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Slackware 11 Has Been Released
CCFreak2K writes "Slackware 11 has been officially released, just over a year after Slackware 10.2 became available. Software available with Slackware 11 includes KDE 3.5, Mozilla Seamonkey 1.0.5 and X11R6 6.9. As usual, ISOs are available through BitTorrent and FTPs, packages can be synced through FTPs, and you can always buy a copy."
Anyone know why they stuck with making 2.4 series kernel default over 2.6? (They do, however, provide 2.6)
long is Pat going to live before all hell breaks loose and Slackware becomes another Debian? Slackware is ancient enough already...
http://kelvin.quee.org
I remember Slackware back in the day, apart from updated packages, has it got a decent official package manager yet?
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/
Congratulations, and kudos to Pat Volkerding. Many distributions have tried to convert me away from Slack in the past decade: none managed. Debian got close at some point, but with slapt-get in place Slackware's package management has become much easier (updated my laptop from 10.2 to -current with ease). Vanilla rocks.
So let's say I'm a relative newbie to Linux, and I've just finished installing Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS Dapper Drake on my laptop. I've read through the forums and have apt-gotten my way to a nice-looking Gnome or KDE desktop with 3D accelerated drivers for X, a bunch of useful apps and some games.
What does Slackware offer the newbie Linux user that something like Ubuntu doesn't?
Let's say I've been using Linux for years, and I'm a compulsive downloader and installer. I like trying out different OS's and desktop environments, everything from FreeDOS to CentOS to OpenBSD. I'm familiar enough with different package systems and administration styles to figure out how stuff works, but I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on something tedious and unrewarding.
What selling points does Slackware have for the interested & experienced Linux geek?
Just curious, not trolling.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
Welcome to the World of tomorrow!
I will use Slackware until it's demise. Even after it's long gone I will build a LFS installation that mimicks Slackware's simplicity.
I've been checking the changelog twice a day for a helluva long time, and its finally come.
Here's the full list of mirrors from where you can download it!
(Or you can get the torrents)
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
Yep, finally we got Slackware 11, and the list of changes and improvements is impressive.
:-)
Just as an aside: Patrick Volkerding is one of the unsung heroes of Open Source. Slackware is after all the oldest Linux distribution still in operation, and it is also one of the most stable and well-managed. And this is quite an achievement, considering it still is a one-man operation, and that Patrick went through some tough times recently, with his health problems and the birth of his cute baby... Hey, I am a dad, too, and I know how tough it is wih a new-born in the house!
So, thanks for everything Patrick! You are "The Man" and Slackware rocks!
And, yes, I am a (very) satisfied Slackware customer. How did you ever guess?
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
What does Slackware offer the newbie Linux user that something like Ubuntu doesn't?
a more hands-on approach to the unix operating system. slackware isn't flashy, isn't what some would even call 'refined' but it is a stable, well-balanced hands-on distro. it's a little more 'primitive' in some things like package management (*whine* dependencies *whine*) but this also works in your favor when repairing a system (reliance only on tar if absolutely necessary). This is only one thought i came up with right quick..
What selling points does Slackware have for the interested & experienced Linux geek?
rock-solid stable. if you stick with distro-only packages, you can expect to have practically no problems with it. that's part of the reason the package versions are older; they're tested. pat doesn't go latest-n-greatest unless a large demand exists or a security vuln is found. fwiw, i had a slack3 mailserver at my 1st job acting as corporate email router/gateway for our entire company (~150 ppl). except for the kernel and sendmail itself*, the system was vanilla slack. ran like a top.
i've tried a number of distros for short periods (longest non-slack dabbling was gentoo).. but i keep drifting back to it. i'm also a unix admin by day, if that matters. for me, slack is just plain and simple the easiest distro i've dealt with.
-r
* only reason i went more current with sendmail was this being the time ~sendmail8 started adding antispam bits and it was overall easier than going back and trying to hack the stuff in v7.. and i always love dabbling with the -current kernel, whatever it is.
-'fester
Slackware taught me Linux. I had used distros before and after Slack (I'm on SUSE now) but none forced me to understand Linux more. I learned how to compile a kernel, modify X*.conf files, load driver modules and ./configure, make, make install.
I switched to SUSE for laziness reasons, but because of Slack I've yet to have a problem that was too much for me to solve.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
... can read my mind !!!??!
I use Slack since 1999, no other distribution of Linux
wowed me like Slack did. Nothing comes close, other
distributors try to overload their distros with lot's
of slow and bloated administration-services like YAST2
and so on. But Slackware just runs, and runs and runs...
why do you say that? is it because of the 2.4 kernel? if so, your comment is not needed. the 2.6 kernel is included if you would rather install that.
I'm just curious, but what made you leave Gentoo?
I have used it for years and everytime I try another distribution they all just annoy me too much.
The only time I ever considered Slackware I took one look at the docs, read the bit about 2.4 kernel and threw the disk in the bin. I think that was Slackware 9.?? but everyone else was just releasing the first 2.6 kernels even then.
Why do they still go 2.4 by default now?
How does Slackware work with modern hardware? (Wifi, SATA, etc)
I am never likely to use Slackware and answer these questions myself as I am a sucker for running the most recent stable versions of stuff.
I dont read
On a related subject, are there any linux distros that come with a built in torrent client? If not, they're so widely used it seems like it'd only be a matter of time before one does crop up. Followed by a suit from the RIAA.
Hey....no one asked me.... I must be # 29
Yeah, I was looking for a new linux distro a few months back, and quickly turned away when visiting their front page yielded the most recent news as september 2005. I know they're probably spending all their time coding and therefore have no time to update their website, but I seriously thought they had stopped developing slackware because of the lack of news.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
For a better slack experience, if you are using a GUI that is, I recommend Dropline Gnome http://www.droplinegnome.net/
You may have to wait to use it on Slackware 11, but if you like Ubuntu you will like it.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
The only time I ever considered Slackware I took one look at the docs, read the bit about 2.4 kernel and threw the disk in the bin. I think that was Slackware 9.?? but everyone else was just releasing the first 2.6 kernels even then.
Why do they still go 2.4 by default now?
Well, you could always just compile your own Kernel. Takes maybe an hour all told.
Or, even better, you can actually RTFM and see that you can easily select a 2.6 kernel during install, but I prefer compiling my own.
How does Slackware work with modern hardware? (Wifi, SATA, etc)
See the 'compile your own kernel' comment.
You say you want a revolution....
from the Linux Counter
Distribution
153638 registrations entered 156607 values
distribution Count Percent
conectiva 769 0.50%
debian 31966 20.81%
diy 840 0.55%
fedora core 10480 6.82%
gentoo 13760 8.96%
knoppix 830 0.54%
kubuntu 782 0.51%
mandrake 11951 7.78%
mandriva 2073 1.35%
red hat 16238 10.57%
s.u.s.e 16159 10.52%
slackware 15754 10.25%
ubuntu 10812 7.04%
Others 24193 15.75%
shure, just 28 then.
BWWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Thanks for the laughs, you really made my day.
-gca
I agree, I've also been running Slack and Gentoo, but now I'm running Arch Linux, it's like Slackware but up to date (for desktop use) and with a great package manager called Pacman that is everyting I liked about portage but with no need to compile. Ofcourse if you want to compile everything you can do it with ABS.
www.archlinux.org
I've been using Arch for the last year, i much prefer it to slackware ,they are both simple yet extremely powerful distros, arch won out because it has a very good package manager (pacman) and i love the BSD init script style.
This is not to diminish pats achievement. I spend a lot of time at linuxquestions.org which is home to the official slackware support forum, a lot of people (much more than 28) swear by it there.
2.4 kernel isn't really my thing but then i've heard reports of it being a little faster than 2.6 (less modules?)
Now, I have never used Slackware; it never came my way when I started using Linux, then I got hooked on Gentoo and don't see a reason to look back.
However, I do find your comment a bit... strange. Inflammatory, even.
It may be because you just didn't bother to provide any kind of proof for your claims.
I have never heard anything but words of praise for Slackware (barring the comments on the still-default 2.4 kernel, which is still a very valid option in Gentoo as well), and now you have nothing but derrogatory words for it. I would very much like to know why exactly you find Slackware so lacking.
Ignore this signature. By order.
pwnd!
You say you want a revolution....
I'm the same way, except with Mandriva. I've been using Mandriva since Version 7 (which came out in 2000, back when it was Mandrake). I find that all the other distros annoy me too much. With Gentoo it's the installation process. I know you just have to read through the installation docs, but it's 2006, and I don't feel like printing out the docs, and they're too hard to memorize. No other distro I've seen requires you to follow website instructions to install it. With other distros it's other stuff. I find that Mandriva has a straightforward installation process, and usually all the hardware is working right after you install it. Software is also braindead easy to install, either from the command line, or with their nice admin tools.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I like both Gnome (and Ubuntu) and Slackware. How? Specialization. Ubuntu on desktops, Slackware on servers. Each has their place.
I recognize people by their sigs. Is that a bad thing?
1999 keeps calling, they say they want their default kernel back...
There's more to a web site than its front page. Slackware keeps development news where it belongs:
http://www.slackware.com/changelog/
Au contraire, if you can't "get things done" using slackware then you haven't learnt anything about *nix!
2 things. 1: Lack of proper package management (want to uninstall that package?). Want those dependencies resolved? Want those packages automaticly updated to get the latest security patches? Tough shit. This is a "hands-on OS" and damned if you'll get any assistance getting work done efficiently.
2: Lack of configuration tools. Want to get things done? Want that thing setup now? Go to your favorite text editor and edit those config files by hand, even though it's utterly brainless work that any decent distro should have automated.
Multiply these factors by your amount of servers and tell me you want to manage that piece of shit. Seriously. Some people work in the real world and needs to get things done, not tweak with custom builds and config files. And in this respect Slackware is 100% certified useless.
When I see people praise Slackware it's usually because they got things working, at last, after tons of work. They seem to think this is something special that other OSes doesn't do. Or something. Debian on the other hands... Users praise Debian for getting things done, no hastle, just like that, and that was 2 seconds ago.
I might be biased, but I have used Slackware, and my bias is mostly made up of that experience and my encounter with other Slackware users.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Oh yay, troll time! The only difference between a Gentoo troll and a Slackware troll is that I only have to put up with Slackware trolls every couple of years when a new release comes out.
Some people have different needs, hence different distros for different people. You wrongly assume that your needs are the same as everone else's. I know I'm going to regret this, but I'm very interested in knowing why you feel so strongly that Slackware is shit compared 'everything else.' And please don't bring up the 2.4 kernel. There are reasons for that, and 2.6 is included if you want it anyway.
"Yeah, I was looking for a new linux distro a few months back..."
If I had any mod points I'd give you +5 Insightful. You've encapsulated almost the entire problem with the Linux community, and you didn't even need a whole sentence to do it.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
What about slapt-get etc? Sounds like package management to me... one of the posters here stated he'd upgraded from 10.2 to 11 without a glitch.
That, really, is a matter of taste.
I like manual configuration; you have to learn where things are, but once you do, no automated confiuration is that quick and flexible.
Of course, I do not despise automagically created defaults that work...
Anyway, thank you for the explanation.
Ignore this signature. By order.
I am a devoted slackware user (been checking the Changelog in excess of 3-4 times daily) and you ask why people use slackware?
1. speed it might be possible to get slightly better performance with Gentoo or *insert source distro here* however it also doesn't take days to install.
2. It will run on just about anything. it is nice when I can run the identical base system on my brand new desktop, all the way down to my 486 based linux firewall.
3. A sane design. In slackware you will find everything from a software package where the software package would normally install it. in redhat/fedora you really never are quite sure where the config files might turn up.
4. Redhat. I started out back in the good old days with a fresh Redhat installation (9 I think) and just trying to use that for a week forced me to find a better alternative. the distro I actually found was vectorlinux (slack based) I liked it so much that I simply never looked back. I've tried all the latest SuSE, Fedora, and UBUNTU. and non can perform in comparison to my slackware box in terms of speed, or ease of use.
It's not as much trolling as a statement of facts, but anyway... See this post where I replied to exactly the same.
Take a decent Linux distro, remove any useful tools and strip it down to the binaries (and the binaries only). This is essensially a harddrive image, not a distro.
I fail to see what impressive or useful qualities this removal of tools reaps.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
I like Slackware and Arch, I used to use Slack for everything, now I use Slackware for servers, and Arch for workstations, that combination suits me down to the ground, they're two top distros.
Arch has a lot of software ready to roll, a quick 'pacman -S <package>' away, and plenty more in the (quite active) Arch User-community Repository, and if you fancy rolling your own packages of anything, compiling and producing a package with abs (the Arch Build System) is easy enough too.
Seriously...all 28 of us are really happy you feel that way. We wouldn't want an asshat like in the Slackware brotherhood. Go play with your Mac, you lemming.
Sig? - yeah, whatever.
With Gentoo it's the installation process. I know you just have to read through the installation docs, but it's 2006, and I don't feel like printing out the docs, and they're too hard to memorize.
Download LiveCD
Burn LiveCD
Boot LiveCD
Run through Wizard.
What's the problem? Gentoo now has an installer
Or you can always use Vida Linux which is a binary distro built on Gentoo...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Judging from http://www.slackware.com/announce/11.0.php it looks like slack is still using a lot of old packages. Is there a reason? Apache 1.3. Kernel 2.4. Etc...
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
1200 peers and I'm only getting ~100k/s?
C'mon people, increase those transfer rates. This is one of the few things you can share via bittorrent that won't get you named in a lawsuit (unless it's against your AUP, of course).
Hey, don't insult us Mac users like that. I use Slackware and Mac OS X as my two main OSes. Slackware for Server and Desktop, OS X for laptop. Tell him to go back to drooling over the latest screens of Vista.
Sometimes when I'm working on projects things disappear, I suspect gremlins.
It's only a "hard drive image" if you don't know what you're doing. It takes me around 20 minutes to do manual package selection on a fresh install and I end up with exactly what I need for a base system.
There is no "removal of tools", slackware users generally don't want or need these features. I fail to see what your problem is, if you don't like the distro then perhaps Slackware isn't for you? I don't feel the need to bitch about SysV init every time an update to some other linux distro is announced.
I love slackware, I've been using it for more than a year without changing distributions or installing windows. However, I'm planning to update my machine, and add an Intel Dual Core. My question is: Why doesn't slackware have support for 64bit architectures yet? There might be ports like Slamd64 or BlueWhite64, but IMO 64bit support should be included in the main distribution.
jezus even
... ... granted ##gentoo got 3 times
##slackware channel is populated with +230 people atm
which is a normal number in that support channel
that number easily, but you sir are just trolling!
Does Slackware have the same commitment to timely security patches, easy upgrades, and stable version numbers (no breaking configuration files) that Debian does? If not, I'd rather keep running Debian stable on my servers.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
One thing that I always loved about Slackware (I sadly have switched to Gentoo now but used Slackware for years before I switched) was specficially the lack of a lot of customizations (and the lack of a clear package system). I never was one for grabbing distro-specific packages (or waiting for them); as soon as the source was available for a new app I wanted to install it :). Slackware's barebones nature made that very easy to do without having to worry about breaking the package management system or replacing some uber-customized Redhat package with the plain vanilla version (and often hosing something up).
;).
It was basically a tinkerer's dream come true
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Nice to see someone else who does that. I thought I might be the only one who felt that Slackware and Mac OS X are both transparent and user friendly, each in their own very different way.
30 here anymore?
Linux user #349545 (GNU/Linux)iD8DBQBAzWjX+MZAIjBWXGURAmflAKCntuBbuK
That's not the fault of the distro though, that's the fault of the lazy admin. If you choose to bang in a nail with a sledgehammer, it's not the sledgehammer's fault that you've made a mess of everything. Slackware allows you to do things your way. It's your own judgement call as to whether your way is sane or not.
*Many* people want computers they can use like appliances. Most people, even. But in case you hadn't noticed, there are also a lot of people who actually love computers for for their own sake, who love to dig in deep under the hood and learn, because they're curious, because it's fun, because they want more control than an appliance allows, and/or because they want to build better ones. Those people explicitly don't want appliances. For those people, Slackware isn't "broken", it's almost the only operating system that is completely unbroken, utterly perfect.
If you disagree with me you are simply wrong. By your reasoning everyone should have switched to a Mac a long time ago, and there would be no programmers, no progress, no one who knew how fix anything, no one who could do anything but stupidly *consume* and *use*.
Your preferences are fine for yourself. But don't tell me that my curiosity and ambition make mine wrong. You're wrong, not because you want a dumbed down appliance but because you see no legitimacy in anything else, for anyone else.
http://dev.slackware.it/getslack/mirrors.php
Go to your favorite text editor and edit those config files by hand ...
Multiply these factors by your amount of servers and tell me you want to manage that piece of shit.
You just totally contradicted any argument you may have been attempting to make.
Have you ever heard of a script? You only have to do these things once no matter how many servers you have. Maybe you never understood that because you grew up with GUIs.
A system that concentrates on making the user learn to do things manually is perfect for allowing the user to do automation.
yeah i suppose the "pkgtool" and "removepkg" commands escaped your all emcompassing knowledge.
Take a decent Linux distro, remove any useful tools and strip it down to the binaries (and the binaries only). This is essensially a harddrive image, not a distro.
This shows complete lack of knowledge of slackware. Slackware has package selection during installation and source code in the standard distribution.
And of course, the admin has the final say, however, Slackware doesn't make it easy to quickly install this-or-that tool on demand.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I've tried other distros over the years, and have found the package management systems unwieldy, untrustworthy, and no less time-consuming to get things set up like I want than manually building from source and editing config files. I've learned details about system operation and file system layout through working with Slackware that have helped me debug problems on a variety of systems.
I'm a big fan of what I like to call Fire-and-Forget computing. I like to set up a system right the first time, then never have to touch it again (or as little as possible). Slackware has been very good about letting me do exactly that. My firewall/NAT box has been running happily without any unexpected reboots since sometime in 1998. For the most part it was only getting rebooted every time I moved from one dorm room/apartment to the next.
Slackware's also better at running on older hardware than any other distro I've found. I've just tried to get Ubuntu installed on some bare-minimum-specs HP e-PCs, without success, and there didn't appear to be any sort of lowmem option there.
I do miss the base floppy set for installing a minimal working system, done away with somewhere around slack9. I do miss that awesome little booklet that was tucked inside the 4-cd set (the first Linux book I ever read, and the most useful IMHO). I've always disliked the lack of a ftp/wget-based installation option on the stock install disk. And I've never been able to get the slack-build scripts to build new openssl-libs and openssh for me. Those are pretty much the only complaints I've ever had that were slackware-specific.
If you don't like the minimalist attitude of slack, use something else.
Just because you see it as 'posting facts' doesn't make it not trolling. If I go into an Audi car forum and start posting facts and figures about how much Audi cars are shit compared to every car made in the last 6 years, that is trolling, or maybe flamebait. The line is kind of blurry, I suppose. Either way, you could have picked a more constructive tone in your post... you likely wouldn't have been modded down, you still would have gotten your point across, and it might have led to more mature discussion.
I do agree, dependancies can be a pain. slapt-get was a giant leap, but most packages still don't have dependancy info. Frankly, it's only been a problem for me once or twice in the last few years, although that's probably due what I use slack for.
Frankly, your complaint of lack of configuration tools is just silly. If you're managing more than two servers AND you don't have scripts written up to do all these config changes, which are contained in simple text files for this very purpose, than I think you need to rethink your admin strategy. No offense, but this holds true for almost every distro. I don't care *how* snazzy the configuration GUI is, I don't want to do it more than once.
If you want to dip your toes into the BSD world (I'm a bit of an OpenBSD bigot myself, use it for my home router), Slackware is the best gateway. Of all the Linuxes it's considered the most BSD-like. So all the good things people say about Slackware, BSD is just a bit more so.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
and add another 20 or so here!
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
removepkg isn't for uninstalling packages? Man, I've been using it for the wrong thing all these years. Good thing I can still use pkgtool and choose "remove" on the menu there.
What dependencies are those? I suppose every once in awhile it happens, but the instructions for installing those packages tell you what else to install and in what order.
Funny, I've been on a mailing list for years that informs me of all the security and enhancement package updates for slackware. I can then just ftp to ftp.slackware.com or my favorite mirror, download them, and install with upgradepkg or pkgtool. Alternately, I can install slapt-get (which admittedly is not a default part of slackware) and do a quick slapt-get --upgrade.
You might have installed Slackware, but you clearly didn't use it.
Funny, I did not notice the MCSE in your sig.
You say you want a revolution....
I'm sorry but I disagree with you on a fundamental level about *nix and learning. IMHO slackware and the rest of the *nixs are broken at the very core in that they require learning to be useful.
:-)
Well, you are entitled to your opinion, just like everyone else.
But, if this is truly your opinion, may I suggest Mac OS X? I believe it is -- so far -- the best answer that is available right now to your requests.
Other than that, the only possibility that I see would be for something like HAL, from "2001: A Space Odyssey", or the voice interface of "Outland". Since both are science-fiction movies, I am afraid your dream OS is still somewhere in the distant future.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
n/t
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
IMHO English and the rest of the languages are broken at the very core in that they require learning to be useful.
IMHO math and the rest of the sciences are broken at the very core in that they require learning to be useful.
IMHO pianos and the rest of the musical instruments are broken at the very core in that they require learning to be useful.
Ever since I said my honest opinion about slackware and asked why anyone would use it, albeit in a very non-compromising approach, my server logs has exploded with poor bruteforce attempts, even lamer SQL Injection attemps and generally weak kiddie action all over my server.
Even though I refrained from saying so directly in any of my other posts... Way to prove that Slackware is a immature platform with a immature userbase.
You guys can stop polluting my logs now. It's honestly getting boring.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
I'm just curious, but what made you leave Gentoo?
:)
.. 2.4 kernel ..
:)
/extra/. dir area and you can install it. pat just uses a 2.4 as the base install.
not really sure i really gel'd with gentoo. it never made it to my primary pc; i played with it a bunch on a secondary box. i did kinda like emerge, i liked the custom-compile twiddle-your-own-settings-to-the-nth-degree thing.. but ultimately i just liked the balance of simplicity/hands-on stuff of slackware. that, and my secondary box (lowly pII-based celery466) had a mild coronary when i asked it to build kde. it was fun to watch the smoke curl out of the case.
yeah, i'm not sure why pat went that way with 11; i think the 2.6 series has been out there enuogh. and with the 'super-stable' 2.6.16.x kernels.. well, pat's the maintainer. since i roll my own kernels anyway, i'm running vanilla 2.6s on my main boxes (home desktop & work laptop).
How does Slackware work with modern hardware? (Wifi, SATA, etc)
Dunno yet on sata; i will when i finally buy my am2 mobo. wifi; i have a dell latitude d600 with the intel centrino/ipw2100 stuff, and it works fine.. again, with my vanilla 2.6 kernel & udev enabled. nary a problem. if i had any gripes with the base stuff.. it is lack of lvm tools in the install area. building an lvm-based initial install is.. challenging.
it's worth mentioning slack does include a 2.6 kernel with it; it's in the
il'l try gentoo again at some point, probably on one of my non-intel boxes (not many ppc or mips distros out there to pick from anyway.. compared to i386)
-r
-'fester
The FAQs on Slackware www pages are so outdated that it is ridiculous. An example:
/docs/mini/Large-IDE for instructions on how to make it work. (Thanks to Bob DiMarco for forwarding this to me, and Patrick LoPresti for compiling the information in the first place). Note that newer kernels (> 1.1.40) will do this translation for you automatically, and thus make the workaround unnecessary.
Q: My large (> 1/2 gig) IDE drive reports more than 16 heads, and as a result Linux won't install on it. What can I do?
A: See the file
Does anyone still use Slackware? Or is it just released for nostalgic purposes?
Have you read my journal today?
What does Slackware offer the newbie Linux user that something like Ubuntu doesn't?
:-)
One of the great things about Slackware is how fast it is. By keeping it simple (fewer services running on a standard new installation), Slackware is one of the fastest distributions I've used. This is important to me when I install Linux on older boxes. Ubuntu is awesome (I use it on my main desktop where I have the hardware for it), but for project boxes, even Xubuntu feels a little sluggish. So I use Slackware
I thought the developers were dying?
They'd like their distro back :)
Marc
Check out slackware-10.2/patches/ChangeLog.txt at your favorite mirror for timeliness of recent patch releases. Not exactly sure what you mean by "stable version numbers", but the main ChangeLog.txt files are available going back several releases, which will show the history of every package version number. Package upgrades can be done through slapt-get and upgradepkg.
I partition my drive with a big / and reasonable
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Or probably more correctly, most BSD like of the various linux distros. There is very little guessing as to whats where and in general its hard to break. But no its probably not for people who enjoy tracking down why the latest greatest of XYZ has broken or worse, caused other things to screw up. Slack is kinda the Ronco of linux - set it and forget it!
This really all depends on how you define "proper package management." What should it do, and what should it not do? Yes, apt will track your dependencies, but at what cost? And is it easier? I recently decided to try installing and using Debian, and then Ubuntu when the first would not work for me. I could not even get started with Debian until I spent about an hour reading help information online and then editing my sources.list. And I did this by hand. Where was the automation? Then I tried for something like three hours to install the nvidia drivers. I could not even find a concensus on this online, and had to pick an approach and go with it. When it failed there was no easy way to roll back my changes as the installer had "tracked" my dependencies for me and I had no real idea what may have been changed. I never was able to get an accelerated driver on the system. I also could not install mplayer or any dvd player, either by deb or hand. Automation? Not really, and what there was simply made things complex and harder to understand.
Ubuntu was little better. I still had the same experience with hand editing the config files, and by the way, this involved finding what to put into them which is not self-explanatory. And, after perhaps an hour of tinkering and rebooting, I did get an nvidia driver. But, that was all. No Mplayer, dvd capabilities and so on. I never got anything working to my satisfaction beyond the nvidia driver, and that took longer than an entire Slackware install. I should mention that I spent the better part of three days tinkering with these two systems, and in the end this is not much time. However, since these are always touted as automatic and easy compared to the cryptic Slackware, surely three days to get 3D drivers or watch a movie is not too much to give?
Now, my feeling is that apt is neither easy nor automatic. It is nearly impossible to master. The details of using this tool are very far from intuitive and documentation, as far as basics and getting started, are nonexistent. Sure, it is probably powerful, but in the end all it does is install binaries and track dependencies. What is this power for? It seems like haveing a 500 horsepower lawnmower. Why is it so overwhelmingly complicated, and in a system which users brag about being so simple and automatic? And even when it works right, you are a slave to it. You cannot easily mix hand compiled apps with debs. The debs don't recognize the stuff you install youself and so you have to work through the tool. I am doubtful that the stability which would result from this mix too, just from my small experience of trying to do so. Because of this, what you have is a very complicated and inflexible system, which doesn't sell itself to me as superior at all.
On the other hand, there is Slackware. After the experiments I am even more certain that it is the best approach available. The package management is stable and easy. The commands can be explained fully in the man pages, and these are very brief. There are no flags to worry about and nothing to update and so on. You go to the server, download the app, and run installpkg. Want to remove it? Removepkg. Upgrade? Yep, you guessed it. Really, it is braindead simple. Of course, the complaint always comes along about dependencies and so on. True, it doesn't do it, but then is that bad? In Debian I could not manage to install Mplayer because the system seems so completely a slave to the package manager, but no such trouble exists in Slack. I can install half of Mplayer's dependencies from slackpacks and the other half from source, and then install Mplayer without issue, either by slackpack or source. And the system just won't care, and will be as stable as it was before the action. And removeing things is
I love Slackware, and I keep vacillating between going with Slack or Debian. I currently use slack on my workstation, and debian on the server, because the server is 64-bit and debian has a semi-official 64 bit port that works. The only 64-bit support for slack seems to come from slamd64, which is fine but I have to wonder why the "official" slackware distro is ignoring 64-bit? Is it just because of time, or is slamd64 eventually supposed to be rolled into the official distro?
/etc/init.d in debian. Also, sometimes things are in weird places - e.g. who thought to put cron files under /var/spool/cron/crontabs? Why can't all config files just live under /etc? It just makes things harder to back up.
I was veering toward preferring Debian, until I had to build my own Perl. On debian, this is a bit complex and a nightmare, to be honest, when all you want to do is build the damn thing there seems to be all this other crap you have to do in order to make it fit in with the rest of the "debian way". When I built perl on my slack box, it worked like a charm. On debian, it promptly broke a bunch of stuff (e.g. apt-get). And I couldn't simply remove the stock perl, because dozens of crucial packages depend on it. I know it's possible, I know, but it's NOT easy, if you have to sit down and spend a few hours researching how to build perl "the debian way". Slackware is much simpler in that regard.
So I remain torn. Sometimes I really like the apt-get simplicity of debian, especially for essential stuff that I really don't care about or want to spend a lot of time on, and want to "just work". On the other hand, straying off the straight and narrow in debian land can get you in a world of trouble. Slackware is much simpler - you can compile stuff from source if you want and it doesn't break everything. On the other hand, I don't like some aspects of slack - e.g. no easy way to restart crond. I really like having all those restart scripts under
All in all though, it seems like every distro has its pluses and minuses. For me, the lack of an official 64 bit support makes slack a second choice on the server at the moment, since I have a dual Opteron and really want to take advantage of that. But on the workstation, I have a real affection for slack's straightforward, no-crap nature.
Tried Ubuntu?
:) Oh, and they've got well-configured KDE and Gnome desktops, plus XFCE if that's your thing (it was mine when I was on Gentoo, but now I'm a Gnome guy), and of course you can go for the more minimalistic DE/WMs with just a few minutes spent removing and adding packages in Synaptic.
I was a long time Gentoo user, but I made the switch. Ubuntu's defaults are, almost without exception, the exact settings that I would have chosen for my own, custom distro. They've got the desktop set up the way that I'd have liked to have had it in Gentoo, but I never had the time to get it just right (despite hours of tinkering and RingTFM).
The handful of things that I don't like take a few minutes to fix after a fresh installation (mostly the ass-tastic color scheme).
If you've never tried it, or if you havn't tried it since a couple versions ago, give it a shot.
It's also got a fast release cycle (biannually), and you can move over to the testing version a month or so before the next release if you must, though with a little bit of risk, as always with such things
I just started downloading it. I have pulled down 1.7 MB, it is going very slow, and already I am uploading more than I am downloading. Are you guys all killing the torrent client the minute you have yours ?
I just tried yet another distro and came back to slackware. This time it was Elive ( debian based OS with Enlightenment on top of it ). I couldn't even find out how to get my wireless nic to start up at boot, couldn't get a dwl650+ card driver to compile, couldn't get Netbackup client to run, etc. etc. For christ's sake I couldn't even insert a module without doing it DEBIAN's way (m-a) !.
I've used RedHat, Fedora, Debian, Gentoo, and Suse. None, not any of them understand that it's just a kernel with a bunch of scripts and files wrapped around it. To them it's a massive production of management tools and a kernel that runs it all. Yick!
Slackware is my (personal favorite) choice for distros.
Although we don't use it @ work for our production servers, I use it @ home for my laptop, firewall/router, and building other network appliances, as well as @ work for my desktop.
It's flexibility and minimalistic approach are very attractive reasons why I can't seem to embrace other (bloaty) distros equally, although I do use them (when required).
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Everybody, open the bottles! It's time to rejoice! Yet another milestone release of Slackware is out! World changes, but one thing remains - Slackware! Thanks Pat and long live Slackware!
Does a MAX possible of 4 years count as "long time"?
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
And judging by the comments here, many others are.
and beryl?
There's about 1700 people on the DVD torrent right now; god knows how many on the CD ones.
How does Slackware work with modern hardware? (Wifi, SATA, etc)
- See the 'compile your own kernel' comment.
I've had no problems whatsoever getting sound, SATA, USB, network, WiFi, Bluetooth working on my Dell Inspirion 6400 (six months old) on my Slackware 10.2. I upgraded to Linux 2.6, followed some clear kernel instructions for my Intel card and moved to -current because it was nearing release anyway and I already happily used -current on another system.
A few extra notes:
- most SATA controllers work with one of the SATA kernel images you can choose when installing. I had to use a 2.6 kernel for mine though.
- sometimes you'll need user space add-ons to make the most of your hardware, my Intel WiFi requires a binary 2.6 driver module and daemon.
- if you do compile your own kernel: copy your working kernel config (Slackware's default is a good start), make oldconfig to check new options, then make oldconfig your way towards a leaner kernel with fewer modules plus the things enables that you'll need. Keep dual/triple booting into working configurations to test things out. Nobody ever got fired for learning grub or lilo.
- with Slackware you start with a vanilla setup. You have more control and responsibility when it comes to non-critical patches that add functionality. Understand this and use it to your advantage. Slapt-get and SWARET are apt-get like clones which you can also point to linuxpackages.net, this gives you access to a good amount of extras.
- Patrick is conservative. Expect security fixes and grave bug fixes to release versions only. Even -current gets relatively few updates, you can see the entire Changelog from 10.2 to 11.0 on the Slackware site and it's a very plain and forward list of changes. Again, linuxpackages might help out.
- Slackware does no development of its own. Report software bugs to the source and important released (security) fixes to Slackware. This is a bit decentralised but also removes bureaucracy.
I always say: it works for me, but YMMV. Slackware has always worked really well for me and I can tell people how it behaves, but they do have to make up their own mind whether that suits them or not.
I love Slackware. Grew up in Linux with it. Started in 1996. Still using it today as my primary distro.
All my current PCs CPUs now use AMD64 instruction sets. I'm motivated to moving them toward more pure AMD64 software. I've owned Athlon 64 CPUs for three years now, and still no wide and mainstream support for AMD64. All the 64-bit options currently are not as mainstream or as polished or conflict free.
I've been experimenting with the unofficial Slamd64 port with modest success. Fred Emmott is really a great champion and I appreciate greatly all his work. Slamd64 still has plenty of rough edges and may only approach, but perhaps not exceed, the smoothness and polish of the official distribution.
In the meantime, I'm experimenting with Slamd64 but also branching to other distros which claim full AMD64 support (xubuntu, SuSE, Gentoo are my current areas of focus) to guage whether they seem more mainstream and have smoother support.
Readers, why do you think there is no "official" effort to bring Slack to AMD64? Do you think this may change?
I know Patrick has commented previously on this. To turn a blind eye to AMD64 seems to me to shortchange the future of the distro. Slack was founded on i386 and has maintained steadfast focus on that architecture, and though AMD64 isn't so greatly different, i386 won't be with us always. What becomes of Slack then?
I would like to see Fred's fine start folded into a greater official port to lift out of the level of just being a curious project and to get the backing of a larger community.
Please share your views.
USNG: 14TPU4605
Slackware is the greatest OS for beginners - advanced geeks.
I've moved on to LFS since my dabblings with slack, but since slack i've become a damn good Unix systems administrator... Without any formal unix education.
good times.
I'm glad to see Slackware steadily plodding along in it's development. I hope that Pat continues to produce this distro for years to come as it is a fantasitic distro, one that is too often overlooked.
While I have since moved on to another distro, more or less out of necessity, I'm glad to know that I can always "come home" to Slackware.
It does when all of that time is spent compiling.
:)
Makes 3ish years seem like a lifetime.
I personally prefer slapt-get (and use gslapt as a Front-End if I'm feeling gooey!).
QTswaret, however, is a very nice FE and almost makes me want to switch to swaret. The thing is, I tend to use the CLI for occassional updates and probably only use an FE 20% of the time. I used to use swaret but am currently more comfortable with slapt-get.
slackpkg is quite useful too for package management.
When I roll my own I use checkinstall (mentioned wrt debian and redhat/fedora in a later post) to create install tarballs.
Where can we get a DVD ISO of the entire thing so we don't have to burn 4 separate CDs?
Eric The X ratfynk
I've been checking the changelog more than twice a day in the last couple of months (100ths of times) and it loookts like this is *THE ONE* we were all wating for ;).
;)
;)
Next I'll get married, move to a new house and take slack 11 with us inside my nest personal server (AMD GeodeNX - global warming killer) - that have also been waiting in the last 30 dayd with an empty HD
Thank you Patrick, you've make this digital world a better place to be
How does Slackware work with modern hardware? (Wifi, SATA, etc)
:()
I can't speak for wifi, but sata works just fine, at least with 2.6 (I haven't tested the 2.4 beyond having to use it for the install). It worked out of the box, but I had to recompile the kernel anyway (no HIMEM-enabled kernel comes with it.
Sound cards are still the various iteration of the Audigy 2s, more or less (if someone can recommend an alternative that has decent linux drivers, please do. Creative drives me nuts, but the buzz on the onboard AC97 is hideous. Yes, it's an ALSA issue.)
Pretty much the same for any network card I've used, unless you're into the really esoteric stuff. Not a whole lot of advancement in the 100Mbps arena these days.
2.6 is fine on slackware... 2.4 is more comfortable in a stability sense I think. I've been using the 2.6 vanilla kernel with slack since 2.6.3 or so...
;-)
SATA works fine with Slack 11 and 2.6.18... My home box has 2 160G SATA's striped for fast storage. At work I have 1 server that has 4 sata drives in a raid 5 configuration. My ex-employer foolishly did not know what they had in their IT department when I rolled out Enterprise desktops running Slackware. (Hell I heard Ford is doing the same)
My current employer knows exactly what they have in IT and provides me with plenty of breathing room.
Slackitude... get you some!
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
And I can go to kernel.org, D/L the latest kernel, build it and boot it no problem.
Try those on your artsy-fartsy, oooh-look-at-the-eye-candy-while-I-masturbate RH box. Just try running a stock kernel from kernel.org on RHEL4. I dare you. I just tried last week.
And if you really know how to get things done, you don't need some damn GUI holding your limp dick to help you do it - you can do it on any distro. Care to tell my what you need RHEL4 to help you do that you by your own admission aren't capable of doing on Slack?
theres a kernel headers warning in the 2.6 package. it tells you your going to have mismatched kernel headers from either the kernel, or from glibc. take your pick. what it doesnt tell you about is the convenient build scripts in the source for glibc. carefull to upgradepkg --reinstall, NOT installpkg if you do this.
why not just include a set of glibc packages to go with? (to use if your not just testing 2.6)
and, maybe, for the 2.6 kernels, not bother with the seperate alsa driver. the one in the kernel works, and one less build script to run for users.
i was surprised to see 2.4 still default (and ill be really surprised if its default for the next release)
I'm new to the linux world. Just started using it about 4 or 5 months ago. I'm not in the I.T. business. I'm that annoying marketing guy on the phone you guys mention from time to time, but I've been a "closet case" computer geek sense I got my first Apple II. I've known about linux for a long time and I finally had some extra scratch so I decided to pick up an box and experiment with an OS I've been wanting to dive into.
:-).
I shopped around for distributions. I used Debian, Ubuntu, and Mandriva. Those all left me wanting more, I guess you could say they just didn't do it for me. I found slackware, read up about and really liked it's history, the community, and the KISS system just made a whole lot of sense. So here I am now a few months later, I have my second computer up and running with slackware 10.2, my sound works, my video works. I can print, I can play mp3s, write documents using the provided software. Hell I even have a Samba server going so I can swap files between my systems. Some might call me crazy for saying this but it's been easy with Slackware!
Between google, http://www.linuxpackages.net/, and the fellas at http://www.linuxquestions.org/ any obstactle I've bumped into has been easily over come. I really don't see why Slackware is classified as a hardcore linux or not for beginners. With all the excellent documentation it has been easy for me to do the things I want to do. Pretty much everything I do with my windows system I can do on my slackware system. Infact these days I use it more often because I rarely have to shut it down!
I'll be ordering up slackware 11 asap. It's definitely an OS that I will use for a long time. Thanks Pat V, for creating and maintaining an excellent OS even a non techie noob can use productively
1: Lack of proper package management (want to uninstall that package?).
Type "pkgtool". Option four is "Remove". Has been in there since 1994, when I started using slack.
Want those dependencies resolved? Want those packages automaticly updated to get the latest security patches? Tough shit. This is a "hands-on OS" and damned if you'll get any assistance getting work done efficiently.
Huh. Let me put it this way: I upgraded to V11 by typing "swaret --update && swaret --upgrade". That ain't exactly rocket science. I think I might have had to type "A" when it asked whether to install it all. That line, by the way, is run once a week from cron and keeps my system uo-to-date. What on earth is the big deal?
Oh, I see -- lack of "proper" package management. I guess that means management that requires a GUI or something like that. Well, in that case Slack might just not be for you, because it works just as well without one as with one. Hum. Odd.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Slackware is good for those wanting to learn about Linux, but it is equally as good for those who want a system that *just works*.
I use Slackware not only for myself, but for customers' (individual and corporate) desktops and servers. Slackware is ideal for this due to its stability: once the system is set up, customers don't have to worry about things breaking, and can get their work done. If they have problems, they call me. Needless to say, after the first month or so (when the problems have to do with adjusting to Linux applications) I don't get many calls.
There are some "sisters" who like Slackware too.
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
LOL@LUNIX
Is there any good source for CD/DVD label images for those of us burning our Slackware ISOs?
Been using Fedora for the last year or so, FC4 --> FC5, pretty happy in general. But as I read more and more about Slack (and run into more and more redhat/fedora issues) I start wondering: is it worth switching? I'll qualify the question (yes horses for courses etc. etc... :) )
:) ) file server / SSH gateway. I would turn it into a full blown router but don't see the point of buying 3 more NICs when my little linksys box does the job happily, aside from having full iptables control
:)
-Usage: General PC stuff, lots of downloading, a bit of multimedia (mostly music, previewing videos I DL
-Nix knowledge: somewhere between advanced newbie and average user. Only started using Nix 1-2 years ago but I like tinkering and am not scared of CLI
-Time: I used to devote a lot of time to geeking around with my box, but lately (esp. with work ramping up) I haven't been ars3d. Though a fresh challenge may increase my motivation!
cheers all