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Slackware 10.0 Officially Released
BRTB writes "Slackware 10.0 is out! X.org 6.7.0, kernel 2.4.26 (2.6.7 optional), KDE 3.2.3, GNOME 2.6.1, GCC 3.3.4... it's all new, and just as stable as you'd expect from Slackware, if RC2 was any indication. There's an official announcement, as well as some ISO BitTorrent links, and a mirror list. Of course, the non-cheapskates among us should go buy the CD-set to support the project. Have fun, everybody..."
anyone tested x.org 6.7.0 . i want to know if it supports proper 2D drivers for later radeons (9600 and later) out-of-box? i know xfree86 4.4.0 does.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Perhaps its not completely germane, since it was announced a while ago, but again, kudos to Slack for moving to X.org so quickly. The faster everyone gets away from X the better we all are.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Does Slackware have an apt/"windows update"-style auto-update tool yet?
This looks exciting. I can't wait to try this one out. Especially as it has 2.6.7 in it.
Why are some linux releases still hanging onto the 2.4.26 kernel, or relasing two kernels (Knoppix comes to mind) ?
Th2 2.4 kernel tree still has that floating point kernel bug in it, doesn't it?
READY.
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I ran Slackware on my PC for years, but have recently switched to a Powerbook. I'd like to run Linux, and I've investigated dual-booting with either Debian or Gentoo.
I'm having trouble finding good resources, though these people seem to have made some progress... last November.
I've had a difficult time finding a current PPC port of Slackware. Has anyone experimented with building a Slackware base system on a G4 from some other distro, or had any luck with some other approach?
...what is the draw to Slackware? I have used (and loved) both SUSE and Debian for years and use them as my primary systems (along with OS X and Solaris). SUSE has YAST. Debian (and based distros) has the best (in my opinion) package management system. RedHat has....ummmm...well, I'm sure it has something. Anyway, since I've never used Slackware, what are its best qualities? I'm very curious as it seems to garner a lot of respect.
If slackware will work, out of the box, with my Linksys WMP54G wireless card, I'll start using it yesterday.
Anybody know?
The biggest strength of Slackware, for me, is its rock solid stability. It just doesn't crash or do anything weird. It definitely isn't "bleeding edge" (although it does contain the most recent KDE, for example), but that's just fine by me.
I've also grown to appreciate Slack's lack of dependency checking. Basically, Slack just gets out of your way. The KISS principle applies everywhere. I've used Red Hat and Mandrake, but now that I know what I'm doing, I think I'm a Slackware lifer.
I have been a Slackware user since 1996. I've seen it grow all through these years, and even though it didn't get as popular as Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE or Debian, I stuck with them. It's been Slackware from the first Internet server I've installed in 1996 to my new personal server this year. I've never been so proud of my distribution of choice! My thanks goes to Patrick Volkerding for all his effort. He actually replied to my emails years back...however minor my concerns were. Thank you for taking care of your Slackware users.
Slackware has always been releasing the latest software, although this time they sounded 'too Debian' by releasing a 2.4 kernel claiming it was more 'stable' than 2.6. This is a first. They still don't have a packaging tool to match apt. Well, maybe someday... Nonetheless, viva la Slackware!
One of Windows strengths (only) is that you can have multiple versions of dll's. This started with Windows2k.
/usr/lib most non system dlls are in seperate directories of where the apps are installed. When you run an .exe setup program it only copies the dlls that are needed or puts its won dlls in their own private folders.
.so and tools for each version of the app. That way we can run old RH4 apps and Linux apps in FreeBSD without a problem.
Yes the infamouse GP faults were the cause of conflicts and wrong dll versions but Windows tracks each one and applies the right version of the dll for the right app at runtime.
Why can't unix do this? ALso instead of having everything in
Korn who worked some unix services for Windows commented that he liked the idea of having seperate libraries in each folder.
Why can't we do this?
Also many older apps wont run on Linux or emulated well in FreeBSD. Why? Because of linking to newer versions of libraries and tools that are incompatible.
It would be great to have the kernel decide which
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When I started out, I cut my teeth on Mandrake. It was easy, but I did nothing for two weeks but say, "Man! Look at all these fractal programs!" A week later I installed slack...that's when I began to love *nix. The curve went from a slope of zero to exponential. The slackware installer even has a good intro for a newbie. It's nothing to be afraid of.
I'm coming from a Mandrake background, but switched to Slack 9.1 last year.
I upgraded most of my packages via swaret over the past few days, upgraded to KDE 3.2.3, replaced Xfree86 with X.org, upgraded to Mozilla 1.7 etc. And I updated my kernel to 2.6.7 last week.
So am I pretty much running Slack 10.0 already, aside from a few minor packages here and there that might need to be upgraded using swaret?
This means that foobar.dll v1.0 and foobar.dll v1.1 can exist on disk at the same location (to the requesting program).
.NET comes in. There is no more DLL hell. :P
This is already possible in Linux and has been for years (it probably inherited the practice from other unices before it was created). The way that linux handles different versions of the same libraries is actually really nice. You can read about it here . Where the problem comes in is that that either the package manger doesn't like to install multiple versions of the libraries, or the user isn't aware that it is possible. I think that the latter is the more common case. The user sees that they need library version Y, and they have X so they naturally upgrade the package rather than installing it beside the existing one.
This is where
Kind of live WinForms/Avalon
Slackware is a nice distribution, its easy to understand its package system for example. But it has bad binaries/package support.
You can live happily with it if all packages you need are in the distro, which include all packages needed for servers and small offices machines, but it can be a nightmare if youre a home user.
Slackware is a "one man" distribution, the reason for that is its low number of official packages.
And if you need some other software outside of that its better you compile all yourself or youll be in a jungle of amateur made packages.
People with different software and hardware configurations generating packages and spreading it around.
That lead to missing libraries messages (even when you have them), missing new versions of libraries that are on the official distro (but not yet updated), complaints about not finding your remote control (even when you dont have one), binaries compiled with strange options (some missing other unuseful) and so on.
A slackware zealot may say "compile your own", but sometimes you cant, because of time restrictions, or just dont want to waste a lot of time compiling a "one task application" and its dependencies.
And in that situations youre SOL in the jungle, and is not a good experience at all.
Time was, this was real. I had The Linux Bible, which had an old Slackware based on kernel 1.2.13. I took notes for 3 hours before I ever did a thing with the CD. One week later, I was online. No GUI yet, so Lynx was my friend. Another week to get XFree86 up and running (I learned more about video timing than I ever wanted). Two more days, and I had Netscape loaded and running. That's when I knew I had taken the first steps of that fateful journey...
The transition to X.Org from XFree coulnd't have been easier. 1)I backed up my XF86Config file. 2) Removed ALL the XF86 packages. 3) Used swaret to DL and install X.Org 4) Renamed xf86config to xorg.conf and bam it worked right away. --tarballedtux
This is something I've been trying to address to the OSS community. We need to use hard links if the version isn't the same. Install it in the application's directory. That's where it belongs. This would solve all of Linux's dependency problems, IMO.
The music is all around us. I can hear it. Can you?
Actually the LSB says that binaries should be statically linked, except for a very short list of very stable shared libraries. Too bad nobody actually pays any attention to the LSB.
The second way to fix this is to do what .NET did, make assemblies (exe, dlls) strong named. /dev/null. When you actually want the new version of the library, it's really nice to upgrade it and know that the new behavior will apply to all programs. The real problem is that programmers are sloppy about changing their APIs (and also that some dependencies aren't even libraries). C++, unfortunately, really encourages programmers to break binary compatibility, because any change to an exposed class breaks compatibility.
One problem with this type of scheme is that sometimes you upgrade a library because it had a security hole, or perhaps because it had a bug that caused crashes or sent data to
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I'd tried Debian, Mandrake, and a few minor distro's. I don't know why everyone says that slack is hard to configure. Atleast in the newer versions , it isn't. I installed slack 9.1 I think it was. It went without a hitch, not at all confusing compared to debian, although a graphical install would have been nice for anyone new. It finished the install and then restarted. I typed startx. On most computers, it would have been fine. I looked in the file and it was configured, except for my integrated graphics, which I no longer used (put in a GeForce but never disabled integrated). I changed that one line in the file to NV, and X worked. Network worked, CDRoms worked, etc. I don't get why people say its hard to install. Although nongraphical, the install is still menu driven and straight forwards. The configuration is minimal, and its fast and rock solid. I never looked back after that. Swaret works great, and for things not in a slack package, they will usually compile perfectly. GO SLACK!
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Hey cool, same here. First installed slackware 3.6 on my 386. Downloaded all the floppy sets over a 14.4 dial-up connection and installed it. It was great, I remember emailing a KDE guy asking if I could run KDE 1.0 with 4MB of ram. Turns out they recommended about 8MB...
Oh the nostalgia.. I miss the excitement of the discovery in those days.
Now I run Debian, which kicks ass, but it lacks the same kind of excitement and hobby feel as I had back then.
Your points are all perfectly valid. That's why I don't recommend Slackware to the casual user. If you want to see what this whole "compooter" thing is about, run SuSE, Fedora, or (zealots, please have mercy) Windows. :) If you want to have a fairly user-friendly system with minimal viruses and spyware, at low cost, run any of the first two. If you want to get your feet wet, try Knoppix; it doesn't require any drastic alterations to your current system since it's a LiveCD, and it's pretty usable.
If you're knowledgable about Linux, like a hands-on install where you get to manage your system without those pesky wizards and auto-generators getting in the way, don't mind BSD-style FS layouts, and don't expect everything to be handed to you...for God's sake do yourself a favor and run Slackware. You will thank me later.
I should mention that I define "later" as "after you manually install your drivers by looking up the names and opts in the kernel docs and uncommenting the requisite rc.modules entries in vi, exclude your PCMCIA IRQs 7 and 10 (your machine will lock up), call the Korean manufacturer of your monitor (your system is down, right? So you have no network) to figure out what to put in the XFree86Config, and add your SMB connector (missing by default) to your CUPS connector list...etc."
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That sounds eerily familiar... I think most admins that need a stable production system probably end up doing about the same thing!
I was spoiled starting out as a Windows programmer. I hate to say it, but Windows has the best attitude towards backwards compatibility of any mainstream platform I've seen. System APIs are preseved, bug-for-bug, *forever*. If I ship or buy a Windows package today, I'm virtually guaranteed it will run on any Windows platform years into the future. Whereas Linux binaries age like meat in the summer sun.
Perhaps one day a Linux or BSD vendor will get their act together and offer a truly stable system (in the sense of minor upgrades not routinely breaking everything). This will probably require a lot of effort to modularize the various component packages and strictly enforce versioning of interfaces. (Debian seems furthest ahead - e.g. they understand that unstable libraries need a unqie API version for each and every release, regardless of whether the original authors care to provide one)
The LSB seemed like it was intended to move forward in this direction, but instead it just seems to have codified the existing (poor) situation. RedHat provided a pretty good solution (100% compatibility within major releases) but with the discontinuation of support for their low-end distros, Linux software vendors are left with no clear standard target system.
Does anyone know how hard it is to upgrade to the 2.6 kernel if you go for the standard 2.4 install with this dist? Do the seperate installs literally just install different kernels or does it install different versions of libraries too which would need to updated on a manual upgrade?
I have run Slackware since way-back-when, and it has certainly gotten a LOT easier to install/setup than people give it credit for now. Still not the auto-configuration bliss of some distros, but it isn't a painful process anymore either.
I just did a fresh install of 9.1 a couple of days ago to set up a MythTV box. The BTTV-compliant tuner card was automatically recognized, sound (AC97 chipset on the motherboard) just worked, and grabbing the source for Myth and compiling it was no problem. It was a LOT easier than I expected! And a whole lot faster than waiting on Gentoo, which is what I had been running on that machine.
I haven't had to do anything fancy to support CF readers (I have USB and PCMCIA), although I do still manually mount/unmount them at the command line. I've considered setting up supermount or something, but never bothered. My USB scanner Just Works too. I think I had to install XSane myself (been a long time since I did it, my laptop is at Slack 9.0) but again, simple compilation.
I've actually tried just about all the other distributions recently, thinking maybe - just maybe - I might want to switch. But the number one thing that keeps sending me back to Slackware is package management, oddly enough. Everyone keeps saying what a wonderful thing apt or rpm is, and I found that to be true up until I started trying to do something bleeding edge and I had to compile my own stuff. Then it started to get frustrating and irritating. Slackware just trusts you to do the right thing. Or, put another way, gives you just enough rope to hang yourself! Besides that, things just didn't seem to be in the right places. Slackware tends to keep its packages strictly stock. There are a few changes, but they are pretty minor.
I also dislike burning CD:s. When installing FC2, I followed some advice somewhere; the thing to do was to store all ISO:s on an ext2/ext3-partition, mount the first ISO on loopback, copy the vmlinuz & initrd image to /boot, add it to the lilo/grub-menu, reboot, choosing that entry when booting, running the rest from hard drive. Worked nicely :-). Although FC2 didn't (both my sound cards refused to work, tried unmuting things etc. to no avail), so I went back to Debian. But, it was possible to install entirely from hard drive & an old linux partition. You might try doing something similar... (the reason for using ext2/ext3 was that those were the only filesystems understood by the install-kernel before it had loaded modules for reiserfs etc.)