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Why Slackware Still Matters
An anonymous reader writes "In a rebuttal to the recent opinion column "Does Slackware still matter?" at Linux Watch, cRaig Forrester provides insight into Why Slackware DOES still matter--and not just to "hard-core group of hobbyists" or "highly professional" Linux server administrators--but desktop users and newcomers too."
I used to use Slackware, and I'd imagine it hasn't changed that much since then. Granted it was fun while it lasted, I think it was too high caliber for me. When I finally switched to using distros with package management, everything felt alien. Recently I've been using Ubuntu though which I'd like to say is absolutely amazing so far.
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I don't think most people would agree with the following: "So, does Slackware matter? Simply put, YES. Slackware matters because Slackware IS Linux." The reality is that many people who are experimenting with Linux for the first time now use Fedora or Ubuntu.
I will say this though. I definitely harbor fond memories of using Slackware from 1995. I remember vividly those Boot and Root 1.44MB floppies and trying to install from their extremely early packaging system. Ah the memories...
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Throw me in the "newcomer" camp.
As it happens I just installed Slackware on an old PC I had lying around. Though I had installed and used other distributions before my experience with them was quite limited and I've been mostly a Windows user.
I chose Slackware merely because it was the easiest to acquire. They offer the torrents right from the official website and they're always well-seeded. I got both CD's in what seemed like no time at all.
After about a week of usage, it's been holding up fairly well, even with the ancient specs my old PC has. It was even able to support a wireless adapter I stuck in there after I installed madwifi. However I definitely needed a lot of outside help in accomplishing that task, and overall though I was able to get it installed and running fine, a total newbie would have gotten nowhere. If Slackware wants to appeal to that demographic at all (which it very well may not) it needs to fix that.
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I started with RedHat 5.0 back in the day, but didn't feel like I really "got" linux until I started with Slackware. Learning the real way of doing things got me more in line to handle things like Solaris, AIX and FreeBSD. While I don't use Slack anymore (ubuntu on my desktops, freebsd/openbsd and gentoo on my servers) I'm glad it's still around, and have sent newbies (ones that WANT to learn) slacks way.
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For me it was the ELF migration. I managed to get halfway through recompiling everything, then I gave up and switched to Red Hat. I may even have the hard drive around somewhere, in its half-way a.out/ELF state. Stuck with Red Hat ever since (Fedora now, of course.)
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Slackware has not evolved.
That's just not true. Slackware has changed significantly in the last 5 years. It still has flaws, true, but the installer, number of packages, community support and upgradeability has come a long way since "the 90's". It may not be the trendy geekster-hip distro it once was, but Patrick hasn't been sitting around twiddling it's thumbs.
One thing I find funny is how often a Slackware article is posted to slashdot. I should run some searches and see which distro has articles posted about it most often - I bet Slackware's up there. Not bad for a dead distrobution.
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I had been using SLS for a while, but found it too bloated, so I switch to the very nice MCC "Interim" release. I've upgraded my kernel to 0.99.7a, as well.
In all seriousness, it is interesting to go back into history. I remember the first release Slackware, where Patrick has basically put everything under the sun into it (and tested very little of it). At that time, so many things were busted that I didn't see the point. I actually did use MCC for a while for just that reason -- it was lighter/cleaner than either SLS or Slack. Of course it didn't have X11, but back then on my 386sx16 I was far happier using text consoles with vi or emacs and using the virtual console switching. (X11 was just too slow.)
I'd planned to submit an Ask Slashdot about the article this one rebutts, but decided that it was really too childish to spend any time one. I suppose that since it's come up now I can go ahead and ask.
Does Slackware really still matter? The author of this article seems to think so, but he also doesn't seem to be the most partial. So, what do you guys think? (No need to be partial, but it sure would help.)
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Ubuntu froze during the disk partitioning program on my PIII 700MHz, 64MB Thinkpad. SuSE spelled it right out, "You have too little memory to run the installation program, please activate a swap partition." (Sure, if you would just let me run fdisk!) Slackware installs and runs without a hitch. Slack matters to me.
When I started the long move to linux, a year or two ago (almost complete - I mostly needed to wait until I was sick of the games I liked), I spent a while looking for some non-existant "official" linux distribution. I doubt I am alone in this. Sites like distrowatch cleared this up for me, and so I looked for the most standard distribution. I found slackware.
/etc/rc.conf - WTF?
To be fair, part of this is also in the fact that the first LXF I bought came with slackware 10.0, but on the other hand I'd downloaded and tried Vector Linux (an old version - wasn't impressed at all).
Anyway, the point is, slackware is the closest thing I know of to just "Linux". Not that it sets standards or is the king of the world or anything.
Reading through the distrowatch rankings to jog my memory, I have tried the following: ubuntu, mandriva, suse, fedora, debian, damn small, gentoo, vector, puppy, arch, opensolaris, openbsd, auditor, feather, gentoox, condorux, goblinx, big.... not the longest penis^H^H^H^H^Hlist of distros ever, but a substantial set of data nonetheless.
If you look around the slackware linuxquestions forum, you'll notice this little phenomenon - people try to leave slackware and try other distros but are attracted back by this magical force. The closest I came was arch linux - truly amazing package management, but too flashy and customised -
So yeah, slackware rules.
Why do people continue to perpetuate this Slackware myth?
Because it is not a myth? I installed Slackware and got it up and running just fine and all the basics (KDE, Firefox, etc.) worked just perfect. But over the months I kept running into programs that I couldn't install. Every other program that I'd try to install would crap out and necessitate me having to screw around with it for a while to get it to work. That got old pretty fast, especially when I had real work that needed to get done.
So I switched to Fedora Core 4. All the software that I had such trouble gettng to run on Slackware installed on FC4 without effort using Yum. The difference between Slackware and Fedora was like the difference between night and day. For a main desktop computer Slackware was just to much of a hassle.
Oh and I tried all the package management systems available for Slackware. They were very lacking. They were like using alpha stage software.
Personally, I think Gentoo is a godsend for everything from teaching beginners step-by-step how their system is structured to creating a quick and powerful system 100% designed around YOUR machine.
Back in the day I used Slack because I didn't want bloat - just wanted barebones install with working network. Even when it came to installing packages... selecting from a list of pre-compiled bloated binaries is still bloat.
It's not truly optimized for YOUR system.
But there was a downside - say you wanted KDE, you'd have to compile by hand ALL the dependencies. Not fun. But I wasn't gonna sacrifice performance with the pre-compiled binaries.
I'm not bashing Slack, it was a great distro back in the day, but now that Gentoo exists, which gives you infinitely more control over your system not to mention automatic compile/emerge for anything you choose to install, why would you stick with the former?
It just seems counter productive to run a production based system on pre-compiled packages OR compiling everything yourself by hand and dealing w/ the dependencies.
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I totally agree with you. I've always been wary of RPMs, probably due to the same ignorance that people claim that slackware either doesn't have or has inferior package management. There have been situations where my RPM database said that an RPM wasn't installed but it was, and I didn't have the patience to sort it out. Also, the RPM dependencies insistence, only defeatable with --nodeps (which maybe caused my RPM db issue) always interferes with a project. Slackware now has slapt, although one can easily do an upgradepkg ./* from a directory of packages. The dropline and freerock management systems make keeping your windowing system up to date a breeze.
And most importantly, Slackware has actually prompted me to _understand_ what all the bits are for. I have an edge now, because I never started with magical RPMs or a magical up2date (although those tools are available now in various carnations for both RPM and tgz packages). I still recommend slackware to people who want to learn about linux.
It's also considered a conservative distribution, which tends to mean it will stay with a stable version for longer before upgrading. That's official though. You can always compile your own from source and then CREATE a package.
There are great home-made packages available from www.linux-packages.net and various other sites.
I love slackware, and hope Pat's healthy and having a good time.
Yeah!
"When the solution is simple, God is answering." -- Albert Einstein
I think all Linuxes are descended from those three: Slackware, Debian, and Redhat.
My late post will likely go unseen, buried on page 2, but here it goes...
/etc/slackware-version
As many others have stated, Slackware is unadulterated Linux, and this is what cRaig means by, "Slackware matters because Slackware IS Linux."
Slackware was my first install of Linux about 1996, and I, too, have tried all the distros over the years, and have come to love Slackware. It IS easy to install and maintain, and I have no idea where some of the "Slackware is only for gurus" opinions originate. I work in a company supporting many "Enterprise" and free Linux distributions, as well as all of the BSD's and some commercial UNIX's. Slackware makes up a small number of our customers, but we never hear from them for support because the OS is so stable, and security updates simply don't break the server, as other distributions have been known to do. If a user wants bleeding-edge, then they can track slackware-current - or just track the stable versions. Updating and the package management tools work perfectly. Period.
I think the relatively small number of Slackware installs is simply due to marketing. Patrick does not dole out dollars for advertising or "push" for enterprise level adoption. BUT! Once users and Linux admins become aware of Slackware and try it out (and I mean *really* use it - not just bitch about, "I can't find..." and give up), I think there is only a tiny percentage that throw up their hands and resort to the big names. (I had a hard time, just now, writing 'big names' - Slackware has always been one.)
And not to just post a male-member extention, but it just keeps on ticking for me:
michael@aesop 17:00:05 ~ $ cat
Slackware 9.1.0
michael@aesop 17:00:07 ~ $ uptime
17:00:08 up 402 days, 16:05, 3 users, load average: 0.15, 0.12, 0.13
"It puts packages where the originators expects them to be -- this means that I can download a source tarball, build it, and have it actually work."
This is a *major* advantage to Slackware. Why do the other distros put things in weird places for all of their packages? Drives me nuts.
To be fair though, I have had troubles with Slackware's Berkely DB files being "in the wrong place" or missing libraries or being the wrong version, most notably with OpenLDAP and Cyrus SASL. It could just be OpenLDAP and Cyrus that are the ones messed up, I'm not sure... but other than BDB issues, I can't recall any other programs that won't compile from source and just work.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
Looks like Slack is outlasting many a distro. If Slack weren't important, this guy wouldn't be writing an article about why it's not important. Long live Slack.
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The most extreme box I have ever built uses Slackware 8.0 the most recent 2.2 kernel and upgraded apache,ssl,ssh, mysql, php and mod perl. On a P2 300mhz 256MB memory and 1 8 gig hard drive.
System is an email server (qmail) with pop3 and clamAV for virus scanning, a web server (LAMP) with large 100MB file uploading,
a file server with Samba and NETATALK for access to uploaded files from the local net, an ssh and webmin server for remote management, a DHCP server for local network, an ntp time server for local network. It is also the firewall/NAT box for the internal network.
Why all this on one underpowered box? It is in a small business with limited resources and was the only box not used for anything.
It has been in use for 3.5 years so far with a max continuous uptime of 9 months. Box has come fairly close to 9 9's uptime. As of the first of the year I get to move it to a 1.2GHZ P3.
When first putting this box together I chose Slackware due to it's very straight forward and simple bootup scripts.
The fact that it starts out as a fairly light weight system when first installed and started allows for easy customization.
So Yes Slackware matters to me. I use it on just about every box I build. It also runs my personal systems.
I have tried others but I always seem to wind up using Slackware.
not only is it a good first distro but it kicks all other distros asses hard when you try something complex.... like building it into your own embedded distro/OS for a 8meg flash/16meg ram embedded processor.
My alarm clock run's Slackware. and does things that most people would kill for in an alarm clock. (mp3 wake "ringtone" text to speech good morning with weather and news, waking me 30 minutes early because it snowed last night, etc....)
I've tried the embedded distros and tried making redhat fit in small places.... only Slackware was easy to get there and manipulate easily to gut and use busybox in place of most tools and run in tiny places.
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