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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)
What is this debian in which you speak of? It must mean devil....and must be slayed
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.
How APT a reply! I thought all our minds have gone all woody reading /.
http://kelvin.quee.org
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
... 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...
Yeah, it's called "the System Administrator." ;)
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.
Ummm, Gnome has a built in bittorrent client, so a few Distro's must have it already
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
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?
There's more to a web site than its front page. Slackware keeps development news where it belongs:
http://www.slackware.com/changelog/
Long answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
I suppose some might have a Torrent client on their installation CDs, but the closest you can get with Slackware, if you have slapt-get installed:
l ackware-10.2/" >> /etc/slapt-get/slapt-getrc
echo "SOURCE=http://ftp.scarlet.be/pub/linuxpackages/S
slapt-get --update
slapt-get --install ktorrent (assuming you have a functional KDE)
I only deal with CLI installs of slackware, its been damn stable throughout -current.
:: The Essential SlackWARE Tool
I use Swaret for my package manager, Its cli-only, does dependancies, etc..
swaret
swaret.sourceforge.net/index.php
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.
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
However, the package management solution that comes with Slackware (and always has) is durable, functional, and flexible. It has versioning information, so you can upgrade by package name. You arent stuck with hunting down un-necessary prerequisites because the author says you need them. And they are very easy to create and maintain (using a standard tar/gz format).
Above that, Patrick does a wonderful job from release to release by specifying every package naming changes, obsoletion, and addition in order to make upgrading easy.
Now, true, with checkinstall package creation is much easier in redhat/debian. And debian/ubuntu release updates are super easy. However, you cant diss a tried and proven solution just because its not feature ritch. It will allow you to do what any package management solution is designed to do: install, upgrade, remove software packages. Enough said.
STABILITY
It always has had a package manager. pkgtool. It doesn't do depenedency checking, but that doesn't make it not a package manager, any more than a lack of point and click interface makes vi not a text editor.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
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.
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.
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
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
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