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Patrick Volkerding Interviewed by The Age
boa13 writes "The Age, a major newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, has published an interview with Patrick Volkerding, The Man behind Slackware. Covered are the early history of Slackware, its business model, its current state, Patrick's plans for the future and his opinion about the commercialisation of Linux. "
Slackware is what Linux is meant to be. For advanced users who like to tinker around, clean, and without any of the crud and bad designs which occure with commercialisation. Hats off to Pat!
Here's a good companion piece, from the second issue of the Linux Journal way back in 1994:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=2750
Read the shocking truth about Patrick's Grateful Dead tape collection, and the possibility of a Slackware/Debian merger!
in his teaming up with Bob to work on Slackware?
From the Article: "I don't have a problem with commercial versions of Linux (Slackware is one, after all). My main concern is that everyone plays by the rules, and I've heard about things (like binary only releases and beta testers forced to sign non-disclosure agreements) that just don't seem compatible with the GNU General Public License. Hopefully the Free Software Foundation is keeping a close eye on the situation."
I hear many fl4mz0rs spouting off about how this distro 'blows' and this other one '0wnz0rz', etc. And many times their beef with the distrobutions is that they cater to the mainstream (Windows?) users, rather than to the old-school-bloatless-speedfreak user.
I just want to clear this up for any fl4mz0rz listening. GNU/Linux will not ever be ruined by any company who releases a distrobution.
Anyone can make a linux distrobution, and because of this, if you ever see that all the distrobutions of linux are heading down the road to Redmond, you can learn (now thats a novel idea) how to make your own (if it's important enough to you). The atrocities mentioned abover are not good practice for companies, but do not hurt the GNU/Linux community very much because educated users will not support companies who do them.
If it's not one thing, it's Steve's Mother
It's not "slashdotted" from where I sit - page came up instantly?? :)
The site serving this was built to handle the load when the Sydney Olympics was on, so it can
handle a slashdot link - especially when most people in Australia have gone to bed, so hardly any load is on the servers.
BTW, its a load-balanced Linux farm serving the content.
What were you doing at the time you started Slackware?
I was finishing up my bachelor's degree in Computer Science at Minnesota State University, Moorhead.
It's MinnesotaLinux, dontchaknow!
While most other commercial Linux distributions have problems balancing the books, Volkerding hasn't had to worry since he decided in 1994 that the only way to keep the project going was to find some way to fund it.
No need to worry since all he needs to do is find some way to fund it? Doesn't that apply for almost ANY business model? I think that the person who wrote this article is a freakin' moron...
------
Sig
Here
I found it by searching for the subject line he mentioned in interview mentioned here.
Where's Stallman on that list? Not so sure about Eric Raymond. Yeah, fetchmail and ncurses are nice, but he also made childish threats against Bruce Perens (search Google), made a nice killing on the board of VA, and had fun giving speeches at Microsoft.
Clunk-click!
Slackware is still going on with the latest 9.0-beta still the first choice of Slackers!
:)
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
Yes, I used Slackware since the 0.3 release, which was little more than SLS (Soft Landing System) coupled with some Yggdrasil bits on top. With the advent of GCC 2.0.3 and libc 4.35p1, it really started to produce a stable enterprise-ready Linux distribution which I could deploy in my company.
I've tried Debian, Red Hat and WinLinux 2000 since, but none match the simplicity, speed and coherence of Slack. Here's hoping that Walnut Creek buys back BSDi, giving Volkerding and is team more money to make the distro even better and avoid any potential merger with Gentoo.
debugger on Sun gear, and later ported it to Linux.
ESR was the world's expert on Unix for Intel IA32 hardware, long before Linux was invented.
He maintained the definitive Usenet list of i386 Unix. He personally tested and reviewed them all.
Before Slackware, my first association with Patrick Volkerding was when he took up a collection to help Linus Torvalds financially when Linus was still a student. Patrick collected several thousand dollars in dontations for Linus, and very penny of it went to Linus. Very cool.
I like all these guys. If they weren't doing Linux, they'd be doing something else equally fine.
But I don't think slackware is for everyone. Linux is going to see huge growth in the next couple of years, and the n00bs can't reasonably be expected to do everything from a command line. There is a place for the relatively bloated redhats and mandrakes of the world that automagically work in (nearly) every case. If you were just getting started with linux, which would you prefer?
A best-of-both-worlds type compromise: slackware and webmin. Small, fast, stable, with an easy web-based configurator.
Just read this on the mailing list; the future's bright for Slackware!
Slackware now includes Michael Glad's Ultra Fast Crypt, which provides the Unix `undelete' function, plus some other entry points. Because of the United States export restriction on DES implementations, we are distributing this code separately from the rest of the C library. There is an extra distribution tar file just for crypt; it is called `slack-undelete-2.1.3.tar.gz'. You can just unpack the crypt distribution along with the rest of the .la library and
build; you can also build the library without getting hurt. Users
outside the USA can get the undelete distribution via anonymous FTP from
ftp.gwdg.de [134.76.11.100] in the directory pub/linux/udelete, or
another archive site outside the USA. Archive maintainers are
encouraged to copy this distribution to their archives outside the
USA. Please get it from ftp.gwdg.de; transferring this distribution
from ftp.gnu.org (or any other site in the USA) to a site outside the
USA is in violation of US export laws.
Beside the separate filesystem tar file there are some more add-ons which can be used together with GNU/Hurd. They are designed in a way to ease the installation by integrating them in the libc source tree. Simply get the add-ons you need and use the --enable-add-ons option of the `configure' script to tell where the add-ons are found. Please read the FAQ file for more details.
See the file INSTALL to find out how to configure, build, install, and port Slackware. You might also consider reading the WWW pages for Slackware at http://www.slackware.org.
Slackware is completely documented by the Texinfo manual found in the `manual/' subdirectory. The manual is still being updated and contains some known errors and omissions; we regret that we do not have the resources to work on the manual as much as we would like.
Here is my experience with slackware.
.......Now all my machines run Slackware ( including my Sony VAIO XG18). When i got my Sun E250 last month , it took me only 2 hours to get it all set up with Solaris 9 ( Having NEVER worked on Solaris at an admin Level ). All this because i did not have a automagic install and had to learn/piece it all together.
The first linux CD i had was Slack 2.0 in the fall of 1995 and the Windows partition survived only 2 days. I can't say it was the easiest distro to work with but it forced me to buy the Linux bible and RTFM to get it working.
The memory of having my first X-session after hacking modelines etc for 2 days
Keep the good work going Patrick.
YJ87
The VCs will give you money to expand, but then if the climate turns, they might not be willing to keep funding. Now you have made lots of commitments to customers, employees and supliers that you just can't keep up.
About three years back I got a great job with a dotcom just when they got funded by a VC. By the end of the year, the company had doubled in size and by the next spring they had to lay off about half of the current staff. When I shook hands with the CEO on my way out I could tell he was very sad that he had let all of us down this way. The CTO that I reported too couldn't even look me in the face, but that's another story. Recently I heard the were absorbed by the VC and pretty much closed up their operation.
Much as I love Slack, and use it several times a day, it's a shame that there's no native package management tools. Red Hat and SuSE have had the excellent RPM system for a decade now, while Debian's apt-rpm system is equally impressive.
.tgz tarballs which work in a similar way, but they have trouble retaining the metadata and fine-grained dependency stacking information that an easily-upgradable package management system provides.
:)
I know that Slack has
I'll still keep using Slack, but I can only hope that they develop a superior package system, or at least do a proper Ports implementation.
Just my 2 cents. Mod down if offtopic
Man, it's good to see that name again, it's been awhile like an old friend. The first linux I ever used was slack 3.1
C|N>K
From the comment: "GNU/Linux will not ever be ruined by any company who releases a distrobution. Anyone can make a linux distrobution, and because of this, if you ever see that all the distrobutions of linux are heading down the road to Redmond, you can learn (now thats a novel idea) how to make your own (if it's important enough to you)."
I hear many jackasses spouting off words that are plainly misspelled. And they also start sentences with "and," rather than omitting it.
I just want to clear this up for any jackasses reading. Distribution will never be ruined by any retard who posts a comment. Anyone can make spelling errors, and because of this, if you ever see that all the comments misspelling distribution are heading down the road to poor syntax, you can learn (no, seriously, it really is a novel idea) how to speak the fucking English language (if it's important enough to you). The atrocities mentioned above are not good practice for posters, but do not hurt the English language very much because educated people will not bother reading slashdot in the first place.
I really like slackware's simplicity. I agree. Myself, I went from DOS to slackware (in the 1.2 kernel days). Configuration flipped from editing autoexec.bat/config.sys to rc.d files.
/. crowd would be why someone chooses Debian over slack or vice versa. I'm not trying to start a "which is better" war, but although I've tried Debian, I keep coming back to slack.
Using slackware in those early days made me LEARN how the whole system works (since, like today, there are no GUI tools for anything). Over time I've tried most of the other distros, but I keep coming back to slack because I know what file to edit to get the job done.
Don't get me wrong, GUI tools are great and are required to bring Linux to a larger audience. However, they never quite have the flexibility, and at times are unusable (shell only).
My question for the
i started using linux a little over two years ago. i went to linuxworld 2000 in nyc and came home with free copies of several distrobution's cds. i went cold turkey off of windows and into redhat. after about a month, i realized that i wasn't really learning much from redhat.
that night i decided i was going to find a distro that i liked. i installed everything (suse, turbolinux, debian, conectiva). finally, i installed slackware an was amazed at its simplicity. it was remarkably voodoo-free. there were no crazy scripts to confuse me, everything made sense.
now i use debian. i forget when or why i made the switch. i still love slack, but i'm hooked on debian's package management and software availability. slackware is the best distro to *learn* linux on. it forces you to do things yourself, and that's important. it's not quite as hardcore as linux from scratch, and i've heard crux and gentoo are similar, but slack will always hold a special place in my heart.
Thanks Pat.
//radiotakeover.
Stop karma whoring. The article loads up just fine.
What the fuck did ESR ever do? Write some crappy essays? Write a medoicre mail fetcher? brag about his vaporous riches? defend VAs switch to closed source before getting fired?
I mean really, the guys just a fucking freak.
But i can tell you post is just a troll considering Richard Stallman isn't on the list even though he made the most valueable contribution by writing the license...and gcc and emacs and...
For me, I use Slack because I like knowing how things work, and I know I have a lot left to learn about linux admin. Having to go into the config files and get everything working myself is the best way for me to understand what is happening, and gives me the best chance to fix it if soemthing goes wrong
oh, and i haven't tried any other distro's since I played with RH 6.2 so I don't know much about anything but Slack.
krenshala
Debian vs. Slack?
one word: apt-get
I love Slack, it's the distro that I've spent the most time using. In the end though, I found that despite everything I disliked about Debian (SysV-style init scripts? ewwww...) it was easier to keep up to date than Slack.
Sure, Slack's packages are simpler, but even the BSD-tarball packages that they're based on have improved in quality over the years. (Sure, Slack still has a better package management program, I can't even imagine trying to manage as many packages as Slack has installed using Free or OpenBSD, but the packages themselves need a bit of work)
So what's the end result? As much as I love Slack, for any system that I don't want to or can't spare the time to compile everything when a new patch comes out, I'll stick Debian on and point apt away from the stable tree. But I still enjoy Slack, and still find uses for it.
Personally, I wouldn't stick any other distro on a sub-586 system.
I've chosen Slack because I've found it easier to configure and because the stable version is more updated than the Deb one. Anyway I'm planning to give another try at Deb as soon as I have a spare box.
oftopic maybe, troll.. not.
QillerPenguin, w/o his password :-(
Slacker since '94
COlumbia biatch.
Sure, RMS contributed a lot, but that's not the issue.
The poster listed people he thinks are cool, and RMS didn't make the list.
I don't think RMS is cool either. He contributed a LOT.... but he's not cool.
Everyone knows the best way to learn linux is to use a shitty distro!
Here's where you can do the right thing:
http://store.slackware.com
And you can sleep better tonight!
QillerPenguin
I've been using Slack for about 2 years now. I've tried various other distributions (Mandrake, Red Hat, Debian, Gentoo), but I just love Slack so much I can never leave it. It's the way Linux was meant to be... I know exactly where everything is, and my filesystem isn't dirty like with the rest of the distros.
:B. I guess Joe Sixpack isn't really into that idea, but hey, Slack's not for everyone.
I'm glad to see something like this getting some press... keeps me knowing that Slack is still going strong, despite what some trolls like to say. (Slackware has no money left!)
On a side note, who needs a package manager? I never use packages, except when installing the distro... compiling is better
Happy New Year, it's 1984!
I won't argue against Slack, since I have never used it. But I'll tell why I use Debian. I've used Red Hat 6.0 (buggy as hell), Debian Slink, Suse 6.3 before I went back to Debian Potato. Last time I installed Debian GNU/Linux on my main computer was 9/19 2000 (at least that's last time /etc/hostname was modified), and since then I've upgraded to testing and later unstable, and changed all of my hardware except my floppy drive. Debian just works, so I have no need to get rid of it. I guess I run Debian because that's what I use and it never causes me enough trouble to demand a reinstall.
Now, I wanted to try Slack when I got an old laptop a month or so ago, but I couldn't find an easy way to do a network install with a PCMCIA network card and no cd-rom. It currently runs Woody, but I still think Slack would do better on such old hardware (133 MHz Pentium, 40 MB RAM).
ESR is definatly not cool.
He's a sci-fi dork who watched to many rambo movies as a child so now he hoards weapons for the day the right-wing revolution comes. That ain't cool. Plus he's just fucking ugly.
He decided in 1994... to find some way to fund it. As opposed to May 2000, like the ones that are failing.
when he said:
It looks like the project has saved me from a life of COBOL.
Mine is a dual P166 (non-MMX) running slack, and it runs great (ok, so I use windowmaker the few times I actually want to use a GUI, cause KDE/GNOME is just too slow on my ancient CPUs ;).
;) If it works, and I can get my games to run under slack, I'll loose the win2k partition and feel very happy with the world. :)
I plan to try installing slack 8.1 on my dual Athlon 1500MP system when I get a free weekend to sit and play with it.
krenshala
You got it baby, What Mr. D is to music, Mr. V is to ....
Linux Distros, Can you dig it
DJJ Slacker since 1995... OK Slacker since 1955, Slackware since 1955
store.slackware.com = We're sorry, the Interchange server is unavailable... We are out of service or may be experiencing high system demand. Please try again soon. Damn /. !!!!!!
"and the n00bs can't reasonably be expected to do everything from a command line"
Actually my first linux was slackware 3.2. I chose slack because I want to learn and not click check boxes. Ive tried others but keep coming back to slack. If the noob wants to learn what's really going on they might choose slack. I choose it because people said not to use it unless you wanted to have to learn a lot, which appealed to me.
Slack vs Deb (Slack!)
:)
/etc files. This is not a dis against RH but I think that to anybody who takes a gander at all the setup files involved it's obvious that if you prefer hand editing your config files to other options Slack is VERY friendly in that regard. Deb configs seem friendlier to me then RH.. but nothing beats the straight forwardness of the Slack configs.
... if you haven't tried Slack yet DO IT. Listen not to the naysayers.. if you can cfdisk/fdisk then you can get it running.. no sweat. And if you have any problems just email me :) (anotherlamenick@yahoo.ILOVEPAT.com) (and to finish.. all distros have pluses and minuses... try them all!)
Ok.. for one.. just to say.. fighting over these is stupid... but you know that.. just want to agree with you and get on with it
I think Slack's big advantage over all other popular distros is it's simplicity. The nice sexy init, the easy to edit
Size. In a help chat I heard someone about to try Slack ask where the 2nd cd was... 'only 1 cd? How does Slack get away with 1 when every other (major) distro uses 2 or more?' My response.. 'Funny, I always wondered how every other distro got away with 2+ cds when Slack works so well with 1'. I think this is a BIG DEAL. What should come on a distro and what should not? Personaly I like nice slim installs. Anybody who's installed Slack knows damn well you can get a fully working distro on one cd AND have plenty of programs you don't want on it. My debian install wanted CD2 just to install the console mouse server. Knowing there isn't 2 or 3 cds worth of extras I'll have to sort through is a big plus to me.
Updating. And this is the clincher. Ok.. so yea.. no apt-get. But I think people make this seem a lot worse then it is. Is hopping on an ftp and upgradepkg * really that hard? Some would say its not automated enough.. But then.. some would say it's perfect. I know what gets updated... every single package. And yes.. I WANT to know. But even if I didn't... a) it just isn't as hard as people make it out to be and b) it doesn't require any setup (you can spend hours in dselect to automate something that never took much time and maybe shouldn't be automated anyway. Yes.. going from distro to distro isn't as easy as it could be... but I hardly see such a move to be taken so lightly as to be typed in one command (although that is an option I envy).
So in the end.. I install Slack.. no cd flipping, a lot less sorting through crap.. setup scripts that are amazingly easy to comprehend. Nab that patch directory and I'm secure and updated... head to current if I want more. Updating mulitple computers is as easy as apt-get... excepting you have to d/l the files by hand (or you could automate it.. if it's worth your time).
Ask yourself.. what do you want out your Linux install.. a working system ready for installation of choice software... or a system with everything and the kitchen sink installed whether you want it or not. Yes... you can make any distro fit the former.. but never so easily as you can with Slackware. For users/admins who want to know what's on their system.. what is not.. and don't want any surprises... Slack is the way.
And that's my $0.02
sigs are for the weak
Yes.. going from distro to distro isn't as easy as it could be... but I hardly see such a move to be taken so lightly as to be typed in one command (although that is an option I envy).
:P
s/distro/version
preview only works if you READ it
Now, I wanted to try Slack when I got an old laptop a month or so ago, but I couldn't find an easy way to do a network install with a PCMCIA network card and no cd-rom.
;), the 5 install.x files (these are your 'root' disks.. used to be color.gz) the network.dsk and the pcmcia.dsk (both in the above dir along with install.x). Ok.. so 7 disks.. try to find some floppies that aren't screwy and dd/rawrite those suckers over...
:)
:)
The most straight forward way is going to take a lost of disks with version 8.1 (the main root disk is now 5 disks instead of 1.. serious bummer!) but shouldn't be that hard.
First.. it is going to have to be NFS.. unfortunately this is the only network install Slack recognizes.. so be sure ya got that Deb box ready.
Now head to the rootdisks dir. I don't seem to have this on the 8.1 iso so try the ftp. You need a boot disk (likely bare.i, this is of course in another dir
Install from here is easy. Boot up with bare.i and the 5 installs. You'll be at a root prompt. At this point you can load your pcmcia and network drivers by typing simple commands displayed in the MOTD. I've never used the former but with network it's as easy as typing network and then either allowing it to probe or if you know what you got you can head to tty2 and modprobe it yourself. The commands mount the disks you made (network.dsk and pcmica.dsk). Very simple really.. only worries up till now are bad floppies
At this point it should be straight forward... once you got your pcmica/network drivers loaded you can continue with install as normal. Mount the cd in your main box and setup a simple NFS... bam happy Slackware installation
Hope this helps in some way... if you need any more feel free to email me (anotherlamenick@yahoo.ILOVEPAT.com).
sigs are for the weak
What the fuck is it with you ESR groupies? Volkerding created and still maintains a cool Linux
distribution, Bruce Perens wrote some cool software...
and ESR wrote a fucking LIST? Now, who's the odd man out here?
Is this a gay thing? Er, sorry to burst your bubble, dude,
but Raymond hates fags.
compile everything when a new patch comes out? wtf are you talking about?
wget ftp://ftp.slackware.com/path/to/patches/dir; upgradepkg pkgname.tgz
is it really that hard? oops, I bit the debian troll who obviously has ever actually used slackware, sorry moderators, do your worst
Why did you stress "The Man" in the article blurb? Is there some doubt as to his masculinity?
Thanks. Yes, I noticed NFS was the only option. I don't like that very much, as it means I will have to download the whole .iso. A waste of bandwidth, but I'm downloading right now.
The Age keeps a table of the 5 most viewed articles and as of Monday morning it reads:
For some reason, I found that very funny.
Geoff.
--
NP: Porcupine Tree - Stars Die-The Delerium Years 1991-1997 [Fadeaway]
My first experience with RedHat was abysmal, mostly due to philisophical and practical discrepencies with RPM. I even had a similar problem with dependency hell when trying out apt-get with debian-unstable. Why not just use stable? Yeah. Nothing as long as you don't mind running year-old versions of 0.X software that's had several bug fixes and features added on in the meantime. I'm not saying that RPM or DEB is the antichrist. For people who don't know what they're doing or don't have time to learn what they're doing, it gets the job done for the most part. It's a blanket solution for people weaned on Add/Remove Program in the Windows Control Panel.
But anyone that DOES have the time and the interest to actually LEARN what they are doing with Linux will benefit GREATLY from running Slackware. Install the big, basic, stable packages that you don't plan on upgrading, and install the rest from recent source. Yes, you will run into problems. Yes, there are points at which you will be confused. Yes, you will have to read and ask questions, but in the end you come out a better, knowledgeable administrator. You will learn how to use configure scripts to get the binaries *YOU* want. You will learn how to edit broken Makefiles. You will learn to inspect and fix source, ultimately submitting bug fixes and becoming a more vital PART of the linux/OSS community, rather than just on the sidelines, chanting "Linux r0wx0rZ! Windowz $uck$!"
I don't think RMS is cool either.
Yea.. because Freedom isn't cool... closed source isn't worth fighting against... and using closed source is ok and 'cool' as long as it involves beer.
God forbid.. RMS deserves recognition because he has the GUTS to stand up... not give a flying fuck about 'cool' and do what's right.
Following people is stupid.. but if you are going to follow anybody DON'T FOLLOW LINUS!!!
Follow someone with some morals.
why?
you want the slackware directory and then only with the package sets that you need
the install cant do anything with an iso image unless its been burnt to cd
Patrick, your Linux distribution got me truely interested in the OS a few years ago, and recently I decided to use it as my exclusive desktop OS. Slackware is just perfect! It is lean and fast, and everything just makes sense. I love 8.1, and am really excited about 9.0. You'll always have my $40 when a new release comes out. 8.1 really did it for me, totally outdoing 7.x (which got me started). You are the man! Keep up the good work! My Linux using friends and I all love Slackware.
Or you can unload that .iso into a local NFS share and go from there
Writers imply. Readers infer.
What should come on a distro and what should not?
Nothing should come on a distro. I want my distro free of genetic material. I mean, I know that Linux users have this horrible reputation but I never expected to see this deviant lifestyle so explicitly endorsed.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Even then, the cool thing about Slack is that you can still get a machine up and running with just understanding a few simple things. Uncomment a soundcard in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules and change the permissions for all the users. Then run xf86config, and your machine is up and ready to go. The cursed based Slackware installer takes care of pretty much anything nowadays,even networking.
The most difficult thing about learning to use Slackware was learning to use FDISK. After you read about the basics of the UNIX filesystem, it is super-easy, and is even easier today with CFDISK. At the time, I was still new to Linux but realized that I was never content with the other popular distributions. I totally fell in love with Slackware after that day.
Slackware just draws you in after that with its simple configuration script system. I love how much it is like BSD in that respect. Its easy to use and just works perfectly. It's simplicity at its best, but there is no end to what you can do with it. You can make it as complex as you wish, but run it in its most basic form for almost any task.
I just put Slackware 8.1 on my friend's notebook (P233 with 32 MB of RAM). Gnome runs pretty well on it, even with such a small amount of RAM. Just don't run anything that relies on Mozilla (including Nautilus), or you will realize what slow is. 40 MB of RAM will cut it well for Gnome or any lightweight desktop interface. KDE (my preferred desktop for Slack 8.1) runs like molasses with less than 64 MB RAM.
I was really impressed with the results though. I would probably be perfectly content with it, had I not been used to running it on an Athlon 1400 with 1024 MB RAM and 3 40GB - 7200 RPM Deskstars at home.
Can't wait for Slack 9 though, especially with the inclusion of the new Gnome 2.0.
I believe Wizard is correct, you don't need the iso, only the packages you want. At the very least I'm sure you could leave out full package sets (./slackware/kde) if not individual packages. I do like having the iso though.. if nothing else it makes a handy rescue disk for systems with bootable cdroms :)
My big problem with the NFS is compatablity. Last I checked (which was a while back.. please correct me if I'm wrong) you could only get NFS on Windows with a paid addon. Ok.. so maybe Slack isn't the best Linux System to start with.. but I hate the idea it can't be done. Inconvienent at best, limiting and incompatable at worse.
Incidentily.. I was always under the impression this was done to save bandwidth not waste it. If anon ftp is an option there is no reason for someone with a fast connection not to install directly. But then if they want to install on another computer.. or maybe a reinstall (maybe I'm a gimp.. but I've never been satisified with my first install on any distro) then they d/l again. Forcing people to d/l the files directly preinstall ensures one d/l per user (not per computer or install).. which saves bandwidth. In hindsight I imagine you could get anonftp access (for compatablity reasons) without allowing users to install off the 'real' ftp sites.
sigs are for the weak
If you read the alt.os.linux.slackware FAQ you will see that some of the regs there have added a few new options for installing such as an ftp install. It is all in the FAQ.
Faux_Pseudo
Offical a.o.l.s. cult member.
Ascii artist &
I started using Slackware very early on, tried many other distro's alwais came back.
;-)
Many Linux enthousiasts around me told me to move to a "modern" or "better" distro, I never did, eventhough I did look around.
Looking at the posts here, I'm really happy that there are so many happy Slackers with me
It really is a nice distro, and I still would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about Linux.
The reason I choose Slackware over Debian is that it's easier to understand, and harder to break. Automated apt-get tools are a great convienence when they work right, but a system-breaker when they don't. If I break something with Slackware, it's pretty clear what I did, and much easier to undo it.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I happen to run both Debian and Slack, so I'd have to say they're both good. But I run Debian on a dozen different boxes, whereas Slack has it's home on my old Toshiba laptop (T1950CT) and nowhere else, so I suppose I'd have to say I like Debian more. In fact, the laptop in question used to run Debian too. However, Woody killed it. I could actually use apt and/or dselect under Potato, and it worked. It technically still works under Woody, but instead of taking a few seconds, it takes about a half-hour as the system thrashes swap memory trying to deal with the package database. I don't know if it's merely the size of the package list (the number of packages in Debian doubled between Potato and Woody) or if the Woody versions are memory hogs, but in any case, my poor old 486 laptop just can't deal with it. The Slackware-current runs on it just fine...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I just loop-mounted the iso and shared it via NFS. It looked like an easy way to me at the time. But I wasn't quite happy with the install - it lacked plenty of things I've been spoiled with on Debian (some apps I needed, and I really don't want to compile stuff on this old peace of junk), so in the end I installed FreeBSD instead. It's the best so far - I'm writing this from Galeon, and it's almost usable. FreeBSD is quite a bit faster than Linux on this machine.
By the way, I can hardly feel sorry for you... All last night I had to listen .lock files, too.
to her tears, so great they were redirected to a stream. What? Of _course_
you didn't know. You and your little group no longer have any permissions
around here. She changed her
-- Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the private life of a Linux nerd
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