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Slackware Linux 10.2 Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the everyone-remembers-their-first dept.

excelblue writes "Slackware Linux 10.2 has finally been released. This release comes with Linux 2.4.31, with 2.6.13 available in the testing packages and glibc 2.3.5. This time, they've decided to get up with times and switch to Firefox, Thunderbird, and subversion instead of using the Mozilla suite and cvs from the previous distros. Here are Torrents of ISO images."

7 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. My (quick) distro of choice by Punk+Walrus · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I am looking forward to trying this out. Slashdot alerted me to Slack fans, and I have been using it steadily in personal and professional environments for years now. I like LFS and Gentoo, just because I can tweak every living thing out of my hardware and software, but if I need a "quick set and forget" distro just to get a box running, Slackware is hard to beat.

    I don't know why people claim the installation is so hard. I guess the disk partition thing might be intimidating, but then again, I have FDisk'd so many times because Windows/DOS had issues back in the day, I find the two-tone ncurses thing to be a positive boon!

    A hearty congratulations to Pat and all the people who worked for this!

  2. Re:YAY! by RiotXIX · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But there are package management tools. They've been working on it. And they're useful when you want to mass upgrade several packages on your system without having to uninstall (yes I still don't know how to uninstall a generic packages..like when I download something, untar; make; make install : where can I find out where it put all it's stuff?). Having a database/registry of where an application put's it's files is a damn good idea.

    "Updated versions of the Slackware package management tools make it
        easy to add, remove, upgrade, and make your own Slackware packages.
        Package tracking makes it easy to upgrade from Slackware 10.1 to
        Slackware 10.2 (see UPGRADE.TXT). The slackpkg tool in /extra can
        also help update from an older version of Slackware to a newer one,
        and keep your Slackware system up to date. In addition, the new
        slacktrack utility (in extra/) will help you build and maintain
        your own packages."

    Seriously many have a perception of slackware as being dated/non-user friendly, but it's one of the most integrated/structured distros I know - it DOES move forward/evolve with the times, it just keeps it's releases at stable versions.

    --
    "You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
  3. Glad they stuck with 2.4 by m50d · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Others will disagree with me but I still find 2.6 kernels to be unstable more often than not (see my journal). As a more server-oriented distribution, stability is perhaps more important with slackware than many distributions, and it's good to see Pat's priorities reflect that.

    --
    I am trolling
    1. Re:Glad they stuck with 2.4 by planetoid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I upgraded from the default 2.4.x kernel that came with my Slackware 10.1 distro to 2.6.13, and I now notice that glibc halts execution of programs in which it detects a memory leak (at least that's what I understand that "corrupt double-linked list (blah blah blah)" error is about, correct me if I'm wrong).

      I find it curious that this didn't happen in 2.4.x -- why would the kernel I use affect how glibc operates and detects potentially fatal memory errors? Wouldn't glibc recognize it regardless of kernel?

      Anyway, this rendered a few programs (all unofficial ones that didn't come with Slackware, of course) unusable; setting environment variable MALLOC_CHECK_ to 0 is supposed to let the program run without problem from glibc but it just segfaults. But then again, maybe that's for the better? None of those programs were must-haves; of course it would be nice if people learned how to debug their programs and be more hawk-eyed about their use of new and delete/malloc and free.

      I would go back to the 2.4.x kernel for the slightly-better stability but it didn't include hyperthreading, and Doom 3 was running like a slideshow. Doom 3 now has better performance on my Linux system than it does in Windows, and KDE doesn't take forever to start up either (like 3 seconds as opposed to the 10-15 from before). I'm pretty sure Einstein@Home, LHC@Home, and ProteinPredictor@Home also are benefitting from the significant increase in speed as more of the processor's potential is utilized when I run it.

      --
      Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
  4. Slackware's purpose? by Zemplar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now that you can get a 'real' UNIX for free, what are the compelling reasons to use Slackware GNU/Linux whose primary function is to be "...the most "UNIX-like" Linux distribution out there."

  5. Patricks Health by nighty5 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Last time I heard he was very ill, anyone have the latest?

  6. History of slackware? by hackstraw · · Score: 3, Interesting


    Slackware was my first linux distro. I learned a bunch from it when I first got into linux in 1994 with Slackware 1.something. It used the kernel version 0.99pl13. That was a long time ago.

    I'll tell you, it was the best OS I could run at the time. I also thought it was cool that the default computer name back then was "Dark Star", which is a Grateful Dead song for those that don't know. The system was very modular, and it was relatively easy to install. Yes, I installed via sneakernet on 1.44meg floppies. The second time I installed it, I downloaded it over a 14.4 modem, possibly slower.

    I did more reading when downloads took days at a time :)