Slackware 9 Unleashed to World

kiltedtaco writes "Slackware Linux 9.0 is out! Based on gcc 3.2, and equipped with kernel 2.4.20 (ptrace-patched), XFree86 4.3, GNOME 2.2 and KDE 3.1. You can read the full announcement, or just go grab a copy for yourself at either the Slackware Store or these lovely mirrors." I know a lot of people who first cut their teeth on Slack when trying Linux. It's cool to see that it's still around.

Comments

First useful post?

[BRTB]

Since the official Slack FTP is a bit slow from everyone trying to grab it, here are a couple (unofficial) mirror lists:

alphageek.dyndns.org
AbnormalPenguin.com

I've already downloaded mine, so everybody have at it. ;)

Re:What's so special about Slackware?

[Anonymous Coward]

its complete lack of package managment,

It does have package management: installpkg, removepkg, and upgradepkg. It is far, far superior to RPM-based hell. RPM breaks the golden rule of programming (KISS) with a giant sledgehammer; just look at rpm --help, which I won't list here, as it's 154 lines of help options. That's just inexcusable.

The beauty of slackware's package management is that is doesn't check for dependencies. At first that might seem like a bad idea, but for power users (which is Slackware's target) that is best. What if I've upgraded a package manually, by installing from source (or really any way besides installpkg/upgradepkg)? For Redhat, you've got to fight rpm because it really doesn't like to install without all the dependencies listed in its rpm database. On Slackware there is no problem at all.

Additionally, RPM files suck. How do you get the files out of the package, if you just want to see the files and don't want to install? Use alien to convert it to Slackware tgz format.

And how do you see what files each package includes? For rpm, you've got to use rpm to "query" the binary database. Uck. Not very powerful. However for Slackware, all the files are listed in text files in /var/log/packages/, each file representing a package. You can use any of the many powerful file and text processing tools that come with all GNU systems, for example to see what packages put files into /sbin, just do "grep ^sbin /var/log/packages/*" - now that's powerful! And to find what files are in a Slackware .tgz package, just do "tar ztvf package.tgz".

Slackware Linux Essentials

[Alan Hicks]

You'll notice at the slackware store that there is a wonderful paperback book licensed under the GPL entitles, "Slackware Linux Essentials". It is perhaps one of the best linux books I have ever read and am thankful to be involved with.

Mysel and many of the "BOZOs" in alt.os.linux.slackware are currently working on a revised edition to bring this book up to date with the latest release of Slackware Linux. You can take a look at our (so far meager) progress here. I encourage anyone who wants to participate to give me an e-mail, you can find my address at that link, as well as a mailing list for this project. Any contributions would be greatly appreciated.

Slack on!