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?

[JebusIsLord]

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

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:)

[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:)

[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:)

[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:)

[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:)

[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.

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

[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.

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.

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!

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

[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

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?

[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).

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: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!

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

[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.

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: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.

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...)

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.

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

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.

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?

[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.

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...

[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

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.

Slackware 9?

[Spacelord]

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

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