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"

Comments

One Happy Slackware User, and Plenty Distro Wars

[Joel Rowbottom]

(fwiw, this is probably flamebait, and will get moderated as such - but it's my 2-worth; disclaimer is i don't normally get involved in distro-wars)

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.

Re: too bad slackware.com sucks

[Faux_Pseudo]

cat file Slackware users know to look below the surface and check the changelog in slackware-current for information. You can do this with a quick bash script in cron once a week and read about any changes in your inbox:

# only meagerly tested code that i banged out for this post
# covered under GPL
#!/bin/bash

HOME=/home/faux
DIFF_STORAGE=${HOME}/.diffsave/
MIRROR="http://carroll.cac.psu.edu//pub/linux/\
distributions/slackware/slackware-current/\
Chan geLog.txt"
if [ ! -d $DIFF_STORAGE ] ; then
mkdir $DIFF_STORAGE
fi
if [ -d $DIFF_STORAGE ] ; then
cd $DIFF_STORAGE
mv -f ChangeLog.txt ChangeLog.txt.orig
wget ${MIRROR}
fi

if [[ -f ChangeLog.txt.orig && -f ChangeLog.txt ]] ; then
if [ $(diff ChangeLog.txt ChangeLog.txt.orig 2>/dev/null | wc \
-l | awk -F : '{print$1}') -gt 0 ] ; then
diff ChangeLog.txt ChangeLog.txt.orig
fi
fi

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.