Slackware 11 is Coming

ejd3 writes "In the slackware-current changelog Pat has stated that 'Although there's still quite a bit in the TODO queue here I'm making my steps carefully as -current is very stable, and I think it should ship as a stable 11.0 soon so that we can get back to the business of breaking things in -current. :-)' How much longer will the slackers have to wait?"

Comments

No need to wait

[iiiiiiii]

Slackers just run what's in -current

Re:No need to wait

[zsau]

Thing is, those of us who do stick to our distributions don't want to upgrade as we go along. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Updating regularly isn't what I want, it keeps changing things. Even if the change is for the better, it can still interrupt your workflow...

With Gentoo or Debian/Sid or the like, you have to continuously maintain your computer (as packages change) to keep it up-to-date with security (or even to able to upgrade easily in a few years time). With Slackware or Debian/Stable, you just sit around and once every few years, you upgrade. The upgrade might be a bit narky, but one day every few years is a lot less time than an hour every few weeks. It just works in-between times!

64-bit official?

[Spydir Web]

Are we gonna see an official 64-bit release this go round? I had to switch to gentoo then ubuntu just to use my AMD64...

Re:64-bit official?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Slackware's biggest "problem" is that it has little to no "community," at least as far as vocal fanboys (you know, the kind who visit Distrowatch to click through and drive up its numbers). I think it tends to attract and keep a self-sufficient, quieter crowd, and therefore its presence isn't as great as its numbers, if that makes any sense.

It makes perfect sense, as I'm one of those of whom you speak. I'm a UNIX professional who works with Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and Redhat AS. I run Slack on my workstation and on a couple of smaller servers because it is about as unobfuscated (at least from my perspective) as you can get. No glittery anything, just a very solid Linux.

I need to send Pat money this time around as well as I think I purchased 10.1 but not 10.2. Anybody who seriously uses Slack should do the same if they can afford it. He puts out solid distro, and he's a nice guy.

Re:64-bit official?

[Lumpy]

I think Slackware's biggest "problem" is that it has little to no "community,"

there is a huge slackware community, it's just very much like the BSD community. WEare simply too busy using it in embedded systems, and other places to take the time to run around posting to all forums "S1ac4war3 0wnz joo!" messages.

Slackware is the absolute best distro for doing really advanced things like stuffing it in an embedded device or making a super stripped down machine that makes an old useless 486 scream like a monster for a single important task... makes the best OS for a homebrew firewall that fits on a 8meg CF card.

I use it for developing apps for the gumstix embedded platform. installing the cross compilers for alpha processors is painless compared to a rpm or deb based distro.

Marketshare?

[Noodlenose]

Having huge respect and sympathy for Patrick Volkerding I nevertheless wonder whether Slackware is (after being one of the groundbreakers for Linux) is becoming a niche - distro. Shame, really.

Re:Marketshare?

[Jason1729]

IMO Slackware is still the best Distro. I've been using it since 2.3 back in the 1.0 kernel days. I love its simplicity; it's designed so you can edit the config files yourself, none of the GUI tools so many distros like now with the actual config files hidden all over the place.

Re:Marketshare?

[NosTROLLdamus]

Every time I use one of those more "modern" distros and something goes wrong or I need to do something even slightly complex there always comes down to some nit-picky problem that's a complete pain in the ass to even deal with.

It's as if newer distros are so good at hiding things from you that even when you are looking for them you can't find them.

Re:Marketshare?

[drange_net]

I love its simplicity; it's designed so you can edit the config files yourself, none of the GUI tools so many distros like now with the actual config files hidden all over the place.

Well, I use Debian at servers, Arch Linux at my private desktop, Kubuntu at my laptop and Ubuntu at work. Please tell me I can't manually edit my config files and that the "GUI tools [...] with the actual config files hidden all over the place"...

I call BS

Re:Marketshare?

[Poppler]

It's true that you don't need a GUI to configure Ubuntu. However, in my experience, if you're used to Slackware, the location of some config files in Debian-based distros can seem counterintuitive. Slackware is very simple once you understand it; I especially like the BSD style init system, it just makes sense.
Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is great too (I'm using it right now), and I haven't had much trouble configuring it the way I want. But after using Slackware regularly for a while, I can understand why he feels the way he does.

Re:Marketshare?

[jibjibjib]

You are obviously just trolling and have no idea how the BSD system actually works. It's just as simple as in SysV to restart a daemon. For example:

/etc/rc.d/rc.httpd restart

Re:Marketshare?

[wed128]

I don't think you've ever used slackware, it's not as scary as you think. Everything is much easier to configure if you're willing to read the documentation.

Re:slack is cool even for n00bs

[jpardey]

That brings to mind one of the things that I think makes linux nice. As I want to keep my laptop happy, and as I am lazy, I just run windows. I do miss linux, though, mainly because with windows, you can't see the bones, so to speak. *nixes are more like gloves you can move your fingers about in, while windows seems more like... a hunk of wood. It is the control that makes it fun to use linux. An ease of use distro can reduce this fun and sense of control/accomplishment slack sounds like it can bring.

I tried suse, and was annoyed by the loss of control. Why isn't root's bash profile in /root? Because they want it to be easy, and not dangerous. For configure/make/install it is nice to add to path (gtklib I think it was, or something). Sure, I should stick to packages, and do things the suse way, whatever that is, but as I am not running a managed system of desktops, I just want to have fun and make it work.

RSN?

[User0x45]

I love Slackware. Other then a brief gentoo thing, I've used nothing
but Slack since putting it on my 486. But shouldn't this topic have
come out next week/month/year when Slack 11 is *actually* released?

It'll be ready Real Soon Now. Let's really discuss it then.

Think it'll have 2.6 as its default? Huh, huh, huh?

--User0x45

Yes, RSN, but that's news for Slackware because...

[1369IC]

...it doesn't have a PR machine (even a volunteer one) behind it cranking out a steady stream of news. Look at Distrowatch Weekly's upcoming releases and announcements, and you see release roadmaps, schedules, plans, estimates and pre-order information going all the way out to December. Slackware is nowhere on there.

Even on userlocal.com, supposedly the Slackware community site, and the top items are from February and April (and the latter's about Zenwalk). Other distros start work on their next release before the current one is final, and we hear about it from one release right to the next. Hell, we heard about the Suse and Ubuntu delays for what would seem like forever if we didn't have all that "when is Debian going to release" and "Vista delayed again" coverage to compare it to. So Slack gets a RSN item on Slashdot. Seems small in comparison to all the coverage of alpha flights, umpteen betas, RCs and golden masters some distros get all over the web.

Personally, I'm happy to be using a distro done by a guy more interested in getting a solid product out the door than getting a good press release out the door.

Re:Slackware user

[layer3switch]

Personally I don't think it really matters if Slack includes 2.4.x or 2.6.x in stable branch because most Slackers tend to recompile kernel anyway. But when it comes down to it, it has a lot to do with initial boot and installation on legacy hardwares. My experience is that Linux kernel 2.4 just works on every hardware so far while I can't speak same for Linux kernel 2.6 due to quiet a few drops in legacy hardware support.

I agree on Pat's great work, and he's such a drama queen. :P

slackware is fun

[kokoko1]

Linux is fun and slackware more fun :)

Slackware and the Easiness Factor

[greatcelerystalk]

While I'm certainly more technically inclined than a number of people I know, I wouldn't describe myself as much more than a Linux power-user. I'm an Anthropology major with severe dyscalculia and have had little inclination to learn much more than Python, a little Lisp, and HTML + CSS; I'm not the 'typical' programmer geek or system administrator, but I wouldn't say that Slackware is any more difficult to use than SuSE, RedHat or FedoraCore. I originally started using Slackware (3.2) because I was careless with my Windows 95 installation media, and I couldn't re-install it after I had to replace the harddrive. It was pretty hellacious back then, but I was still using AOL for dialup and had never touched *nix of any flavour before. I ended up going right back to Windows. However, when Slackware 7 was released I decided to give it another go. On my circa 1997 PC, I didn't even have to recompile the kernel. Everything in the install worked out of the box (including X). Eventually, as I began to learn more about how Linux functioned, I taught myself how to re-compile the kernel and to do various other basic system administration tasks; I'm not sure I would've managed to learn quite as much about Linux had I started off using a distribution with an integrated package manager and so-called "hand holding" system administration utilities. I'm writing this post on a low-end Inspiron running Slackware-current. Yeah, it took me longer to configure the Slackware install than it did the XP install or the Ubuntu install, but Slackware is very easy to configure once you learn how. I gave my largley computer-illiterate mother an old desktop running Slackware with IceWM (I later switched it to KDE), and she hasn't had many problems with it. I doubt she could configure the system herself, beyond the options in KDE's control center, but it's certainly as easy to use as any other OS.

Re:Health Issues

[Lxcom]

--That may be part of the reason why some people feel reluctant to become too dependent on Slackware. I love it even though I use Apple hardware. I like raw simplicity. I purchased a "PC" just for FreeBSD use and installed Slackware as the secondary, Linux OS. I hope Slackware can survive in the long run.