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Slackware 11.0 Almost Done
linuxbeta writes "DistroWatch reports that the development process for Slackware Linux 11.0 is almost over. OSDir has some sweet shots of Slackware 11.0 RC1 in the Slackware 11.0 RC1 Screenshot Tour." From the article: "'There are still a few changes yet to happen, but let's call this Slackware 11.0 release candidate 1.' Other recent changes include upgrade to stable kernel 2.4.33; upgrade to udev 097, and rebuild of glibc 2.3.6 for both 2.4.33 and 2.6.16.27 kernels. The new release will ship with X.Org 6.9.0 and KDE 3.5.4, and will provide SeaMonkey instead of Mozilla."
Seriously.....
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
What a waste of bandwith. Like we need to see EVERY screen during the install.
I was using Slackware for few years before I switched to Arch Linux.
I don't understand why it still uses xorg 6.9. Maybe the reason is that nobody has the time to make so many packages for xorg7? IIRC that was the reason why there is no full GNOME in Slackware.
Kernel 2.4 - OK, as long as it is 2.6 ready (and it is).
But guys... what's the point to use so old software? If you don't want to put new desktop stuff, then just remove all desktop packages from distro.
Granted, I don't use Slackware. But when I saw a link stating "Slackware Screen Shot Tour", I fully expected to see a bunch of shell prompts :-P I wasn't entirely wrong!
I didn't realise GNOME had renamed itself KDE recently...
Yes, there's a lot more to a system than looks - but for a desktop OS, looks count a lot. And those screenshots don't give anyone a reason to give Slackware a second glance.
Am I missing something here?
Well, besides that its KDE, I dont think so.
Will Slack 11 include the CIFS patch in the 2.4 kernel? I need CIFS at work to talk to the Windoze boxes at work :-(
Hey, everybody knows what does it mean when a piece of software is almost done :)
... the Church Of the SubGenius!
"Powers. I have them."
Please remind me why this is exciting... Slackware is cool to run. It's not particularly interesting to look at. (the OSX folks have that wrapped up) Just tell me when it's ready to download.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Or is there some deeper hidden difference here?
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Exactly what I was thinking. It's almost pointless to show screen shots of any linux distro unless you're showing an interesting / new installation process or configuration manager. The rest of KDE / GNOME same ol' same ol', and there really is no point.
Using cfdisk, so I can presume it doesn't do ntfsresize. Still uses LILO. Console font configuration is kind of nice. The installation of KDE is absolutely 100% vanilla.
I can get a debian system pared down pretty well too, so I still can't see anything compelling about slackware.
Oh, don't be a penis. If it doesn't interest you, move on. No need to troll up the thread.
To Patrick Volkerding, his wife and Volkerding 2.0!
This is the oldest existing Linux Distro! Possibly one of the most stable as well. It retains the Unix philosophy that it does a few things really, really well, and gives you the tools to add on to it. It's tanj simple to maintain and update, no "RPM Hell". And it's one person's vision, which gives it a consistancy that is lacking in other "art by committee" Distros.
And I am biased...I moved to Slackware from Soft Landing Systems (SLS) Linux, and although I have tried many different Distros over the years, I keep on comming back to Slackware...and not just for religious reasons, either!
Thanx you Patrick and Co for keeping the vision!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
XOrg 6.9, 2.4 Kernel ... are you sure this isn't Debian?
... for its venerability as well as its stability. It was my first, and still favourite distribution. It's not on the bleeding edge, but it has other virtues. One is that it can be scaled easily to install as much or as little of it as you need, and run on machines with very different CPU and memory resources and amounts of disk space. Great for turning a bunch of old mismatched PCs into a Beowulf Cluster.
Semi-automatic package management has taken awhile to evolve, but for some time now it has been very good indeed. There are several good PM clients; I think slapt-get has the edge right now. And if you can't find what you need in the distro, there are several sites (such as http://www.linuxpackages.net/) that offer lots of additional packages and goodies.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Being a dedicated Slack user for the better part of a decade, I've rarely questioned any of Patrick's decisions in the maintenance of HIS distro. (Most people who piss & moan about Slackware being dated don't realize that it's one of the few distros that is still maintained, for the most part, by a single individual).
However, with great trepidation, I must say that perhaps some changes are in order.
Slackware has had a dedicated following for a long time because the distribution filled an industry need. The need for a truly rock solid stable distro that was a fairly easy transition for those coming from a pure Unix world. It seems now that those days are, for the most part, gone. The majority of the engineers out there now days have been brought up on other Linux distros, and many have never touched an actual Unix system. (No need to start any "What is Unix really?" flame wars).
While I do still prefer the structure and stability of Slackware, I do think it's time to make certain changes. I'm not saying it's time to jump on the "Latest and Greatest Everything" bandwagon. I think it's time for the distro to be re-focused. Possibly into a pure Server OS, with a strong focus on commercial grade clustering & virtualization. All of the other distros that have done this (i.e. RedHat, SUSE, etc.), did not have the right base for it. They were based on bleeding edge, sometimes alpha code, and everything had to be stabilized (which hasn't seemed to work out very well). Slackware does have the right, truly stable base for a dedicated server OS. If Patrick were to shift things to this direction, build in the right set of truly enterprise-class server features, I think he may very well see a new found following.
The other area that I believe a re-focused version of slack could be very successful is the embedded systems market. Slack is known for is lean, fast, optimized code. I think it would fit well into this segment.
I think either of these markets are perfect for Slack. Neither is looking for the latest, most newfangled, gui-based, anything. They want lean, fast, stable code, & steady release cycles. Just my $.02.
Yeah, but it takes balls to install gnome when it's shipped as a tar of binary files.
Badass Resumes
I have been using slackware now for almost a year. before then I have no linux experience. Just that it has been maintained by one person for so long, is in itself the thing that makes slackware so powerful. Congrats to Pat (whom I've never met) for being such an example of what it means to truely keep to what you love.
Slackware's primary design concern is stability. 2.6 is relatively new, especially by Pat's standards. To be quite frank, it doesn't make a difference; there's a 2.6 kernel option available. Even if there wasn't, there's nothing stopping you from making your own (and given Slackware's target audience, the geek, this is somewhat expected).
Note: proud Slackware user here.
Goten Xiao
I remember using Slackware 2.0 in 1994. Ahh the memories, Looking at it now it hasn't changed much. I am not sure if it is a good thing or not.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
you bastard!
It was Pain.
But I got it to work AND dual boot.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
IF you have not used Slack then you should not be a bashing it.... Slackware 10.# + is the rule at this house. Six boxes total (2 are daily "drivers", 2 are servers with 2 backups). This box here (mine) is a custom built box on a Soyo Dragon mobo that came out of a dumpster. You heard me... a Dumpster.... It started as a Slackware 10.1 stock with a 2.6.10 kernel, not very stable... Went back to the 2.4.28 kernel and had no problems... I have tons of custom apps buolt on this box. It has also been updated beyond Slackware Current and I have been running KDE 3.5 since early last year (self built). Slack is solid and if you prefer a more stable platform not loaded with a bunch of "eye candy" than it is what you want... Oh and Slack is very fast..... on any box....
Um... Kernel 2.4.33 was just released on August 11th 2006
check kernel.org
when is the next Yggdrasil release? Oh, right, I was thrown back six or seven years by seeing the name Slackware and the list of specs. Never mind.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
For regular Slack users there is also the Subscription.
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
Not even mentionning that pretty much all of the 2.6 goodies get ported back to 2.4 :-) 2.4.33 was released on August 11, 2006....
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
I'm surprised no one has yet posted this: Slackware Linux Poster
Why does slackware even bother making a screenshot tour?
From my understanding it is a stability oriented platform with a focus on the terminal interface. Thus the actual screen shots, if they do a good job, should be the same thing over and over again.
>>: "some command"
: Command done successfully. Whee!
*lather rince repeat*
It was a joke - interesting response though, in light of those other posts claiming that Slackware lacks the fanatical userbase of other OS's.
Other comments get insightful mods for laughing at Slackware sticking with stable version numbers instead of going with cutting edge stuff; I get modded flamebait for joking that a beta release of a relatively minor Linux distro isn't exactly gripping stuff..
Nothing is wrong with 2.6, but for some of us having the 2.4 option is essential. For example, certain applications built for 2.4 LinuxThreads will tend to be very unstable running on the new POSIX threads in 2.6.
People are looking at this the wrong way. It's not that Slackware doen't included the 2.6 kernel (it does), it offers the versatility to run either 2.4 or 2.6 which is a major advantage over other distros. Especially for us poor bastards who have to run expensive closed-source proprietary software at work.
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
It is official; Netcraft confirms: Linux is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Linux community when IDC confirmed that Linux market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Linux has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Linux is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Linux's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Linux because Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for Linux. As many of us are already aware, Linux continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Ubuntu is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Ubuntu developers only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Ubuntu is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Debian leader Murdock states that there are 7000 users of Debian. How many users of Ubuntu are there? Let's see. The number of Debian versus Ubuntu posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Ubuntu users. Kubuntu posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Ubuntu posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Kubuntu. A recent article put SUSE at about 80 percent of the Linux market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 SUSE users. This is consistent with the number of SUSE Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of SUSE, abysmal sales and so on, SUSE went out of business and was taken over by Novell who sell another troubled OS. Now Ubuntu is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Linux has steadily declined in market share. Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Linux is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Linux continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Linux is dead.
Fact: Linux is dying
Posting anon since this might be off-topic. But what's the "proper" way to upgrade from one Slackware distro to a newer one? The last time I just plain installed one version over my last version, a lot of things stopped working, especially X. A professor I had said he always just formats his entire Linux partition and installs fresh... buuut... he was always a kind of reckless fellow, and I cannot afford to format over my entire partition. Is there a sensible "middle-ground" way to upgrade to a newer Slackware distribution without breaking anything (and this probably applies to upgrading any version of any distro).
very funny to see this story submitted at the exact same day ... :D
i was rsyncing current slackware
after 3 months of not feeling the need to stay up to date
"Almost" doing something isn't newsworthy, damnit. Yes I am grumpy.
Comment of the year
The headline reads like a story from the Onion.
Guys, there is derived distro's from Slackware you know. Try Zenwalk Linux. Kernel 2.6.17, Xfce 4.3.9Beta1, it's own repo/package management system. It is to slackware what Ubuntu is to Debian.
If you have not used Slackware then.
Shut the hell up!
If all you do is distro dance.
Than shut the hell up!
If all your after is pretty screen shots.
Then shut the hell up!
You are not qualified to talk on the subject!!!!
Yes, but it's still based on old technology.
"There are still a few changes yet to happen, but let's call this Slackware 11.0 release candidate 1."
Why not just call it "Slackware 20.0 RC1", and make everyone think it's really advanced? It's not a release candidate when you know it is certain not to be released. It's a beta, tested by people who didn't design or implement it.
--
make install -not war
Because you KNOW the screenshot gallery is a direct representation of what a linux distribution stands for...
Slackware is very confused about what it is. It used to be the hacker's GNU/Linux. That title now belongs to Gentoo or Ubuntu. It is not an operations oriented distro like Debian. It is not commercially accepted like Red Hat or SuSE. Who are they protecting with all of the caution?
an ill wind that blows no good
I didn't mod you, and even if I had the points I wouldn't have downgraded your post. It simply didn't have any readily verifiable characteristics I'd normally associate with a joke, so I assumed it was serious and tried to call you on it. No hard feelings.
Every posting about every damn 0.0.1 revision of any Linux distro comes with a completely superflously screenshot tour!
These screenshots show always just the damn latest version of KDE / Gnome and often Gimp and Evolution (and the advertising text on the distros webpage will always try to sell these programs as their very own achievement...) which has really nothing to do with the distro itself.
Don't you people get tired of the same old complaint? If you don't want to run 2.4 then don't. No one's forcing you to. But just FYI, your opinion, interests, and needs do not encompass the universe of Linux.
There are reasons why 2.4 kernel development continues. Also, I don't see how non-programmers are going to see or care about much difference between 2.4 and 2.6.
Rediculous: A word indicating the writer is ridiculously ignorant.
I've enjoyed using slack purely because it doesn't try to get in the way of an experienced linux user with a mess of configuration utilities and package management. At the same time it provides enough basic, simple, and direct facilities to avoid the desire to roll my own distro.
Xorg 6.9 and 7.0 are not the same code; 7.0 supports my video card whereas 6.9 does not. Thus, my distro being stuck back on 6.9 for all friggin eternity makes it so I have to patch and recompile my Xorg to get decent video.
Well, slackware was my first distribution.
Back in 1991, I installed Slackware 2.3 (from a set of 20 or so floppy disks).
So when I saw this article, I thought hmm, got to see that distribution screenshot thingy...
Well lo and behold, the first handful of screens have hardly changed at all! The same UI the same screens! First deviation was cfdisk, which I think we had to exit to shell and run fdisk in 2.3, but otherwise - EXACTLY the same.
The KDE screenshots, well, they look like KDE on any distribution, so discount those as meaningful in any sense.
Slackware was always stable for me, but I stopped using it at around version 9, and after hopping around for a better alternative I've now settled with Gentoo, which provides me with what I need and I still use the odd trick I've learnt from Slackware to break the rules with Gentoo when I find it doesn't do what I want.
Still, an interesting article.
Clearly, the person that created this poster/jpg and the person that linked to it knows nothing about Linux or Slackware. The configuration window in the so called Slackware poster jpg is from Trumpet Winsock that ran on Windows 3.1 which never had anything to do with Linux or Slackware.
0.36% of computers that linux runs on Slackware has?
-
Slackware is significantly faster. And much faster with a custom kernel. All the system scripts are written in plain old bash, and the init system, based on BSD's, it's simpler and more elegant. It's just more Unix-ish.
-
The package system is simple, so simple it'll never break. You won't have dependency problems, because there aren't any dependencies. All the headers come with the packages, so you don't have to install any *-dev packages to compile some app.
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All the software bundled with Slack is unmodified. It's a plain Kernel from kernel.org, with plain GNU stuff and a plain KDE. No especial artwork, nor funny shit you'll never use. Come on, everybody changes the wallpaper and theme after installing a distro.
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Never crashes, unless you've messed up the config files. I've sometimes seen Fedora and Ubuntu behaving sluggish or buggy. In Slack this NEVER happens (or never happens to me).
Ubuntu is still installed on my computer, and although it's a nice distro, I'll be back slackin' in no time.$ whoami
I use the word in this context. Got it?
an ill wind that blows no good
Most people who piss & moan about Slackware being dated don't realize that it's one of the few distros that is still maintained, for the most part, by a single individual
... so? You say this like it's a good thing -- a feature of a distribution that's significant enough to outweigh more practical considerations.
OK
Why do you consider it a feature?
I don't really care in principle if my distro is maintained by 1 guy or 1000. But in practice, by using a distro maintained by 1000 (give or take), every package I've ever wanted, I've found. That's a big advantage. What's the advantage to one maintainer?
I'm reminded of jwz's easter egg comment: "Convenient though it would be if it were true, Mozilla is not big because it's full of useless crap. Mozilla is big because your needs are big. Your needs are big because the Internet is big. There are lots of small, lean web browsers out there that, incidentally, do almost nothing useful."
A distro maintained by one person sounds like a recipe for a small distro, i.e., a distro that doesn't do as much as I need.
except in horseshoes, hand grenades, and atom bombs...
What?
I have tried several distros over the year, but any 'stable' machine has been Slackware since I started to move to Linux.
Oh, BTW, for those that complain about newest hardware support, talk to the manufacturer of the hardware. If they are doing their job, you just need to learn ./configure && make && sudo make install.
Its a shame that people see slackware as dated. Slackware's stability, and flexibility, makes most other distroes look like another windows. Slackware is a stable base on top of wich you can put whatever you want. Slackware isn't an enterprise solution, but you can easily build an enterprise solution on top of it. Its basically ready to go as a simple webserver though. Slackware is like a blank canvas, just gnu, linux, and a few basic utilities. Gentoo is probably the closest linux to it, but gentoo's portage and weird init scripts are very particular to gentoo. And rebuilding my OS when I want to upgrade isn't very appealing. Slackware's package management, and configuration scripts, are so basic and unobtrusive that they never break or get broken by any modifications you may need to make. I can see why this is annoying to some. Most people would rather spend time using their OS than adding to it or maintaining it. I can see why ubuntu and fedora tend to be the OS of choice for desktop users, but I fail to see their advantage to power-users and server admins. If you're a control freak, and don't have enough time to do LFS, slackware is a great starting point. For what its worth, here is a shot of my laptop running slackware: http://home.comcast.net/~diabolix/shot.png
I read the link through. It is true! I am a 42 year old ricer! My machine is tricked out with LED's. It is very reminiscent of the street rod pictures on the site. I have made the same hyperbolic Gentoo claims, even on this forum. I still believe them! 10 years ago I was a staid SunOS user who wrinkled his nose at PCs. That all changed with my first Abit Mobo, AMD CPU, and LED fan.
an ill wind that blows no good
Seriously, thank you.
:)
I've not used another distribution that I could tolerate for more than a few hours, Slackware being the exception. It's consistently excellent and for the past few years that I've been using Slackware you've proven your mastery over the rest of the crowd. Your vision of this distribution is exactly what a lot of people look for. I think a lot of the others are too afraid to do what Slackware does (probably because it does it the best, no contest), and aim for flash and glitz.
Ignore the trolls and nay-sayers. I know it's hard, but there is a legion of Slackware users that appreciate the work you do for us.
On a side note, not everyone wants crappy custom GUI tools to configure their machines and a slow and annoying "magic installer thingy" (I'm looking at you YaST) to download and install their software. Some of us like having control.
Press the discs, my money is ready to be sent
Once again, thank you.
Just because you diffused the bomb doesn't mean you're not holding a half pound of C4.