent OpenSSH hole, and tried to crack a Slack box - it was fairly obvious from the start, because the rootkits failed. Then I built Slack packages for tripwire and stuff.
Pat's got it right, IMHO. It's a good, simple distro with decent ground-up building. And there's a lot of misconception that you have to build stuff on Slack boxes - you don't - you can quite happily build packages.
I now run Slack on my laptop, on the company servers, on my desktop, and loads of other places. It works for me. I'm pleased to see Pat's finally got it together for 8.1 (I've been following the updates for some time).
But one bit of advice: update slackware.com - it's bloody old.
Snogs,
Joel.
[1] Admittedly I haven't got used to it in the same way I got used to Slack, but there's enough people in the company who can get used to Slack. Standardising means getting other people to learn it too.
Smegma.
Which means we finally get rid of them!!!! :))
The funniest thing is that the people who vote for the greens are typically the ones that place the biggest stress on the environment - they live in the city.
Also the greens always define what is environmentally safe, it's practically like todays music. Today you listen to band A tomorrow to band B etc. and the only classic is nuclear power which is always a clear NO. So make up your mind and start to think rationally.
Why doesn't anyone mention that a lot more people die due to pollution coming from car engines than from nuclear power? Still no one is boycotting cars, but nuclear power is a clear no no. The answer is that cars are too damn practical, so we need to compromise. Nuclear power however is clearly unneeded as we can get electricity from the wallplug, so what do we need that powerplant for?
Just give me one source of energy that is better and has a smaller impact on the environment. And waterenergy isn't one of these, it severly damages the environment.
"Instead you should stop cooking your food, it's perfectly fine while cold"
Hmm... Seems someone needs a case of salmonella or trichinosis to teach them a little lesson about the proper cooking of food.
BSD is dying just like slack! I have always hated slack, when I was forced to leave it I decided to hate it forever! Slack may be fine for j00 n00bs, but not this 1337 H4X0r!
This is a troll. I grew up on Slack since '95. Go slack!
--Kevin
Difficult? Man, if upgradepkg is difficult, then I don't want to see what you consider easy.
Just last month I upgraded a box that was installed as Slackware 4.0 (the last libc5 version) to a modern glibc base by installing new packages. This was done since I needed to build a new version of patch, and the ancient gcc on there wouldn't cut it. So, I needed a new gcc, which was linked against glibc, of course, so I installed that too.
After installing bin86, binutils, gcc, and glibc, the new patch built cleanly, and I was able to upgrade the kernel to 2.2.20. You see, the old patch binary couldn't handle the format.
This is how stuff works in the world of Slackware. If you know what you're doing, you can pull off a trick like this and still have a perfectly usable box.
The key is realizing that you don't HAVE to upgrade things just because they exist. Keep up with security patches and upgrade when you need to plug a hole or add a new feature. The forced march of upgrades seen on other operating systems need not be reproduced here.
- Long time Slackware admin
fire-eyes == dalnet irc troll as well as cpio
werd
Parent is overrated, mod down
This is a replacement signature.
who uses distros anyway...
takes away the edge doesn't it?
Build an lfs and you'll learn linux.
www.linuxfromscratch.org
everything compiles smoothtly..
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
I have been with Slackware since 1995, when they released 2.3.
Now the introductions are over, let's think about Netscape.
IMHO Netscape is bound to have more users than Slackware it runs on multi-platform, it is released with almost every Linux distribution.
Enough... you must be a troll?
Yet someone (a moderator) found this funny?
I just built a Dual Athlon system... I installed XP just waiting for 8.1 - no other Operating System will do, until 8.1 is avaiable.
PS Has anyone noticed this on the BBC? Is it a scoop or is it old news?
alt.os.linux.slackware has known that rc1 on was out for a few days now and someone on the group even makes the effort to make current ISOs on a weekly bases. Other innovations mentioned in that group are the ability's to easily install slackware from ftp or DOS.
Ascii artist &
I've been using Slackware since 3.5 back in 1997, and I continue using it today. In fact, I'm posting this from my Slackware 8-ish box. So why Slackware? It's all about simplicity. Let's get more specific...
The lack of "forced" package dependencies is a good thing. When I know exactly what I want, I don't need to care about "forced" package dependencies. I run a Debian laptop at home, and when package dependencies break (ok so I'm trying out the unstable branch), it can be a real pain to fix that back. And I don't even want to get started on RPM (yes I run a Red Hat box too). But if I know exactly what I want, I can fix everything myself in Slackware. I'm not forced to accept what a package/distro maintainer wants me to install. It's all about control.
Learning Linux/UNIX. Some of you have already mentioned this. If you really want to learn about Linux/UNIX administration/development, Slackware is a great distro for that purpose. Now, people who would just want to use Linux as a desktop (for non-programming purposes) should use another distro. Slack's not for you. However, people who really want to learn will love the DIY-ness of Slackware. When you have to compile stuff yourself, or figure out why a certain library isn't working, you'll learn a whole heap of skills and tricks that will be really useful to you later. For example...
Moving back and forth from/to BSD is a breeze. When I first had to admin an OpenBSD box, I felt right at home. The similar *.tgz-style packages were easy to admin, and so was editing/configuring the system via editing text files. I later had to do some research using FreeBSD boxes, and again, I'm on familiar ground.
There are a whole lot of other reasons too, but I can't spell it out right now due to my current semi-hangover mode...
The downside: Of course, the obvious downside to using Slackware is time. You need to have heaps of time to learn and use it. But once you're done with that phase, you'll find your investment in Slackware will be worth it all. Again, I stress that Slackware is not for everyone. I certainly don't expect some of my less-obsessed-with-UNIX friends to like it. But hey, if you're the adventurous type who loves to learn and tinker around with stuff, go try it out. I think you'll like it.
slackware 96 was quite nice... came with a book called "Using Linux (third edition)"
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
Some people may be wondering why someone would use slackware when there are distros like Mandrake which have a graphical configuration utility for everything. There is a very good reason: to learn about Operating Systems and about Linux. To change a configuration in Slackware, you have to edit text files.
To change configuration in any popular Linux distro you can edit text files. Why do people think that because more modern distros offer people the choice of GUI tools they somehow limit those who wish to edit text files? The only GUI tool I know of that eats hand configured text files this is Linuxconf, which is due more to bugs than design (which is why Linuxconf isn't installed by default in most recent distros). To summarize; how is Slackware better for learning than other distros? Because, as you say, you have to edit a text file?
This is asides from the argument that Unix should be more about building a working network using whatever tools you wish, graphical or text, which save information to text files, rather than dicking around with the intricacies of text file formatting. I'd rather have someone that knew how DHCP worked than how dhcpd.conf was formatted.
The other thing I'd argue is that if people were to learn about Linux they should learn about the Linux Standards Base - things like SysV init scripts, the FHS, and the RPM packaging system (although the FHS is still waiting on the RPM 4 version of Maximum RPM so v3 is still the written standard).
Checking Linux Counter you will find that Slackware runs 12.09% of the registerd boxes. I couldn't find any current numbers indicateing how many netscape users there are. Maybe someone else knows.
Ascii artist &
You may be right,
:-D
but having said that Slackware places an email in every root's inbox asking them to register for the Linux Counter Project, how many other distributions do that?
Looking at the numbers of the project I would say that their numbers are a huge underestimate.
Don't say that this is a smart marketing ploy by Slackware, they've been doing this for over 7 years. It's just a shame that other distributions don't do the same...
There are AFAIK two analyses of Slashdottings to the Linux couter project so I won't provide a Link
Then again, luckily SUSEconfig isn't installed by default in most recent distros, either.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Well, yes - and CPU time is a resource.
I think it is quite interesting how slack has different boot kernels for different hardware configs for the install. Thats a pretty unique approach in my opinion. I also think that the installer rocks. Its very easy to use (even if it isn't 'Mandrake-esque') and I love curses programs. I do have a question though (haven't found the answer in the changelog). Does anyone know if there is an installer image with the base ISO that has a kernel supporting USB HID devices? The PS/2 ports on my best machine are fried and I only use USB for keyboard and mouse. I know I can download the image but I also don't have a floppy drive on that machine. Any help would be appreciated.
By the way, why would we even talk about goverments while we discuss one of the best linux distros?
Now I don't see Gnome-2 even it's already available for the least patients.
What's happened to Slackware? Any chances for re-incarnation?
I installed 8.0 on my old P-60 as a firewall. Try that with RedHat. You'd have to dig up a 5.2 disk (oh wait it doesn't have a cdrom). Slackware is very relevent. For christs sake I still have to go through that shitty ass Redhat install interface for selecting packages. Who would ever think vim enchanced was a novelty? I always wind up updating packages anyway.
tar zxvf whatever.tar.gz
make
make install
works fine for me!
After I downloaded Slack 8.0 Last Year some time. I was always kinda curious how long before the next release. and After A year goes by and the forum closes down I start thinking maybe they are having a problem . Maybe slack is going away. Maybe the maintainer is just to busy to keep up slack. Well after reading the changelog that guy has been busy allright maintaining and making slack better more power to ya I should have sent my 20 buck to slack instead of mandrake. Don't forget to follow the adventures of slack-girl
It's all Politics
Yo, moron, if you don't understand why Finland wants to be a net exporter of energy you need to go back to Econ 101. Nuclear energy is the most ecologically friendly energy around, as long as it's done properly, not like Chernobyl, but like Three Mile Island at worst, where although a lot of problems did go down and there was a big scare, no real damage was done. At any rate, even including Chernobyl in the averages, Nuclear still produces less ecological damage than anything else. If you care about the environment you should be happy about it - maybe this reactor will put some filthy coal plants out of business, or even one of those hydroelectric dams that are devastating to the natural river ecosystems.
http://www.planetmirror.com/
It works well for me.
That's the spirit. To hell with those bleeding-heart environmentalists. BTW, may we store the nuclear waste from our plant at your place?
New versions of Slackware are modern. Slackware is different from the rest because it is not a version of Red Hat or Debian, not because it is outdated.
There are different distributions for different kinds of people. Why does one have to be the best and others not good? If you like to have graphical tools, more power to you, but if you don't want to waste hard drive space on programs you'll never use and don't need, then that's cool too. Let each choose his own and let's keep choices around.
standards are good for some things, but I do not want to see RPM taking over linux distributions. I don't care if people want to use it, but don't force me to.
You obviously never had SUSEconfig re-generate your carefully handcrafter sendmail.cf. I just wondered if the guy who wrote it was being paid by Microsoft or a Debian nut when it first happened to me.
I've never used SUSE, but I used Slackware a long time ago, and have since then run a number of production Debian and Redhat servers. That said, I'm a bit puzzled by your comment, since it seems to imply that Debian eats local changes to configuration files. (I won't discuss Redhat.)
It's quite easy to set up Debian systems without any sort of automatic configuration. Changes to configuration files are always options provided for the user's convience, not something forced on him or her. AFAIK there are only two possible ways that a configuration will have anything changed by the Debian package manager:
1. When you upgrade a package, your are given the *option* of using the package-supplied configuration file instead of your own. However, the default is to keep your own.
2. The first time you install a package, you are given the *option* of having debconf automatically manage the configuration files for you. (At least in the latest Debian versions; debconf didin't exist IIRC a few years ago.) Debconf is just a program that keeps track of configuration information. The configuration files (eg. XF86Config) that I've used it for are extensively commented as to what parts debconf will change, and what parts it will not. This makes it possible to change things by hand and still use the automatic configuration stuff.
Of course, if you chose to install linuxconf or one of the other GUI configuration utilities, it might overwrite your manual changes. But I don't think that it's legitimate to blame Debian for that. Linuxconf is just a package among others that Debian provides in order to give users the widest set of options possible. I'm sure that if you installed linuxconf on Slackware you'd get the same resuslts.
Is there any specific example of Debian destroying a configuration file that I'm missing here?
-- "--," ?
> At any rate, even including Chernobyl in the averages, Nuclear still produces less ecological damage than anything else. If you care about the environment you should be happy about it - maybe this reactor will put some filthy coal plants out of business, or even one of those hydroelectric dams that are devastating to the natural river ecosystems.
...where will you all put the long-lived wastes generated by the plant? Do you guys have a Yucca Mountain or large,stable salt cavern handy?..
I've started using Autopkg, but does anyone else have any more autoupgrade programs for Slackware? Also, what distros use BSD inits and which use System V inits?
I wonder if Linux has as many users as Microsoft Word
SuSEConfig doesn't rule out using custom config files, it just makes you learn to edit them in the generator script instead of in the resulting file. Once you get the hang of it, it's really a decent system to use.
:) Then again, I'm biased because I started on Slack back when it was actually one of the more modern distros and there was no ISO available (man, that makes me feel old). I wouldn't have learned as much general linux stuff if I'd started with some other more "cutomized" distro - I would've just learned that distro.
Then again, I really think that Slackware is a good learning distro because it *forces* you to learn if you want it to work. If there's a lazy way to do something, I'll do it, so forcing me to learn is a good thing.
Then I recently made the change to Gentoo and have never looked back. I was just trying it out to see what it was like and I can't force myself to go back to Slackware. I personally love portage.
Even if we wind up having to package the crap up and shoot it into the sun, waste amounts are so small in relation to the power produced that it will still be cost effective.
Exactly! And even after stating it you never understand it. Slackware does things in very standard ways, so instead of learning the peculiarities of a particular distribution, you just learn solid standard *nix.
The LSB is just wind. Slackware is the living standard that you can install on your machine, run, use, tinker with.
SysVinit is just annoying. RPM *shrug* you can install it on slack if you need it, knock yourself out.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Slackware does things in very standard ways....The LSB is just wind.
:)
No comment.
... this was the mandatory linux/Opensource-updatenews of the day, no more this shit today.
Totally offtopic, but most of the non-apocryphal writings have primary documents placed at the end of the first century or beginning of the second. More than enough time for artistic license, but you're still wrong. Maybe you should've said "Compiled 400 years after the events..." and you could've, probably, been right.
Put identity in the browser.
There is a site that makes binary packages of mostly everything you'll for slackware 8 and 7. You'll need some packages that are hard to compile or that you don't need much personalization or that you may want to easily remove with removepkg.
So in between official upgrade, take a loot at the linuxpackages.net site.
unfinished: (adj.)
You misunderstood. SUSEconfig actually was the reason to me to try Debian. I don't know if SuSE fixed anything, but the SUSEconfig shipped with 6.4 just shouted "Play by my rules or use another distro" a bit too loud for me.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
When I was a newbie, I found RH a relatively easy way to start out with Linux, but I have never liked the broken packages I always got with RH or MDK.
Debian is nice and stable, good for servers, and the packaging is good, but it is usually a year out of date by the time it is released.
I am running Slack 8.0 now, and love it. Stable as all hell, critical apps are up to date and built from source, the rest just left as they came out of the box. Don't think I will be changing distro for a while.
That has got to be the funniest shit I've ever seen in my entire motherfucking life. Jesus loves me, this I know...
Regarding your (presumed) rant about RPM being specified in the LSB, it's not really that bad, since nobody IS forcing you (even though some RPM-based-distro users would have you believe otherwise). IIRC, all the LSB specifies is that distros should have some way of installing RPM packages. Slack users can install RPM, and Debian users can use alien.
If you really want Unix and flexibility, get SLACKWARE! I maintain a Ham Radio node running on Slackware, as it's easy to add AX.25 stuff in a text file. With RedHat it's near impossible to get anything integrated if it's not available in an RPM...
I think everyone here is missing the point. Everyone is comparing Slackware to Mandrake/Redhat etc, but the main reason why I use it is to install the absolute basic libraries required to get a Linux system going and then compile the latest KDE, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Kernel and stuff like lirc so everything is remote controlled. The result is a Linux which is fast (takes 20 seconds to boot), looks good, easy to use and only fits in a partition of less than *1GB*. You don't get the bloat that you get with other distros.
Another advantage as noted earlier is editing config files. When you install hotplug USB or lirc or any other daemon which needs to go in an 'rc' statup file it is really easy in Slackware - simply add the command! Using most distributions today you have to try and fight some kind of configuration program or alternatively break the rc files which get overwritten next time you use the 'easy to use' configurator!
I had Mandrake on my machine until recently. While being pretty good, I had enough niggles with it to make me switch to Gentoo.
/etc/hosts. The other problem was that I often couldn't find stuff to edit it in the first place.
For one thing, it had a habit of resetting configuration files I had manually edited - e.g.
can we pump the exhaust fumes from our coal-burning plant into your house?
evanchik.net
It doesn't even come with a "2 click install option". .. and is as easy to configure as windows (almost) and is more stable than windows (well, not so much NT anymore, but better than 95/98 and ME).
.. kinda like ICS for Windows 2000. .. only .. umm... open source (I think, having never read the source, I can only guess it's more secure, because lots of other people, just like me, have read it).
.. Looks kinda like what linux did before all the companies got to it and made it much better for people like me who don't know anything about this whole "operating system" business.
.. Apache is needed for IPMasq isn't it? It's got something to do with that packet-forwarding thingy doesn't it? .. I'm sure it does, my classmates were saying something about it.
Why would I bother when RedHat can do everything that windows does, (almost)
When I've installed my RedHat IPMASQ computer, it boots up X Windows, gives me a pretty login screen and I can just double click on the modem icon to dial the net.
This new Slackware is crap. I install it, and it's all text based. Everything needs to be configured using the KEYBOARD. There's even this thing called 'telnet' and 'ssh' which allows me to use the little black box from my windows machine. It's very strange.
Nah, I'm giving slackware 8 a miss, I'll wait for the next version of RedHat to come out, rumor has it I can play solitare during setup, and chess as it boots, and loads all the pre-installed services in the background.
Slackware works better for me than any other distro I've tried. I've had oddball problems with both RH and Mandrake, and I just don't like the "look and feel" of Suse. Sometimes Debian works great, but not always; I've gotten bit in the butt by apt-get. I only broke Slackware once, and it was only X and I could fix it from the command line. There's a learning curve, and I may have to tinker, but once I get something working, it WORKS!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
That bbc story (about water on mars) is a coupla days old.
it appeared on slashdot here
I haven't even said I dislike Slackware, just that I can't see a benefit to forcing users to run text files (as the post I am responding to asserts is the case).
Respond. Don't moderate me into oblivion. That isn't a troll. If you think it is, explain why.
Holy crap, I couldn't resist a big me too on that one. I almost stopped using linux entirely when I first started using it simply because of SysV and RPM.
'Phone-jacking: Give someone a ring, they'll have to answer to find out who it is!' - Threni
Well the first time I installed linux myself it was RedHat. The init system was so bizzarely convoluted I suspected it was invented simply to torture me ;) I actually liked rpm at the time, it's certainly a lot better than windows install shield crap. But it's needlessly complicated, and when it goes haywire (normally because of poor packaging I am told by rpm advocates - I don't doubt that's true, but then again it's needlessly difficult to package things properly under it too) it can be really ugly.
After installing slack and setting it up I could never go back to an rpm distro. The init system makes sense! The package system makes sense!
With redhat when something went wrong I could never be sure why until I spent the time tracking it down, and it always turned out to be something different and strange each time, sometimes my fault, but often not. When slack screws up, it's always one of two things - either there is a hardware problem or I screwed something up myself. After about a year I started having confidence in that, and that confidence has always turned out to be well founded. It makes troubleshooting so much easier.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.