Slashdot Mirror
First Impressions of Slackware 10
Eugenia writes "Michael Hall wrote an informative article about the first impressions of the recently released Slackware 10, mostly discussing the domain Slack excels: the server. Michael concludes that 'Slackware 10 is a well-rounded distribution that will continue to make a first-class Linux server platform. Changes in the new release are incremental, not radical, and Slackware remains one of the most stable, reliable and flexible distributions available today.' The article also sports 14 screenshots."
needs better package management. otherwise it is sweet
It has great package managment, no dependencies, swift upgrades, simplistic interface, doesent use some obscure packaging format or anything like that either, just plain tar.gz =)
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
I want the same stability that people want in a server on my desktop. If there are a few programs that are missing, usually a trip over to Linux Packages is enough. If not, take the time to learn about compiling (however use 'checkinstall' rather than just installing the compiled program--makes it much easier to maintain a clean system). Package management tools such as Swaret and slaptget have made it easier than ever to maintain an up to date system (with options to update to the latest security fixes in the specified version (say 10.0) or to the -current tree.
Slack on!
Yes, agreed with the idea that it's best for servers. I use it to power all my web servers, and without all the bells and whistles, I can really keep a firm grasp on the very few things I actually need running. No 5 CD install, just a very narrow footprint perfect for hosting. All my mentors used Slackware too, so how could it be wrong???
Nothing is foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
really not all that much different from Slackware 9.1 as far as I can tell. Just the usual package updates as you would expect. The core of what makes Slackware Slackware (installation, directory layout, config files, pkgtools) is pretty much the same. But maybe for me the difference seems even less, since I've been synching with Slackware-current every few weeks for about a half year now.
I have also found the default no-deps system better than apt in debian.
However, for installing some multipackage stuff (for example Gnome 2) there just has to be a dependency manager. That's what swaret is for.
But that's slack. No bloat. Anywhere. You want it bloated, punk, you put it in your frikking self.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I have it in use since day one (including the excellent Dropline-Gnome suite. Pat did a great job as far as it concerns me. One downside is that OpenOffice.org and Evolution are not included due to space restrictions. Another one maybe, that you can't install the 2.6.7 kernel from within the installer. No big deal, though, since all you need to do for an upgrade is a simple installpkg.
Aside that, it's a lightning fast distro that hasn't failed on me yet. Also, IMHO the greatest distro for starters since learning under Slack is learning it "the right way" and will help you later on with other unixlike systems.
Or, in other words, it needs package management.
Slackware has had swaret for quite some time. I've been using it since 9.0 and it's come in handy many times. It checks each package install to see if all libraries are up to date and recommends, downloads and installs whatever you're missing.
First thing I noticed which was different was when the setup detected my ntfs partition /dev/hda1 and added it automatically to /etc/fstab to mount at startup. I thought this was a nice feature especially for the newcommers who always need this feature when dualbooting and not knowing much about linux.
Overall, the difference is updated packages with the obvious replacement of xfree to xorg which was a great move by Pat. (like he's done any wrong move! pfft).
Slack 10 is a great solid distro which I reccomend also for people with slow connections cause it comes with source packages like the source of 2.6.7 kernel.
IMO, the best distro to learn the basics in & out of linux.
I've tried plenty of linux distros(slack, RH, gentoo, deb, mand, suse) and freebsd, out of all of them slackware is by far my favorite. Some peopel complain about a package manager, but ive never been a fan of those anyway, i prefer to do it all by source. i honestly havent noticed too much of a difference between 9.1 and 10 aside from updated software(most of which i had already updated) I, personaly, see slack as a straight-to-the-point distro; which is exactly what i want. Plenty of oportunity to update anything you want. kernel 2.6.8-rc1 works great with slack 10 =) [/rant]
To expand on what a couple of people have said, slackware has had a default XF86Config file for quite some time (always?) However in the past it defalted to using the Framebuffer X driver, and it 10 it defaults to using the Vesa driver. In both cases you need to change the XF86Config (now xorg.conf) to use a specific driver if you want decent performance.
This change is not (directly at least) related to the change to Xorg - they could have done it with XFree86 as well. Also while I agree that Xorg is the way to go, alot of the technical praise they are getting is misdirected. There is really almost signifcantly different between it and XFree86 4.4, and most of the improvements that people see in Xorg are really improvements in XFree 86 since the 4.3 series.
There are package management systems out there for slack that even check dependencies. I recommend checking out swaret or slapt-get
I wish that it had some Apt-Get sort of thing (besides Swaret/Slapt-get which have a low package base in comparison.
Although slackware's 'pkgtool' is rather disappointing tool, you can install NetBSD's pkgsrc for slackware, and it can handle and install all your packages. I have found pkgsrc to be very useful, and very eloquent.
For a walkthrough on getting it working in slackware, Marrti Kuperinen has created an easy guide that can get you up and running with pkgsrc on Slackware in no time.
Just install FOX toolkit 1.2.7 and PathFinder comes with it. Make sure you read its ./configure file to figure out how to enable AA fonts on FOX, because the default is ugly non-AA fonts... Regarding customizing the colors of the FOX apps to match your Gnome's, email Eugenia from osnews, she should have a conf file for FOX. :)
.tgz is Slackwares packages for use with pkg-tools. It contains a setup script, descritption, a file hierarchy ment for unpackaging on the root dir and probably some more subtle differences. When you download a .tgz that doesn't have this and you try to run installpkg on it you end up with mess / (and a hot head.)
I had that problem for a while, happened to me when i was scrtewing around with the screen resolution in lilo.conf. It would boot just fine, but once i started X, if i ctl+alt+Fx then the screen looked all screwy(angry fruit salad!), i just set vga = normal and all worked out great for me.
Slackware is for people who want a classic UNIX system. Debian, Red Hat, etc. all have their places, but Slack is for people who grew up on, administer, use, and love UNIX.
I don't think the screenshots and the article are related.
The article is by Michael Hall while the screenshots (seems like they) are from Eugenia's (the article submitter and OSNews' Editor) Slackware destop.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Not sure what you mean by "free", but Patrick V. has been selling Slackware online for quite some time. It would be nice if people actually bought it.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Slackware posts its changelog on the web. All you need to do is stop by every so often and see what's been updated. Then you download what you want and install it. I suppose if you really want it to flash at you like other distributions, you could jury rig one of those webpage trackers to go "beep" when the page is updated.
Seriously, this illustrates one of the attractive features of Slackware. I don't need to turn over control of my machine to some unknown update script on some unknown server. I install what I choose to install. For example, I compile my own Mozilla rather than installing the version that comes with Slackware. The last thing I want is for some whizbang tool to install its version of Mozilla on top of mine.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
... static link the binary in one of the bin directories ...
Static link? I am sure you mean creating a *symbolic* link, because that is what the "-s" in the "ln -s" command stands for.
Static linking is something entirely different, and has to do with the way you compile a binary. A statically linked binary includes all the libraries it depends on in the binary itself, whereas a dynamically linked binary just refers refers to the shared library files and the linking is done at runtime.
Yes, it was easy to bootstrap pkgsrc when I used it on Slackware. I do not remember any major problems. It helps to be comfortable with make and autoconf tools - the good and bad of open source is it's such a moving target.
Pkgsrc can coexist with other packaging systems. In one case, we had a couple aging Slackware 7 servers running. We did not want to take them out of service but needed to run a new program on them. By adding a pkgsrc tree, we got a whole new generation of compiler, autoconf tools, etc without affecting the legacy bits.
What would probably not work well would be mixing an interpreter from one packaging system (Perl, Python, Erlang, etc) with modules from another packaging system.
There may be more software available in the "native" packages for a given OS than with pkgsrc. OTOH we like that pkgsrc gives us a consistent interface for config management across several OSes. YMMV.
I keep my sources for most of my programs. If I want to remove the program, I simply go to the source directory, switch to root, and type:
"make uninstall"
Viola.
The majority of programs that use a Makefile for installation will have no problems uninstalling a program with "make uninstall". I've been doing this since I started using Slackware 7, and have never had a problem.
A more conventional way is to simply make a Slackware package with "makepkg". It only takes a few seconds more. "Checkinstall" is another option, but it doesn't come with Slackware by default.
My favorit program for creating slackware packages is 'checkinstall'. You can find it in extra/ directory of Slackware10 CD3.
After you compile program from source, insted of writing `make install` you should write `checkinstall`. Few simple questions (yes,no) and you got a new package.
If you don't like the new program you can remove it with the good old 'removepkg' command. No need to browse all directories and hunt down files one by one.
Something more, the package file is saved and you can install it on another system!
There is another program for automatic package creating in the extra/ directory. It is the very same program Pat is using to build slack.
Happy Hacking