Slashdot Mirror
Slackware Turns 10
Sir_Stinksalot writes "DistroWatch is reporting that Slackware is 10. 'Yes folks, it is exactly 10 years today since the release of Slackware Linux 1.0, complete with a brand new Linux kernel 0.99pl11 Alpha, XFree86 1.3 and even a PS/2 mouse support!' Let's all say happy birthday to Slackware."
It would be interesting to hear if it still runs, and how it stacks up - "then vs now".
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
From: bf703@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Patrick J. Volkerding)
.99pl11 Alpha.
.99pl8. I'm working on it :^)
/pub/linux/slackware. At least initially,
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Slackware Linux 1.00
Date: 17 Jul 1993 00:16:36 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Lines: 76
Message-ID:
Reply-To: bf703@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Patrick J. Volkerding)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu
The Slackware Linux distribution (v. 1.00) is now available for
anonymous FTP. This is a complete installation system designed for
systems with a 3.5" boot floppy. It has been tested extensively with
a 386/IDE system. The standard kernel included does not support SCSI,
but if there's a great demand, I might be persuaded to compile a few
custom kernels to put up for FTP.
This release is based largely on the SLS system, but has been enhanced and
modified substantially. There are two main disk series, A (13 disks) and
X (11 disks). Some of the features:
Series A:
About what you'd expect from SLS series A, B, and C. Plus:
Source for the Linux DOS emulator version 0.49.
The FAQ for kernel level 99pl10.
Kernel source and image at
[compiled with these options: math emulation support, normal hard drive
support, TCP/IP, System V IPC, -m486, minix fs, ext2 fs, msdos fs, nfs,
proc support, and PS/2 style mouse support. You may need to recompile if
you have some other type of busmouse. The kernel was compiled with libc
4.4.1, g++ 2.4.5]
The new keytable utilities.
The NET-2 networking package, preconfigured to use loopback.
A public domain version of ksh, and tcsh 6.04 (with the bugs worked out)
GNU gcc, g++, and Objective-C at versions 2.4.5
Includes and libraries at version 4.4.1
mailx, quota utilities, experimental winapi source, sound drivers.
The TCL toolkit and samples.
In addition, the installation program has been improved to offer more
information about the packages (and the installation procedure itself)
as you install.
The install program can also automatically install LILO, configuring it
to boot either from your master boot record or from OS/2's Boot Manager.
Series X:
Also, all the packages you would get in the SLS X series, plus:
XFree-86 version 1.3.
Open Look Virtual Window Manager made the default window manager.
XS3 server offers support for S3 based video cards.
XV 3.00 Image viewer is included.
PEX files from the XFree-86 distribution are included.
Although TEX support is not included in the Slackware release, the you may
install the SLS T series from the install program.
At this point, the install disk itself is running
Also, installation from other than a 3.5" floppy has not been tested, but might
work. 5.25" floppy will not work because of file sizes. At this point, I have
no plans to support a 5.25" version.
How to get the Slackware(tm) release:
The Slackware release may be obtained be anonymous FTP from
mhd3.moorhead.msus.edu in directory
this release will be in the form of 3.5" disk images which should be copied
to floppies using the RAWRITE.EXE program, or dd under Linux.
Please note that our FTP software does not support limiting the number of
concurrent anonymous logins. PLEASE try to go easy on this machine. If things
get out of hand, access may be restricted.
Other sites are, of course, welcome to help out with the load by mirroring
the distribution.
If you find any problems with the distribution, or if you have any suggestions
for improvements, please let me know. If you know of more up-to-date versions
of software in the distribution, I'd like to hear about that, too.
--
Patrick Volkerding
volkerdi@mhd1.moorhead.msus.edu
bf703
When I turned ten, daddy took the training wheels off.
... and exactly how is it better today?
Slackware is the first Linix Distro I used, though I admit it was a bit further along.
-Rusty
You never know...
... when Slackware was released... I think it was by SLS, no, which mean "Soft Landing Systems".
... :)
Of course, happy with my Yggdrasil installation (woohoo, a bootable CD distro - in 1992! With X!) I scoffed at the notion of there being yet *another* Linux distro around.
Little did I know, 10 years later, that there would be thousands of Linux choices around. Wow.
Happy birthday Slackware! One of these days, I ought to give you a try
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Slack 9 released (roughly) 10 years after 1.
I'm sure Max from Pi would see something in that.
Slack was the distro I fell in love with first. as of lately, i've been impressed with the portability of Knoppix LiveCDs. But I'm still a Slackware fan. Happy Birthday! w00t!
Great distro ... been using it since Slackware 3.0 ... hope it survives at least another 10 years.
Still running on an old 386SX NSF server with 125MB of HD and NE2000 card. :-)
ALREADY?!?!? Geesh oh wiz, I got to upgrade *AGAIN*?!?!?
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
In spite of some serious competiton by Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE and other very good distributions, a lot of people still prefer Slackware as their distro of choice. That's a nice 10-year birthday present.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Slackware 0.99blahblah was my first Linux. I had two boxes of 50 floppies that I spent hours downloading and copying at a computer lab at school. All of that fit onto one of the two 100MB partitions on my 200MB disk (the other had Windows 3.0). I still have the boot floppy and every once in a while I pull out the boot floppy to see if it can boot on new hardware. Still works on most!
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Hell...I was using SLS (SoftLanding System) Linux from Victoria Canada in 1992/1993 even before this young upstart Pat started his distribution (I think it was even based on SLS)...ahhh the days of distributions on floppy.
We used v0.95, we downloaded it direct from the Finland FTP site over a 14.4 modem, took all night, and we liked it!
All I wanted to do was run my favorite Unix game: "rogue"
I tried Minix, but rogue wouldn't compile, so I tried Linux and have been using it ever since.
Thomas Dz.
Sure, slack is fun to dink around with and it's nice for a sense of history and all that but today as a business about the only distro I can quote out is Linux 9.0. In todays market customers want support and they want to see a product comes in a box with decals and installation books. Fortuen 500 companies don't really care about the "cool" factor.
Warmest regards,
--Jack
Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time
11:20:29 up 3651 days, 22:40, 1 user, load average: 0.09, 0.07, 0.02
PS/2 mouse support! Truly, Slackware has reached the cutting edge* of computing.
*as of the mid-1990s
From the initial Slackware release announcement :
...
There are two main disk series, A (13 disks) and X (11 disks).
In a not-so-distant future, Linux distros will also come on 13 disks. Only not on floppy disks. That's how much GNU/Linux has evolved since the early days
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Awesome! It finally caught up to Red Hat 5 and Windows 95! Way to go Slackware!
For me Slackware is the best Linux distribution period. It's the first one I tried back in 1995 and I've yet to find one that's better. Slackware is compact yet comprehesive, stable, simple ans user friendly. If you're an old-timer like me and you don't mind a non-GUI installer, Slackware rules.
Stick Men
Linux newbie's log, stardate Thursday 9th June 1994:
"Installation of SLS Linux system [sic]: disks a2-4, b1-8, c1-2, c3 (partial), d1-, t1-3. Disk s1 was corrupt."
And I never looked back...
However, looking over that old notebook now, I see it did take me until December of that year to get my head round sendmail enough to have working mail!
I started using Slack in 1994 ver 3.1 and I'm still using it today (well version 8). I'm running it on an IBM Microchannel server model 9595 at 90 Mhz. Slackware is rock solid and I hope it stays that way. Happy Birthday slack my old friend.
Slackware was my first linux distribution. I used to work at "Bureau en Gros" ( I think it's "Business Depot" in english). I was working in the computer section and this guy ask me about Linux. I thought it was a game at first. But then he told me that it was something new and cool but very complicated. I found the CDs for him in bin. That same day I got myself a copy and wanted to install it on my computer. By then I just thought it was an application. Reading on, I realised that I need a different partition. I read up on it and installed my first Linux system on a 100 Meg zip disk. It was the coolest thing for me. I spent most of my time trying to figure out how to do the simplest things but it was really fun. I had an slow computer at the time ( Pentium 60Hz) and the newer games didn't install on my computer anymore so I had to find myself another way of having fun.
And now I get paid to program device drivers on Linux!
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
Fortuen 500 companies don't really care about the "cool" factor.
Guess spellcheckers aren't all that cool either, eh Sparky?
Like many, Slackware was my first distro.
Oh what hell it was to get it installed, being that I knew very little about hardware.
Many years later, I laugh at how trivial the setup is now. But had I not had the slackware experience all those years ago, I would probably be a MS monkey, instead of a Linux Geek.
Thank you Slackware (Patrick and all).
...about slackware is what I would change about most linux distros I have used...
Upgrades do not work as smoothly as they ought to
work needs to go into some code in the upgradepkg utility that can migrate the settings, rather than plopping down a new copy of the file and saying you might have to look at it....
Gentoo, my other favorite distrobution suffers from the same problem...
And yes I know if I really want this feature I oughta code it myself and submit patches etc....
I'm to lazy, and my real job takes more time tahn I'd like, so between work and having a life I just haven't got the time...OK...OK
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I remember my first time with slackware way back when in college. I couldn't download it, because I needed to get linux up and running in the first place so I could dial-up to the CS modem pool and PPP. So I went the bookstore, bought a huge stack of floppies and tried 3 times to copy all the distro disks before I got it right - back and forth all day to campus.
Problem was I was copying *.* instead of * to the each floppy having come from a DOS background. That wasn't nearly as bad as blowing my $800 monitor the next day trying to setup X timings. Ahh, the good old days.
The latest Slackware IS Linux 9.0.
While it's not v1.0, you can download Slackware v1.1.2 at http://linux.ka.nu/, as well as some other historic Linux distributions (Debian 0.91, SLS 1.05, and MCC Interim 1.0+)
Slackware Linux was my first introduction to Linux way back in 1995, when I installed it on my Toshiba 486DX/25 Laptop, though it had reached Kernel 1.2.something by then!
:)
I still prefer slackware to this day, particularly where I need to tweak and change things quickly and easily - it doesn't have any of the "newbie-helper" kruft which the big-brand distro's have, which tends to hinder more than it helps after a while. It is a small, fast, reliable distribution well suited to both Desktop and Server work.
Heck, I still run an old Slack-3 installation on a 486SX/25 with 12MB of RAM, a 250MB HDD, a 120MB HDD and a couple of ISA NIC's as a router, Firewall, Mailserver, Webserver, DNS server and some other odds-and-ends - though it has had a few upgrades (kernel, glibc, etc) over the years, it's still the same basic setup!
Way to go guys...
Keep up the fantastic work...
Disclaimer: I meant what I thought, not what I wrote! What? You can't read my Mind? Oh dear!
...forget the rest!
Jeeez.....look up your titles, plz... For a moment I thought that Slack 10 is out, and I even didn't bother to read any further and instead rushed to the slack site to see what's in it....well, as you already suppose I didn't find much.... /. crowd is already downloading _the_ distro...
Next time you may include a "(no pun intended)" in the title, to avoid scaring the shit out of people imaging how 50% of the
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
21 computer, enables 3rd parties to store data on that com-
22 puter, or use that computer to search other computers'
23 contents over the Internet.''.
They're making search engines of any sort illegal. Think about it.
What's this Submit thingy do?
Slackware users and experts can make a vow, on Slackware's 10th birthday, to be more helpful to new users and Linux newbies. Many a new Linux user has been turned away from Slackware because, although a geek friend might have pointed it out, there is no help or regard for the newbies. RTFM/RTFD!!! is the most common phrase heard in #slackware on many different IRC servers everywhere. This is the same situation for Debian. New users to Linux who want an extremely powerful distribution, complete with friendly help and knowledgeable users who aren't afraid to help a newbie, even if they ask a duplicated question, should check out Gentoo.
This comment was randomly generated by a school of piranhas chewing on the PCB of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
One of the remarks that usually comes up about Slackware is the "gotta compile everything yourself" issue. Not true. Slackware still kicks Red Hat's butt in the "just works out of the box" contest.
At least, I think that's what it was. It came with the first edition of "Linux Unleashed".
Today, several years later, I am still using Slackware, version 9.0, on several computers of mine, and it's still one of the best distros around. (And yes, I have tried Mandrake, Red Hat, Caldera and several BSDs)
Thanks a ton to Patrick Volkerding... May your slack prosper and grow forever more!!
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Now it's a jolly good distro!
Now it's a jolly good distro!
Now it's a jolly good distro!
Now it's a jolly good diiistrooo!
And so say all of us.
And so say all of us.
And so say all of uuuuuss.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
As a professional consultant for a major Fortune 500 software company, I've recently gotten involved in the whole open source phenomenon as started by Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman with the release of the GNU/Linux operating system (or is it Linux? I'm not too sure on this point).
Anyway, after having compiled a report on the commercial viability of open source as an alternative to closed source in the e-commerce/b2b world, I've become quite interested in Linux myself, and thanks to a handy Corel Linux distribution, consider myself to be someway to becoming a "guru" as people here like to call themselves.
Anyway, my point is that Slackware, as a distribution, doesn't give out the professional image that Linux is trying to gain at the moment. On one hand, you've got respectable players like Red Hat, Corel and SCO pushing Linux's corporate image to new levels of respectibility, but on the other hand you've got a distribution named "Slackware", hardly the name your tech-savvy CTO wants to represent a core part of their enterprise solution.
The whole name seems to give the distribution a half-finished, "slack" even, image, surely not one that's in anybody's best interest, whether they be the average long-haired Linux sysadmin or a suited CTO looking for the next big thing. And this image taints all of Linux.
No, whilst Slackware may produce a decent distribution, they definitely need to think about a name change to ensure continued acceptance in the increasingly corporate-driven Linux market.
Webmasters: If you'd like to keep the awareness of slackware up, grab a banner from here: Slackware Propoganda and link it back to Slackware.com.
It was when I was a Win95 support person for the evil empire that I was turned on to Slackare. This was back in... oh, 96 or so. My cube-mate turned me onto it. That was my first Linux distribution. I've since tried a few others, but always end up going back to Slack, and now enjoy 9.0.
Viva Slackware! Thanks also to my cube-mate, Pete.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!)
For a quick rebuttal of the normal arguments RedHat users and their brethren use against Slackware, you can refer to my handy-dandy already composed never-sent reply to this message I found on Google. To sum it up: If you don't think Slackware is a serious distro, you probably don't have the ability to properly maintain a Slackware system. You'll just have to sacrifice the serious Slackware advantage for a.. less serious distribution.
Debian 3.0 came on 7 CDs. Actually 8 if you include the international version of disc 1.
And then there are the source CDs...
The future is now. Time to start using DVDs. Now if all the business with DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW was sorted out...
Oh no! I didn't even get any presents!
Well, I am not really an old timer.. my first Linux distro was either Slackware 7.0 or Slackware 7.1 Has been using Slackware since then. Now I have Slackware 8.0, 8.1 and 9.0 Good job Patrick.. Happy Birthday to Slackware.. may it always prosper.. Cheers!!!!
I'd never bought so many floppies before in my life...
You never forget your first love.
;-)
I first heard of Linux in "Unix Review". It was very tempting. I got Slackware on a CD that was included in "The Linux Bible", which I got for $19.95 at a local Barnes and Noble that had just opened. It was the cheapest book with a Linux installation CD that they had. My heart sank when I figured out it was mostly a bunch of HOWTO's, typeset (some very incorrectly). But...
For three hours before I ever put the CD into my machine, I read, checked hardware, and took notes. It paid off. The first installation failed, because I forgot to create a swap partition (required back then). The second attempt succeeded, giving me a Linux 1.2.13 kernel and enough to begin "bootstrapping" my configuration. What a steep learning curve, but it taught me how to do things manually (useful when other systems' "automatic" config managers just can't handle the customization you want). One week later, I had a working X system, running FVWM. Two days after that, I had a working dial-up script. I immediately downloaded Netscape.
I dual-booted for two years, until the Chernobyl virus hit my partition table and both copies of my Windows FAT32. With no hope of recovering my Linux system, I started from scratch with 100% Linux, and have never looked back.
I've tried other distros, but Slackware is so lean and straightforward. Even my ex-wife prefers it to RH/Mandrake/Debian/whatever. Thank you, Patrick! (and thanks for accepting my patch a couple months ago, too!
Happy birthdaaay, you little slackerhead.....
.sig
I only tried it out in '01, but I fell in love with it ever since. Previously I had used Redhat, Mandrake and SuSE, but the minute I laid my hands on Slackware, I knew this was the distro I had been looking for.
Happy birthday Slackware. Live long and prosper.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
without an obligatory microsoft bash.
happy birthday to Slackware
a freshly cleaned diskette drive, and six hours of downloads at 2400 baud. them were the days.
When you got X up and running on your monitor, you really HAD something. FAQ entries were a woundrous archive of arcane material that made you want to call up the author and say "Thanks, man!" Motherboards that topped out at 64 MB.
Wow.
I STILL remember comparing it to the SCO I had at work, and kept comparing the man pages to the IBM XENIX manuals I had stashed away.
Thanks for the memories, Slakware!
/me watches RedHat, Debian, Gentoo, and Slack all play pin-the-tail-on-the-distro and take turns swinging at the "lynched bill" pinata...
well, it's nothing one behind the ear wouldn't cure
I had a box of floppies. I'd FTP a bunch of floppies from school, walk home, stuff them in the drive one at a time, and repeat.
I think it was 43 disks altogether; it took me several days to get it installed. What a pain in the ass.
Then I finally FTPed the whole distro down over a 28.8 link. Wow, that was nice, having the whole damned thing on my (then enormous 1054 MB) hard drive.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Slack was one of the first that I used for a while. I first tried Redhat, but didn't feel enough control. I really liked slack, and only left it for Gentoo. Still, If I had to do a mass server install (where source only distros are useless in a non-hemogenous environment), I'd probably use slack or debian.
Incidentally, I keep an old slack cd in my laptop bag, as it makes a nice partitioning tool. And it can be a quick startup kit if you want to go through the LFS stuff.
Happy B-day Slack, keep up the good work...
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
congrats Slackware happy 10th!
I've still got my first linux distro, a slackware distribution from TransAmeritech. I got it in 93 I think. It used kernel 0.99pl12, and came with 6 pages of photocopied documentation stapled together. I keep it now just for nostalgia.
Man, bringing back the memories.... Running my ISP on a SUNOS Sparc10....
:) Happy 10th B-day!
Needed something for a news server, and we tried the 1st rev of slackware....
Worked great, until the 1st time it crashed.... File system corrupted on reboot.... (sigh)
Reinstalled and rebuilt about 5 times, finally gave up and install FBSD...
I still go back and install linux about once a year, just to make sure I'm not missing anything...
Goddamnit, there's a "BSD is dying" joke in here somewhere, but I just can't find it!
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
That Slackware is dying
To a colored text installer!
I love you Slackware, you were my first isntall! You never forget your first time.
I've only been using Slack since 8.0 but I really enjoy it as a distro. Many thanks to Patrick!!! The only problem that I have found so far has been with gpm. When exiting out of X the mouse behaves erratically. This happens in the versions included in 8.1 and 9.0 so I just downgrade to the 8.0 one.
And thank you for the wonderful conrtibutions you have made to the community. The world is a better place because of your efforts!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I remember using slackware for my first Linux install back in 95, during first year college. I like many others out there remember getting the 5 boxes of floppys and downloading them all using the colleges internet connection. Once I got them home it took me a couple times to get it working on the old 486sx25 I had at the time, but I did. A few months of tinkering later and I had free PPP service using slirp on the dial-up shell account my college gave me. I still use slackware as my primary linux distribution, I can't stand working with MicroHat (what some of you may know as RedHat), and was not too impressed with many of the other linux distros (Mandrake, Suse, Yggdrasil, Debian and a few others) I've tried over the years, always end up nuking them and putting slackware on instead.
I must say thanks to the slackware team for the great software over the years.
Now come on...
;)
What part of "Yes folks, it is exactly 10 years today since the release of Slackware Linux 1.0, "
don't you understand?
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
darkstar login
:wq
Go Slackware. It's your birthday.
We gonna party like it's your birthday.
In another 10 years I want to be able to pull up this post to prove to my kids I was cool. Oh wait Im posting to a slackware thread... Oh well Happy BDAY Slackware! You were my first and made my the geek I am today!
Just a warning to all you knew virgins trying out slackware, BE GENTAL and HAVE FUN!
keanmarine.com
I still have my "Linux Bible." Part of my nostalgia is marvelling at how I managed to install it with such a poorly proofed HOWTO's (some incorrectly typeset, some just plain wrong/ignorant).
I still have the disks I used for my first Linux install. Can't recall what the labels mean and doubt the disks are still readable, but they are labeled SLS A1.3, A2 - A4, SLS B1 - B7, SLS C1 - C3, SLS D1 - D2, SLS S1, SLS T1 - T3. A total of 20 1.44 floppies. Ran these on a 25mhz 386sx w/ 9 MB RAM and a 100 MB disk. SLS A1.3 claims to using kernel 0.99pl11. These must have been done right about the time Slackware forked off from the SLS dist.
Maybe I'll try and auction them off on ebay and see if they are worth a six pack of beer. Then I'll have beer that is free-as-in-Linux.
FreeSpeech.org
Never could find a good reason to change after 386BSD. ,makes me happy.
THe slack distro is consistent , runs and
Run 8.1 on my main machine and 7.0 on the firewall.
The nicest thing about it is I know where most everything is and what the file name is.
Familiarity counts for something.
Slack was my very first distro.
I feel old.
Bow to me cause i am root ... of a slackware box
Strange attitude coming from a group of people who appear to have adopted the Dobbshead as thier logo. ...probably just the slack thing...no matter, never really got that joke anyways....
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Happy Birthday SLACKWARE! The oldest and made with PRIDE! It's great that we have this traditional distribution around! I LOVE SLACKWARE!
...come to think of it I can't remember anything from 10 years ago. fee-doo-dah marijuana affects the memory
Yeah slackware may need marketing people, but it don't, it's a good product itself ;)
Happy birthday SLACKWARE and a GREAT BIG _THANK YOU_ to you Patrick for your awesome work!
With tears in my eyes I remember all the great moments Slackware has brought to my life. Patrick and others who work on Slackware, you should be proud! When a job is done well it is done the way you guys do it.
LONG LIVE SLACKWARE!
----
Slackware is not a factor in discussions about market share or brand value or anything like that. It's a symbol, a legacy, something divine that you cannot change.
It has almost religious meaning to us, like holy cows in india or that t-shaped wood things with that semi-naked guy pinned to them that you find in churches. Changing Slackware's name is not just wrong, it's impossible.
That said, if you're looking for something that is 'fit for the market', check out RedHat or Debian or one of the countless others.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Slackware was the first distro I used, and guess what - I just installed 9.0 and I love it.
I met Patrick once at a LinuxWorld Convention, and he was such a nice dude. Happy Birthday Slack!!!
The Nintendo Entertainment System turned 20 this week.
Anyone up for a port?
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
SCO pushing Linux's corporate image to new levels of respectibility
/me chokes to death
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
Go slackware!
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Despite stability being the most commented feature of Slackware, people often forget to mention other Slackware's strong points.
Fast. My slackware 9 system actually run most apps faster than any other distro I've ever installed, including Gentoo with custom flags and their overbloated kernel.
Simple. Debian is always regarded as the de-facto GNU distro, but slackware is a distro where software is always compiled with standard instructions from authors, so configuration files, compile flags and etc are always As You Expect.
Up to date. Everybody thinks slackware lacks the latest glibc or kde version, but those that really use it, knows that it is almost a bleeding-edge distro comparing to more conservative distros, and it still keeps stability.
Congratulations Patrick and all other slackware friends for the long-lived high quality work!
Davi
circa 1991, 100MB.. and its still run slack as my firewall, I thnk 7.something sans X. Both the drive and slack are testimonials for stability.
Bollocks.
This is what they mean by "non-GUI" installer. Instead of pretty windows and shiny icons shaped like big-eyed penguins, you get something that looks like this:
__________________________________________________ _
Here is our completely and utterly incomprehensible non-gui installation screen:
[ ] I can't stand it, help! What? Where are my shoes? Stupid Slack!
[ ] I think my mouse is broke... stupid Slack!
[ ] Hmmm... I think I may have to use the keyboard... Stupid me!
[ ] Hey, I found the space, arrow, and tab keys! Yay me!
[X] This is pretty easy!
[ OK ] [ Cancel ] [ Back to other Distro ]_ _
_________________________________________________
*That's* "Non-GUI?" The way people bitched, kvetched, and whined, I thought when I put in the CD, I'd get a flashing cursor, waiting for me to do some "pull out of the air" command like LOAD"$",8 and enter in the hex value of the primary IDE boot sector address or something. Dude, that may not be mouse-enabled or have fancy anti-aliasing, but it's "GUI" to me because:
- It is graphical (it has lines and colors!)
- It is a user interface (it's for me!)
- It's how I have been installing Red Hat via Serial interface/low RAM anyway - Back when I started computing, the only GUI we had was a menu system like that...
There he goes again... "back in the day" man...
I think Slackware is a pretty tight distro, I wouldn't call it non user-friendly. I'd say it's friendlier than Debian! [not to knock Debian, it also has great uses and noble goals]
I'd say anyone who knows Liunx/UNIX, and has an i386 box should give this a try at least.
__________________________________________________ ____
www.punkwalrus.com - They'll only take away my gun when they pry my cold dead fingers off Logitech gamepad
That means it's been around 11 years since I first started to use Linux ? ( kernel 0.98something ).. I feel the wrinkles creeping up on me *shudder*
Slackware needs a flashy logo...Since Patrick is from fargo maybe a woodchipper would be in order?
I might have missed my flight otherwise!
Tanj, things are so much nicer now...but Slackware was a good idea back then, and it is still a good idea.
Hail Slackware, Hail Bob! Hail Eris!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
With Slackware being the first distro that introduced me into the world of unixes, Happy 10th Birthday!
What does PITA mean? I've seen it several times now on /., and I haven't figured it out yet. Thanks.
isn't what it used to be ;-)
:-)
What a great time we had
I was the first commercial distributor of Slackware in early 1993. This was when it first came out and was only available online for download. I sold it on Floppy disk 3.5" 40 disks to a set and sold hundreds of sets around the world. You can still find it in a Google search "Stephen Balbach linux" even though I stoped selling it in 1994. It is my one claim to fame in the Linux world.
stephen@balbach.net
HAhA!! I remember the slackware disks I downloaded. I haven't heard about A,B, or X disk setts in such a loooong time, sigh, haha! It really brings back memories when I spent hours installing it and finally being able to play with fvwm.
I then remember when Yggdrasil came out with thier bootable CD-ROM and that little booklet it was wrapped up in. Just about last year of a little longer than than, I when to Half-Price Book store and sold them all of my old Linux books, including the Yggdrasil bootable CD-ROM package.
The memories...
Happy happy birthday Slackware!
VIVA FOREVER!
remember using slackware in the summer of 94- my first exposure to Linux, and not a very easy one at that. Had to copy it on 1.44 floppies (took 40 of them to get everything.. or maybe less. I forget now.) Stayed up the whole night coping to the disks, and then going back and installing it.. only to find a few disks corrupted.
Also remember that the installation created guest like accounts by default, named "snake" and "gonzo" (does anyone know why, and if it still does?). Used that to hack into the Physics dept. hehe.
Sigh. How time passes when you are having fun ! Happy B'day Slackware.
I got Slackware on a CD with a Linux book, proceeded to install it, which required compilation and filled an entertaining afternoon, and the darn thing worked!!!!
I was amazed and pleased and realized even then that Linux would have a life of its own.
So, slack is for admins only, if I understand your replies in your email.
I tried Mandrake and that was better, but my contractees wanted RH if they were to use Linux. RH 7 had enough custom C libraries that I couldn't do a simple Apache build. About that time (~ 3 years ago) I tried Slackware and loved it!
My ONLY irritation is mindless COTS vendors who MUST use RPM to install their &^%$ products (IBM, IBM, IBM). I've used Slackware from 7 until now without issue with the distro. The more I use it, the more I like it.
At work now were using RH Adv Server 2.1 (over my objections) and while it has some cool stuff (the 2.5 job scheduler, p_threads, etc.) RH still manages to screw with C libraries (for some of our in-house apps) and not include Perl modules so we can use things like SIS. Slackware 9 OTOH is running like a champ on my pIII 500MHz home PC which I'm using for my Masters project.
In short I'm batting 1.000. I've not had a Slack install I've had issue with and I've not had a RH install I haven't regretted. yes, I know, double negatives and all that...
Don't get wrong, better RH than windows, but all things considered - I'm a Slacker...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who take things at face value, and those who think too far into them...I'm in the second category. Has Slackware turned 00000010, or 00001010?
G. M. Manath
Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both 'Yes' and 'No.'
I am using Slack for the whole 10 years. Had SLS before, so it was easy to switch to a distro that was based on SLS.
Speaking from the old folks camp, there are many distros for many people. Slackware is not really a 'newbie' distro, or at least not newbie in the sense of 'I just wanna play with Linux' area. If you are already a technical person, and like detail, Slackware is a great way to learn the insides and out of the system. Very rarely in the 8 or so years of using the distrib have I not been able to find a solution in a howto or usenet. If I download some code and try to compile something, and it does not work, most times I'm the kind of person that will tweak the code and fix it... because I can If I stick with the RPM/DEB/etc thought train, if it don't install.... I'm stuck.
No, I don't tell new people to try Slackware, I throw them a KNOPPIX cd and let them play. But I'm an old fart that enjoys fixing a problem and learning about my system. If that's not for you, there are other distros. I was just looking at my box the other day and realized that I've been on the same distrib version since '99! Happy birthday Slackware! Distros came and go, but it's nice to know that at least one is worried more about the rock solid nature that is Linux's longest claim to fame, and less about the creaping featurism that seems to be spreading slowly across the Linux world. "In my day, we downloaded 20+ disks off a 14.4 modem, and loaded them one by one to install Linux... and we liked it!"
Ten years ago!
We didn't have these fancy CEE DEE ROMS and high speed connections in those days. you kids are so spoiled with you fancy installation programs these days! ha!
Back in our day, we had to walk 15 miles in the blizzard, carrying Teletype, 50 pounds of batteries, a five-gallon bucket of dimes, and a pallet of paper to the nearest payphone. We had to shovel the dimes into it, or hijack it with a paper clip like in WarGames. Then we used our acoustic coupling to connect the teletype, and it would print out all the binaries on reams and reams of paper. So we had to walk all the way back and type in the bytes BY HAND onto the hard drive.
In those days you EARNED your Slackware!
Phaeton Sez!
28 more days and you can read almost the same article again: Debian is 10 years old on August 16th
Hooray for Slackware! Rock on, Pat!
I've been using Slackware for a few years now, since version 7. I had used other distributions in the past, but none really hooked me. Today, I've got Slackware running at home, work, and I've hooked many friends on it as well.
It's still the most sensable and stable Linux distribution that I've used. It's fast and highly configurable. It's also one of the most UNIX-like distributions it's BSD-style init scripts and straightforward config files.
Paired with Dropline GNOME, you get an excellent combination on the desktop. If you can handle running FDISK, I suggest you give it a shot.
"Let's all say happy birthday to Slackware."
Let's just be sure not to sing it, or we'll be on the hook for copyright fees.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
In 1993, I discovered Slackware 1.01 on a CD-ROM set called "Nite Owl" that sysops would buy so that people could download from them. I put the boot/root images on a floppy and rebooted my system to be greeted with a login prompt. I told it "root" and suddenly I saw something very cool.
#
I know, big deal, but back in those days, Unix was something that could only be accessed at a distance. I either had to dial my ISP or my school, and it wasn't the same. This sucker was right here in front of me, and it was all mine.
I saved my money, bought another hard drive, and installed it properly in the spring of 1994. Over the next couple of years I learned how to break things and fix them again, and put it all together.
Now I have a job running a couple dozen Slackware boxes for a medium sized organization and have contributed a few small things to the kernel. I am no longer reliant on systems that have their hoods welded shut, so to speak.
Thank you.
I've been using Slackware since around about the 2.x series (I forget the exact version). I've tried Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE and Debian. I keep coming back to Slackware.
Why? It's the most streamlined and simple ditribution there is and always has been. After 10 years it still has not succumb to the bloat that all the other distributions have done so far. I don't have to fiddle around with the silly "tools" that other distributions (Linuxconfig, ugh! Yast, ugh!) insist I use just to get my system running, Slackware let's me do it my way.
Long may it continue!
Slackware was the first distro I was really serious about. I used it for about 30 months, and about 24 of them were Linux-only.
I eventually moved to Gentoo because I liked the package management system better, and because the forumns had decayed from a slightly 'stiff' atmosphere to an all-out flame-fest. While I have no doubt that many of the posters there have used Unix for 70+ years as they claim, and that all of them have worked in a range of Fortune 500 companies and security firms and such, I still assert that they are the rudest, most arrogant bunch of twirps that have ever congregated around anything.
Think I'm being harsh?
Go on then. Take your next question into alt.os.linux.slackware and see how you fare...
The simplicity and ease-of-management of slackware has freed me for important things like
playing RTCW ET, and reading Slashdot.
Thanks Patrick!
I worked with slackware before, but ended up going with RedHat. Recently I decided to upgrade and wanted something new. After trying out a number of distros, I ended up going back to Slackware. I love it. And I just installed dropline-gnome, a Gnome environment customized for Slackware and WOW does it look nice.
0 8.html
If you're really interested, I put a short article about it on my blog:
http://www.jadetower.org/muses/blog/archives/0000
Who said Freedom was Fair?
I just wanted to say thank you to Patrick and all the other fine slackware developers. You got me started with Linux. It has been a hobby, a passion and now a career. Thank you.
Trey
aaaww, happy birthday Slackware! *sniff* *sniff*
/me hugs Pat
You must be the biggest lamer on earth. I'd kick your face in if I would meet you in person. You gotta show some respect even if Slackware is not the distribution you're using.
That's great. Never really been a heavy user (we don't buy white boxes, and corporate support revolves around RedHat), but it has always impressed me.
Good job and keep on keepin' on!
PS - best distro name ever!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I play (use, whatever) with many different versions of Red Hat where I work, and have used Debian in the past.
:-)
I've also played with the SPARC port of Slackware (discontinued, sadly) which was pretty sweet.
Slackware is my distro of choice for my workstation in the office, and almost all of my PCs at home.
Happy Birthday, Slackware! Here's to another TEN YEARS of enjoyable computing!
It was my first Linux install ever (wow, 10 years ago). Although, I'm not sure it was 1.0, was there a pre-1.0 version? The Linux kernel wasn't even at 1.0 yet (0.97 or so, I believe).
I remember downloading it at something like 14.4 BPS (the pain) off a local BBS that got the Fido-net feed (or whatever it was). I remember the floppies... Ah, the many, many floppies. I believe the standard small install was like 35 floppies or so. I remember sitting for hours swapping floppies.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
I seem to remember that Peter McDonald (SLS) was pretty pissed about slackware - I think it had something to do with Slackware basically taking the SLS packages and making better install scripts or something. Or different packages with SLS's install scripts...don't remember the details, just that Usenet was in a tizzy about it.
/. had been around then, it would be a 1200+ comment article :)
If
Holy Smeg! I played with Slack 1 when I was in High School. I spent about a week and a half downloading the entire thing from a local bbs. I learned really early not to fool around too much with the MBR, I had to come in at 6:00 one morning and re-format and partition, and re-install all of the school programs that HAD to be there, and my little linux partition that could got scragged a few times too.
I also learned what happens when you rm ld.so
Frankie.
I remember taking literally days working with my first slackware linux install, and after working through that frustration taking another day tweaking X so it would run. It took months before I fully appreciated the true beauty of Linux... yes DOS and even Windows installed far more easily and without any frustration whatsoever, but Linux, as I would find, had a payoff. After 6 months of running my slackware Linux system I had had to reboot due to "General Application Faults" or "UAE (Unexplained application errors) exactly ZERO times. So, put a little extra time and effort in up front and never worry about the stability of your system again. It was true then, it is even truer now as far as Linux installers have come! Thank you Slackware!!! :)
The Matrix is real... but I'm only visiting!
Hmmm. Wine apple souce. ghwwgaahwaahwagaaaa.. *drool*
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
It's good to the see the one distro that started it all for a lot of us is still alive and well.
I respect other peoples opinions and taset, but for me this is all I need in a distro.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
What the subject says. Even 7 days old warez is considered lame and old.
So, shut the fuck up you finnish loser.
If you can beef up your RAM, linux runs pretty well on a 200. I'm on a 200PP, works perfectly OK. I can surf, listen to net audio streams, run apt, etc, all at the same time. Before I added a couple of sticks it was pretty slow, now it's fine.
A couple of days ago I found that I have been using Linux almost 10 years (I started in autumn 10 years ago). And of course my first system ran Slackware! :-)
Ainoastaan suomalainen voi olla niin tyhmä kuin sinä, joten haista vittu vitun kusipää! Vedä ittes jojoon Debianin kanssa vitun luuseri! Voi helvetti että teitä saa hävetä näillä kansainvälisillä foorumeilla. Vittu mikä kommentti. Mieti vähän mitä kirjoitat vitun pahvipää!
Aparently the part of the population that read Slashdot and don't get the joke.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Until I discovered Dropline my Slackbox always made a suboptimal desktop-machine. Now with Dropline I get all the seksy stuff with a great (Online-)Installer and the folks are really fast to package the upgrades. I think they included Mozilla 1.4 just two days after it went stable. Antialiased fonts, cutting edge gnomelibs, evolution upgrades (wich were a real pain before)...all fast and stable. Who could ask for more? I wonder if the two projects will merge one day? This would make Slack the Killer-Distribution on the Desktop. Actually Dropline is what Lindows tried to do with their autoupgrade but failed miserably.
cu,
Lispy
Looks like the Dropline-server dropped the line. ;-)
Its slashdotted right now...please try again later.