Slashdot Mirror
Slackware 10-RC1 Released
Chaxid writes "According to the latest Slackware ChangeLog, release candidate one of the next iteration of Slack is upon us. I asked Patrick Volkerding via e-mail if the 2.6 series of the Linux kernel would be included in this version, and this was his response: 'To have support for using the 2.6 kernel in the installer might not be a good idea quite yet, and it would delay the release a lot. I'm planning to wait on that for the next one'. It's worth noting the Slackware 10 RC1 is fully 2.6 compliant however."
As TouchOfRed writes, though, "A test kernel 2.6.6 option is offered via the 'testing' tree. Slackware does not offer ISOs for the RCs (however there are some third party users that compile the RCs or the -Current tree regularly as ISOs), so if you are already running Slackware 9.1, you can use the excellent Swaret to upgrade to the latest packages (make sure you edit your /etc/swaret.conf prior of using swaret to allow for kernel upgrades and other options)." This release includes kernel 2.4.26 , Gnome 2.6.1+, KDE 3.2.3, GCC 3.4, XOrg 6.7 and more.
ISO's of RCs? Is it to help the guys selling ISO CDs? Seems to me they would want to make it easier to get and test.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
Cousin to Gentoo I guess you would call it. Glad to see it's still chuggin along. I may just have to install it again one day.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
This release includes kernel 2.4.26 , Gnome 2.6.1+, KDE 3.2.3, GCC 3.4, XOrg 6.7 and more.
Not much interested in those. Half the reason I run Slackware is because it's not bleeding edge and bloated. Good to see they don't force 2.6 on the users.
Slackware 9.1 was fully 2.6 compliant, too.
It fills my heart with glee that a fellow dutchy is making (among other people of course) one of the more popular linux distros.
Congrats to him (and the team)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
I swaret my way to the newest versions. (swaret.org)
It's nice to have an up-to-date installation-CD though.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
And I just installed 9.1... *grumble*
Surely you can't release an RC? You can issue an RC, but once it's released it's a release, not a release candidate.
Until Slackware has a solid PAM implementation, it will be delegated to my smaller, simpler tasks. And yes, I've read Patrick's rants about his dislike of PAM.
And 2.6 is quite stable, not to mention a hell of a lot faster than 2.4... so why are we still stuck in the stone age? If you want to be really elitist about it, stick with 2.2...
Slackware was the first distro I ever used, way back in 1995. I had read about Linux in a small InfoWorld article, back when InfoWorld was tabloid size instead of regular magazine size. The article said you could run an entire operating system on a single floppy disk. Of course, I had to try this on my 386SX with 4M RAM. I downloaded Slack over a 14.4 modem and then copying it all to a set of floppy disks. I wish I could remember the name of that tool. Anyway, I ended up installing Slackware using UMSDOS so I could keep my DOS/Windows data.
:)
I remember I had to completely reinstall Slackware any time I wanted to add a new piece of software because I didn't know how it all worked. The very first question I asked on a Linux newsgroup was, "What's darkstar?" It, of course, was the default hostname for a new Slackware install. Heh. Starting X would dump you into fvwm with only an xterm and a pager; not much has changed there.
Ultimately I used that Slackware machine to learn about Unix and make the move from client-focused to enterprise-focused. Those were fun times.
I can still remember my grandpa telling me stories about this distro.
uhmm, genius, slackware comes with both, so YOU can PICK one you like. or use both. or use neither.
--- d'oh
No.Try out http://www.dropline.net - it's the best distribution of Gnome I've seen, and it's for Slackware.
And I am still using it today. Why?
All in all, thanks Patrick ! Another great version of a great distribution !
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I can come up with only one reason to support your statement; xdm is not started at boot on default.
/etc/inittab to turn it on.
It's a matter of changing one numer in
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Uhmm, I have no clue what you're talking about. removepkg installs cleanly packages that you installed via installpkg.
--- d'oh
I've been trying to find someone who has the Slackware 9.1 ISO files for a friend with no luck. All the mirror sites in the U.S. seem to have removed them, and I don't REALLY want to abuse the bandwidth of sites outside North America if I don't have to. It would be nice if distributions that don't want to do ISOs for downloads would adopt Jigsaw Download (jigdo), like Debian uses...
ftp://inferno.bioinformatics.vt.edu/linux-distros/ slackware/slackware-current-iso/
I don't even know what you're talking about-- slackware has had easy removal of packages nearly forever! Incredibly, it's called 'removepkg', but like any tool, you can shoot yourself in the foot if you're not careful. =) With the addition of Swaret to the mix, managing packages on slackware is too easy.
Okay, i am a linux user of several years. Mostly Red Hat, but i've had Suse, Mandrake and Gentoo at various times, but never Slack or Debian.
:(
i'm told it doesn't get more stable than Debian Stable, but i normally hear people say Slack is hard to install or hard to work with. Why is that? And can someone please clear that up for me? i'm not trolling, i just don't know enough about Slack to see why people would want to run it. Is it small and fast and just less "junk" to worry about for security reasons? Help me out!
heh, i've also heard Slack mentioned amidst some rather colorful expletives (i know the feeling though
There was some serious bugs in 9.1's toolchain (either binutils or the compiler), which caused a lot miscompilation of some kernel code I was testing. Quite horrible. I do hope this has been addressed.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Yup, try 'pkgtool'. Comes with slack standard.
Slackware is not so much a cousin to Gentoo, as it is Gentoo's *mentor*. That said, any further comparison strains credulity.
Such silly, half-thought, cookie-cutter comparisons of the two distros only serve to further obscure the true nature and intent of Slackware.
Trolly, trolly, troll-troll
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
man 8 removepkg
Don't speak until you've used it. I've used nearly every distro including slack, debian, and fedora. Fedora is the only one that "just works" and works really well. It doesn't hide things from the user but its simple enough for newbies. I like slack, but Debian and Fedora IMHO are slightly better. Fedora has been my distro of choice since its first release. I can just give it to friends and they can use it, I can use it as a secure server, or anything I pretty much want. Debian does have some advantages, which is why I run it on most servers. And slack has its place, as does every distro, but the only thing that I see slack has that the others don't is the history. It is a great distro, but hardly the best, or the only one worth using. Oh, and the best community support I've seen has come from the Fedora community, ask a question in a debian or slack irc channel and you'll get nothing but trolled and told how stupid you are, even for fairly advanced questions(at least thats been the majority of my experiences), where as fedora always has someone willing to help.
Regards,
Steve
the others have answered your question, and I'll even add this, it even comes with RPM, should you feel the need to scream out loud.
There's also a xfree86 4.4 package for those who want it too.
Well, I can't say how it compares to other package management systems in the other distros, but I rather like the slackware package management system. It has improved, it sounds like, since the last time you used Slackware. It does allow package removal, and allow you to upgrade packages as well. Also there are tools to help youbuild your own packages.
DaC
Um...right now it's the same thing. Same codebase, same product. Ok, since the license change in XFree86 the codebases haven't been _exactly_ the same (obviously) but all in all, you're talking about the same peice of software.
Silly rabbit
Slackware (inthe form of ZipSlack) was my first experience with Linux. While I can't say it was love at first sight, it did encourage me to come back for more. I currently run 9.1 on my Toshiba laptop, and couldn't be happier.
Can anyone say whether this release addresses or patches the latest kernel bug?
I tried Slackware not long ago when my interest for linux grew. That was 8.1. I wanted to try it because everybody telling me their experience with slackware sounded "funny" such as
"Oh u compile and u compile! It never ends!"
"Slackware is a hard distro to learn and installing softwares won't be as easy as you think"
"Slackware makes you work like in the Russia Regime. No fun, all work!"
Those reasons were good enough to make me try Slackware since I was reading the opposite from the distributions which many people tried (and still do. mdk, rh, suse). I did not want to start with a distribution which made it easy. Making it too easy for the user sometimes avoids them from learning something that they should know.
Slackware isn't hard to learn though. It's just about you finding the proper documentation and ready to learn using 4-5 xterms (or more?). Slackware is straight forward which doesn't do anything weird cause it's rock solid and it only provides you with useful software in the cd's. I've been using slack ever since and still today.
Patrick, great job as always!
This is not the release of Slackware 10! This is merely the release of the "release candidate version 1"!
Worst of all, I was looking forward to rsync the update today, and now you've shot that idea to hell, Timothy!
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
If you only use prebuilt binaries then I can see why this might be a problem. However, Slackware is designed with simplicity in mind for the user who is prepared to get his hands dirty compiling his own stuff (even if only from time to time). This almost by definition makes any package management system a la Debian or SillyHat redundant, since your database is out of date the first time you do this.
If you want to stay current with Slackware and stay with pre-built binaries, there's always swaret (and it really is current). However, you'll never appreciate the simplicity of Slackware if you never try playing with it.
I noticed this the other day while Swaret was running-I kept getting "Welcome To Slackware 10!" emails after it finished. Had me confused for a while there-guess that's what I get for updating against current. :)
Hats off to both the Slackware and the Swaret crews-I use my old Slackware 9.0 CD all the time for installs. For whatever reason, my Linux installation success rate (which I define as "going from fdisk through to working X in one attempt") is highest when I use it, across all the computers I've ever tried it on. Then it's a quick swaret install for updates, and I'm up and running.Slackware has a nice set of tools to install, upgrade and remove packages.
What Slackware doesn't do is automatically resolve dependencies. You're on you own for that. And, frankly, given my experiences using the Debians and RedHats of this world, automatic dependency resolution is a disaster waiting to happen.
A little bit of reading before you install something should tell you about its prerequisites. If a maintainer can't be bothered to tell you what his code assumes is already on your machine, don't use hise code.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I do. I'm only a newcommer to the loving arms of slackware(9.1) for about 4 months now. The non-bloatness. With slackware I am in total control of my system. so what slack is manaul configuring and it doesn't have the greatest auto hardware detection. In my eyes thats a good thing. it makes you learn, and with slackware you learn fast.
the others have answered your question, and I'll even add this, it even comes with RPM, should you feel the need to scream out loud.
Yeah, but RPM is a horrible awful thing and its implementation is a plague on the Linux world.
No central repository, no consistent interface, sparse documentation, incompatible versions, etc. Debian's APT, Slackware's pkgtool, and the ports system the BSDs have have all been a much better working and better designed system, for much longer than RPM has been around.
Just IMHO.
Oh yeah, and shutup all you Gentoo Partyliners, you're way late in this game.
do() || do_not();
May I also recommend slaptget?
It's like swaret, another package management for Slackware and is very similar to apt-get for Debian.
A little while back there was a smear campaign against slapt-get by the developers of swaret. I think this issue has been resolved, but that's how I found out about slapt-get. You can read the comments (Nov 25th 2003) on the slapt-get link to freshmeat above.
I've been using linux since Redhat 4 (even still have the CDs for that). I've used Mandrake, Suse, Redhat, Debian, and experimented with Gentoo, Vector, Lycoris and a few others. I'm using Slackware 9.1 upgraded to current and I love it. Fast, easy to maintain, and keeping it up to date using Swaret is a breeze.
/etc/rc.modules file!
The init style is so much easier to understand than other distros, and the community over at the Slack forum at linuxquestions.org is amazing. I think Slackware has an iffy reputation due to no gui tools. But the *.conf files are so well commented, actually Pat has a nice little firewall script in the comments in the
Anyway, I will buy a Slack 10 CD when it's released, but I doubt I'll need it. Slack just works.
Debian unstable Registered Linux user #226117
My blog:Real Health
You make such a fine point, I could hardly agree more. Slackware has contributed more to my general knowledge of *nix-like systems than any other single entity. Slackware *does* force you to learn, but allows one to do it at their own speed. After almost six years using Slackware, I can sit down at virtually any Linux distro (or for that matter, *BSD) and soon have the task at hand complete.
I don't want to perpetuate the old myth that 'if you know Slack, you know BSD', but Slack does more to stomp out the learned helplessness that cripples most user's *nix experiences, especially those unfortunate enough to have grown up in Walt Microsoft World.
I never thought that computing could ever again be as fun and rewarding as the days when I pounded out terrible BASIC on my C-64. Slackware has brought all of this joy back, in droves. I am forever grateful to Patrick for all his years of hard work. As an aside: visualize a distro maintainer that actually listens to user comments and wishes, and seems, by all accounts, to be a nice, regular person.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
I haven't seen slapt-get mentioned. Like apt-get, it's a tool for managing packages, except for the slackware system. It is continually one of the most downloaded packages at linuxpackages.net or you can pick it up at software.jaos.org
(1) edit /etc/swaret.conf so that VERSION=current
(2) issue the command: swaret --update; swaret --upgrade -a
and you'll basically have installed Slackware 10 RC1. Damn, I love Slack, and swaret just makes it easier to keep 'current'.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
You mean they are still putting this distro out?
Got my start on Slackware.
i cant seem to come up with a sig.
dickhead...
<end/>
One nice thing about swaret (swaret.sourceforge.net) is that you can set it to check dependencies, or not. I know it's not part of slackware proper, but is a very, very nifty tool. I run it every week or so to keep my slacks up to "current".
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
just try searching for slackware isos on eMule, eDonkey etc. Couple of weeks back I saw the isos for disk 1 and disk 2 floating there :-)
I'm glad Fedora really works for you! I was using Fedora Core1 and upgraded to Fedora Core2 breaking both my sound and video. I went back to slackware. I had been on RH since 8.
Patrick droped it from the distro because of the behavoir of it's author. Try something like Slapt-get instead.
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
That's funny, I've always viewed Debian as the best distro for "just working". Perhaps it's more of a puzzle to install but during it's lifetime everything is just so easy and smooth. I also haven't tried Fedora, but that's because I haven't had any incentive to.
I've tried a number of other distributions and always come back to Slackware, mostly because other distributions feel the need to make goofy proprietary crap - er, I mean apps that might work, if you happen to know the exact name of the executable and know where it resides... and so long as you don't mind any customizations to be over-written willy-nilly. This is especially true of RedHat, which I'll never touch again. Suse was a bit better. Debian crapped out on the install for no good reason on a normal hardware configuration that worked fine with Slackware. Plus, the monstrous list of apps to install was impossible to work with. I'll never bother with Debian again.
Slackware is simple. You boot it up and run "setup". How hard is that? If you want, you can use RPM's, and other package "utilities", but they tend to blow up after a while. pkgtool is simple and works. Swaret is the cat's pajamas - though not actually a part of Slackware (see swaret.sourceforge.net). Best of all, most Slackware knowledge is useful on other unix-like OS's; you don't go into a panic about not finding your distro's goofy-ass-proprietary app for configing something, you just know where to look. It's great.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
This current trend of only bringing minor release numbers up to 1 or 2 before hopping on to the next major only to keep up with other distributions is getting silly. If there was some major change in this, like a switch to Linux 2.6, that would justify a major number bump. This release doesn't really have anything of the sort.
I like slackware because it has captured the flavor of BSD very well. It has a cohesiveness that is the result of Pat's immense knowledge and steady hand.
However, given that Slackware seems to be one of the prefered distros for BSD-o-philes, why not move its old-school BSD init style to be more in line with the other BSDs? The NetBSD rc scripts are not a huge leap for people familiar with Slackware's. That's because the new style is a logical evolution from the old. FreeBSD made the jump too. The new rc script style feels more "BSD" than the old feels to me now...
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
You like "ps s" to be missing 3 columns?
You like the ps "TTY" column to be missing stuff?
Slackware didn't include all the required
changes as listed in the kernel documentation.
they are not at all mutually exclusive really, as far as applications go. If i have gnome libs installed and kde libs installed, I can run a gnome based app right alongside a kde based app.
hell, i have kde installed in slackware and never actually use kde as a desktop environment. there are a few apps that are built for kde that I use.
Just to clarify things a bit, neither swaret nor slapt-get are officially supported as part of the Slackware Linux distribution. These are 3rd-party addons, and are definitely used AT YOUR OWN RISK. As noted, swaret has been removed entirely from -current (and hence this RC). The author's behaviour and bizarre political views aside, swaret has been shown to mercilessly bork the odd boxen, on more than one occasion (yes, anecdotal). I cannot comment on the qualities of slapt-get, other than to say that I have not personally heard of any disasters involving it.
Worth noting that #slackware@irc.freenode.net does not suggest that users perform updates with either of these tools, nor is any help whatsoever provided for same.. either in use, or in cleaning up the rubble.
Be wise.. until you hear Patrick swear by it, chances are you will be swearing *at* it. ;-)
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
I've only just installed 9.1...
My first experience with Linux was Mandrake 9.2 and all I learned from that was how to bite through my desk when I got locked into another dependency loop. Slack, on the other hand, doesn't attempt to do everything for you and there are lots of clever ways for you to bollock up your system - in other words, you get to learn a lot.
Think of Slackware as the Linux equivalent of the Danger Room in the X-Men. If you survive it, you know you're good enough.
More important, KDE is not broken or altered like with some distros.
packages aren't added to the stable branch until they are verified to be *stable* which can take some time. getting added to unstable branch isn't an instant process either. there are some gentoo specific bugs that might need to be worked out which takes time, and also someone needs to write the ebuild and add it. this is a pretty good guide on makeing your own ebuilds. if you get an ok one working submit it.
I was really hoping that the next iteration of slack would have the 2.6 kernel as default - my hopes are dashed.
:)
I'm not an uber-geek, I like to meddle with Linux and really like Slackware - I managed to compile the 2.6 kernel with slackware 9.1 after a LOT of effort and reading up and the speed increases were amazing, however, I couldn't get everything working - too busy trying to earn a living.
Damn - why the hell are they not adopting it for 10 ?
Arrr, whatever, I'll wait till 10.1
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Go buy Mandrake 10 Powerpack or something like that. It's made for users not wanted to have to deal with all that junk. I used to get annoyed by the nomenclature of package namings in linux, but then i realized it just made things easier.
Just because slack isn't best suited for your average consumer doesn't mean there are not other distros that are. Slack is and always has been a distro for people who like to tweak and pick apart until they've learned something new. For a lot of people running it on the main desktop, it's probably because they like the feeling of control it gives them that windows and probably mandrake or fedora don't. It's all about preferences.
And by the way, it included, as you posted, KDE 3.2.3 which is designed to make using linux very easy. That and swaret will probably make maintaining the system easier than on windows.
I do, I'm writing this from a Slack 9.1 machine with KDE 3.1 at home. We have six machines in the office setup this way, and I have one at home.
Find coupons in Greeley
Thank You very much Patrick for your work on Slackware! When the official version of Slackware 10 is released I promise to open a bottle of champagne and drink to Slackware!
In this insane world of distrowars Slackware is the only sane thing. Let them other distros have a war against each other, I'll stay out of it and stick with my good old Slackware! It's built on tradition! I like it! No, I love it! Using Slackware is like stepping into traditional, old Irish pub and it welcomes you warmly.
Thanks to you all who have something to do with Slackware!
Our unofficial Slackware mirrors are here. Some of us have been up to date with RC1 as of last night.. I'm sure the rest will be there soon, if not already.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
That only applies to clue-bies. I've been using Linux (specifically Slackware) since 1995. I know how it works. I don't need to play with it "for days and days". I just do, and be done with it. Thanks for presuming I use Slackware to "feel smart". I use it because I can trust it. I'm no genius, so if I can do it, anyone can.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
What the hell are you talking about? Did you even bother to read anything about slackware? Did you intend to post in a Debian thread and your words got carried by the wind?
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
I don't get it. How many people use Slackware and KDE or GNOME? They seem mutually exclusive to me!
And why do you think so my young grasshopper?
Yes they ain't official. But over the past 6 months of using swaret I found it to work extremely well once you know how to properly configure it (e.g. not to auto update kernel packages when you're using a self-compiled kernel). The important thing is that, as long as you know what it's doing and what u're doing, the risk is low no matter it's official or not.
There're many good software that are not 'official' by ur definition (e.g. Apache 2 and Squid). Do they also deserve this big 'USE AT YOUR OWN RISK' sign that scares off potential users?
The best way to learn the truth about the quality and reliability of any software is to test it yourself.
I've heard several times that Slackware is not a good beginners distro. For the non-tech I would agree. But for the tech inclined I think it is great. My first distro was Slackware 2.3. Lots of work but I sure learned alot. Ran great too on a 66mz 486 with 16 megs and 400 meg hard drive.
Those were good days. I remeber how excited I was when it first booted and then again when X was running and then again when PPP was connected.
Don't seem to get that excited anymore. The thrill is gone.
I am still trying to figure out what to move to from RedHat 7.3. This is a very solid version that I am using, and I have it pretty much dialed in to do what I want. Since RedHat abandoned their users, I have resolved never to touch their products again (and yes, I was quite happy to be paying them for updates, I'm no freeloader). Anyway, I have looked at Debian as the main contender, but it seems to be perpetually stuck in older versions. I know it's entirely possible to mix and match to get what you want with Debian, but Woody is simply too old for me and I don't want to have to install testing or unstable just to get newer packages. I'm currently using the Progeny transition service, but that won't last forever... so, any suggestions? Is slackware a good candidate for switching from RedHat 7.3? Is it very different (I know a lot of the differences may be small, but it's the small details that kill ya when you're trying to get your server back to where it was before the re-install...). Also, I am a little nervous about a distribution that seems to depend on one person. What happens when Patrick decides to move on and go do something else, or just retire? Is there someone else who can take up the slackware cause with as much dedication and knowledge as he obviously has? I don't want to be left out to dry again, searching for another distribution...
Any insights/suggestions welcomed...
Since my first encounter of Slackware 10 years ago I never need to seek specific help from the community. Either Slackware just works, or my problems have been addressed and google-able. For other problems its always easy to trace through how Slackware is doing stuff e.g. by reading the doc or following straight-forward shell scripts.
On the other hand, with mdk or rh I often found myself overwhelmed by a mess of auto configuration tools which subtly fiddle with scattered, obscure config files and soft-links. Recent versions seemed to have more standardized and consistent tools but I still prefer getting my hands dirty to make things just work.
You could download what you need from the -current/RC10-1 tree and follow the simple instructions to create your own ISO.
This is just a release candidate folks.
I saw that shot more than a few times back when Starbuck was a man. ~ lucabrasi999
hey fred! is that you?
(probably now ex) as400 programmer living in the NL polder?
lol!
10 years ago there was no google.
funny guy
Oh I agree whole heartedly, hence the "scream out loud" part (I knew I should have put "rip your hair out"). I do wish that pkgtool would at least passively warn about dependancies. Something along the lines of "Hey you want to install FOO but we notice that you don't have BAR installed, you might want to install that or else FOO migght not work right" Just as a reminder that FOO needs an other package, which is now up to the user to install later.
Bad idea, no? -- "yes, i'm kidding. no, i don't care" -- angelsys
Microsoft just released a new ad with solid proof why not to use Linux. Get the facts!
Come on.... everyone knows that slackware's real giant leap was when it jumped from version 4 to version 8, leapfrogging over the other popular linux distributions of its day, which were still at a lowly version 7.x....
How do Slackware users out there keep their systems upto date, (I dont mean updating to this new release candidate I mean just 9.1 fixes) ?
t
There're many good software that are not 'official' by ur definition (e.g. Apache 2 and Squid). Do they also deserve this big 'USE AT YOUR OWN RISK' sign that scares off potential users?
Last time I checked, neither Apache nor Squid were entrusted with automagically updating, upgrading or maintaining the entire system. There is more than a fine line of difference between a system service (or application) and a global adminstration tool.
The old axiom applies: Never gamble more than you are willing to lose. By that token, I am not willing to lose a stable system on the bet that swaret will save me an hour or two. It just doesn't make good sense in production. In an experimental situation, then (just as big) BY ALL MEANS!
The best way to learn the truth about the quality and reliability of any software is to test it yourself.
Heh.. "learn".. as in, "That'll learn ya good!"
Seriously, Pat has not failed me yet, and until some utility of this ilk bears his blessing, I'll be happy with vanilla pkgtool. It just works. Checkinstall is also quite handy.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Im surprised that nobody mention slapt-get yet. You can check it out here. Its very simple to use. It can check more then one source, official or not like linuxpackages.net
slapt-get --update
slapt-get --dist-upgrade or --upgrade
slapt-get --help
SOLDERING IRON!!! i'll have you know you young whippersnapper that when WE installed slakware we didn't have no SOLDERING IRON. we had to climb the slopes of Mount Doom, dodging balls of flaming brimstone, and poke sticks of metal into the lava to heat them up and BRING THEM BACK IN OUR BARE HANDS!!!
*koff*koff*
and we had to LIKE it too. damn youngsters today. no appreciation for how easy they have it
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
Here are some torrents of 10RC1: http://abby.evilhack.com/slackware/currentiso/0615 04-cd1.iso.torrent
http://abby.evilhack.com/slackware/currentiso/0615 04-cd2.iso.torrent
May not be around long, get em while they're hot!
I was NOT saying that Apache/Squid are safe to be auto-updated. I quote them to illustrate that software without the blessing by Patrick are not any riskier to use.
What Pat has done is to kind of 'mark' things as stable (and I do think he's done a good job), but software without his chop are not necessarily unstable.
btw, swaret uses the vanilla pkgtool for package handling.