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Newly Released: Slackware Linux Essentials, 2d Ed.
VincenzoRomano writes to point out that as of a few days ago, "Slackware Linux has its second revision of the Slackware Linux Essentials book. It is a major revision of the the reference book for Slackware users and is now an official Slackware project.
Slackware Linux is the oldest and yet pretty active Linux distribution born from an idea by Patrick Volkerding and that turned 12 a few months ago. It follows the KISS(Keep it Simple, Stupid!) philosophy, which seems to be one of the reasons of its long life.
The book itself has been created by David Cantrell, Logan Johnson and Chris Lumens and is available both in printed (dead-tree) form and in electronic form (HTML/DocBook/PS/PDF). Whether your are a Slackware aficionado or not, the book deserves a look at least!"
Slackware is much easier to maintain than debian or fedora installations because it lacks package management, so you're not constantly pressured to upgrade the software. It's kind of like running windows used to be, before it harassed the user with monthly "updates" that require "reboots".
Badass Resumes
A downloadable PDF or HTML version of the book would be cool.
Thanks Slackware.
Slackware Linux 10.1 & Slackware Essentials, 2nd $60
Got Slack? T-Shirt - Extra Large $16
Support for Linux, excellent educational material and the most efficient way to run a server, $priceless$
Its a bit expensive, compared to http://linuxfromscratch.org/
but worthy nonetheless.
That was back in the day, when you had to read the Makefiles and add and remove the appropriate "-D" options to get all sorts of fun stuff. Slack was lots of fun. I'm really happy I cut my teeth on it, but goodness, I don't have the time to track security flaws any more. I'll happily let RedHat, Fedora Foundation, or Debian tell me when there is a patch I need to be worried about. I still hand hack all my config files. Sometimes, I hand hack the RedHat specific config files, but I still read all the scripts and know all the commands to boot strap a machine from scratch if I really need to.
Kirby
Whether your are a Slackware aficionado or not, the book deserves a look at least!
I am not a Slackware aficionado. If anything I am a Fedora aficionado. I've used Debian back in the day (1998) and Redhat as well with a little SuSE thrown in for good flavor over the years. Why should I look at a book speificially targeting Slackware when I am not an aficionado? Just curious...You know, that was my thought for a small fraction of a second until I realized it was a joke...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Or are you just incredibly lazy?
It's sort of like forgetting to pay homage to GNU/RMS, boarders on sacrilegious, and they take away your "geek card", and ask you to leave. That sort of thing.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Paying homage to GNU/RMS is so nouveau geek.
Sorry...
I read through the page, and didn't see the links, and then posted on impulse.
Failure to recognize the links for what they were may be somehow related to my only getting two hours of sleep in the past day and a half.
I think it would pay you to take a look at a more recent Slackware distibution. Quite a lot's happened since the 3.X days.
Once on the security mailing list you get advised whenever a new package has been updated to fix some security hole, and then you can just upgradepkg from the new package, if you need to.
Sorry, nothing profound to put here! (http://www.abacus4.com/
I've been pretty happy with Swaret http://www.swaret.org/ for package management on Slackware. It takes care of regular security updates for many of my servers, and does not ask for any personal information like up2date did.
After dealing with rpms for awhile with Mandrake, I decided to move to Debian. I found Debian's package management system to be so much better than the way rpm is "set up" under most distros. Slackware seems to to be a step in the other direction, but the simplicity of it does seem enticing. I just can't wait through all that compiling!
Even though Slackware provides CDs 3 and 4 with the sources to all the packages, the default way is to install binary packages. There is also plenty of websites on the internet that feature additional slackware packages. I think you are confusing Slack with source-based distros, such as Gentoo.
Contrary to what many people seem to think, Slackware does have package management. There is a very clear package format that should be followed when making all Slackware packages, and there are official tools for using them that Patrick wrote (installpkg, upgradepkg, removepkg, pkgtool, makepkg, explodepkg).
Perhaps what the author was getting at is the lack of dependency checking that Slackware default package management software does not implement. Swaret is a popular tool that does support dependency checking and many other features that Debian and the other distros have been using for awhile.
Personally, I find Slackware amazingly unobtrusive. The simplicity of the Slackware model and Patrick tasteful design have really kept it alive all these years as other distros began to get in the way of their users.Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
I run my business on Slackware. It's the first distro I learned to use and even though I've tried others, I keep coming back to Slack!
I always compile from source in slackware because often it's easier than mucking around with packages whenever dependencies are involved. I also get the most current version, and I can put it in the right place. Using utilities like checkinstall makes this almost painless. However, having recently put gentoo on my laptop, I am having to make excuses for not converting all my other machines to gentoo as well (my current one is laziness). It also compiles everything from source, but finds all the other stuff you need to compile too, downloads it all, and keeps track of everything, so it's more than not painless, it's a pleasure.
I've tried some building some big programs with lots of dependencies from source in slackware. Some I have succeeded (mplayer, gEDA), some I have failed (gnucash, miserably), but gentoo gets them all right with no problems at all.
Package managers are good for people who don't know what's going on, but they're even better for those who do. Because both parties benefit from the convenience, but only the latter can work around when they break. I guess what I'm trying to say is if there could ever be an heir to slackware, gentoo is probably it. But if you're like me, you spent a lot of time tweaking your slackware machine to get it where you like it. The point is that I achieved the same tweak level in a fraction of the time with gentoo.
Read the sig, read the sig, ziggy ziggy ziggy zig!