Distros To Try: Slackware 9.0-rc1 And Yoper 1.0

FrosGate writes "Slackware 9.0-rc1 is now available for public consumption over at www.slackware.com. From the site: 'Some of the main components included are the 2.4.20 Linux kernel, KDE 3.1, GNOME 2.2, and XFree86 4.3.0, as well as gcc-3.2.2 and the latest development libraries. Enjoy!' Enjoy is right!" And Scorchen writes "YOPER has released Version 1.0 of their increasingly popular distro. This is the their first stable release." Here's the announcment. The website claims "With Yoper it is possible to import packages from all the other major distros including rpm's, deb's, and tgz packages."

Comments

Yoper looks a bit dull?

[Stillman]

I've been looking at YOPER recently, and it really doesn't seem to be much more than just another distro. The website makes all sorts of amazing claims, but when it boils down to it, it just doesn't seem to have a lot to it. Slackware + alien?

I dunno - somebody prove me wrong! :)

Re:Yoper looks a bit dull?

[hdparm]

GNU/YOPER

Happy now?

Oh sorry, it's Stillman, not Stallman.

Re:Yoper looks a bit dull?

[josh crawley]

YOPER = Slackware + Alien

Yep, that about says it all. Still, I'm wanting to put together a Knoppix-like distro but focused on media. Have all the fun tools/players in it, along with a XINE DVD plugin, MPlayer, and OGLE.

Re:Yoper looks a bit dull?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has a bit more flexibility, I think that's all. However I still prefer Ninnle linux. It handles everything yoper does, and more. Been doing it for quite a while now.

http://www.ninnle.org/

Re:Yoper looks a bit dull?

[JebusIsLord]

Wrong. Yoper is essentially the latest CVS version of LFS with an installer.

Re:Yoper looks a bit dull?

[linuxghoul]

is this what you want? Then go, HELP OUT!!

Ghoul2

Re:Yoper looks a bit dull?

[Luke-Jr]

www.ninnle.org doesn't get a DNS lookup :(

Re:Yoper looks a bit dull?

[mslinux]

GNU/YOPER Happy now?

No, that should be:

GNU/YOPER

GNU/Happy GNU/now?

GNU/Oh GNU/sorry, GNU/it's GNU/Stillman, GNU/not GNU/Stallman.

Re:Yoper looks a bit dull?

[hdparm]

Man, you have a huge flaw in your signature. Please, debug.

gentoo for me:)

[dcstimm]

Gentoo is a great distro, but i wouldnt recommend it to any newbies... Slackware is also a fun distro to use, but gentoo has better package management.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[intermodal]

I am a gentoo user, and I got a modem router so i could use it (and install it) via modem from my ethernet, and it runs fine. Installation the first time was a pain, but once you have the portage directory populated with what you need, its smooth sailing as long as you save it and use it on your other boxes when you install. I know my laptop wouldnt be running Gentoo without that fact.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[exhilaration]

I agree - Gentoo not only has excellent BSD-style package management, a performance-tuned kernel is also available.

You can always install the "vanilla sources" kernel, but come on - don't you want to experience the latest experimental performance patches to the kernel? SURE YA DO! Gentoo is a "bleeding edge" distro.

And no, it's not for beginners, but it is great for someone who'd like to learn more about Linux.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, at least with slack you're not dependent on a fast internet connection.

some of us here in eastern europe can only dream of broadband. debian users are heavily dependent on their internet connections too.

thanks again, pat v, for making a distro that functions in all conditions

Re:gentoo for me:)

[Centinel]

Gentoo could seriously widen its appeal if it would start releasing CD-sets that include its ports tree and precompliled binaries the way *BSD does.

That would alleviate a big hurdle for bandwidth-challenged folks.

Hopefully, this is something drobbins and crew have on their radar screens.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[PDXNerd]

Slackware is no more or less difficult of an installation than Gentoo (unless you count patience as an installation step). :-)

Granted, the last I used slack it was at 8.1, but the console setup has not changed. It's a wee less buggy than it was a few years ago (from 4.0 is as far as I've used it) but it is still "too much, too quickly" for a new user.

(Though really, not a bad distro from a stability standpoint. I never had any more or less crashes with slack than I have had with gentoo..)

If a new user can handle slack than they should be able to use gentoo.. Gentoo is a GREAT distribution for new Linux users that are interested in learning how linux works from an organizational point of view (directory structure and file layouts, config locations, etc) - from the ground up.. I admit, the installation is rather touchy at this point (i.e. manual and hackin' by hand) but if you follow the instructions EXACTLY you will find that it installs like a charm. Solid and easy to use package management, bundled up in an intuitive and easy to use package called emerge.

It's true BSD style portage for linux! Yeah! What more could one ask for in life? :-) Besides yet another distro - perhaps we'll call this one Red Slacksetoobian?

Re:gentoo for me:)

[BrookHarty]

Ok, so.

Yoper is a binary 686 arch distro, with rpm packages.
Slackware is a small binary 386 arch distro, with tgz packages.
Gentoo is a source distro for any architecture.

Gentoo is pretty fast, but damn you have to compile everything. It is fun to see which optimizations you can throw at the kernel, Xfree, kde and all. But I want an optimized build for AMD processors.

Maybe if someone had some spare time, do some benchmarks with P3/P4/XP compiled builds with SSE/MMX/3dnow/etc optimizations, could prove if specific builds are worth the hassle.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[mvdw]

Gentoo is not for me. I tried it a while ago, and it installed well, and went well, until I did an "emerge kdemultimedia", which then went ahead and upgraded almost the entire system over dialup, breaking the installation in the process. Back to Slack, where I can again have a rock solid box where I know what's in it, and can make my own decisions about what to upgrade (or not).

Re:gentoo for me:)

[PDXNerd]

I know this is getting off-topic, but I feel I must respond to this. Firstly, emerge protects you against these things by firstly:

a. Allowing you to do a "pretend" emerge and seeing what dependencies will need to be resolved before your package can be installed.
b. I have done what you have done too. Sometimes on purpose, once during an emerge --update world the power went out... emerge downloads and builds the files then installs them. This is what you and I do without a nice manager like emerge. What happens if you kill a make install in the middle? Exactly - type it again, finish the process. If you farked something up, it was probably not emerge.

If you use any other distro and have equal packages and don't upgrade dependencies for a new kde add-on like kde-multimedia, you will be asking for trouble anyway. Automatic installation of packages makes life a breeze! ;-)

Re:gentoo for me:)

[jericho4.0]

I would love to see some benchmarks on optimizations for different arches, patches and gcc versions/flags etc.

From the few anecdotal stories I've heard, you might see around %10 or more in some cases. I'd like to know more.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[sabinm]

I must disagree about Gentoo not being for Newbies. I think that Gentoo is the ultimate distro for Newbies. The instructions are direct and concise, with real world examples. Their forums are professionally moderated and updated frequently with users of varying degrees of experience. The difficult part is making sure that your kernel is configured just right, but a person with commodity hardware could install Gentoo on his/her system and be up and running within one day of compiling.

Red Hat' documentation is erratic at best and not easily navigable. SuSe was useful as soon as I figured out the correct path to download the distro from FTP. Mandrake didn't cut it for me. Believe me, I shopped around. I PURCHASED Red Hat at every new milestone release up to 7.2. I was really liking the way Gnome was looking on 7.2 Red Hat, and then they went and screwed up everything with 8.0. That was the most difficult distro for me, not becuase of the difficulty in understanding linux (although I am an intermediate user at best), but because it was so difficult to get *under the hood* to change anything. I used 8.0 for about two days and started hunting for a new Linux distro. I even went to Yellow Dog to be loyal to Red Hat, but found it to be wanting.

Gentoo was by far the easiest to configure, straightforward to understand and helpful in documentation. The first attempt was a disaster, the second attempt booted right up. The third attempt, on my 700 mhz Ibook was a total sucess with very minor cosmetic glitches. I can't praise Gentoo enough for making a Linux OS for the masses. Don't let anyone fool you: Gentoo is easy and configurable up the wazoo. I've never been more pleased with a linux distro. I'm only dissapointed that I didn't discover Gentoo until a few months ago. I would even be willing to sell gentoo on a prebuilt system-THAT's how much I like it. I've never sold linux on a prebuilt system because I make custom systems. I'd always burn some CD's to let others TRY it, but I"d install gentoo on any system that wanted it, it is so simple to use. I think that a CD with a stage 4 tarball and Unreal on it would sell to more people that would want it. I was even considering writing Gentoo to see if they would be willing to do tarball specifically for Nvidia's Cinema Platform with MythTV or something of the sort. Anyway, this is too long of a ramble. The short, no Gentoo is not for everyone, but its sheer simplicity is mindboggling.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[Ledskof]

I agree. People label gentoo as newbie-unfriendly because you don't just pop in a CD and stare at pretty pictures for 30 minutes, then reboot straight into X and start browsing the web. A lot of people seem to think that a newbie-friendly linux should be a MS Windows desktop replacement.

Gentoo definitely gives the power user as much control as they need, but it's not as if a newbie has to utilize all of this from the getgo.

Someone who is truly interested in learning a unix-like os but not exactly ready to start configuring and compiling sources is given a break with gentoo.

For anyone not familiar with any kind of ports tree... They've developed a software tree based on (i think it's based on it at least) the BSD ports system. They have a set of autobuild scripts that will download, configure, compile, and install the software for you, automatically, just by using the emerge tool. Ex:
#emerge vi

When it finishes you'll be able to run vi.

Anyhow, even if you are a newbie, give Gentoo a shot.
read more about it here:
http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml

Re:gentoo for me:)

[JebusIsLord]

Well, latest kernels don't need you to mess with hdparm anymore, nor do you need to pass arguments to get it to recognize all your ram AFAIK. Sorry but BSD does NOT have "a good policy on staying a step behind the bleeding edge without being too far behind" like you say, at least not compared to gentoo. Nothing is as up-to-date bleeding edge as gentoo.

The VM and scheduler, sure. I like having threads though. Hopefully all of your concerns will be addressed soon with linux 2.6.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[more fool you]

it doesn't recognize all 6GB on my servers. but that's ok, i still use it

Re:gentoo for me:)

[JebusIsLord]

they do have CDs with precompiled binaries for lots of different archs (i686 for example). Don't think the ports tree is on there though.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[Magila]

Apparently the next release (1.4) will include just this in the form of the Gentoo Reference Platform.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[jsse]

You are absolutely right. Whenever somebody who has no previous linux experience come to ask me which distro to start with, I'll then ask 'Do you want to learn to use a distro or learn to use Linux?' For the latter case I'd definitely recommend Gentoo, at least they could learn a great deal about installing a Linux from sources or at least how to compile from sources. Of course, this is not for those who *just* want to learn to use a distro for their job. :)

Re:gentoo for me:)

[mijok]

And no, it's not for beginners, but it is great for someone who'd like to learn more about Linux.
Couldn't agree more :) I think it's a very good distro for those who are somewhat experienced with computers but maybe not specifically Linux (so that they know what compiling is all about and don't fear manually editing config files) and are thus interested in trying something different than off-the-shelf OSes - ie. compiling your own OS.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[Anonymous Coward]

The gentoo instructions are basically Go Type This, Now Type That....

Maybe this is supposed to teach you (the hard way) that the foremost thing about a Unix environment is that everything can be scripted.

Then again, it's probably just a lamer filter.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[Zork the Almighty]

I almost agree, except I think it depends on how you want to learn. Some people learn top-down, they want to see the finished product and gradually learn about more and more details. In the meantime, they have a fully functional computer. For people like this, Gentoo is probably not the best choice: they would be better served by Mandrake / Redhat / etc, or even Debian (if they can handle the kernel modules.

However, if you are installing linux on a second computer or something (so you can afford having only a command line initially), then you can take your time and build everything from the bottom up. In this case, Gentoo is probably about the best possible distribution you could imagine.

My experience was Gentoo (didn't set up X) -> Mandrake (rpm hell) -> Debian :) . I will probably keep my main computer on Debian for quite some time. However, for my second computer (mostly a server) I will most certainly return to Gentoo.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[bonch]

Gentoo was by far the easiest to configure, straightforward to understand and helpful in documentation. The first attempt was a disaster, the second attempt booted right up. The third attempt, on my 700 mhz Ibook was a total sucess with very minor cosmetic glitches.

Doesn't sound so newbie-friendly after all. Do you think newbies will bother after the first disaster? Or tolerate minor cosmetic glitches after three tries? They'll demand something that just works.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[MS_is_the_best]

I disagree with this. Gentoo is not for beginners, because it takes too much trouble to install. How good the documentation may be, it still are a lot of instructions to work through.

Typical beginner thinks, 'I hear a lot about this Linux thing, what is that?'. Once they see it running and find some cool things, they learn more and more about there system.

If at one moment during the installation it becomes too difficult, they think something along: "Mmm, maybe I will try again in a year." Knoppix is perhaps the best distribution for beginners.

For a beginner who's harddisk is crashed four times because of Windows, is perhaps motivated enough to start looking in Gentoo (just like a more experienced GNU/Linux user, who fights with dependencies a lot).

Re:gentoo for me:)

[7-Vodka]

you know, the opt's are not the biggest benefit of gentoo. I find that it's building every package with the options you want.

want to enable kde support. USE='kde' want no cups support USE="-cups". Not only this, but it also ends up that you never have dependency problems because each app/lib etc is BUILT for your system.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[7-Vodka]

shit my bad. What i meant to say is the biggest benefit of gentoo is that it's SO FUCKIN EASY to write ebuilds and add new software to the distro.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[tzanger]

Gentoo is a GREAT distribution for new Linux users that are interested in learning how linux works from an organizational point of view (directory structure and file layouts, config locations, etc) - from the ground up..

I'm sorry but Gentoo does not teach any of that -- it teaches you how to use portage and emerge. Slackware doesn't teach you any of that either (I'm a diehard slack fan) -- if you want a distro that teaches you where things go and what things do, LFS is a good choice, IMO. If you just copy and paste the directions you won't learn much, but if you read what you're doing and the explanations given for each tarball, you will learn quite a bit.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[Deth_Master]

If you want a true "your os" I would check out sourcemage. I've been using it now for 9 months and I think it's really neet. It uses a very unique package management system. It will build all your apps from source. Catching what files were installed and where, and allows you to uninstall them. The default option with the uninstall is to archive it somewhere. It puts all the files in a tar.bz2 and saves them unless you tell it to go away. That way if you want to reinstall it, it doesn't have to reinstall the whole thing, it just extracts it.
Just thought that was nifty. Also, since this is a linux from scratch type distro, everything is compiled for your architecture(sp?). Which is really neet, because I don't have a p4 or whatever they compile it for. I have an Athlon and there are certain features that when compiling for an Athlon (in Linux) that you get over compiling for P4.
my 2 sense....wait....

Re:gentoo for me:)

[Fizzol]

> I think that Gentoo is the ultimate distro for Newbies.

Oh dear God, come on. Gentoo is the very *last* distro you point a newbie toward. Let's deal with the real world here.

Gentoo is *not* easy by any stretch of the imagination. Is it a great distro? Likely. But easy? Not in this universe.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[Shadowlion]

Do you think newbies will bother after the first disaster?

It depends on who the newbie in question is.

If the newbie is coming to Linux because he wants to learn Linux, and doesn't mind commiting some time and effort to it, then yes, that newbie will persist.

If the newbie is coming to Linux because he think it's Microsoft's next operating system, or because it was mentioned in PC Gamer, than no, that user probably won't stick with it.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[fudgefactor7]

"And no, it's not for beginners, but it is great for someone who'd like to learn more about Linux."

But Gentoo also has the BEST documentation I've ever seen, which is a Damn Good Thing (tm).

Re:gentoo for me:)

[TheRaven64]

But Gentoo also has the BEST documentation I've ever seen, which is a Damn Good Thing (tm).

Have you used FreeBSD? I've played with it a bit recently and found the supplied documentation far superior to anything I've seen on Linux. The FreeBSD handbook (supplied in HTML format, or on paper in exchange for money) contains almost everything you need to know, and the man pages seem better written (although that of course only applies to BSD software).

DISCLAIMER: I have not used gentoo, so I can't compare it, but would be interested to hear from someone who has used both.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[bigdavex]

I think that Gentoo is the ultimate distro for Newbies.
. . .
The difficult part is making sure that your kernel is configured just right, but a person with commodity hardware could install Gentoo on his/her system and be up and running within one day of compiling.

A day before getting a usable system? For a newbie? Are you serious?

Re:gentoo for me:)

[koh-der]

I used RedHat up to 7.3 and when i tried 8 i was thoroughly disappointed.

I switched to gentoo after reading various sources. I thought I might have to do a lot of configurations manually. However, that turned out to be a major misconception. Little time consuming maybe, but not at all hard.

I found it easy and documentations very good. Forums are better than any support doc you can find for RedCrap.

I love the way portage handles packages and the fact that I can choose to, if i wanted to, to throw in compilation options.

Whether it is for newbies or not I don't know. I will tell you tho that i consider myself a newbie.

I believe that Gentoo is what I think Linux is suppose to be - can take default but leaves a lot of room for the tinkerer.

PS: and who can forget Larry the cow... better than a hat.....

Re:gentoo for me:)

[SimGuy]

I used their tuned kernel, but there's something wrong with their NTFS driver. I get applications freezing when they try to access the partitions (intermittently). These apps won't even quit on a kill -9!

Consequently, I switched to vanilla sources, which don't have such a problem.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[SimGuy]

They'll demand something that just works.

Then Windows definitely isn't for them either...

Perhaps they should try a Mac? Apple's been working that "It just works" angle for a while now....

Re:gentoo for me:)

[msimm]

Pffft! Someone's had too much Bawls today! ;-)

Your most revealing statement:

...you don't just pop in a CD and stare at pretty pictures for 30 minutes, then reboot straight into X and start browsing the web.

This is why Linux isn't ready for the masses, it seems like there are still a lot of people with this type of outlook.

Right now their are two kinds of distro's:

• Good
• Easy

Both have their place and welcomed usefulness, but for the time being they are fairly mutually exclusive. Gentoo is not for newbies, its for people who like computers and sexy operating systems.

That's fine that Gentoo isn't a plug-n-play distro, lets just not confuse things.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[Knuckles]

Correct. You don't get a reasonably working machine if you only do the install stage and leave out setup. I just tried Gentoo for a week. It's interesting, but lots of things aren't there that on Debian I take for granted, like that an app comes with some sensible default cron job if it makes sense. Like, fileutils set up a periodic updatedb run.

Then, there is the quite incomprehensible runlevel mechanism. Maybe I wasn't with it long enough to judge, but to me the concept looked interesting, but the implementation lacking. I mean, runlevel-related files in /mnt/.forgotthename ?? And not documented in the bootprocess documentation doc either? WTF are they not at least in /etc/runlevels/thename?!?
And then you're confronted with a crowd on IRC that constantly discusses the merits or not of -fomit-frame-pointer and is it included in -O3 or not. But know nothing about the basic skills to run their distro.

Well, back to Debian and love it

Re:gentoo for me:)

[mvdw]

Oh, yes I agree that in principle the gentoo way of doing things is better. However, the implementation when I used it left a fair bit to be desired; there seemed to be dependency conflicts; ie, upgrading one thing fixed the dependencies for that, but broke something else that depended on the old version. There didn't seem to be all that much quality control.

Things may be better now, but in the words of Samuel L Jackson, I'd never know because I'd never eat the filthy mother fucker.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[PDXNerd]

Were you using a pre-release or beta? These things can happen. I have been using Gentoo exclusively on both my server and main system. I have not had one broken package or dependancy - ever. (Unless I added something outside of portage and did not remember I had done this, user error NOT gentoo error). This makes me wonder whether in your case portage had incorrect deps listed or whether the user forced an install without allowing the correct deps to be resolved?

Re:gentoo for me:)

[mvdw]

Were you using a pre-release or beta?

I don't know; this was maybe a year ago (just before slack 8.1 came out); I haven't been back since. I love BSD's ports system (I have a couple of netBSD boxen), but when I used it, gentoo seemed like a great idea, poorly implemented.

Look, gentto might work for you, and work well for you; that isn't under dispute. My experience, a long time ago, was that what should have been a simple thing broke my system. I went back to slack, and never looked back. I like slackware, and have no reason to change from here, YMMV.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[John Hasler]

> You can always install the "vanilla sources"
> kernel, but come on - don't you want to experience
> the latest experimental performance patches to the
> kernel?

If you're not a beginner patching and compiling your own custom kernel will be trivial regardless of the distribution.

Re:gentoo for me:)

[Ledskof]

I've recommended a few newbies start out on gentoo and they are diehards now....

then again the newbies I know aren't computer newbies... just linux newbies.

Slackware is always quick to pick up the latest

[Xpilot]

Latest GCC, latest stable kernel, latest GNOME, latest KDE, latest Xfree86, and yet solid as a rock :)

Re:Slackware is always quick to pick up the latest

[CelestialWizard]

I'd say that Gentoo would be the fastest. XFree86 4.3 was available before the /. post! *grins*

I've been running glibc 2.3.2pre1 for over a week, XFree86 4.3 after an hour of it going final - and all of this from the portage tree (package management), not manually downloading source and building by hand.

Re:Slackware is always quick to pick up the latest

[illogical_simby]

What's wrong with you guys, I'm still wiping my eyes. Keep the funny posts coming!

Re:Slackware is always quick to pick up the latest

[SteelX]

I use Slackware on a daily basis. I love it, but one trend that I observe (which could be improved) is this:

1. Official Slackware release.
2. Stable branch gets updated at warp speed.. once new software comes out or security fixes become available, the stable branch has it first.
3. After a while, current branch starts. Now current branch gets updated at warp speed.
4. Stable branch looks like it's forgotten. Doesn't get updates for months (except for very critical security fixes).

I tend to update my stuff using the stable branch and it's disappointing to see it being "forgotten." Of course I understand that stable is supposed to mean what it is - stable - but it would still be good to see updates on a more frequent basis.

Sure, there are unofficial packages on places like www.linuxpackages.net but I trust the official ones a lot more. And being a typical Slackware user, I compile heaps of stuff and create home-made Slackware packages all the time.. but there are certain things like glibc that I'd rather leave alone.

I used to update from the current branch but this particular current branch from 8.1->9.0 is a huge leap (the gcc change) so it couldn't be done this time.

Re:Slackware is always quick to pick up the latest

[kamisalami]

I thought he was talking about gentoo, until i read the topic.... i don't know about slackware these days, but it sure applies to gentoo. Though i think quick should be lightning-fast.

Re:Slackware is always quick to pick up the latest

[Alakaboo]

I updated my 8.1 install from the current branch, including kernel 2.4.20 and GCC 3.2 and everything worked fine. Just make sure you update your solibs and pkgtool before anything else.

Just out of curiousity, do you update by hand or using some sort of script?

Re:Slackware is always quick to pick up the latest

[SteelX]

I see.. so it works. :) I wasn't ready to take the 9.0 plunge... too much critical data sitting on my system and too little time to fix any problems! :)

I upgrade by hand using upgradepkg. And when packages aren't available, I compile by hand and make Slackware packages myself. I heard that autopkg was good but have never used it. How about you?

OSNews

[colin_n]

Yoper has already been discussed thoroughly in an OSNews feedback thread and it has been decided that a lot of their claims are duds or dont quite work and they dont add anything visually pleasing to the distro. Everything Yoper looks like crap. Dont believe me, check out their screenshots. That Y instead of the K looks terrible.

Re:OSNews

[colin_n]

The duds as described in the thread on OSnews are these, and I will do a copy and paste:

"Yoper doesn't include a working dependency-resolving package manager. Apt is included, but doesn't seem to work; rpm is installed, but the db has no clue what packages you have installed, so you have to use --nodeps, and after the new program crashes because of dependencies, you have to look at the output from the console to see what you are missing, then to rpmfind.net, and on, and on." - posted by anonymous.

Sorry I wasnt descriptive before

Colin

Re:OSNews

[xao gypsie]

well, try it for yourself. i ahve, and i really liked it. not for the power users, but its installs well, runs mostly off the install, and is really fast....

xao

Re:OSNews

[colin_n]

Why would they try and make a Y look like a K. You obviously havent looked at the screenshots.

Re:OSNews

[pnot]

well, try it for yourself

Easier said than done. The release version isn't available for download and I have better things to spend $98 on.

Re:OSNews

[tzanger]

Well maybe IT'S SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE A K!

It's a capitol 'Y' in a courier font... that's their "symbol" -- I don't believe it's meant to look like a K at all (and in fact, it doesn't).

Re:OSNews

[Fizzol]

I've tried it, didn't dislike it exactly . But it's really 'just another distro'.

Re:OSNews

[The Troll Catcher]

I can't believe they have such a crappy icon - I bet I could make something in the gimp in 5 minutes that looks better than that. It looks like they didn't even try...

Re:OSNews

[xao gypsie]

i had no problem dling it....

xao

Yay for the slack...

[japetto_bootsnakes]

Yay for the Slack. I can't say I have never deviated, but I always come back for more. Pat's still doin' it for those who want to run linux for all the right reasons...

Re:Yay for the slack...

[ankit]

yay! me too!!!

But its not for everyone. I guess this is a generation thing (lol). Most people from the pre-redhat/windows days continue to admire the simplicity and elegance of slackware. I just dont see a new linux adopter choosing the "plain and dry" slackware over anything else. Maybe in 10 years, people wont even open consoles anymore. But I for one cant live without a shell prompt the rest of my life....

Just count the number of *dumb* "slackware is dead" posts!

Re:Yay for the slack...

[reidbold]

not true, i've only been using linux for 2 years, slackware lives on my server and desktop.

Re:Yay for the slack...

[josh crawley]

Well, when you want a system to run exactly the way you want it, Debian's not the answer. Slack is. You set it up with minimalist stuff, set up the server(s) and log out. Log in ONLY for bug patches.

It'll run for months on end, or until you need to upgrade it. Really, it's best for 1 solid server. Web, mail, SMB, NFS. you name it, but I'd have each box with its own server (unless you're really cutting corners).

Re:Yay for the slack...

[moertle]

The server connected to the cable modem under the end table in the living room was running for 167 days until my roommate was dusting and accidentally hit the power button (and even then acpid did a clean shutdown). I had it connected to the stereo and the TV, had 3 NICs in it, routed between 2 subnets, had a webcam, apache, smb, nfs, named, pure-ftpd, cups, and VNC running on a Duron 750 with Slackware 8.1.

Not that Slackware is the only distro that could do that, but still, it can keep up with the latest and greatest.

Re:Yay for the slack...

[Jester99]

I just dont see a new linux adopter choosing the "plain and dry" slackware over anything else.

Call me a masochist, but when I decided to run Linux, I just downloaded Slack 4 (over a 28.8!!) and installed it. Hm. Yea. I was a masochist. Ok, nothin' to see here. Move along.

Of course, I learned how to use linux *real* fast like that :)

Re:Yay for the slack...

[Goth Biker Babe]

I try other distros but seem to find myself coming back to Slackware every time. Last weekend I bit the bullet and installed slackware-current which has now become 9-RC1 and I kind of like it. I'm not running servers or anything like that, it's just for my desktop machine. Also I'm finally using KDE after using enlightenment for years. I prefer minimal desktops and the last time I used KDE (early days mind) it was all look and no substance. Now I can configure it to be fairly minimal whilst keeping the usefulness of of an integrated desktop.

So all in all I'm happy with the reinstall. It seems stable and does what it says on the tin.

Re:Yay for the slack...

[Valpis]

Actually no.

I am one of those pre RH guys and I have used RH for the last years and are happy with that. I have done my time compiling, configurering and all that. Nowadays I like just to install the damn thing and start use it as soon as possible.

But last time I checked, RH came with a console as well.

I don't have the urge to hardcore, elite or something else, I just use my computer. I know how to do things so why should I have to prove it everytime I want to install a new compputer?

Re:Yay for the slack...

[SteelX]

Haha.. very well said! I agree totally.. I use both Slackware and Debian on a daily basis. Debian really gets in my way of doing things. And when the package dependencies screw up, you're totally screwed too. Gotta run those arcane commands just to get things fixed. Far, FARRRR cry from Slackware. Once I have the time, Debian's off my second PC.

Re:Yay for the slack...

[indigo78]

As a POST RedHat/Windows guy, I must say that I've been very glad about leaving out all the graphical stuff and to be able to set up a really minimalistic (means easy to maintain, to control and to configure), without being forced to do/install anything to "please" the distro (as you have to do with other distros). The same way, I've been very pleased to discover the good-old-command-prompt :)

Re:Yay for the slack...

[Sgt York]

I broke down crying after about the 300th question during the install

Thank God...I thought it was just me being a wuss. I did wade through it, though, and I did like Debian (kinda) once I got it set up.

I've been trying distros out for my primary desktop machine (so far, Debian, Slack, and I'm about to try SuSE). I'm no total newb, but I've never used Linux on my primary machine before. This thread has been quite useful...I started out gung-ho for trying the new Slack, but now based on the posts I've seen so far, I'm leaning towards Gentoo.

Re:Yay for the slack...

[dotgain]

Thank God...I thought it was just me being a wuss. I did wade through it, though, and I did like Debian (kinda) once I got it set up.

Nothing wrong with you - You're the victim of an arcane and unnecessarily complex installer. All it results in are the ones that have waded through it think they're 1337 because they did, and then post no end of one liners on slashdot saying apt-get this apt-get that, hence apt-get fucked

RTFM for the installer? It's 238kB. I ain't reading it. I don't have to read one to install Win2k, nor Solaris, nor RedHat, nor Slackware (the very first time I used Linux I did, but that only makes sense). A ten year unix user shouldn't have to read a massive document explaining all the idiosyncracities of the installer.

I'm sure debian will be just fine without me, but my point is, I'm loads better off without debian.

Nothing different

[ObviousGuy]

We've got all these different distributions of Linux, but nothing seems to separate one from another. This one's got standardized app installing. This one's got a nice OS install script. This one's got a better app installation system. This one can use all the different installation systems.

Whatever. There simply isn't any value added by any of these distributions.

Which one stands head and shoulders above the rest? Any suggestions?

Re:Nothing different

[FuzzyFurB]

Try Slackware. It works well. It forces you to understand your system more, but that's a good thing. the /etc/rc.d/ scripts make sense, nothing nonstandard like in RedHat, and compiling and using a new kernel works the way it should. Slackware's packaging system is the best IMHO. Debian may have the upper hand but Debian is still running the 2.2 kernel and xfree 2.3 right? :)

Re:Nothing different

[tempest303]

Well, I'm pretty partial to Red Hat.

1) I like RPM. Yes, apt-get is cool, but apt4rpm helps even the odds.

2) I like GNOME - Red Hat is a bit more "tuned" to GNOME.

3) They're well catered-to. They've very popular, so a lot of OSS and commercial projects alike target Red Hat as one of their supported distros.

4) They're sane. I think they tend to make some of the best strategic decisions for Linux, both short term and long term, and it's reflected, for the better, by their distro.

5) Use of spooky, mysterious logo reaffirms my masculinity. Can you REALLY feel like you're the Alpha Male when your distro has a logo like this?

Re:Nothing different

[tempest303]

Oh, and lest I forget, Red Hat's new system config tools kick ass. Having the option to go in and dig through text files is an important necessity, but having the option to NOT HAVE to dig through more damn text files is nice, too!

Re:Nothing different

[Somnus]

Whatever. There simply isn't any value added by any of these distributions.

Isn't that application dependent?

• I am a power user, and I am using Gentoo here on my laptop -- like butter.
  
• At the physics cluster here, they use Red Hat 8.0, because they need a set of standardized binaries, and didn't want to invest the time to work out the kinks themselves.
  
• At my group back in undergrad, the PhDs had zero time for administration, so they installed Debian and never looked back.
  
• (etc. ...)
  

What matters is that a distro a) does what it promises and b) is interoperable with other distros.

Requirement (b) is already handled by tarballs for most distros, and also in some by the low overhead in creating packages for them (e.g., Gentoo).

Requirement (a) is really what separates the distros. We'll see how Yoper fares. If two distros occupy the same niche, the better engineered one will win (well, hype not withstanding ...).

Re:Nothing different

[Feztaa]

Which one stands head and shoulders above the rest? Any suggestions?

If you want it done right, do it yourself:

Linux From Scratch

Re:Nothing different

[Anonymous Coward]

You sly devil, post a comment stating all the distros are the same, follow it up with a series of differences between them, then sit back and enjoy the response. Delightful, and look, extra points for positive moderation! Obvious Guy indeed.

Re:Nothing different

[Kurt Russell]

Debian may have the upper hand but Debian is still running the 2.2 kernel and xfree 2.3 right? :)

I got a box running testing/unstable it has all the bleeding edge packages and that baby is anything but unstable.
Check out thisfor using apt with more than one source.
Yea, stable is way to old for the desktop..

Re:Nothing different

[On Lawn]

I agree 100%. I put the distros on a scale this way...

RYO --- Gentoo --- Debian --- Redhat

Thats from the most "have it your way" on the left to the most "I don't know what my way is" to "my boss wants it his way" on the right. Slackware fits somewhere on there, but its used in so many different ways I couldn't place it in one specific point.

The value added is being able to have it your way, or being able to rest on the rock solid attempts of others. That Linux interoperates so well yet has distros that cater to each crowd is more then commendable.

They are interoperable enough in principle. We do have a Redhat box here at work running a Gentoo kernel for the NFS/TCP patches. I have rpm's running on my Gentoo box. But niether of those were easy.

--------------
OnRoad: It gets you there and back again

Re:Nothing different

[Scaba]

I am a power user, and I am using Gentoo here on my laptop -- like butter.

I prefer the taste of real, creamy butter on my laptop.

Re:Nothing different

[Arandir]

There simply isn't any value added by any of these distributions.

Hey! One of these distros is Slackware!

If you're going to bitch about too many distros not differentiating themselves, then bitch about SuSE, Redhat, Mandrake, Lindows, etc., because Slackware was there first.

That's right, Slackware was around before any of these other newcomers were even thought of. It wasn't the first distro, but those one or two that were older are no longer around.

Re:Nothing different

[esanbock]

Debian is still running the 2.2 kernel and xfree 2.3 right? :)

Debian has a nice tool called kpkg that makes compiling and installing kernels directly from source a pleasure. Sometimes I recompile my kernel just for fun. But make sure you download the pentium-builder package to make sure your new kernel is optimized to the max. My only complaint about debian is that all the binaries are only optimized for my 386 Packard Bell.

Re:Nothing different

[tzanger]

the /etc/rc.d/ scripts make sense

As a slack user since 3.3 I would have to disagree -- rc.d/rc.* works good for most things, but the sysv-style is a LOT easier to machine-maintain, and the execution path is NOT significantly more complex, IMO.

I use checkinstall (google for it) to create my slack packages... it'll create bastardized deb and rpms too, but it generates correct slack packages (since slack packages are so simple).

Re:Nothing different

[tzanger]

I got a box running testing/unstable it has all the bleeding edge packages and that baby is anything but unstable.

That's bullshit. Where's superfreeswan (freeswan with x.509, NAT-t and delete-SA)? How about mplayer or the other stuff like libdvd-css? With enough screwing around you can find pacakges for some of this stuff, but I can't be bothered... Debian is wonderful if you're an average computer user and don't want any hassles with packaging. If you need anything nonstandard or even a little esoteric, you're hosed. I didn't decide to use a packager only to have to keep track of the stuff that doesn't fit in it in my head. Slackware and checkinstall do the job perfect for me.

Re:Nothing different

[Cro Magnon]

The "value-added" features in those other distros is one reason I use Slackware.

Grr...

[BRTB]

Ya know, ftp.slackware.com had JUST quieted down enough for the -current mirrors to rsync to a reasonably-recent version. At least I grabbed everything up to when Patrick threw in the Sendmail fix....

Yoper= Slackware + alien?

[civad]

I am too tempted to agree.
Having tried both Slackware and Yoper for sometime, I think here are some things to note that might try to differentiate the two distros:

a. Installation process- let me say that typing something like "yoper" to start the installation process of an OS is...um...different. But then, there is no rule/law which says that one *must* use the term "setup".. :). Also, one cannot get to choose the packages to install in Yoper.

b. Default Desktop: Slackware offers a choice. Yoper doesn't. I personally prefer XFCE (just a matter of choice, nothing personal against KDE), something that Yoper does not provide by itself.

c. Under the hood, there is no noticable difference between the two distros. They both have similar package menagement

Re:Yoper= Slackware + alien?

[civad]

Sorry for the typo: The last word in my earlier post should be spelt "management"

Re:Yoper= Slackware + alien?

[Bronster]

I just like the way that the Yoper people claim that it's the most stable system they've used for 20 years, and then turn around and point out that the current version is a release candidate with a testing version of KDE installed and that if you want stability they suggest you don't install KDE. ... which sort of defeats the purpose of running Yoper rather than any other distro - the big difference between the distributions is how well they integrate the desktop environments and how sensible and stable their defaults are (not to mention linking tools against the desktop environments if possible for a cleaner behaviour).

Re:Yoper= Slackware + alien?

[Feztaa]

I personally prefer XFCE

XFCE4 or XFCE3?

I kinda thought that XFCE3 was cool but ugly, and went back to Fvwm. Now I've got XFCE4 (cvs) installed, and it kicks ass! When XFCE4 comes out of CVS, I'll reccommend it to anybody. It's a lightweight DE that looks good AND doesn't take three years to load! Woohoo! :)

Re:Yoper= Slackware + alien?

[civad]

dictionary.com >> > So its an even 'fight' then: both parties had the decision in their favor....

what?

[spoon42]

Yoper. Right.

Shouldn't last long, with an 80k PNG of text.

Aside from that, they use alien to import other distros' packages, set CFLAGS, and possibly want to become the next Lindows... (from the about page)

What is the purpose of Yoper?

Yoper has not been designed to compete with or replace existing Linux distros. However, it will be used to support commercial conversions of office software from Windows to Yoper. These conversions will be done by trained and certified professionals within the Yoper franchise. Most technical issues with conversion can be resolved quickly by typing a few commands or running a few purpose built scripts. We prefer this method to having to develop and support an auto-detection system, that in time itself will become increasingly difficult to support.

So, what?

Other than yet another distro. Possibly with delusions of grandeur. And they seem to want your money.

Re:what?

[mao che minh]

You have to admit, Linux is getting big in business, and it doesn't hurt to aim for the heavens. Aggressive business models work better then passive ones, and Yoper certaingly seems to want to be aggressive. IBM gained a cool billion by aggressively confronting not only their UNIX competition, but also their Linux business partners.

That said, I would still rather throw my money and/or support towards distributions that have been treating the community good for the past 5 or more years (Slack, Redhat, Mandrake when they aren't looking for a handout, and Suse).

Mod: funny?

[Ayanami Rei]

I'm sorry, I didn't get the joke. And I've used (past tense) slackware.

Re:Mod: funny?

[CelestialWizard]

I agree, I don't see the reason for the post being funny. Am I also missing something?

Is it the comment about being bleeding and still solid?

Re:Mod: funny?

[spakka]

Maybe it's because he used a smiley

Re:Mod: funny?

[PDXNerd]

Hahahaha! Have you ever used Slackware?

Check out KNOPPIX !

[MrNybbles]

Try downloading a distro of KNOPPIX. Check out http://www.knoppix.org/ and http://www.osef.org/ .

Just make sure you select English as your language before you boot (unless you injoy using Linux with a German attitude.)

This distro of Linux is geared more twards grade school students, but it is still a very good distro and it runs compleatly from the CD. Good for those who just don't want to commit a hard drive to Linux but want to use it.

Re:Check out KNOPPIX !

[bryanp]

Definitely. KNOPPIX is a great rescue disc if nothing else. I pulled down the EN version the other day, popped it in an old Thinkpad 600X with a damaged hard drive (replacement on the way). Booted to KDE, grabbed an IP address from DHCP, pointed Mozilla at the corporate proxy & was out on the web and our intranet shortly thereafter. Used the SMB browser to map over to my laptop's hard drive.

Did I mention I'm an old hand with Novell and WIntel but not experienced with *nix at all? So technically I'm a newbie when it comes to Linux.

Re:Check out KNOPPIX !

[Asic Eng]

It's really the best rescue disk I know. My dad had a problem with his Windows system recently (the old "system not readable" bug which screws up the entire OS). He had a Knoppix CD available (was included in c't magazine recently) and with this was able to boot.

It automatically detected all the hardware, came up with X-Window had KDE icons for all the Windows partitions.

Right-Click on the CD-Burner icon brought up the KDE CD-Burner, and he was able to burn all his data on a backup CD. (Ok, this will only work if you have a CD drive and a separate burner.)

In comparision: the Windows rescue CD provides a DOS-like shell, and that's it. No CD burner, nothing.

The one thing I'm missing is an option to grab a partition from Knopix, transfer the installation to there and install a boot manager (on floppy would be sufficient...). Is that possible at all? Might not be what it's intended for, I guess. :-)

Re:Check out KNOPPIX !

[cyrax777]

yeah i really like it its a great for a n00b to linux like me to play around in.

Re:I'm gonna try Slackware 9

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't even touched Slack since the 5.x days

So i guess that means that you have never touched slackware then genius?

Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

If you download the '-en' version of the ISO, it's default language is English.

Re:Uh

[patch-rustem]

I try that, but it defaulted to US instead of english.

Re:I'm gonna try Slackware 9

[Glytch]

Um, there was no Slackware 5. Patrick jumped from 4 to 7.

BTW, Patrick, you and your distro both kick ass. Keep the faith!

distro debate

[knightinshiningarmor]

Hmmm.. this seems to be turning into yet another Distro War [lite]. So, I'll try to plug in that LFS is the coolest, and if you've never done it before you're not a cool linux person.
Red Hat, Mandrake, and the others are for getting work done, LFS is just plain cool. When you install it you learn about how linux really works and ticks--it's really satisfying. So, grab an unused box and throw it on.. it doens't take too long... ;)

Re:distro debate

[Repugnant_Shit]

Red Hat, Mandrake, and the others are for getting work done, LFS is just plain cool

I love LFS, but I have to do disagree with that others are better suited for getting work done. I've had the same LFS system on my main box since october, and use it all the time for coding, web stuff, graphics, and games (with WineX). There isn't anything on the system I don't want, and its rock stable (52 days of uptime until I accidentally kicked the power switch on the UPS - doh!)

A distro like RedHat makes me paranoid. For security I'd rather use something I built up from scratch, so that I *know* it's secure. I could be totally wrong, but it works for me :)

Re:distro debate

[Cro Magnon]

Depends on your idea of "too long". When I tried it, it took over a week between my creating an undersized LFS partition and my actually booting the darn thing. And LFS "out of the box" isn't useful for much except, maybe creating another LFS. I'd probably fare better now, since my current machine is much faster, and has enough HD for a 2nd distro.

I disagree

[Somnus]

Whatever. There simply isn't any value added by any of these distributions.

Isn't that application dependent?

• I am a power user, and I am using Gentoo here on my laptop -- like butter.
  
• At the physics cluste here, they use Red Hat 8.0, because they need a set of standardized binaries, and didnn't want to invest the time to work out the kinks themselves.
  
• At my group back in undergrad, the PhDs had zero time for administration, so they installed Debian and never looked back.
  
• (etc. ...)
  

What matters is that a distro a) does what it promises and b) is interoperable with other distros.

Requirement (b) is already handled by tarballs for most distros, and also in some by the low overhead in creating packages for them (e.g., Gentoo).

Requirement (a) is really what separates the distros.

Re:I'm gonna try Slackware 9

[nomadlogic]

lol and i just used up my mod points too damn! exactly what i was gonna say too...

Re:I'm gonna try Slackware 9

[mao che minh]

I blame my keyboard, I mashed 3 and 5 at the same time, back spaced over 3 and left 5. So sue me.

Now that we are on the topic of older lack distros, was it just me, or weren;t you able to order Slack way back in the day right from Patrick's site, and it came in a two CD set with Tux on the front? (I think it was 3.4)

And you can...

[Anonymous Coward]

...reaffirm your masculinity with a goofy red hat?

whatever floats your boat dude ;)

Re:I'm gonna try Slackware 9

[Rebel Patriot]

I haven't even touched Slack since the 5.x days. I think that it's time to get back to my roots.

Troll! had you ever ran Slackware you'd know there were no 5.x releases!

Go back under your bridge.

I don't undestand why linux is on so many CDs

[xutopia]

Why can't Linux just be on one CD? Why do we need to cram things just so we can fill two CDs? Why can't we just have the bare minimum in a distro: the OS, a notepad, the web browser and the web server?

Re:I don't undestand why linux is on so many CDs

[ananke]

so far slack was always on one cd [i don't count the source/extra cd]. the 9.0rc1 i was also able to fit on one cd.

Re:I don't undestand why linux is on so many CDs

[jclendenan]

Like Windows?

Re:I don't undestand why linux is on so many CDs

[moertle]

I remember the day that I was saddened that the /slakware directory didn't fit on a single 100MB Zip disk.

Re:I don't undestand why linux is on so many CDs

[Arandir]

Why can't Linux just be on one CD? Why do we need to cram things just so we can fill two CDs?

Try FreeBSD. Everything you need is on one CD. Heck, if you don't need XFree86, there's an ISO that's only 100Megs. And if even that's too much, just download two floppy disk images and install via FTP!

Re:I don't undestand why linux is on so many CDs

[TeknoHog]

> Why can't we just have the bare minimum in a distro: the OS, a notepad, the web browser and the web server?

So that you can start work right after installation. You don't have to spend extra time downloading/buying and installing applications. Besides, a bare minimum OS doesn't and shouldn't include "notepads", browsers or webservers.

It's possible to do a minimal install of a Linux distro if you like, and for many distros you can install it directly from the net (with a boot floppy) without having to burn CDs.

Re:I don't undestand why linux is on so many CDs

[Billly Gates]

Another benefit of FreeBSD is the manual. If your not using X and your not a unix god, then the manual is a very nice thing to have. Especially if you have a winprinter and can not print any of the man pages. Its one of the best Unix books out there and it teaches about almost any command line administration task out there. Great documentation is nice and always comes handy.

I heard slackware came with a great book during the 3.x installations. Is it still included with the standard distro? .

Re:I don't undestand why linux is on so many CDs

[DaCool42]

A web server is a bare minimum?

Nothing nonstandard like in RedHat

[Ayanami Rei]

What is with this problem people have with RedHat? The configuration management choices they made may seem unique, but after having managed quite a few systems with it, I really wish they would push harder for wider adoption of those idioms.

I'll admit it, I like RedHat's /etc/rc.d system. It ties in with pcmcia, networking and wlan-ng quite nicely. I almost wish their SysV style scripts and tools (chkconfig, svc, /etc/init.d/functions, ifcfg-[dev], etc.) were used by more distros. I guess I've been tainted by working with Solaris, but I enjoy that method. It makes adding and removing services easy and clean (no editing files for most stuff). And when I miss slackware (I used to run it) I can always add stuff to the /etc/rc.local and friends if necessary.

I used to hate RPM, but I've come to appreciate it since most everything comes packaged as such, and the tool is rather powerful once you figure out how the hell to use it. Plus, those loonies at PLD give us i686 optimized software in RPM form of all the latest stuff that RedHat hasn't battle tested. This I cannot ignore!
I agree RPM tends to break on the kernel, but then I always install the latest kernel right after an install so I don't think about it. And a new stable kernel version later, a make oldconfig isn't too hard... I've never installed a kernel any other way, what's hard about doing it "manually"?

Don't know much about Debian, except that it has definitely moved on to 2.4 and Xfree 4.x

Re:Nothing nonstandard like in RedHat

[mvdw]

I agree RPM tends to break on the kernel, but then I always install the latest kernel right after an install so I don't think about it. And a new stable kernel version later, a make oldconfig isn't too hard... I've never installed a kernel any other way, what's hard about doing it "manually"?

Being a slackware user at home, and forced to use redhat at work, I've been battling with trying to upgrade the kernel to v2.4.20 on the RH8.0 machine at work. We need 2.4.20 for a driver that's not in anything earlier; after 2 days piss-farting around compiling the kernel from the 2.4.20 source rpm from 8.1 beta, we finally bit the bullet and just upgraded the whole system. If you can tell me an easier way to upgrade the kernel, I'd most appreciate it...

Re:Nothing nonstandard like in RedHat

[Ayanami Rei]

steps:
cd /tmp or /bigemptydirectory
wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux- 2.4.20.tar.bz2
cd /usr/src
mv linux linuxold #(don't worry, it won't hurt)
tar xvfb /tmp/linux-2.4.20.tar.bz2 #makes the linux subdir
cp linuxold/.config linux
cd linux
make menuconfig ... Do a bunch of stuff, drill down through menus disabling anything you don't have, and selecting the things you need in menus ... then...
make depend && make bzImage && make modules && make install && make modules_install

Then make sure to edit /etc/lilo.conf and check to see if it is to your liking. If not, edit then run:
lilo
OTH, if you are using grub, I'm not familiar with it but the idea is the same. Edit config file, and run the program that modifies the boot loader.

Reboot, and enjoy (make sure to select the new kernel when prompted, if it isn't the default!)

Re:Nothing nonstandard like in RedHat

[the_real_tigga]

Then make sure to edit /etc/lilo.conf and check to see if it is to your liking. If not, edit then run:
lilo
OTH, if you are using grub, I'm not familiar with it but the idea is the same. Edit config file, and run the program that modifies the boot loader.

Well, the cool thing with grub is you DON'T have to go thru those steps.

Re:Nothing nonstandard like in RedHat

[lizzardo]

Slackware comes with a script that allows you to have SysV init scripts, unsurprisingly called rc.sysvinit. I don't know which version of Slackware first had it, but the date in the file is 1999.

I like the simplicity of the "normal" Slackware method, but also like the abstraction of the SysV method as well. I use Slackware at home, and have used Solaris extensively for work, and having the option to use either method is best for me.

Re:Nothing nonstandard like in RedHat

[mvdw]

Yes, that's the process in Slackware, and it Just Works. However, when I tried almost the same thing (only difference was that I used the RH source RPM for 2.4.20 kernel), it wouldn't boot. Firstly it needed an initial ramdisk, then I tried using the old one, that had mismatched kernel version numbers (big surprise there!); then I fixed that up, still wouldn't boot, etc etc. Note that each time we were compiling a kernel from clean, which was taking 1/2 hr to do, so we eventualy gave up and just installed the latest beta...

Re:I'm gonna try Slackware 9

[carboncopy79]

What about slackintosh?

Dropline GNOME for Slackware

[fflewddur]

And of course, don't forget to checkout Dropline GNOME for Slackware. It's a GNOME-based desktop, similar to Ximian GNOME--instead of the plain GNOME packages shipped with slackware, you get an interface that has been tweaked to near-perfection and tons of extras (such as PAM support, allowing normal users to perform "root" tasks such as setting the time and date, and FAM, making Nautilus show up-to-date view of your file system) to make your desktop truely usable. You can learn more at www.dropline.net/gnome.

(And yes, I'm the main Dropline developer, so this is a bit of a plug and should be interpreted as such...)

Re:Dropline GNOME for Slackware

[necrognome]

As one of your "end users" I would like to give you some praise. Following the guidance in your documentation (and elsewhere), I did not include the standard GNOME packages in my Slack install. Instead I downloaded the dropline installer and executed.

"It just works." The tweaks you've made to the default desktop (i.e. the icons, even the wallpaper) are sweet. The interface is really consistent, and everything (i.e. menu options, etc.) is in the right place.

Just wanted to say thanks!

Re:Dropline GNOME for Slackware

[Trejus]

I tried dropline a few weeks ago and have to say that i throughly enjoy using it. I used to never use anything more than a window manager, since I always felt like it got in the way. But drop line is so nice, it's like having the best of both world.

Of course, the best part of dropline is the painless install. You install the installer, run it, walk away for some appropriate time, restart X, and you have gnome 2.2 with all the features you've ever wanted. Thanks fflewddur for your good work.

Re:Dropline GNOME for Slackware

[leiz]

slight problem, slackware doesn't use PAM.

Re:Dropline GNOME for Slackware

[fflewddur]

Dropline includes PAM and updates login/shadow/passwd/su utilities to take advantage of all of PAM's goodness :)

Re:Dropline GNOME for Slackware

[fferreres]

Do I need to delete my Slakware gnome version? Mh, I may have a problem installing it, because I custom installed many things, including Evolution (default version did not want to play nice with my Palm)

Did you notice..

[Adam9]

the "minimum" RAM requirement of 128mb?

Agreed. Seems like someone wants to be a RedHat wannabe minus the ingenuity. Oh well.

Re:Did you notice..

[spoon42]

hrm. yeah. From "about" again, under "Why another Linux?" (Do tell.):

Yoper fills the gap between the guru-only Gentoo or Linux from scratch OS's, and Linux distros used by businesses or home users, that still want the best.

All I've been able to get out of that is "Like RedHat, but cool" or something.

Maybe, maybe they're going for business support. (And are hoping for another dot-com bust, er, boom.) There's hints at developing a better desktop, charging for future functionality, support, and... training? Still, my bullshit meter is running a bit high. As has been mentioned elsewhere, even if it isn't a scam, there's some technical issues. Sure, you can use alien, but then dependencies don't work. Some have said it combines the worst features of other distros / ways to do it.

eh. I, personally, don't see the point. And I say it looks a bit off.

Re:I'm gonna try Slackware 9

[ahaning]

He must've missed the Slackware Math class where we learned the new numbering system:

1.... 2.... 3.... 4.... 7.... 8.... 9....

(For those who aren't familiar with Slackware: After version 4, Patrick Volkerding - in an attempt to one-up the other distros (they were releasing their v6's :) ) decided to bump the version number up 2 notches. So, there never was a Slackware 5 or 6.)

Gotta Have my Slacks

[Ayanami Rei]

It's bold and smooth, uncompromising.

Observe, no trendy Camel, no babes idling on the beach. One look, and you know why geeks flock to the Slackware label.

It's the LAMP baby, so light it up, kick back, and enjoy the pure flavor.

Yeah that must be it.

[Ayanami Rei]

:) :) :) :) :)
^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^

::clap clap clap clap::

I just got a standing ovation. Therefore, I deserve Mod: You Won the Academy Award (+1)

slackware 9.0rc1 isos

[ananke]

Before peoiple start asking, there is NO official iso for rc1 yet. However, plenty of people make them, and if you're interested, you can visit #slackware on irc.freenode.net, or some other slackware channel. I'll be happy to provide you with the iso i make on a regular basis.

In addition, slackware.com has very limited bandwith. Be gentle with it, use one of the mirrors. It's hard for those mirrors to sync the updates regularly as it is.

For those who wonder, if upgrading from 8.1 to 9.0rc1 is possible - yes, it is. I don't think there's an official document that specifically talks about 8.x to 9.0 upgrade. If you're interested, please be careful, and backup of course. [i just upgraded live 8.1 to 9.0rc1 two days ago, and here are few things to keep in mind:

- upgradepkg [--install-new sometimes] is your friend
- upgradepkg /a/glibc* first
- next couple packages to upgrade are /a/sed*, /a/elflibs*, /a/pkgtools*
- keep couple terminals open, with some tools in memory, say midnight commander. they may save your life if needed
- for people with nvidia cards, if you upgrade xfree to 4.3, you probably should also recompile the nvidia drivers, and install nvidia glx stuff. for that, you'll have to have kernel compiled with your fresh new compiler [gcc3.2.2].

To sum it up, if you're interested, visit #slackware on irc.freenode.net, and somebody may answer your questions. Slackware 9.0rc1 works well, and as slackware goes - it is very stable, simple and elegant.

Re:slackware 9.0rc1 isos

[taj]

Why not put it on gnutella so we can all mirror it for you?

I always thought that would be a perfect use for p2p.

Re:slackware 9.0rc1 isos

[ananke]

good idea, but honestly, i haven't used any p2p since napster. it would take me awhile to figure it out.

Re:Slackware

[hamtux6]

It does. Slackware follows the standards... and it even puts KDE in it's proper /opt/kde place.

Re:Slackware 9rc1

[wasimmer]

Once you go slack....you never go back!

Re:I'm gonna try Slackware 9

[Glytch]

I'm not sure about ordering off the website. I've got a 3.4 4-CD boxed set in my hands right now, but I bought it at a local store in november of 1997. God, I feel old. I remember when I was installing this on a Compaq 486, one of those damned all-in-one things with built-in monitor.

This may sound stupid, but that boxed set is kind of a prized possession. I keep in on my shelf above my monitor, as a reminder that I didn't always have a high end machine, and to appreciate what I've got. And now that Compaq 486 is running Slack 8 and happily chugging away as my firewall... the damned thing refuses to die. :)

Ease of update

[azaze1]

Slackware 8.1 is currently my linux distro of choice. I've used redhat, debian, gentoo, and mandrake (for about 20 min) in the past. But I settled on Slackware because, like FreeBSD, its easier to figure out what is going on behind the system, and why. The /etc/rc.d directory is very easy to follow and understand.

My ONLY complaint with slackware is installing new software, and updating existing software. I don't mind the source approach, but I wish it implemented FreeBSD's ports, or emerge from Gentoo, or something similar. Basically, some option to update or install something with minimal effort. I would have stuck with gentoo if it didn't change /etc so radically. Learning Gentoo is like learning a whole new flavor of unix, rather than "another linux distro".

Does anyone know if slackware plans on coming up with its own package or source based install/update solution akin to FBSD's ports, pkg_add, or gentoo's emerge, or debian's apt-get? Something that settles dependencies.

-Robert

Re:Ease of update

[LordNite]

Slack does have some decent, IMHO, package tools. Look here. :-)

Re:Ease of update

[otprof]

What you want is swaret, which works with slackware binary packages.

http://freshmeat.net/releases/114935/

It does all of the automatic leeching and installing for you, based on the packages you have installed. Dependencies, though, are your own responsibility. If you have the dependent package installed, and there is an update, swaret will easily get it for you.

This makes it really important when you install from source to use makepkg, so that pkgtool knows that you have that installed, in case you want swaret to get the newer version for you.

I agree, though, that the source compiling/installing scripts for Gentoo are cool. Swaret doesn't quite go that far.

Re:Ease of update

[tzanger]

My ONLY complaint with slackware is installing new software, and updating existing software. I don't mind the source approach, but I wish it implemented FreeBSD's ports, or emerge from Gentoo, or something similar.

I've never had need for it -- use the regular source tarballs and use checkinstall. tar -xjvf && cd && ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc/whatever && make && checkinstall -S --nodoc --install for most things. If you want to remove the package, you can. if you want to upgrade, you can.

I'll admit, debian's source package format is an ideal -- the unaltered source, patches and installers. Very nice. Checkinstall gets you close to the functionality, and 9 times out of 10 you don't need to patch anything anyway.

Mandrake partition resizing

[Norman Lorrain]

Just tried out the latest release candidate. I was able to take a Toshiba laptop with Windows XP, shrink the NTFS partition, and auto-allocate Mandrakes partitions. Point-and-click, almost a no-brainer. I can't imagine making this any easier.

Hardware autodetect works great too, first time I see a distro that detects both my touchpad and USB mouse.

Usually a dual-boot setup gives me headaches, but this time I was delighted.

Nice!

Re:Mandrake partition resizing

[awful]

Sounds like Xandros.

Yes.

[Ayanami Rei]

(didn't I just say that?)

So what, it still isn't funny. Nothing about slackware is funny until you run fortune -o

Only interesting to fat geeks with no life (nt)

[notexttroll]

nt

The problem with multiple package bases

[SHEENmaster]

is that they have different dependency chains. Before I saw the glory of Debian Linux (I use non-free packages, so it isn't GNU/Linux) I tried using Redhat RPMs with Mandrake 7.something.

Each app wanted a different version of glibc or a different version of libfoo, and it eventually got to the point where I gave up.

I use debian for prepackages software and compile from source when no packages are available. Debian packages are of the highest quality, every one of them contains man documentation and stuff as well as a fully-integrated distro menu for those "other" window managers like windowmaker and blackbox.

If they made it work, then congrats to them. I just won't be betting on it any time soon.

Re:The problem with multiple package bases

[Surak]

that they have different dependency chains. Before I saw the glory of Debian Linux (I use non-free packages, so it isn't GNU/Linux) I tried using Redhat RPMs with Mandrake 7.something.

Each app wanted a different version of glibc or a different version of libfoo, and it eventually got to the point where I gave up.

Personally, that's why I went with Gentoo. You want an app? Just 'emerge the-name-of-the-app' here and all the libraries and everything the thing needs is downloaded and compiled right on your system. Since it's compiled on your system, it's optimized for the libraries you have installed automatically. The package management system (Portage) also ensures that applications are optimized for your processor -- something Yoper claims to do, but I don't see how given that it's a binary-based distro and not a source-based distro like Gentoo.

Re:The problem with multiple package bases

[oliverthered]

even with in discributions their are all kinds of dependancy problems.

I used to use Mandrake, a lot of there compiles were broken of missing bits (e.g kamera), so I decided to recompile from source.
Most of the source compiles went ok, but a few had problems with Mandrake left overs.

Then I though it was about time to upgrade to GCC 3.x, it would be a nightmare to find all the C++ apps that needed 2.9x so I switch to Gentoo.

I've had a couple of problems with Gentoo, but I'm fairly sure that it's going ot be the easiest distribution to manage and upgrade.

Re:The problem with multiple package bases

[Spellbinder]

i totally agree =)))
debian is the only packagebased linuxdistro i was ever happy with for desktop use
on my workstation i use gentoo which rox!!!!
but i don't like to invest hours for configuring my laptop so there is debian the way to go :p

Re:The problem with multiple package bases

[pete-classic]

I use non-free packages, so it isn't GNU/Linux

It isn't the absence of non-free packages that makes a "Linux" system GNU/Linux, it is the fundamental dependence on GNU software.

How hard would it be to rip Glibc out of your Debian system then rebuild it without Gcc? (Not to mention everything from Autoconf or Bash to Time or Wget.)

-Peter

Who are the retards behind Yoper?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Excuse the language, but I want people to notice this. On the "About" page, this is just two things I noticed on their "features" list:

Mozilla from Netscape Ltd.
OpenOffice from SUN.

I have sent them an email demanding that they change these -- Netscape is based on Mozilla and SUN has something called StarOffice, based on OpenOffice. My reason given for the demand was that slashdotters would obviously notice this and make the same demand, flooding their email.

So, come on, Slashdotters, start the email! At the very least we want:

Mozilla from Mozilla.org
OpenOffice from OpenOffice.org

or

Netscape from Netscape Ltd.
StarOffice from SUN.

Of course, considering the level of intelligence here, this appears to be a bunch of clever hackers without the cleverness.

Re:Who are the retards behind Yoper?

[wildchild07770]

Actually it's the reverse of this for StarOffice, which was originally funded by Sun and OpenOffice is the ongoing Open Source branch of StarOffice (which now offers extended functionality and support as a pay product). Mozilla I don't quite understand, Netscape and Mozilla share simliarties (Gecko) but as far as I thought Mozilla is an independent project and the two programs simply share similarites in code base.

Re:Who are the retards behind Yoper?

[CaptainBaz]

Netscape is based on Mozilla

Actually Mozilla was originally based on Netscape, although post-v5 releases of Netscape are now at least part-based on Mozilla. The source tree is still at least part-owned by Netscape though, as far as I can tell. See here for more info.

SUN has something called StarOffice, based on OpenOffice

Wrong again I'm afraid - OpenOffice was formed from selected portions of the StarOffice code tree. This is mentioned here, as well as in many other places on the openoffice site.

Do check your facts before you start demanding things...

Re:Who are the retards behind Yoper?

[HerbieStone]

No, you are wrong.

Mozilla's main support still comes from Netscape... the Company Netscape. So even tho the Netscape Browser 6.xx is based on Mozilla, Mozilla itself is in major parts still Netscape, the company.

Star Office has been bought by Sun. Now Star Office has a price-tag on it. To give people a free version of it, they packaged Open Office. So Star Office isn't based Open Office it's the other way arround.

Re:Who are the retards behind Yoper?

[Drogo Knotwise]

IIRC, StarOffice has always belonged to Sun, and Sun sued Microsoft a while back claiming that Microsoft had ripped them off...

OpenOffice.org was based on parts of StarOffice, but now StarOffice is based on OpenOffice.org (same thing as what happened to Mozilla really, except that they released the full source of Netscape).

Finally, there is no Netscape company. Netscape belongs to AOL Time Warner. It's one of the reasons why the next AOL software will be based on Gecko: AOL already employ most of the Gecko coders.

Re:Where the

[SanityInAnarchy]

WTF are you doing on /. if you need Video Professor? Of course, there are training courses you can take on Linux that don't assume you know anything about computers. Those will leave you, not only feeling smarter than your 3-year-old daughter, but with a certfication that could get you a sysad job, so you're the one dealing with stupid user questions -- like, "Where the fuck is Video Professor for Gentoo or Slackware?"

My experience...

[Goonie]

I've just been trying to squeeze some extra performance out of a 3D modelling library I've been playing with. This was on a PIII, and the library is written in C++.

Compared to -O2, I got about 10% overall improvement with -O3 -funroll-loops -march=pentium3 -ffast-math. The last one isn't one you should use generally, though.

The code used a great deal of double-precision floating point, so you could probably get an even greater speedup on a P4 by enabling SSE2.

Re:My experience...

[fusiongyro]

I have actually turned my optimizations down to -march=athlon -O2 -pipe. -O3 turns on -finline-functions and -frename-registers. There is a school of thought that says that smaller binaries will execute faster because more of the code will be in the CPU cache at any given time. Of course, I guess if I really meant it, I'd also turn on -Os instead of -O2 to optimize for size.

In any case, the optimization that's most noticable for my computer is not a gcc option at all, but rather using prelink to make all of my programs start up faster. I read about it on the Gentoo page, it makes KDE start up in about 3 seconds instead of 8 or 10.

--
Daniel

Re:My experience...

[fusiongyro]

See the Freshmeat project page for some of the answers here.

Actually it works for all PIC compiled binaries, which on my system works out to everything except winex and svgalib (or something). It's essentially taking the binaries and libraries on your system and making them faster to load by doing part of the dynamic linker's work ahead of time.

I couldn't tell you why more people aren't using it, but it works for any binary on your system. I think it's just more noticable because KDE takes the most noticable amount of time to start.

--
Daniel

Re:My experience...

[beef3k]

For those of us developing with gcc, this is not an unknown fact at all.

-O3 pulls out the big guns and invoke agressive optimizations which do _not_ necessarily increase performance. Actually, more often than not, -O3 decreases performance and increases the size of the generated code.

Re:I'm gonna try Slackware 9

[Phroggy]

Now that we are on the topic of older lack distros, was it just me, or weren;t you able to order Slack way back in the day right from Patrick's site, and it came in a two CD set with Tux on the front? (I think it was 3.4)

It's now a four CD set.

Yoper not just dull, but actually fishy...

[Anonymous Coward]

(Sorry, I'm about to flame a Linux distro... Posting anonymously to dodge Karma burns ;) )

Ok everyone seems to agree that Yoper doesn't really have anything special. It's just slackware + alien... Also I guess I'm not the only one here finding the catchphrase "Your Operating System!" just super cheesy... Also, what's with their product page? A huge PNG image? Doesn't even look good...

I have no problem with people trying to make money selling Linux. But do they have to insist so much on the Yoper(TM) all over the place. The domain is of course a dot-com, the first link on their navigation menu is "Store"... Sorry but half of my BS alarm have already been tripped...

But I get specially annoyed when due credit isn't given. Where is the page that says that their YDesktop is just KDE with the nice "K" replaced by an ugly "Y"? But I'm sure you will easily find the page where you can order "YDesktop Pack 1.0 for only $98"... I mean, their pages hardly mention it's a linux distro. Let's play a game: try to count how many times the word "Linux" appears on their site...

We could go on about how their site should be nominated for www.webpagesthatsuck.com (check the "About" link at the top... that actually takes you to the FAQ... Hello? HTML formatting anyone?), how their "user community" seems to have a count of 3 (oh but wait, these 3 are actully just flaming the distro on its own boards...)...

Ok, so if we agree Yoper kinda sucks...

so the question is, how in h*ll did they make it to #1 on Distrowatch?

*cough*cheaters*cough*faking*chough*hits*cough*. ..

Re:Yoper not just dull, but actually fishy...

[tamnir]

I do not know about cheating. Maybe they just get a lot of hits because it is a new distribution and they are getting some good press coverage lately. But you do raise some interesting points...

We have not seen many, if any, pro-Yoper postings yet. Anyone for some good words about Yoper? Or does Yoper just "kinda sucks" as the parent writes?

Re:Yoper not just dull, but actually fishy...

[Anonymous Coward]

They seem to have a lot of good words about themselves anyway.

"We have run Yoper without crashes and freezes for the past 9 months and consider it more stable than anything we have tried in the last 20 years."

Those are pretty strong words. The buisness I work at had a SCO box that ran for about 6 years and never crashed once, and only went down during power outages. Had a running uptime of 2.5 years at one point, and I'm sure most people know of stuff up a lot longer than that. Thus I wonder how they can say they've been running it for a mere 9 months and say it's more stable than anything they've used in 20 YEARS. Maybe they've just been using windows all this time.

Re:Yoper not just dull, but actually fishy...

[u38cg]

Hate to shoot a good argument full of holes (and a good argument it is), but distrowatch ranks on the basis of interest, not users, downloads, or anything else. So if two hundred thousand rampaging /.ers head over there and check it out, it's quite likely to jump up the charts. It's the same with any new, unknown, probably crappy distro.

Re:Yoper not just dull, but actually fishy...

[frozencesium]

of course, they ARE in the middle of a flame war with the /. crowd...and i quoteth:

yoper (site admin):
We compiled, tested, packaged, compiled, tested, packaged, compiled, tested, packaged. Until one of you actually tries it how can you even start talking. It is a complete new Linux not based on anything else, targetting the i686 business market. You nerds arenot our business. You nerds are no ones business and this is the reason why as a community we fail to fight M$ properly. After years of dev you could have actually given it an objective go instead of slagging it off and blindly comparing it to slackware only because it was posted on /. in the same article as slackware. Ignorance is bliss. Stay in your matrix and stay blind. This is a business and not a charity organization for brainless and gutless chickens that fill a forum up with junk. Stay with your Linux and leave us alone. Business users need us, since they are sick of YOU. We do not need brainless nerds with too much time on their hand. We need businesses who want to save time and money and save their behind from having to hire you.

1.) release new distro
2.) post article
3.) flame /.'ers
4.) no profit!!!

seriously...what idiot release a distro then flames the comunity that supports it?

-frozen

Re:Yoper not just dull, but actually fishy...

[Randolpho]

I was sorta suspicious about this post, thought maybe the poster was trolling or outright fasifying his post (note the lack of a link), but then I found this link on their official phpbb forums page. Turns out they *did* flame the people they need supporting them. That's a direct quote. See for yourself.

I gotta say, when I saw this article, the first thing I thought was "Yoper? What's that?" So I looked at the website. I thought to myself, hey, I might try that. Good idea with the Yoperize thingy, if they ever show how it could be done. Then I saw this post.

I'm all for trying to market Linux and make money off it, but this flame shows the true colors of the bunch that run Yoper. Avoid this distro with every ounce of your will.

Re:Yoper not just dull, but actually fishy...

[JPriest]

Yoper has a banner on the DistroWatch front page. From what I've read here and elseware it's just KDE running in LFS with an installer. Did you notice that every screenshot on the page is of KDE? Where is the screenshots of the stuff that Yoper adds? Configuration tools anyone? They also want a hundred bucks for the distro. No way.

Re:Yoper not just dull, but actually fishy...

[JivanMukti]

"Avoid this distro with every ounce of your will."

Like it's going to be that hard to avoid it?

Re:Yoper not just dull, but actually fishy...

[Randolpho]

Just, you know, in case somebody gets sucked in by the desire to pay 98 bucks for something they can get free... ;)

Re:Yoper not just dull, but actually fishy...

[Knuckles]

Don't know, but have you ever seen a company being nicer to potential (well) customers than
this?

We compiled, tested, packaged, compiled, tested, packaged, compiled, tested, packaged. Until one of you actually tries it how can you even start talking. It is a complete new Linux not based on anything else, targetting the i686 business market. You nerds arenot our business. You nerds are no ones business and this is the reason why as a community we fail to fight M$ properly. After years of dev you could have actually given it an objective go instead of slagging it off and blindly comparing it to slackware only because it was posted on /. in the same article as slackware. Ignorance is bliss. Stay in your matrix and stay blind. This is a business and not a charity organization for brainless and gutless chickens that fill a forum up with junk.
Stay with your Linux and leave us alone. Business users need us, since they are sick of YOU. We do not need brainless nerds with too much time on their hand. We need businesses who want to save time and money and save their behind from having to hire you.

Re:Yoper not just dull, but actually fishy...

[McPierce]

The topic's been removed from Yoper's website...

Re:Yoper not just dull, but actually fishy...

[Randolpho]

So it has. Here's a topic where you can bitch about the deletion.

WOPER

[slappy_guru]

Thats been around along time! I think the military used it in some Matthew Broderick movie?

Seriously

[_marshall]

This is why linux is so great in general.

You may label these distributions as no added value, but in reality, we're receiving 100 distributions trying their darndest to try and keep up with everyone else.

Each distribution _is_ frighteningly similar to the next, but it's because the competition is so cut throat, that they must ALL have these added values, or they will drop like flies..

Seriously, name 1 of the top 10 linux distros that didn't borrow a big feature from another distro! It's impossible, because the community is so tight, and the information sharing is at it's peak. Don't you just love it when freedom of information makes things better for everyone? =)

Re:Seriously

[Charm]

Seriously, name 1 of the top 10 linux distros that didn't borrow a big feature from another distro! It's impossible, because the community is so tight, and the information sharing is at it's peak. Don't you just love it when freedom of information makes things better for everyone? =)

Like Slackware, what did it borrow from the other distros out today? Nothing.

Re:Seriously

[tzanger]

Like Slackware, what did it borrow from the other distros out today? Nothing.

Well -current has logrotate which came from RedHat (thank you RedHat!) and also the various crond.daily/weekly/monthly... IMO there's nothing wrong with sharing source or good ideas.

I'm going to make a new distribution

[baywulf]

It will be a tiny version of Debian called 'DE' and to please RMS I'll call it GNU/DE.

Re:I'm going to make a new distribution

[hdparm]

I'm sure it'll get censored in Australia, then.

Re:How Open Source Software Harms the Environment

[lazybeam]

Besides I turn my monitor off at its switch when I'm not using it anyway! My MS mouse occasionally moves by itself and upsets power-saving.

Re:Where the

[chaparrl]

Video Professor for StarOffice, perhaps. I thought A.C. was trying to be funny. When I read his post, I imagined a middle aged housewife who didn't know a Mac from an AWAC giving her testimonial: I popped in the Video Professor cd, and twenty minutes later I was rolling my own kernel and doing the ip chains thing!" Oh, well. I cut my teeth on Slackware, and I still prefer it over all others. What I needed to know, I learned in man pages, README files, and Google/linux searches.

Gentoo 1.4 Final WILL include PRECOMPILED ports

[MarkWPiper]

The current RC's do not include the precompiled packages, but with the release of 1.4, they will be available for the big things (KDE, Gnome, and some others), and will be optimized for common predefined architectures (like AthlonXP :-) ). IIRC, one of the older 1.4 RC's had them in for testing.

Re:I'm gonna try Slackware 9

[Rooktoven]

http://store.slackware.com

but only 8.1 will be for sale until the official 9 release.

(Getting to move almost ALL our servers to Slack at work now. Happy happy joy joy)

re: Linux is Dead

[KeensMustard]

That might be the case, but W2K is more expensive than Linux, and not every server requires that level of stability, security or performance...

If I can interupt this distro war...

[lilricky]

Where can I download Yoper 1.0? It says I can download RC4, but if I want 1.0 I have to order it from their store. WTF??? http://www.yoper.com/download.html

Slackware 9?

[Spacelord]

Oh damn .... and I just finished upgrading my workstation from 8.0 to 8.1

Re: documentation needs work

[Billly Gates]

Also documentation needs some work.

I had to leave gentoo because I lost the gentoo1.3 installation instructions and all I could find were the gentoo 1.4beta. Appearently the stable instructions were gone??? So I downloaded the beta and had lots of headaches and bugs because it wasn't stable. I ended up finding the old instructions in german and using bable fish to translate them back into english to use the 1.3 iso images.

eg.....init steam deisel engine stages
1.) etc/zerhite.d -holds soft animal scripts
2.) etc/net.conf - network tcp/ip stream rivers .......

yuck. I ended up figuring out how to configure the system but when I complained on the gentoo message forum I was labeled as a troll and banned???

Anyway my old motherboard was flaky with the current linux kernels and could not shutdown properly. I had to physically unplug my computer after a shutdown to gain access to my keyboard even upon a cold reboot. All the recent distro's did this besides debian.

I switched to FreeBSD because I liked the ports and the stableness. The keyboard lockup bug went away. It also had the correct versions of software I needed for school installed by default and had great documentation. Gentoo is kind of bleeding edge and a little too disorganized for my taste. There is no execuse for the documentation flop. All the developers told me 1.4rc was stable enough and yet this was almost 6 months before it was labeled stable. Obviously it wasn't ready and they should of kept the instructions for 1.3.

Because of this I would not recommend gentoo to a newbie. I recommend redhat or suse due to their ease of use and standardness. If they really want to learn unix and not just play around with it I recommend FreeBSD because of the excellent book that comes with it.

I heard good things about slackware. My question is does slackware have the great book it once had 4 or 5 years ago that everyone raved about?

Sure...

[Goonie]

The library I was using was called Svlis, which is GPL'd and runs under Linux. You'll have to hack the code a little bit to get it to run with the latest C++ standard libraries - when I get some time I intend to do a cleanup and send the developer a patch.

I can't disclose the details of the "benchmark" I was doing because it pertains directly to some as-yet unpublished research. Sorry!

Movie player in Slackware?

[Jacek Poplawski]

I use Slackware 8.1 on my desktop and server. I checked slackware-current and I don't understand one thing. Why there is no single movie player in Slackware? IMHO mplayer is quite stable. I compile most applications myself, but I think it would be nice to have "everything important" on CD (or CDs).

Re:Movie player in Slackware?

[TeknoHog]

IMHO the whole point about MPlayer is that it's well optimized for your system. Other players don't seem to focus on this enough, but they may be relying on binary distributions for fast machines for which the optimization doesn't matter that much.

Re:Movie player in Slackware?

[stratjakt]

>> they may be relying on binary distributions for fast machines for which the optimization doesn't matter that much.

Many people have 'fast machines' where the optimizations dont matter much.

By fast machine, I've found that pretty much any Intel proc with 600mhz or higher has the juice to run the chunkiest Divx files.

So really, whats the deal? Let the few with older/less standard procs do the optimizing and recompiling, and make the media players, image viewers, sound managers standard.

I've used slackware forever, but sometimes the install and setup makes me feel like I'm in the stone ages.

Starting with Slack

[flokemon]

Slackware wasn't actually my first distro, back in 2000 (long time Linux user indeed...) I first installed Mandrake 8.0, but due to my fantastic computer specs - Cyrix 300, 32megs RAM etc... - I needed something a bit less heavy, and installed Slackware 7.1 (or 7.0?).

I've learnt much more with Slackware than I would have had I used Mandrake or Red Hat etc. I think that's one of the keys about choosing your first distribution - do you want it up and running directly and are you going to be using the GUI all the time? Or do you actually want to spend some time on it and try to understand how the system works?

The only minor glitch imho, is that some of the major distributions such as Red Hat and SuSE have moved more from the original Unix than Slack has, you don't find the settings in the same places etc.. so that Slackware is kind of getting away from the new Linux standards, which can be annoying when you're supposed to support some RH systems occasionally. But then it isn't Slack's fault.

I've tried other Red Hat and Mandrake etc.. since then, and keep getting frustrated with them for various reasons, and keep coming back to Slack :)

Re:Starting with Slack

[tzanger]

I've learnt much more with Slackware than I would have had I used Mandrake or Red Hat etc.

The old rule of thumb was that if you had to find an answer to a non-trivial linux question, you sought out a slackware user on IRC... Now LFS is likely replacing that, but they have decided to hang out on their own IRC network... bah.

Re:Starting with Slack

[Cro Magnon]

I sorta started with Slackware, but at the time, my HD was too small for a usable distro + Windows. It wasn't until 1999 that I had enough room to use Linux as anything but a toy. I tried RedHat first, but wasn't quite happy and did a lot of distro-hopping. Finally, I discovered that Slackware was still around and installed 7.0 (and it still looked familiar from the old days). I still try other distros, but I always seem to return to Slack.

Re:Slackware

[Lispy]

Since Slack is one of the most BSD like Distris you should be just fine with the directory-standards it uses. In fact I cant find stuff in any other distro. Slack is the cleanest Ive seen so far...My advice: give it a shot!

I did...

[Lispy]

I am a rather fresh Linux User but I love Slackware since it is the only distro i fully understand the startup scripts and wich gives me a logical patharchitecture where i find my stuff in the right places. I started out with Slackware because my local Linuxguru told me to but i tried a few other distros (Sonys PS2-Linux, Debian and SuSE) and found them mostly confusing...Since then I keep spreading the word in my neighbourhood and afaik most Newbies like it. Combined with Dropline-Gnome Slack makes a neat Multimedia/Desktop-Box as well.

Looking forward to Slack9!

cu,
Lispy

Re:Longest Slack user?

[mccalli]

Just curious- am I the longest Slackware user here? I haven't been able to part with any Slackware release since v1.2 (April 1994)

Nope. 0.9, 1992 (I think).

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Slackware 9rc1

[IAR80]

Allways did and allways will.

Re:OBVIOUSLY

[maximilln]

Propaganda b***s**t typically is the longest post available.

If the liars can't win with lies then they try floods.

Re: documentation needs work

[axxackall]

I don't belive the parent. He wa so stupid at time of trying Gentoo, then he jumped to FreeBSD and was successfull? There is a serious inconsistense in his words.

Last time I've tried FreeBSD (several 4.*) the system required to know BSD and ports just to install it from the first time. The documnetation was terrible (recursively written for people who already know FreeBSD), forums answers mostly "RTFM". The building of my customized BSD kernel was just a nightmare comparing to what I used to do with Linux kernel (despite the fact that it didn't support everything I had in my PC, which was supported fine by Linux kernel).

If some OS is not for newbies - that would be *BSD. After Linux/Solaris/AIX/NT multi-year experience I was screwed up with FreeBSD. The first impression was: why this OS is so unfriendly if loose many functionality and drivers jumping from Linux to BSD?

But what I liked in FreeBSD was ports (eventually I've been learning FreeBSD anyway, partially just learn ports). So, when I found a Linux distro with the package management system like ports (right - Portage), I immidiately fired all my RH, YDL and FBSD installations (one by one actually), installed Gentoo and now I don't see the chance that any better distro will come around any time soon.

Well, better than Gentoo? There is such OS already, it's new Gentoo! Despite the fact that Gentoo is already the best OS, it's constantly being improved, enhanced, advanced and further developed.

Re:AGREED

[maximilln]

Pay heed to the noble knight. Let's not turn this into a flame war. When it comes to competing against corporate feature/backdoor-ware we're all in this together. If we stand at the line and look at the Linux crowd then let's do this in a friendly manner. Let the best man win. Talk about strengths.

That said: Debian is an awesome primer to get to the meat with LFS. :-)

Re:Gentoo

[chas7926]

-1 OffTopic? Come on mods. The topic was Distro's to Try. Gentoo is a great distro to try.

here's what Yoper thinks about us geeks!

[borgdows]

link : http://www.yoper.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5&a m

From: yoper
Site Admin

"We compiled, tested, packaged, compiled, tested, packaged, compiled, tested, packaged. Until one of you actually tries it how can you even start talking. It is a complete new Linux not based on anything else, targetting the i686 business market. You nerds arenot our business. You nerds are no ones business and this is the reason why as a community we fail to fight M$ properly. After years of dev you could have actually given it an objective go instead of slagging it off and blindly comparing it to slackware only because it was posted on /. in the same article as slackware. Ignorance is bliss. Stay in your matrix and stay blind. This is a business and not a charity organization for brainless and gutless chickens that fill a forum up with junk.
Stay with your Linux and leave us alone. Business users need us, since they are sick of YOU. We do not need brainless nerds with too much time on their hand. We need businesses who want to save time and money and save their behind from having to hire you."

Although this guy is suicidal, he's a professionnal flamer! lol

Re:here's what Yoper thinks about us geeks!

[IamTheRealMike]

Of course you should note that this response was hardly unprovoked, a forum full of lamers flaming your distro would probably piss you off too.

Re:here's what Yoper thinks about us geeks!

[Zordak]

But remember: just because you get flamed, that doesn't mean you don't suck.

Re:I'm gonna try Slackware 9

[Jon Abbott]

Wow... Thinking of my own situation, I haven't touched Slackware since the "Slackware '96" days... Are they still without a package manager? (I'm just joking! This used to be flamebait of yore... I'm waxing nostalgic here!)

If 'optimized for your processor' means...

[BlowChunx]

...a 686 then you are correct. Somewhere on their site it says that all packcages are for 686. Which seems like a very decent compromise for people who don't feel compelled to compile every package they want to install (that is not a flame BTW, I like gentoo...).

Re:If 'optimized for your processor' means...

[jvkjvk]

I've used gentoo.

Perhaps the default is 686, but in the makefile configuration script (which tells gcc what flags to utilize to compile with) you can optimize with whatever flags your heart desires (and gcc supports).

If you are complaining that the binary packages are 686 optimized, I would say why are you using gentoo? The beauty of it is that you *do* compile from source, and optimize exactly how you want to.

Re:If 'optimized for your processor' means...

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

...a 686 then you are correct.

I have to say:

BZZZT! WRONG!

Edit /etc/make.conf and change the line:

CFLAGS="-march=i686

(snip)

To whatever your system is. Yes, make.conf defaults to i686, but in the install doc, it specifically mentions editing your make.conf PRIOR to emerging system because of this.

Remember, with Gentoo, you're using the "real" sources, not some distro's pre-packaged and hacked binaries. I'm not downing any distro that uses that as it's distrobution method, but after having swithed several machines of mine over to Gentoo about a year ago or so now, I won't look back to anything else. I big thumbs up to the wizards over at Gentoo!

Re:If 'optimized for your processor' means...

[BlowChunx]

Easy cowboy. I meant that comment in relation to Yoper. It is optimized for 686.

And "I big thumbs up" too... sometimes even a big middle finger. Depends on who I wave it at.

Re:If 'optimized for your processor' means...

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

I meant that comment in relation to Yoper.

Oh... then I'm sorry, man. I read it as being about Gentoo. My bad.

P.S.
OK, OK, you called me on the "I" thing... bad typing... heh

Re:Longest Slack user?

[tzanger]

Damn... I started with 3.3, having tried Yggdrasil or sommat just before. Mid-90s for me.

You are the ultimate nerd

[mao che minh]

You're the fat, hopeless "I use Slackware so I'm cool" turd that everyone warned me about before trying it a few years back. If you haven't gleaned this from my posts so far: I don't pay much attention to the whole Slackware thing because I don't give much of a shit, and haven't used it in years. Motherfucking nerds man, I swear.

Re:I conditionally disagree

[auferstehung]

et al, just update Debian 3.0 stable with the latest and greatest XFree86 2.3.0 ...

I knew debian lagged, but ...

Yes, I know it was a typo, but it still made me giggle.

Just choose the right language ISO...

[aquarian]

You shouldn't have to worry about selecting the right language when you boot. Knoppix ISOs are available in several different language versions. I speak English and therefore just use the EN version, and it boots to English automagically.

I find Knoppix extremely useful. I use it a lot when I want Linux tools, and all I have available is a Windows system. Knoppix is incredibly slick -- big-name distros like Redhat and Mandrake could learn from it. Check it out for sure. You have nothing to lose, as it runs off a CD.

It IS. And no d/l available

[muyuubyou]

Don't miss the forum

No download available. "Only via our store" and 98 bucks. Somebody mod up the guys at YOPER they're really funny.

Re:Longest Slack user?

[DerPflanz]

You wuzzes, I have been using Slackware since version 0.01 pre-alfa from the mid-80's.

Re: documentation needs work

[saintlupus]

If some OS is not for newbies - that would be *BSD.

I don't know about that - my first Unix was NetBSD, and I selected it because of the similarity to the userland of the (then upcoming) Mac OS X. The BSDs tend to be a little harder to use, but the documentation is light-years ahead of anything I've seen in the Linux world.

A newbie who wants to learn is probably better off with a BSD than with any other Free *nix.

--saint

They also astroturfed distrowatch

[bogie]

They went from no one ever hearing them to having their first beta version capture number one distrowatch.

Any linux company that has the nerve to rig distrowatch just to gain attention for their alpha is pretty sad and more importantly not to be trusted.

If they didn't do it, then why are they crowing about it on their website? So either they A) did it and are stupid enough to gloat about it, or B) didn't do it, but are stupid enough to think their prerelease OS is now the most widely used one ahead of Redhat, Mandrake et al out of the nowhere.

I smell a PR driven company like Lindows who will do anything for a buck.

Re:Longest Slack user?

[chiller2]

" Just curious- am I the longest Slackware user here? I haven't been able to part with any Slackware release since v1.2 (April 1994) which I still have right here. I've tried most others, find some strengths in some, but always use Slackware, and ditch the others I've trial installed. (Debian seems the next best)."

I was wondering the same thing. I picked up Slack in early 1994. First kernel I ever messed with was 1.0.9. Those were the days :)

Re:Yay for the slack... [more]

[dotgain]

This is not how you should install debian. What you should do is installing a minimal system, configure network, and then apt-get everything you need on demand, from the Internet (or from a local server)

So I downloaded all seven of those CD's for nothing? (I've got used to disappointment of this sort in the short time I ran debian).

The CD installation is dangerous, unfortunatly if you don't have network. If you only have a modem, Debian is problematic.

Funny you should say that. I do. I d/l'd the CD's at work (don't tell anyone) like I have with about eight other Linux / *BSD's and Solaris (and had GREAT success with all of them). CD Installation dangerous? Oh. Even WinNT CD installation (in itself) isn't dangerous (The OS you end up with on the other hand...)

Do the least possible from the installer.

I'd rather (as with every other distro) that the installer does _everything_ except pick the root password, and then ask me whether or not I want to trash my boot record (and then do it anyway) while I'm in the next room pounding your mom, so I can come back to a system that's ready to use. Not so much log straight into X and fire up a browser, I can handle setting up X and pppd by hand, as I said as AC (believe me or not) I'm no newbie. I just don't want to watch / have anything to do with the boring install. I'll install patches as and when needed, but I don't want to (can't) go onto the net and proceed to d/l another GB or two of stuff (I like a lot of apps, I don't need them all, but I like to try them all).

Like I say, I've got the install over with, and the system boots and runs fine. But there's nothing I particularly like about debian. Okay, dselect isn't bad, and a darn site better than any of Redhat's package managers or Mandrake's latest abortion (Installing and Uninstalling two completely different procedures, yeah, that's dumb).

The first Linux I installed was Slackware (anyone said Go Patrick! yet?) and it ruled! The install readme was very informative yet concise, and need I say, trouble free. The only reason I tried debian is that I wanted to try another non-bloatware Linux. As it turns out, I needed look no further than Slackware.

First, and last, time I post as AC
Sorry for all the parentheses, my brain is SMP.
And sorry if I sound like I'm trolling you, I'm just pissed off with debian.
Enjoy your new sig, saintlupus!

Screenshots are all the same

[thedarkstorm]

Is it just me, but is anybody else tired of all these screenshots looking the same? Every distribution has the same screenshots and all that's ever different is the lower left hand corner icon on the 'Start' button. Linux distro's need to emphasize more on what they've done different from the other distro's, not show that their the same. Otherwise where is the value-ad to cut over?

Yoper admin's wonderful comments

[haloscan]

This is not flamebait. It's a direct quote from Yoper's website. While browsing Yoper's forum today, I came upon this post in this thread by the "Yoper Admin":

"We compiled, tested, packaged, compiled, tested, packaged, compiled, tested, packaged. Until one of you actually tries it how can you even start talking. It is a complete new Linux not based on anything else, targetting the i686 business market. You nerds arenot our business. You nerds are no ones business and this is the reason why as a community we fail to fight M$ properly. After years of dev you could have actually given it an objective go instead of slagging it off and blindly comparing it to slackware only because it was posted on /. in the same article as slackware. Ignorance is bliss. Stay in your matrix and stay blind. This is a business and not a charity organization for brainless and gutless chickens that fill a forum up with junk. Stay with your Linux and leave us alone. Business users need us, since they are sick of YOU. We do not need brainless nerds with too much time on their hand. We need businesses who want to save time and money and save their behind from having to hire you." (emphasis added)

Amazing that a serious company would post a messag like this. Provides a true insight into their goals and intentions with releasing this distro (basically money).

Re: documentation needs work

[mink]

"Aix is a great unix but its difficult to install if you have never done an AIX install before. You need to configure alot of things. Its made for hackers and senior level Unix administrators. No gui, no fancy installer, nothing. Just some IBM manuals to guide you through."

You havent installed AIX for a while have you?
After the BOS is in (boot off first CD and answer about 5 questions).
your done, or you can go into the CDE or KDE and do all the stuff through GIU.

Re:How Open Source Software Harms the Environment

[weeboo0104]

I have a MUCH more efficient method of power management. Whenever I'm not home and at work for the day...I POWER OFF MY HOME MACHINE! I've seen one of the power management methods that you get with Windows. A blue screen with a lot of numbers pops up and the processor utilization drops to zero. Now thats efficiency!

Yoper vs Koper? KDE vs YDE?

[grolschie]

> I'll break even on the money I paid that kid to change the K to a Y for me

I never heard of Koper. Or YDE for that matter. What are these? ;-)

I thought

[SHEENmaster]

that "GNU/Linux" meant it was built on free software, most of which was GPL whereas other distros intermingle proprietary crap with OSS.

Re:I thought

[pete-classic]

See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html for the official explanation.

All common "Linux" distros use more lines of GNU code than Linux code to create a functioning OS. There are Linux systems out there that aren't GNU based, but they are gnerally quite specialized and are almost exclusively embedded systems.

What you have observed is the fact that people who take the time and care to call them GNU/Linux systems are generally people who take the time and care to build Free systems.

-Peter

Re:Where the

[SanityInAnarchy]

Well, yes, it was funny -- but then, my post is for those who believe that Linux should jump through hoops, do your homework, walk your dog, and cook your meals, or it isn't worth downloading for free.