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An Old Hacker Slaps Up Slackware
cdlu writes "What do you get when you mix an old hacker with an old distribution? A good old review of the recently released Slackware 10.2." Joe Barr over at Linux.com (owned by the same company as Slashdot) lays down his thoughts on everything from the install to reliability and user loyalty.
Think there's any chance we'll ever see a ppc port of this distro? Once upon a time, there was an unofficial project, and slackware.org for a while had an announcement up that an official ppc distro was in the works, but that was long ago...
OSTG--the company that owns Linux.com. The company that owns Slashdot.org
Isn't it interesting that, for all the bitching Slashdotters do about corporate-owned shills, advertising, poor service, and biased reporting, they turn none of that critical eye toward Slashdot?
Slashdot's corporation has a vested interest in reporting pro-Linux stories and anti-Microsoft stories. Google uses Linux, so we get lots of pro-Google stories.
So, the next time someone is ranting about capitalism on Slashdot, point them toward the banner ads on the page and the fact that Rob Malda and the other editors are employees of OSGT, and that Slashdot is bought and paid for.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Redhat 5.0? I cut my teeth on Yggrassil. An add in Nuts & Volts magazine featured the Yggdrasil release way back. I believe it was 1992. I've been running Linux ever since!
Got to love Slackware, the installer hasn't changed since I started out with Linux in 1996!
It's still my favorite distributed when I need to install Linux fast (takes about 15 minutes), the CD contains lots of packages.
It is really a do-it-all-yourself kind of distribution, as the author of the article also found out.
And the maintainer is fantastic. I deal with him often.
While I appreciate Slackware getting press (I used to run 8.0 on my server) this isn't much of a review. He talks about ever step of the installer, which hasn't changed in years, so there's nothing to tell here. He talks about how he adds a root password cause he always does (?) and goes on to tell about how since Slack doesn't support dependancy checking for installs he doesn't use any of the other tools (swaret, slapt-get) that do this for you (?). So don't get me wrong, Slack is still my fav Linux for servers since it paved the way for me to move to FreeBSD, but this isn't much of a review. (oh, and I commented on the article cause he says that RPM handles deps, but it doesn't; yum does. right? I haven't used RPMs for a time, but I'm pretty sure I'm right there)
fak3r.com
I slacked off, so forgive me since this isn't the true FP.
I thought Slackware was only for leet hackers, so why do they need a HowTo?
Old Hackers don't die
They become a zombie process and have to be kill -9
What do you get when you mix those two?
Um, I get Hacktribution or distribacker.
It was about 60 floppies. My first crash was several weeks later when I ran GnuChess under X on my 486DX2/66 w 8MB RAM, and made my second move...
It'd be with slackware, it's the one distro that I used in college that was stable, that didn't have a massive error out of the package (this one the age when RedHat came out with a distro where GCC was broken!!!)
I have to say slackware's name is perfect in a number of way, it's easy to get into, interesting to use, good to learn from, and good to modify how you want it to be modified.
Kudos I might actually have to get the new version and get my old linux box back on it's feet.
...I also learned to hate BSD-style init. I have found memories of Slackware since that's what I cut my Linux teeth on. I was too noob to even know there were easier distros to start with, but in retrospect you learn a heck of a lot more when the OS installer isn't slathered in wizards and GUIs.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Slackware is great in a server environment as it is pretty barebones and can easily be customized during the install. On the desktop (well laptop in my case) however, Ubuntu reins king. I've never had a friendlier experience using/running Linus.
That is seriously the funniest thing ever.
KDE is stable on all my (non-server) Gentoo machines.
If this is the same Joe Barr who can't even install and use MPlayer, do I really give a shit about what he thinks about Slack? I mean if he can call the best video player ever "The Project From Hell", he's just proven himself to be entirely unreliable.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Don't know why not. A desire for stability and control isn't limited to servers. I'm writing this from a slack desktop, for what it's worth.
Just because almost everyone who uses it on the desktop happens to have a neckbeard doesnt make it a bad desktop distro.
Where does this review say it's not for the desktop? It says it's not for everyone, which I certainly agree. But it makes a great desktop OS for its very niche userbase.
I can't speak for Slackware, but I do know that Yoper has an excellent variation on KDE. I didn't realize this was Yoper-specific until later, but Yoper has tweaked the hell out of the KDE settings as well as added a rather slick Mac OS X-ish control panel.
If you get a chance, go give it a try. It's a very enjoyable distro to use. (Once you get past the rather crude install, that is.)
On another note, does anyone know what happened to the Yoper website? It's been down for weeks. They' finally put up a "We're working on it" page, but they haven't offered much info. I was starting to think about emailing them to find out what happened!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I've always thought of Slackware as sort of the HeathKit hobbyist version of Linux... sort of the build your own robot dog, vs. the Aibos of Linspire, SuSE, or Mandrivacoriscalifragilisticexpialidocious.
When I first decided to play with Linux, many many moons ago, I think I bought the Walnut Creek CD-ROM of Slackware at Fry's or by mail order. I got a decent install up and running with XFree86 and a window manager. But it was very definitely a steep learning curve.
Recently, trying out a free copy of Linspire, it was probably the easiest install of any OS (Microsoft, BSD, or Windows) I've seen. Ubuntu was pretty simple too. I could have given my parents Linspire and had them up and running almost without my help.
But if you want to learn Linux, not just install it, Slackware is probably one of the best for that. IMO, Despite all the up-and-comers, it's still a good starter kit for the people who want to learn a little about how it works while getting it working.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
This is an A and B conversation. So C you're way out of it.
Score (-1: Breeder)
Yes, but have you done anything with it.
Depends who's "desktop" you're talking about. Slackware us actually easier to use for those of us who like to have more control over our systems--Slack's initscript setup is so simple to manage compared to the mess of symlinks and directories found in most other distros, and its package management system is very unobtrusive and understandable compared to the complciated GUI setups, distro-specific patches and dependency lists. That said, Slackware always comes with the latest KDE and makes a fine distro for newbies provided you set it up for them beforehand--not having all the extra layers makes it more reliable and less likely to require maintenance. It's also much faster on old hardware compared to the likes of Ubuntu.
Strict glibc compliance and relatively few efforts to make it palatable to the desktop crowd is exactly what has made it perfect for a task specific server platform. Having stuck with it since 1994, when I first started down the road of discovering what Linux could do. I've never been disappointed (in terms of uptime, security and resource control) I will probably keep using it as long as it can be maintained. A learning curve isn't a bad thing. That's why I got into this in the first place. I'll leave Red Hat to the '1337'. This just works.
I started with Peanut linux, I think; some damned umsdos install which came in lha format on a bunch of floppies. Much later, though; this was in 96.
I haven't dealt with modern slackware since 2000 when I started alternating between BSD and Debian, however. What's weird is that with the 10 series of slackware linux crashes trying to load my network card. Haven't really bothered about chasing down the cause since no other distros really have problems with it (most distros load it as 8139too, slackware's 8139too module crashes).
Every goddamn time some Microsoft user gets fed up and wants to switch to Linux and comes looking for which distro to use some clown invariably fucks things up by "throwing in their props for Slackware" for ABSOLUTELY no reason.
WTG guys!
Viva la Slackware! Good job on a great distro. Pat. I started with Linux way back using Slackware 3.0, and have used Slackware 8.0, 8.1, and 9.0 on server-side projects for a while now.
.tgz for the rest of us?
I love Slackware's minimalist approach and text-file-editing, nuts-and-bolts configuration. No you can't get a Slackware package for every app out there, but that's the fun of Linux, build it yourself!
Oh yeah, and when you're done could you use makepkg to make the
"I reject your reality, and substitute my own!"
Can somebody please explain why every single Linux review has to spend so much time on installation? Monday's post of a SuSE review spent a third of the article just on installation. Today's Slackware review spends half of the review on installation (actually a bit more than half if you cut out the conclusion that takes up a quarter of the last page). People, installation is a solved problem! SuSE and Redhat have had competent installers for nearly a decade. Even Debian is slowly getting into the act. When Corel first integrated a game of tetris while packages installed, installation was a done deal. What possible reason can there be to spend all of your time reviewing the installation process, rather than everything else? (and by "everything else", I mean the integration that a distribution brings -- how well are menus configured in your chosen desktop environment, does it have a good package installation story that keeps those menus up to date, does it provide you with recent and stable versions of popular software, etc)
Yes, I know that installation of Linux is critical since you can't easily go out and buy a PC with Linux pre-loaded. I get that. However, the installers for pretty much every distro are simple and clear enough that it doesn't take a genius to use them. Skim your chosen distro's installation manual and have a go at it. Just please stop wasting review space writing about the installation process! Here's a hint: If your review is too short when you leave out the installer part, maybe you don't need to be writing a review.
When I 1st started using Linux, I thought of Slackware in the same terms as I thought of Mandrake (for lamors only!), but after using SuSE, Gentoo, Red Hat, Fedora, and Debian, I was looking for something that I could configure from the ground-up (without all the annoying bells & whistles), to fit my EXACT needs. Slackware did just that!!
Although I could also do this with debian pretty easily, and I still use Debian for Large-Scale Infrastructures, the shear amount of security holes and 12781237912 patches per day, really gets annoying, although I do commend them for such strict security support practices.
Slackware works perfect as a Small Business or Home Network Environment, and is also very nice for clustering (w/ mosix). *Yea, I said it... Clustering with Slackware!! (I expect instant 'flamebait' mod here)*
It took me about 2 years before I was actually tempted to use it as a desktop, and have since ditched windows entirely (at home), with the exception of my DAW.
Now, I think of all the other distros (with the exception of Debian) the same as I think of Mandrake... for lamors only! =p
There are WAY too many reasons why I choose slackware, I don't have time to explain really, but those (experienced users) who use slackware, probably already know, or would agree, it is the best! =p
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
I really do have fond memories of Slackware. For years I ran Slackware [7/8/9.0] on all of my linux boxes, server or desktop.
:)
However I eventually got tired of finding too many of the programs I wanted didn't have packages, and spending too much time compiling.
I've since switched to Debian [and Ubuntu to a lesser degree]. It to has its downsides, but for now, it just takes less time.
I will however give Slackware ALL the credit for teaching me about Linux. I've heard it said that if you need help with Linux, ask someone who uses Slackware as they're the most likely to REALLY know how linux works under the hood.
Nothing to see here
When I first decided to play with Linux, many many moons ago, I think I bought the Walnut Creek CD-ROM of Slackware at Fry's or by mail order. I got a decent install up and running with XFree86 and a window manager. But it was very definitely a steep learning curve.
Keep in mind ALL of the distros have come a long way since the old Walnut Creek CDs. Back in the day Red Hat was no picnic to install. I'm sure a Slackware install is more difficult than Linspire, but the 10.x versions are really not that hard to install. Most common tools are included, and many of the ones that aren't can be downloaded from linuxpackages.net.
That said, there can still be challenges. Hardware configurations are the primary obstacle I sometimes have difficulty getting around, especially for X. That said, I am writing this from a Slackware desktop, I run a Slackware desktop at home and have three testing machines at work running VMware under a Slackware desktop.
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I'll see your Yggdrasil and raise you Soft Landing Systems on 50 floppies.
Anyone else who's first Linux system was called "darkstar"?
They need to pay the bills someway!
Blar.
But if you want to learn Linux, not just install it, Slackware is probably one of the best for that. IMO, Despite all the up-and-comers, it's still a good starter kit for the people who want to learn a little about how it works while getting it working.
Well said. Slackware was the first distro I personally installed (around version 9.0 IIRC) and I still use it on my webserver that just sits there and I rarely touch (I think the uptime is about 8 months now). It is not necessarily for the light-hearted, but if you're a CS, CE, or EE student who wants to get down and dirty with operating systems and knows enough to be dangerous, Slackware is definitely an excellent distro to start on because it is simple yet robust. The other distros (outside of maybe gentoo and debian) are getting away from complexity and are moving towards usability. This is just fine for the wider market, but if you want to play with the inner workings, it's harder to find anything easier to start with than Slackware. Once you master Slack, you can head onto Gentoo and make a relatively smooth transition if you really want a customized box. You could also migrate back towards Ubuntu, Red Hat, or SuSE and be able to get that much more from those distros. Don't count Slackware out just yet.
Old hacker? heck I started on Linux with Yggdrasil
I figured there would be some chest-puffing in this thread ("Well, I started with Linux in nineteen-ought-three..."). Lots of people started with Yggdrasil: it was available on CD-ROM at computer shows when dial-up ruled the land. You are not a unique snowflake.
You seem to have a problem with the "old hacker" as mentioned in the article. Here is a hint: the definition of "hacker" != "Linux user". Yes, there are hackers that run Linux; not all Linux users are hackers. There are also plenty of old hackers who have never touched Linux. You should read this.
As an aside, here is a link to the printer-friendly version of the article.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I started using slackware on my servers in 1999. I heard it was the hardest install but I believe thats because it was an all text install (lots of reading). The greatest thing I can say about slackware is its simplicity. Its pretty easy for me to install it with the minimum packages needed and go in and remove all of the services that I don't want running. Compile the kernel then that server is on its way. I don't use slackware for my desktop computer anymore I have switched to gentoo. Its just easier that way for me.
http://www.arouse.net/despair-linux/slackware.jpg
I'm not sure wtf a 'desktop' is supposed to be, but Slack is a damn fine Workstation OS, if that's what you're thinking of.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I hope they don't use their own distro to host http:
:-)
Yoper.com is down. We're working on it!
We are up. Stop on by at #yoper@irc.freenode.net
Other Yoper places are www.yoper.de and www.yoper.com.br
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Just because almost everyone who uses it on the desktop happens to have a neckbeard doesnt make it a bad desktop distro. I'm not capable of growing a beard [actually, the thought of it is terrifying], but I use Slackware at home as both a desktop and server distro. What the hell is a neckbeard?
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
I read that as "An Old Slapper Slacks up Hackware"
It must be time for coffee...
C17H21NO4
What distro you use depends on your abilities. I agree with everyone else that Slackware will teach you linux to the core(not quite as deep as LFS though)and will provide you with knowledge on how it works. The average user just wants a system that Just Works(TM), is easy to use, and can do everything they need to on it. I agree that installation isn't a big issue anymore these days, but for the casual user a prettied up wizzard install is probably for the best, they don't want to learn HOW it works, they want it to Just Work(TM). "To each his own" best part about Linux, there are distros for the more skilled users, and the n00bs, let the n00bs use SuSE, Mandriva, Lycros, Linspire, etc..; and the rest of us can use Slackware and the likes. The biggest player in the Windows to Linux movment will be "can I learn this easy, and use it easy" not "how much can I fsck with it". There will always be the skilled Linux hacker wanting a open distro to toy with, but there is more n00bs that haven't heard of linux, or have this stero-type [n00b@myPC ~]$ - "WTF DO I DO NOW???" many people actually think Linux is still like this, so the big player is a nice GUI to get them started, because a average user is scared of the command line because they might screw something up, the big problem with Windows; the tools are all GUI based and a user has little chance of fsking stuff unless some program does that for them. In Linux a quick rm* as root will wipe ur HD in no time flat, takes some skill to do that in Windows. But all of this is IMHO, reply.
NO~, I read Slashdot because I think it's stupid.....
Just remember that Yoper uses static linking of libraries to speed things up. If that's what you like, then more power to you.
One reason I stick with Slackware is, as the article said, Pat V. doesn't modify and patch the hell out of stuff. It just works the way it was meant to. While I may not have a slick OS X type control panel for KDE, I do have how KDE is supposed to work. Now, I've never tried Yoper, but I do know from using Mandrake, RH, etc. that a lot of those "patches" caused me problems.
"Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." --Barry Goldwater
A real hacker ( the old style MIT kind, not the current model of a criminal ) would write his own OS from scratch.
Or at the least choose BSD, which is much older and mature then the very idea of 'linux'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Neckbead (n):
See "RMS"
Just remember that Yoper uses static linking of libraries to speed things up.
:-)
Really? I wasn't aware of that. As far as I knew, most of there performance tweaks were the result of targetting the 686 architecture. Still, static linking really doesn't bother me much. My old machine had 512MB. My new machine has 1GB. Neither one really felt a "strain" from static linking. To me, the overall experience is far more important. Yoper excels in that area.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
OSTG--the company that owns Linux.com. The company that owns Slashdot.org
Isn't it interesting that, for all the bitching Slashdotters do about corporate-owned shills, advertising, poor service, and biased reporting, they turn none of that critical eye toward Slashdot?
Slashdot's corporation has a vested interest in reporting pro-Linux stories and anti-Microsoft stories.
Slashdot is a news outlet for a class of people who tend to be Linux users. As such they are after news related to Linux, often interested in problems with other OSes (especially the dominant Microsoft offerings), and so on.
The Slashdot "coverage" displayed all the "bias" you complain about while it was independent - long before it received significant support from any other company, let alone being bought by one. Especially the anti-Microsoft flamefests by the posters.
OSTG has a number of Linux-related segments. Of course they, too, want to have available a news outlet/discussions forum giving coverage of Linux-related news, and acquiring one that was doing a dandy job makes more sense than constructing one from scratch.
Slashdot would, IMHO, have continued to cover things in about they way they are now if they had continued to be independent and found no-strings-attached financing to grow to the current size.
Sure there's a risk that they might give offerings from their corporate brethern more attention than they might have if independent. But that would be true anyhow: Being part of a company can give added opportunity to find out about what is going on in other parts.
And sure there's a risk of giving them favorable treatment in reportage. But IMHO Slashdot's format (stories picked by the editors to kick off a thread, followed by lots of discussion by readers, moderated only by other readers and not totally removed even if moderated down to the minimum) cerates a giant truth-squad that will jump on any distortions or outright falsehoods posted or selected by the editors.
Add to that their careful attachment of disclaimers when selecting a story about another operation owned by the same holding company, and they're IMHO squeaky-clean. (How often do you see or hear similar disclaimers when a news operation of a media conglomerate, reporting on another of THAT operation's holdings? Pretty rare, eh?)
As I see it the only significant risk is of OMISSION - the choice not to post something of importance that might harm another branch of the company. But Slashdot is not the only news operation out here - not even the only one covering Linux and other "news for nerds". Between that and several things users can do (such as post a story on their own journal and point to it in their sig lines, or make off-topic comments on everything related), Slashdot would have a hard time hiding anything.
So I'm not at ALL concerned when Slashdot covers something in another holding of OSTG. And I think you're wasting your breath when you berate them for doing so. IMHO they'd be lax to NOT cover such things.
You should save your breath and energy for hunting down and exposing any actual lies or distortions in such stories, rather than griping about their existence.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What isn't pointed out by this review is that Slackware version the reviewer installed is still a 32bit version. The computer he installed it on is an AMD64. Personally, I would have found the review much more helpful if it had addressed the 64bit issues that Slackware has#151;which is what most new workstations and servers have under the hood.
There is an 64bit port of Slackware out there, Slamd64. Unfortunately, it has no where near the stability of Slackware current. Just keeping the installer from crashing can be a huge headache. I ran into this first hand after purchasing an AMD64 server. It's hard to give Slackware a glowing review until the 64bit port is up to par.
Slackware schmackware, if you want Older Than The Hills and then some try getting 386-bsd going, or for completely useless AIX, and even better get A/UX 2.0.1 with the needed ppc patches. Linux wise you aren't an old geezer computer wise if you can't raise your hand and remember what the pre 2.0 liux kernal was like- Lets just say that Slack 2.0 was a umm "experience" . And the 15 floppies of the older Debians was even worse.
Reading this (using firefox) on sw-10.2/fluxbox; sweet. Maybe I just hate desktops, then.
After having used/tried several distros (including infamous Ubuntu; liked LFS, Gentoo and Debian), I keep coming back to Slackware - has always worked for me best. It just feels simple and reliable; I am not sure why though (I am not a Unix geek). Somehow it gives me this feeling of freedom I do not have when I use other distros (including Gentoo): this is the only distro (other than LFS) where I do not feel guilty when I happen to compile some app from the stock source tarball instead of using the distro-specific package.
Maybe, I just like Unix in its more or less basic form, as opposed to behemoths (OS X, Ubuntu, Suse) people build on top of it. Slackware, I think, is as basic as it gets, and that's what makes it perfect.
The article really doesn't touch on one of Slackware's advantages over other distros... its speed. The only distro that I've really seen that is actually faster, is Gentoo. And that was Gentoo compiled specifically for that machine. An associate at work has a ghetto celeron powered Tosh lappy, with Slackware. The thing is screaming fast. We also put Slackware on an old 700MHZ Celeron and you would have to get an XP machine over 2 Ghz to compare to it when it comes to speed.
MadOgre.com
Well if Slackware works for this guy then great, as it clearly also works for a lot of other folks, not all of them going on 80 :) I guess in the years ahead we'll get used to the oldies fighting in the aisles over their favourite distro rather than, as now, over politics, world war two, medical care and who got to the discounted cookies first.
However, perhaps a certain amount of prudence might be a good idea. If someone is going to invest a great deal of time in learning Linux then maybe they'd want to choose a solid distro whose future looks brighter than its past. So I guess that might mean, say, Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu or Debian. OK, everyone will have variations on that (Gentoo, Mandriva, etc.). But I wonder whether Slackware fits the bill?
Software gets more, not less, complex. And we ask it to do more not fewer things (VOIP and multimedia functionality being only the latest two in a long line). I wonder whether this means that traditional Linux distros put together by just one or at most a few people are going to become untenable. Only the bigger outfits will really be able to keep up because they have enough developers and contributors to allow it.
Dunno. Kudos to Slackware and all who sail in her - the guy behind it sounds like a hero - but is this really the future?
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
Since Slackware 96 , the desktop of choice.
Slackware is for people who like to be able to get at the bits and pieces.
You don't have to fiddle with the bits and pieces (anymore) but you can.
which is more hardcore, slackware or debian?
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Something wrong, dump slackware in a partition and get the whole thing running again in no time. Also downloading & compiling a new kernel in slack means you will most likely have a kernel which will run your system. Try the same in SuSE and you really have trouble with the load of modules without sources present.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Good luck getting support on that if you use any special compiler flags and run into stability issues.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Props to Slackware, it's where I got my start. But Gentoo gives you _complete_ control over your system, and has portage to boot! Why waste time slacking, when you could be hacking?
The one thing that really made me go "Ahhhh" when I was first exposed to Slackware was the fact that the packages included with Slackware are much closer (or almost identical) to what you would get if you downloaded them direct from the original maintainer (SSH, Apache, ect...).
Consequently you don't find stuff hand hacked and installed in strange places. If the man page says its in "X" location, that's where it is. Too many distros take a third party app, modify it so that the way they install it is different from what the original INSTALL file says, which makes it fustrating to troubleshoot.
Because I run an old machine with a slower processor and less memory, I find the best Linux distributions for me are those that, by default, install as little as possible to get a running system without all the bells and whistles. The only system that works better than Slackware for this is a Linux from Scratch system.
Man I ruined an entire labs worth of work and who knows how much more by downloading compiling and running GnuCash on our HP9000 server at the local community college. I just remember running the game, making like two moves and then all of a sudden everyone in the lab doing a collective "what the...". Took me a few seconds to put two and two together, close Kermit, and bounce to the cafeteria.
It wasn't till I started running my own unix systems that I understood why the professor was so pissed that his server had to be restarted that had a three year uptime.
Having using Slackware since its first release on a computer that dual booted OS/2, I can say for certain Slackware has staying power. DOS 6 was easy to install, Slack is too.
/etc files in vi right there before you boot into Linux.
Slack 10.2 makes it tons easier to boot from CD and even get the network up before you even boot into your installed OS, to be able to download any patches or setup NFS you need or copy special conf files down.
If you want to do a complex install like I have (setting up software RAID on a 2.6 kernel running an AMD64-Dualcore with a Shuttle ST20G5), you can setup the raid from the boot CD, install everything, and patch your
Without Slackware, I probably would have never been interested in Linux at all.
Real hard users are waiting for Jolitz to come out with a new version of 386BSD, this Linux stuff is just a stop gap until the new version.
i read somewhere that the maintainer wasnt in too good o' health..what'll happen to the distro? will it be handed down? Hmm..
Given that Gnome is not on the package list some issues with wxWidgets and gtk2.6 will arise if you want to install things like Audacity. There are slackpacks for audacity but you need to make sure you pre install and ldconfig wxWidgets.
The multimedia interface to alsa can become problematic with KDE 3.4 as the kcontrol (Control Centre) has a habit of messing with dev/midi too much. You need to restart it every time you launch KDE. No config file that I can find lets you set it to run dev/midi at launch. A minor inconvience at best.
There is a problem with KRecord, it wants to do the microsoft trick and lable .wav with its own file tag and gets the shits when you try to save .wav. So good recording software is best served by installing jack, and Rosegarden which are not included in the extra packages. Apart from that OpenOffice2 will not install as it is only available in packaged form that must have allsorts of deps. A slackware package for the latest and greatest things like OpenOffice and Audacity will take some time, but you can bet it will happen and when it does it will rock.
Back to multimedia Rosegarden4 takes a long time to compile, but is well worth the effort!, on Slackware it is much more reliable than on any Debian varient I have tried, kudos to the Rosegarden guys!
Apart from the lack of some of the GTK stuff that is necessary for alot of newer releases Slackware is still the most stable and most configureable distro out there. If you have trouble with things like your scroll mouse you just pico etc/X11/xorg.conf and edit it and bingo you are in mouse wheel heaven. Leaving the printer config in your browser makes the config alot more reliable than any wacky gui I have used with distros like RedFat or Mandork, just make sure you have cups going at boot and go to localhost:631 and if you cant follow the instructions then ask Eric Raymond about how he had trouble with it...just kidding.
In summmary if you really want a Linux experience with speed and reliability Slackware is still the best way to go.
Eric Reesor X the ratfynk
Once you master Slack, you can head onto Gentoo and make a relatively smooth transition if you really want a customized box.
:)
I'd go a bit farther and say that Gentoo is the next logical step if one is trying to ease one's way into learning Linux. Just installing it and running it productively for a few months will force one to learn many things that can only be learned on Slackware if one goes looking for them, and that means one must know what to look for, which is not guaranteed. Plus, the Gentoo community is possibly the best resource for people looking to learn Linux.
After that, one should have enough of the core concepts down to get a lot out of reading books on the more arcane parts of Linux, or maybe to move on to LFS if hands-on is the only method to be used.
My history w/ Linux, just for the hell of it:
1) Debian (potato, I think) and Slack -- never did get one of the two installed, I think it was Slack. It was the most difficult install I've ever seen, Gentoo's included. At one point it made me calibrate my floppy drive or something like that, and I was like, "WTF?", and gave up on the basis that it was dumb, a judgement which I stand by. Not that Slack as a whole as dumb, just the installer on that one release.
2) Red Hat
3) Mandrake -- 'cuz it was more user-friendly than Red Hat. I started at the 7.2 release, I think, and stayed with it for a while, but then it got buggy as hell for a couple of releases (9.* series, IIRC), crashing more than Windows (on more than one machine), so I left.
4) Debian again -- Didn't stay long, left because I got fed up with the packaging system breaking for no apparent reason. At times it was every bit as bad as RPM hell. Also the default config of Samba made any connecting Windows machine's explorer.exe lock up after about 30 seconds of browsing a share, and I didn't feel like tracking down the problem. Tried Sarge just for kicks a little while ago, and it still does this. Never had that problem with ANY other distro. Go figure.
5) Gentoo -- Best package management and widest selection of packages EVER. It's what kept me with it for more than a year after I got sick of compiling everything; it was worth it for Portage. It's *that* good.
6) Ubuntu -- 'cuz I want something robust and stable under the hood but I don't want to have to do things like manually configuring automounting of USB discs anymore.
Of course, I'm only running Linux until BeOS comes back and takes over the market *crosses fingers* (yes, I know it won't happen)
Where I work, I am the support.
Slackware is still my favorite flavor of Linux. Slackware is Linux for UNIX techies.
I have tried slackware as a Desktop OS before. It's not bad if you don't mind compiling alot of stuff by hand. Although there are some tools that have many of the precompiled stuff and get them installed for you (e.g. slackpkg {Console} or gslapt-get {GUI}) So as far as servers go, I stick to the saying "Once you go Slack, you never go back", but if you are using Linux as a desktop OS, you may want to consider one of the other distros, unless you want to really play around with Linux and get a feel of how Slackware works. I have recently been using Ubuntu for my Desktop and Laptop which I find rather appealing and easy to use.
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
Us long time Slackware users are interested in hearing another side of the story too sometimes. You don't hear much about it in the media normally It's one of the first distros, and as such, will always have a place in our hearts. Join us in #Slackware @ EFnet if you like it
(1) "Open Source" means "you can access the source code". Source code is nearly useless if all you can do is read it - you have to be able to compile it/interpret it. Do not strip out every single possible file having anything at all to do with source code. Slackware keeps the compilers and interpreters and libraries and header files and documentation needed for programming in about 15-20 different languages. You'd think that is a given - "Open Source" - "programming tools" - DUH! - but in fact, it's an exception. Damn near a freak.
(2) "Following the herd" is for lemmings. Slackware has kept it's text mode installer while the whole world has gone GUI-crazy. Listen, GUIs are a great idea when you're watching a movie or editing graphics or surfing the web - get it? That's what you need a GUI for. When all you need is to read and write text, a GUI is a useless, superfluous, wasteful, unnecessary overhead.
(3) "Popular" is for homecoming Queens. Slackware has gone halfway to divinity by ditching Gnome. Now I'd love it if it took the other step and ditched KDE, too. Check out the two-disk distro - know why you need two disks instead of one? KDE. The other window managers are any one better than Gnome and KDE combined, but if nobody ever tries them, no one else will ever know.
(4) Distributions are released on disks for a reason - to put the operating system ON THE DISKS! Not putting in a patch-work kernel that's just enough for it to wheeze it's way online and download the other 99.99% of itself. I don't know which I get more annoyed with with other distros - wasting the money to burn all those disks, or discovering I am expected to pay for another internet connection just because the system is helpless without the umbilical cord of the internet connected to it. You can take a computer, an electric generator, and your two Slackware disks to a desert island and end up with a complete system ready-to-go - and able to reproduce copies of itself if need be, thanks to those handy programming tools. I just can't figure out how Slackware does so much more on two disks than other distros do in five.
(5) Read docs - documentation good. Slackware has the full compliment of man pages, info system files, docbook, and various contents of /usr/share/doc, and in addition includes HOWTOs and FAQs from the Linux documentation project.
(6) Keep it simpler than simple. I've practically thrown up when I explore the directories of soem distros. Pointers to pointers to pointers to nothing, programs missing half the files they need to run, everything scattered to hell and gone. Then people wonder why their system can't detect it's hardware and freezes up. Slackware follows the traditional directory structure and abides by it, going by the rule that conventions form over time because they make sense, and are not to be disregarded in the pursuit of arrogantly asserting how bold and creative you are.
(7) There is no Slackware For Dummies. And well there should not be, because this distro is one that actually *compliments* your intelligence. And you'd be amazed how smart you are, when you're given the chance to be! So the package manager is minimal, and I hope it never changes. Packages are un-needed anyway, when the system can handle any source-code tarball you throw at it.
Thank you all for glancing through it. We now return you to your regular grandstanding about Photoshop, Ubuntu, and Star trek.
Show me a benchmark that measured a greater than 5% difference. Statistical noise, impartial judgement etc.
Yeah, that's a puzzle to me, too. It's the only distro for my home box. It can do anything every other distro can. But in the mind of Random Luser, any distro that lets you compile a tarball is automatically a server distro for admins only. Like the window manager must somehow vanish if there's a header file on the same hard drive.
Slackware is not only adequate for the desktop, it becomes one of maybe three distros left standing for your choice if you actually use a computer to do some productive work on it.
Very curious; I always thought everything under /usr/src/linux-x.y.z was distro-independent (only differences being actual kernel version differences); that is, what you'd get from the appropriate x.y.z version download from kernel.org.
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
Books: Slackware LINUX for Dummies (With CD-ROM)
It's a few years old, but a decent book nonetheless.
I worship at your LOW /. user ID...
^:)^
(Bet you get that a lot.)
Tetris? Where is the fork in Corel, that allows you to play DOOM while you install packages?
2-3 years ago i took a shot at making the windows-gnu/linux switch
:D for giving me the opportunity to learn and love linux and OSS!
and thank god i did, i started using old SuSE 7.3, i upgraded later to SuSE 9.0 but after 6 months of using Suse i really hated it. It was bloated, it runned like an 1700s' steamtrain on my pii 350, the settings got resetted every freaking time (although there wasn't a lot of configuring to do with the expertise i had then), compiling didn't work (mplayer and valknut) and the install took 3 hrs or so. I was really dissapointed and felt embarassed i was even considering to wipe it from my harddrive and returning to windoze.
But after some surfing after distro's i found one that
urgg uhm that sounded funny to me:
Slackware 9!!!, at that time my favourite music style was ska (and its still is) and one of the bands i loved the most was 'The Slackers'
http://www.theslackers.com/
So this is how i switched to slackware. Not because of recommendations or reviews just a plain 'dumb coincidence'. But i really love slackware (still use it) and it introduced me properly to gnu/linux in ways SuSE just couldn't cut it, i learned a lot in those 2 years and i wiped windows of my second hard drive and gave it to my sister coz i didn't need it anymore! thank you Pat
Oh God, I wish I still had mod points today
vi +
There hasn't been major changes in slackware in a long time. There are many who don't like the way slackware does things, but that's just the way the fans like it. It doesn't get in your way. There is no mystery as to why something does or doesn't work. The packages are pretty much what the authors put out. There is nothing to review on slackware that hasn't been reviewed in past versions (install routine, package management, etc). There is no need to review slackware unless it starts to break or there is a major change. You can pretty much pick a review from earlier versions and just change the package numbers. Sure gnome got taken out of the default, but gnome users usually used dropline anyway.
Ahhh, it's nice to see so many like minded people to agree with for once! Every time a slackware story comes up, that's when I really feel at home on slashdot.
.tar.gz packages. There's not much else to say on the matter. It's just too damn true.
I have my own few things to say about slack, but I didn't want to start a new thread, for what it's worth.
Lately a lot of new distros have been popping up and comparing themselves to slackware. I have one thing to say to them - a spartan ncurses installer doesn't make you slackware. Arch, for example, requires you to configure your system in "/etc/rc.conf". Here you have to "declare" network interfaces (which fucks wireless right up - you have to run long shell script type hacks to get wireless support because of this), your timezone, keymap, modules, daemons etc. Arch gets very upset if you try to tell it not to boot this way.
I got into linux a few years ago. Around 2002, I first saw the word "Linux". Like most brits, I pronounced it Lie-Nucks for months until I said it around someone who knew better. I had been using slackware for months by this point. Slackware was the first distro I installed, having used "university linux" or some such briefly to learn basic commands. The howto thing at the top of the installer list told me everything I needed to know. Linux Format told me about startx. Slackware 10.0, with KDE, the only change being the background: alien-night. That is just about the most nostalgic thing I can think of, in terms of computers.
For a while, I booted from a bootdisk, so as I had a "secret OS" on my computer (to give an idea of how much of a beginner I was).
I installed SuSe, because I couldn't figure out how to set up my internet connection (ifconfig eth1 up && dhcpcd eth1), and though the image of accessing the internet on linux (a big step for me after a week of trying) is another nostalgic one, SuSe was off again in days - even as a total nobody, I could tell what a mess it was - this is important - don't fob linux converts off onto suse or mandriva - they will know that it is crap (after all, they are smart enough to try it in the first place).
Since those halcyon days, I've tried several dozen distros. I can confirm what so many other slackware users say: it draws you back. This is something I've never seen said about any other distro (not even once, though the gentoo/ubuntu brigade likely say it now).
I really 100% agree with parent-post-guy about installing from stock
If I was a writer, I could dedicate novels to how much I like using slackware. I'm a seriously avid gamer, I've got games as new as FarCry for PC, but I almost never have a Windows installation to play it on. It's not even that I give slackware the full 40GB of my hdd - I don't feel right forcing slackware to sit next to that thing*, so I have an xbox (I'm not an GNUFOSS nut, or an anti-microsoft nut - I'm a tool-for-job nut, but for what it's worth, it's a super extra naughty johnny modded xbox).
-- Incredibly abrupt ending - I could go on and on, and indeed I have (I've written and deleted a lot of paragraphs for this post), but it's just more of the same. I suppose this is a kind of open love letter (yes, look at the poor single nerd. At least I don't live "in my parents' basement"). I like this post. It's the most messed up one I've ever written, and that's saying something, but it's been my favourite. I never realised how much a part of me slackware was...
*the source of my disdain for windows is, more than security etc, the fact that linux makes it feel like a fucking toy
That looks like Trumpet Winsock from the windows 3.1 days. Are you sure that's even a linux screenshot?
Meh.
Parent is a troll.
A long time ago (1996), in a country far far away... I was working on my master thesis (llm you'd call it, I think), when windows 95 gave up for the nth time and littered my disk with garbage. Positively fed up with the thing, I decided to replace it with something a friend of mine had given me : slackware 3.0. I didn't knew really what it was (thought it was a DOS of a kind, with flat mem support), and was conquered at first sight by the choice of console police [yes, that's something I always dreamed to change, and never found something correct in DOS realm - talk about eye candy !].
On the plus side, I managed to setup what I needed at the moment in a pinch, finish my thesis without a crash, and print it. That's what I'd call "desktop ready". Then, I had a hard time learning linux and slackware, mostly to do non-work related activities : music playing, networking, gaming, scanning, but that's completely different.
I'm still very found of slackware, and I use it to setup intranet servers everywhere I work (behind firewalls), because I know that they'll stand unattended for years after I'm gone (I still work mainly as a lawyer, but end up spending about 1/5 of my paid time dealing with IT problems - that's karma). The oldest surviving server I setup has 6 years of uninterrupted activity, and the boss of that office refuse to change anything on it, because he says it's been his best investement ever, repaying itself countless times. He shows it to vendors of windows-based solutions, when they try to make him upgrade, and ask them if they're ready to sign a binding contract that their solution will last at least the same time without further investments. They've always backed off.
I still use daily a slack on my personal laptop, with just OO.o and wine (for those win only CDROM databases that are my food maker). As far as desktop goes, it's plain perfect.
No, i was stating a fact, and an opinion. Nothing more.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The original BSD unix was just that. BSD.
It was forked *later*. And since i was talking 'history' here, i was speaking of the original distribution from Berkeley.
What has come after that was based on BSD 'lite', is just that.. things that came after. But there was life before the 'fork'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
- No LVM support! It's more or less a "server" distribution but no LVM? How can that be?
- No grub. This one really doesn't matter that much. After years of using lilo I made myself switch to grub for new installs and really hated it until I got used to it (kinda like vi). Now lilo seems antiquated.
On the plus side Slack hasn't ever had a stupid amount of dependencies like those RPM based distros. With the RPM distros you install Z and you get Q, R, M, U and J as well even if you didn't want them. With Slack you pretty much just get Z thank you very much.
If it just had LVM support and I'd go back to it in a heartbeat.
If one must one but one plus one equals two. Learn to write, nimrod.
One of them being to check for typos. For instance, there's a difference between
root@slack:~# rm -R .
and
root@slack:~# rm -R /
Yeah, I love that GnuCash game, but that end boss sure is a bitch. ;)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Does anyone know of a good, relatively unbiased comparison of different Linux distros? I'd like to start looking at Linux a bit, but don't have the faintest idea where to start in terms of selecting a distro?
I know some are easier to install, some have better installation management, some have greater flexibility, some greater security, etc etc etc. But is there a down-to-earth newbie-learning-tool comparison page that can lay out the basics for me of say, the top ten distros?
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
I actually did something like that once when I was learning C, specifically learning how to recurse into directories.
Suffice it to say I rewrote userdel while I was learning this.
Did he say he had a 2GB swap partition?
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
i'm pissing around with a Sun Ultra20 workstation at work at present (we want to use it as an X-console for our console port-only V240's) and because X on Solaris 10 x86 comes broken out-of-the-box (honest!), i've started messing around with slamd64 10.2 as an experiment. personally, the only problems i had was that the installer could not (or so it would seem) create filesystems. i used a 32 bit 10.2 install CD to mkfs.ext3 and rebooted into the slamd64 installer. since then, i've not had any problems or flakiness. i've not done a massive amount of stress testing as yet but, from first impressions, it seems as solid as its parent. bloody quick, too.
as a bit of advice; if you're having stability problems with any slack, you shouldn't really be using slack -current. you can make a bit of a mess of your system that way. it's updated so often, things can get a little out of step, say for instance if they start using a new version of GCC, they actually rebuild the whole lot so packages can give each other grief. i've made that mistake. this is why Pat refers to '-stable' as opposed to the number of the release.
back to the article in question; i found his review a bit crap really. nowhere near enough in depth and missing some important stuff (i.e. package management and all the user made add-ons).
[opinion] slack has been my distro of choice since 9.0, when i tried it as an escape from red hat. i'd never have learned as much about the inner working of linux if i hadn't. simple as that. [/opinion]