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Slackware Linux 10.2 Released
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."
Time to test the 2Gb/s Internet connection with some torrent seeds
Well done to the Slackware team on another nice release of the nicest, most stable and most usable (for admins) Linux release there is.
Really, the completr lack of package management and silly whizzy clicky admin tools makes Slackware a lllot easier to admin when you have 120 servers running it.
well, if i understood this submission correctly, it implies that mozilla & cvs now are missing - that's not true.
:)
it contains mozilla-1.7.11 and cvs-1.11.20
at least in latest-current that should be identical to 10.2
Rich
until 2.7 will be split and 2.6 stabilized a bit, i agree that 2.4 should be the default - that's what most people use in servers where they don't want to upgrade kernel in a couple of weeks.
:)
and slackware is fully 2.6 ready, to use it just compile it, dropin replace, lilo & it's done.
oh, i forgot that you also have a precompiled one in testing that also should be easy to deploy
Rich
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!
slamd64 has been released with many quite similar changes. What a coincidence, 'eh? Grab it now if your CPU is of the x86-64 persuation.
Rob
Re: up with the times... Slackware has never tried to be up with the times. They're just now allowing 2.6 kernel (from the installer). Firefox is still a 1.0.x release so its not as stable as the mozilla suite has been (though its pretty good). I think Pat just lets everyone else work out the bugs before he incorporates it into his release. Stability and Ease of Use.
Slackware has 28 distros based on it (29 if you include the new PocketLinux), some of which are trying to be "Enterprise Level."
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
I could:
a) Get some work done tonight so I don't fail classes.
or
b) Install some new Slackware on my primary beast.
I think I hear the torrent's call . . . . .
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."
or as root:
Hope that helps. Slackware subscriber since 7.0
Is the snappiest distro out there in terms of overall responsiveness?
True that it is the oldest Linux distro?
If so why does it not seem to have the mind share that Fedora, SuSE, Mandriva and [K]ubuntu appear to enjoy?
Last time I heard he was very ill, anyone have the latest?
You have no problems pimping ads and subscriptions on /., but you won't link to the store of the oldest linux distro out there.
You're in for a long wait, the development model changed and now 2.6.x is unstable, 2.6.x.y is bugfixes, so the latest 'stable' version is 2.6.x.y where x is one lower than the current development version and y is the highest you can find. 2.7 can be years away, if it ever happens at all.
Vector Linux, based on Slackware, is the best personal-use distro I've seen. Got all of Slack's stability, basic package management system that doesn't try to do anything for you, but set up a bit more for desktop use. And it's FAST, the fastest binary-based distro I know of by a long shot.
http://www.vectorlinux.com/
Now I just need to wait for them to update so they're compatible with 10.2...
Thanks. I assume you mean this?
:-)
From the changelog, and for anyone else interested:
gnome/*: Removed from -current, and turned over to community support and distribution. I'm not going to rehash all the reasons behind this, but it's been under consideration for more than four years. There are already good projects in place to provide Slackware GNOME for those who want it, and these are more complete than what Slackware has shipped in the past. So, if you're looking for GNOME for Slackware -current, I would recommend looking at these two projects for well-built packages that follow a policy of minimal interference with the base Slackware system:
http://gsb.sf.net/ http://gware.sf.net/
There is also Dropline, of course, which is quite popular. However, due to their policy of adding PAM and replacing large system packages (like the entire X11 system) with their own versions, I can't give quite the same sort of nod to Dropline. Nevertheless, it remains another choice, and it's _your_ system, so I will also mention their project:
http://www.dropline.net/gnome/
Please do not incorrectly interpret any of this as a slight against GNOME itself, which (although it does usually need to be fixed and polished beyond the way it ships from upstream more so than, say, KDE or XFce) is a decent desktop choice. So are a lot of others, but Slackware does not need to ship every choice. GNOME is and always has been a moving target (even the "stable" releases usually aren't quite ready yet) that really does demand a team to keep up on all the changes (many of which are not always well documented). I fully expect that this move will improve the quality of both Slackware itself, and the quality (and quantity) of the GNOME options available for it.
Folks, this is how open source is supposed to work. Enjoy.
I'll look into the alternatives, though it's still sad I won't be able to depend on their stability as I would the base system.
He had Actinomycosis.r e_PAT/
Brave guy to keep working as sick as he was.
You can rad about it here-
http://linuxreviews.org/news/2004/11/17_0_slackwa
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
XP installation is not that bad .... it is still shows signs of its ancient NT 3.51 history though.
Also, the second stage, where you enter your details and devices get configured, sucks, mostly due to poor feedback and how painfully slow it is. Give me a Windows 95 install process anytime over XP install. And then, once you get it going, you still have to configure > 90% of your important hardware because the OS doesn't have adequate drivers for them.
Whereas the slackware install, I can tell it what partitions to use for swap and install. Then tell it what packages (in detail) I want installed, and once it has installed the packages get it to install LILO. And thats about it. Its much faster then an XP install, and lets me choose all what to install.
Once the system reboots, I can actually go about configuring the hardware and network, without a slow or buggy interface in the way.
I didn't think people -reinstalled- Slackware ...
...
All this talk about going home and reinstalling 10.2 over 10.1
Why not just update your packages or kernel and be done with it
Here are the Magnet URI links. The trackers are having problems. Connect this way...
A 5L
W ES
Q ZK
G SN
Note that slashdot mangles URI's so ther is NO space before the last two charachters like it prints here...just get rid of the space
Disk 1
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:YYXZAJR2B3WFBOZCWCFXUSZBOA2MR
Disk 2
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:YWPGO6H445YQILY5A5XYGSZATPQCP
Disk3 Source
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:FVUYDWUGGYSDXS3CH6KU4SDOEJIJK
Disk 4 Source and Extras
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:PVCGFALOO52JJOSEHJA7YCIHHWERH
Crap, I held out for 2 weeks hoping they would come out with 10.2. So got tired of waiting, downloaded and installed 10.1 LAST NIGHT until 11:45! GRRRR.... I just wasted 2 cds on 10.1... Oh well, at least I don't have to download firefox now... seperately...
Checkinstall is your friend. You'll never have to type "make install" again. Instead, run checkinstall at the "make install" stage, and it builds a package for your distro (it handles .rpm, .deb, and .tgz based distros) and installs it. You can then just use your distro's package management tool, in Slack's case pkgtool, to remove it at a later time.
I think it's in the extras directory on the second Slack CD, if memory serves correctly.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
I've been installing Slackware from bootable CDs for a number of years now. Making a boot floppy isn't as easy as it was in the past either because kernels and such have grown beyond the space limitations of a floppy.
Burn the ISO to CD and boot it. Disc 2 has (at least in the past) a number of troubleshooting tools on it when you boot. It's sort of a rescue disc. (I say at least in the past because my 10.1 discs are not working that way, though I suspect it is a bad burn.)
I was looking for the point at which they switched to bootable CDs and more info on the boot/root floppy situation, but Slackware.com is coming up blank. Maybe somebody else knows.
Rich
Vector Soho, a slackware derivative, is worth looking at. KDE, OpenOffice etc. As fast and light as you can be, with KDE. Has the very nice personal database package tellico with it. A collection manager, but you can customise it to be anything you want. In a small office environment this is a very reasonable choice on older hardware. Installs very easily. You can get used compaqs or dells with P3s and run this stuff quite acceptably fast, and be very secure and stable. Easier for ordinary users not to have multiple file managers, mail clients etc. Great for charities and small low budget educational insititutions.
Anyways, I thought I'd mention that this is the first official release of Slackware in which there is no Gnome. Patrick has (perhaps wisely) left Gnome to be an add-on supported by 3rd parties.
MISCONCEPTIONS FALSE: Slackware uses a very simple package management system that accomplishes two things. 1. it allows you to track files installed. 2. allows you to upgrade to newer versions (yes there is versioning). And as a bonus, your not bogged down with dependancies.... oh wait you want cyclical dependancies??? FALSE: Why? because it still uses 2.4 kernel? Please! stability is the issue here. Purchase a RedHat Advanced server and you'll find it STILL uses 2.4. You cant please everyone all the time, but you can still produce a quality product with proven technology. AD-HOMINIM: This argument is too often used against Slackware in general. For what it is, an "everything is a file" operating system, you must expect to have to get to the command line eventually. If your using it as a server in place of another Unix OS, its not any harder to manage. If your using it to replace RedHat or SuSe, still, its not any harder, and with the added bonus that you dont have as much bloat (did i mention cyclical dependancies?). TRUE: So is Linus Torvolds, and as far as direction, every company, ceo, lead developer must make thier own decisions and you just cant please everyone all the time.
Before the mods make me -1 troll, let me just say Slackware is not perfect, but nothing is. I dont like the fact that PAM will probably never be added
I use it as a desktop and a server. My servers are usually stripped down and single serve boxes, and slackware is a perfect fit. By trade, I work with Solaris, AIX, and RedHat. The only reason I dont push Slack at work is that my company wants to spend the money to have a finger to point at (specifically a large company to point at) when a problem arises.
But in the 5 years i've been using slackware, I've never encountered a show stopper.
You can also try SlAMD64, a Slackware-based distro compiled for AMD64. They just updated for Slackware 10.2.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
... and the only big problem I have with it is that in order to get it just how I like it from a stock install, I have to do a lot of customisation. This is one of Slack's strengths - it's easy to tweak - but it does take time.
From time to time I think about trying a Slack-based distribution which is focused more narrowly on desktop use, but the package selections are never quite right... so I'd end up trying to tweak them as well. In which case, might as well stay with the original.
Ah, Slackware. Frustrating. Beautiful. Just like a woman, but without the breasts. And, in all probability, the closest most of us will ever get to a woman.
We use slackware as our primary distro for our servers, so I set up a private mirror of slackware with a slackware-mirror-making-tool that syncs with multiple mirrors simultaneously. The tool keeps track of successful transfers and errors. Apparently, some mirrors aren't really pulling their weight (slackware.com is when it couldn't find the file on any host):
Rcvd Err Host
100 0 slackware.mirrors.easynews.com
87 0 slackware.cs.utah.edu
18 7 ftp.slackware.com
8 0 slackware.mirrors.tds.net
7 99 carroll.cac.psu.edu
0 105 ftp.oceighty.net
0 106 mirrors.usc.edu
0 105 ftp.cs.stevens-tech.edu
There have been de facto standards for this for decades, and standard layouts for Linux for years. If package developers pick random install locations, that's their foolishness. (This applies to any O/S, not just Linux.)
Having a database/registry of where an application put's it's files is a damn good idea.
Having standard places is equally important.
you had me at #!
Slackware is a special Linux distribution, the fact that it's being maintained and directed by one man (of course with a lot of other contributors) is baffling to me.
...I used these because they offered a Quick-Fix...everything worked from scratch...well...nearly everything that is...except from compilation of other sources, windows mediaplayer formats etc. etc. And hoo-and-behold if you should dare to venture into compilation on your own....then you'd be in knee deep with problems, why? Because these packages makes you dependent on packages, it makes you a slave to downloading RPM for "your-package" and if you want to do things on your own...there's simply too much to learn for a beginner because of all the dependencies and installs you must do (and KNOW) before you can do anything useful at all.
o w-jack)
but that's not the point here. The point is
that Slackware comes with tools to make you
independent! It already installs a TON of
utilities, libs, devs, compilers etc. to make
your life easier when you want to do stuff on
your own instead of being a package-whore.
It's baffling because with the 8-10 years I've got behind me now...trying and TRYING to get Linux distro's to work for me...so I can leave Windows forever - Slackware is the ONLY Linux that made me switch completely.
Yes... I'm now officially an Slackware Fanboy! But what's wrong with being a fan? I love this distro - it just works!
Back in the heydays when I used Mandrake (now Mandriva) and SuSE
It's possible that a lot of you reading this using (insert-your-favourite-package-here) will go into "flame-shock" and tell me that (your-package-will-do-this-and-that-and-I-dont-kn
That's what I like about Slackware! I'm free here, not "strategically" controlled by a corporate that figures out WHAT to bring me so I can "somewhat" be steered into the direction they want me to take by handicapping me doing stuff/learning on my own!
It's also the only package that made myself completely independant from windows, I can see whatever I want in Slack, configure the heck out of it, because of all the utilities and (smart hints and docs by the man himself) I've learned gradually what Linux is all about...and now I don't need to sit in a user-group and feel like an idiot just because I don't know jack even after 10 years with Linux...simply because Slackware teaches me to do stuff on my own and in fact encourages it.
Got slack?! Yeah - you bet!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
It's story time....and before the flamewar begins, let me just say I am telling this story to illustrate my point...so cool it.
.wav file I had lying around. And how do I change the appearance of my desktop? What if I want to change my window manager? I couldn't answer these questions or any of the many others I had. Over the next week or so, I poked around on what felt like 100 different websites/fourms and was able to solve a few of my problems. I even learned all about RPM hell when I tried to install the proper mp3 codec package. As you might imagine, it didn't take long for me to abandon Red Hat. It wasn't that I didn't like it, I simply didn't know how to use it.
In the spring of 2003, I decided I was ready for Linux and somehow I ended up with discs for Redhat 9.0. Yes boys and girls, this is in the days before Fedora. A little disc partitioning, a few questions and a half hour of waiting later, and Red Hat was up and running. When it was done, I had a fully working Linux system....almost. I couldn't listen to my vast mp3 collection, but I know my audio card worked because I could play the random
Rewind a few months to when I was investigating the various Distros. I looked at Suse, Mandrake, Red Hat, Slackware, Gentoo, Debian, and probably some others. For whatever reason, I remember thinking that Slack's site just looked right. My impression of Linux at the time made me feel like it shouldn't be a product of a big company, but rather the efforts of a dedicated person(s). This notion ruled out Suse and Mandrake. At the same time, Gentoo and Debian seemed too hardcore. I'm not sure why I didn't go with Slack to begin with, but after the failed RH attempt, I went for it. Oddly enough, I reached this conclusion the day after Slack 9.1 dropped. Add to that the fact that I discovered the forums at LinuxQuestions.org right around this same time (if you're a linux newb, these _are_ the forums you need), and I had a shiny new distro, and a community of people working through the same kinks I was.
The Slack install was definitely more involved than RH, at least so much as to require a lot more input from me. By the time it was over, I already felt like I knew more, and little did I know what was waiting for me. When the install was done, I had a linux system which worked, but instead of staring at a highly customized KDE, I was looking at the command line (gasp!!). Bring on the fun...While I still didn't know how to config X, how to chose a window manager, how to set up ALSA or countless other things I needed to do, I also knew that I had to find out. RH did it for me and kept me ignorant - it took decisions out of my hands, which is one of the things I don't like about M$. Slack made me do it and in the process, learn it.
I've been on Slack ever since (except for my job and the wife's PC, where switching isn't an option) and although some things were a challenge, I couldn't be happier.
The point of this story is that Slack is a worthwhile distro and IS accessible to newb's.
lack of good automatic package management, [..] lack of all the advanced stuff like Project Utopia
By omitting nonessential bells and whistles, Patrick Volkerding doesn't have to waste his time and energy QA'ing them. He puts more QA hours into features essential to the operation of a production server, instead. This is of critical importance. QA effort cannot entirely eliminate the bugs and incompatabilities within and between packages, but the more hours are spent doing it the closer the distribution can get to this ideal form. Stability and security are the most essential characteristics of a production server.
lack of newbie-friendly administration tools
Don't need them. You may be right that their absence has prevented newcomers from adopting Slackware, though. It would be nice if more companies based their services on Slackware machines -- their services would be more robust, my skills would be more in demand :-) and it would result in more third-party QA'ing of Slackware packages. But I can't bring myself to care too much because the more popular Slackware has become over the years, the more packages Patrick has agreed to incorporate into the distribution to satisfy a wider audience. "More packages" is bad because ...
the relatively small selection of official packages
"More packages" is bad because the number of relations between packages increases in proportion to the square of the number of packages, and the number of incompatabilities between packages is proportional to this number of relations. The smaller the package set, the more effective Patrick's QA hours are at weeding out incompatabilities in the distribution as a whole. In fact I think Slackware has gotten somewhat overbloated with packages, and would welcome a little trimming of the fat. (Of course, what I consider fat might be necessary to someone else's business, so perhaps it's best that this is left up to Patrick, who gets a more gestalt picture.)
As an aside, I suspect what is hurting Slackware's wider adoption the most are its de-emphasis on desktop environments (it actually does pretty well at this, just not as well as some other distributions) and the popular misconception that the newest possible version of software is necessarily the best. In my experience, the decision to press a distribution into production service is often driven by what the IT elite at the company have running on their desktops. (This is more true in small companies, and less true in larger companies, where issues like availability of support by contract are more important. Though, here too Slackware comes up short.) Since Slackware holds little appeal to the desktop user, it does not take advantage of this vector. Also, since Patrick follows the sound, traditional practice of selecting for inclusion only those versions of software which are stable, the software which ships with Slackware is usually not the newest. If you look at the Slackware changelog, you can see various notes of the form "foo version x.y.13 exhibited such-and-such problems, reverted back to foo version x.y.12". Which is the way it should be done.
Inserting gratuitous plug here for my Code of Engineering.
-- TTK
Ask and ye shall recieve.
Slackware has had bootable CDs since at least 3.9/4.0 (4.0 was basically 3.9 with a 2.2 kernel) using floppy emulation all the way up to 8.0 (which gave you a choice of a 2.2 or 2.4 kernel). Starting with 8.1, Slackware has used el torito (I think I spelled that right) bootable CD images. Lots of older BIOS's won't boot an el torito CD, so I always keep one 8.0 live CD handy for rescue operations on those. IIRC, some AMD64 724-in motherboards shipping with a flakey BIOS that didn't like el torito CDs either. Again, IIRC, these were mostly Emachines, which would explain everything.
Slackware, what else when it must be secure, stable, and easy?
Every day I tell myself I'll only READ /., but sometimes I just can't resist replying...
"And as a bonus, your not bogged down with dependancies.... oh wait you want cyclical dependancies???"
apt-get resolves cyclical dependancies. Dependancy handling only fails in cases where humans would have trouble too: incorrect package information, or impossible situations.
None of the other three points interest me. I don't care of my distro is behind (obviously, since I'm comparing Slack with Debian). I don't care if it's hard for other people to use (I'm not them). I don't care if the leader is Our Lord Satan. As long as it's Free Software, the leader's quirks are immaterial.
But the one thing a distribution SHOULD do is integrate packages in a way that does something for its users. Slackware does not compete in this regard. The only rational reason to use Slack is that it's what you're used to.
Also note that Torvald said at the onset of 2.6, that the kernel developer group would not be ultimately responsible for stability issues. (If you have a bug, and they don't see it on their hardware, its not their problem.) He expects the Linux distributors to follow up on undesirable bugs in varying configurations. That is also part of the reason for the four digit releases; they give distributors a way to track their changes to the kernel.
So, when Patrick puts out a 2.6 kernel, if he's only going by what kernel.org releases, there are bound to be bugs; which either he fixes, or you will have to go to Red Hat, SuSE, or someone else's kernel implementation for the fix.
What it means to Slackers: just because its an even number kernel, doesn't mean its a stable kernel, or even a kernel that will not undergo significant change in a few months. Not encouraging for someone who insists on kernel stability and an entity accountable to address bug problems (the OSDL is not). Me? I don't run 2.6 kernels, though I'm looking forward to do so soon (even before 2.7 is official).
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
DVD ISO Torrent
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