Slashdot Mirror
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!
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!
Am I missing something here?
Well, besides that its KDE, I dont think so.
... the Church Of the SubGenius!
"Powers. I have them."
It's kinda like in Windows when you copy or download a file. Where 99% doesn't really mean 99%
Turn on Xgl. Seriously. I run it on every one of my workstations now, and I've gotten so use to the enhanced interface I feel like I'll get eye cancer if I use a 'non Xgl'd' system for more than five minutes.
"Powers. I have them."
SeaMonkey, the code name to the Mozilla Application Suite, an internet suite maintained by the Seamonkey Council. It is no longer maintained by the Mozilla Foundation.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamonkey
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.
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....
I choose my linux distro (read: flavor of the month) based upon screenshots, and the pure number of fanboys. That is why I am Ubuntu until I die (or until the lemmings march themselves into the water), and I have to choose a new distro, 'til I die.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
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)
Yes, since it's makes heavy use of your video card. I run SuSE 10.1, the list is in a package called xgl-hardware-list which installs a file to /etc/X11/xgl-hardware-list. I'm not sure of other distros, but Google should have the answers you seek.
"Powers. I have them."
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
I've done upgrades over at least three version of Slackware that I can remember (and a lot more clean installs) but all went smoothly.
.new files over to their proper names but with your configuration details entered (use the .new because sometimes the format changes a lot)
- Follow UPGRADE.TXT to the letter (in the root of the CD for the new version) not forgetting to move any
- Boot in single user mode and upgrade to latest kernel version (kernels go out of date too fast to rely on the default one being worthwhile for more than a few weeks or so). Don't forget lilo/grub etc.
- Make sure that any graphics drivers/kernel modules/etc. that you compiled in are recompiled with a version suitable for your new kernel
- Reboot and X should work just fine, then you may need to recompile or upgrade some of your software (e.g. if it's compiled against an earlier glibc or kernel).
It's a pain in the bum, especially if you have a lot of software or driver modules that are fussy about what they compile against, but it's usually a damn sight easier than trying to transfer all your software, config, etc. over to a new clean install.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
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