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."

Comments

Re:slack 10

[Eudial]

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 =)

Stable, easy to administer AND a fast install

[dhartman]

I've been a "Slacker" from way back. (version 3.0) Slackware first appealed to me because it didn't have all the fancy-fandangled configuration utilities which prevented a new user from really understanding the inner workings of a Linux distro. I've learned (through just a _few_ mistakes) all the little details and now am quite comfortable working on almost any distro. (although I rarely use anything other than Slackware, even for desktop boxes).

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!

Re:Stable, easy to administer AND a fast install

[The Conductor]

If you want to fit a complete linux system into a small (say 500MB) space then slack is probably your best bet.

I was able to put Slack on a laptop with 340 MB hard drive. Installed just enough to get Abiword working, plus Pine & Links and just about nothing else. It barely fits. Abiword and its Gnome library dependencies take almost half of the drive space. A smaller but less capable alternative is Ted, a *.rtf editor. I had to use XFree86 version 3.3.6 (from Slack 7.1) because the newer versions don't support the obsolete video chip set.

The ldd command is your friend when doing a minimal Slack install. It will tell you which *.so files you need to run a particular program. Oh, and rm -r /usr/doc/*, and ln var/log/syslog -> dev/nul; every byte counts!

Slackware 10 is

[mst76]

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.

My impression

[Lispy]

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.

Re:slack 10

[killermookie]

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.

Re:My first impression...

[pavon]

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.

Re:slack 10

[Kaliban923]

There are package management systems out there for slack that even check dependencies. I recommend checking out swaret or slapt-get

Re:I love slackware

[eeg3]

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.

Have You Bought Your Slackware Today?

[reallocate]

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.

Be In Charge of Your Machine

[reallocate]

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.