Slackware 12.1 Released

SlackFan writes "Slackware 12.1 has been released, with kernel 2.6.24-5. 'Among the many program updates and distribution enhancements, you'll find better support for RAID, LVM, and cryptsetup; a network capable (FTP and HTTP, not only NFS) installer; and two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.4.2, a fast, lightweight, and visually appealing desktop environment, and KDE 3.5.9, the latest 3.x version of the full-featured K Desktop Environment.'"

Comments

ok and?

[Anonymous Coward]

same stuff as in every other distro. the same "most advanced desktop environments available today" can be found in hundreds of other distros too. Why not advertise based on what makes slackware different from the rest than taunting the software that everyone else has?

Re:ok and?

[thenextpresident]

"Why not advertise based on what makes slackware different from the rest than taunting the software that everyone else has?"

Because the people that know Slackware already know what makes it different, and those that don't probably should stay away.

I guess the question is: Why advertise what we already know?

Re:ok and?

[Phroggy]

Because what makes Slackware different from the other distros hasn't really changed since previous versions. What has changed are the addition of new features that other distros have had, and Slackware is now adding.

Re:ok and?

[Anonymous Coward]

"taunting" should be "touting"

Re:ok and?

[gambolt]

Slackware isn't different from other distros. Other distros are different from slackware.

slackware:linux::Rolling Stones:Rock&Roll

Re:ok and?

[Inner_Child]

That's actually a fairly apt analogy - the Stones are one of those bands that people either love or hate, regardless of the band's longevity.

So thank you. Thank you for the first good analogy Slashdot has ever seen.

Re:ok and?

[Nocturnal Deviant]

mod this guy up thats slackware in a nutshell props.

Re:ok and?

[Jurily]

Cool ad. Is the "STAY AWAY!!!" logo on the booting screen too?

Re:ok and?

[j79zlr]

The real difference of Slackware is ironic. They don't bastardize their packages with tons of patches. So somehow they are different by not being different? I am now a Gentoo user which is definitely bastardized with tons of patches ;) but I grew up with Slackware and still have much sentimental value with its progress. Nice to see it still kicking.

Re:ok and?

[Fri13]

I might have answer for that.

New users dont actually know what is OS. They think that OS is whole package, sofwares, support, brand etc.

Microsoft has done "great" job to ruin markets and minds of normal users, for it's own purpose.

In history Microsoft had these monopoly cases about IE. It was that Microsoft intagrated own web browser to OS, instead just bundling with it, so normal user couldn't remove browser.

Many user now mistake "bundle" and "intagrate".

Microsoft has intagrated lots of stuff to OS but not all. Example of games or notepad, what are just bundled and can be removed. Those ain't part of OS but come with OS.

And now same thing is going to GNU/Linux. Users moves from Windows to GNU/Linux and they think that OS is whole package, instead it's something beneath the surface, the desktop.

They think that GNOME is actually what is OS.
Then there are these who starts telling that whole package is THE OS, because normal user dont know what is OS and it's better to them if technology is very simple.

For normal user, if you change desktop enviroment from GNOME to KDE, it's different OS. But every engineer knows that's not different OS because KDE or GNOME isn't part of the OS. Those softwares needs OS, so even that KDE or GNOME is switched or removed, OS isn't different, only working way is different.

Then there are these reasons that if someone change brand or someone else give support to OS, it's different OS.
Like Kubuntu and Ubuntu would be different OS than different distiburions.

Few these people claims that Distribution = OS and distribution word should be forget because it does not exist. And one reason for that claim is that there is over 400 different OS what use Linux kernel and not 400 different distributions of Linux OS (GNU/Linux) what cames bundled with other sofwares.

Same persons claims that if same code is build for RPM distribution and for DEB distribution, that software is build for different OS and not compiled for different distribution.

And NOW we are on that state, there is no reasons to use word OS because it's raped by people who claims that OS is whole package. Same persons who claims that Free Software has nothing to do with market share. And same persons claims that Ubuntu is somekind God's gift for Windows users what is different OS than any other Linux kernel used OS's and it isn't such crappy as those, like Mandriva, Slackware or Debian.

And now we all see PR about 'different' OS's than different distributions. Because there are just people who dont know what is OS and they want to brake down whole community, just like Microsoft would like. And we are marketing different distributions as "superior" among other 'OS' (disrtibutions). We allow this kind persons to rape community.

Ain't we tired for OS/Browser/Distribution/Desktop Enviroment/Name/etc wars?

Why we cant just promote the community and not just own distribution what we use? (sorry, meant to say OS for those who thinks distribution == OS)

Re:ok and?

[Chris Mattern]

"Welcome to Slackware. Now go home."

Re:ok and?

[turing_m]

"Rolling Stones" seems to underrate the learning curve involved.

slackware:linux::A guitar:Rock&Roll

Re:ok and?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually a fairly apt analogy - the Stones... Er, didn't you mean apt-get analogy?

Re:ok and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slackware is for people who can't let go of Unix, other distros are for people who can't let go of MS Windows.

Que pasa? Nada.

[DarrenBaker]

According to their home page, this is the first interesting thing to happen to Slackware since 2005. It's the most boringest of all distros!

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[Pommpie]

Which is why it works so boringly. No crashes, no wacky untested software with potentially unrealised bugs, no fancy memory-sapping 3D effects... where's the fun in that?

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[zappepcs]

To some it is boring, yet to others it's a sign that not only is Linux not going to go away, but it is available for any business, government institution, school, person etc. to modify and use it as they please. There is no single church around the globe despite the rather vigorous efforts of several groups. There should be no single OS. The simple reason for this is Born out by your comment. We simply cannot all play nice together and agree on what an OS is supposed to be and do. For that reason alone there should never be a single OS. Vive Slackware! Vive la difference.

You never know, one day next year (around March 15th or so) you will find that you have the perfect application for the use of Slackware. All of a sudden, it will seem like a cool OS for that application and you will have a moment of de ja vu and silently thank me for this moment.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[Anonymous Coward]

You never know, one day next year (around March 15th or so) you will find that you have the perfect application for the use of Slackware. CINNA. O Caesar-
CAESAR. Hence! Wilt thou lift up Olympus?
DECIUS. Great Caesar-
CAESAR. Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?
CASCA. Speak, hands, for me!
Casca first, then the other Conspirators and Marcus Brutus stab Caesar with shards of Slackware disks.
CAESAR. Et tu, Linux?- Then fall, Caesar! Dies.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[celle]

Another name for boring is rock solid stable. Been using it since 1994. I haven't lost data yet even after my home was struck by the biggest tornado in the United States (2 1/2 miles wide)(it had friends). I was doing a backup and cleaning out the interior of the case when the tornado struck. I went back to what was left of my town(three tornados went through it)(obliterated) and my house(struck by two tornados) the next afternoon. Put the covers back on and removed the server to my fathers. I then cleaned out the case and powered her up. No problems and thats after the server running for six years straight. She's still running strong four years since that day.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[paulpuddles]

Right on brother, its kinda like a straight-edge approach to life. Taking every day sober.

err... on the other hand, screw that. I'd rather fall over on the floor from a 'crash', than sit there and fight the war on paper cuts!

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[Cairnarvon]

``Tornado resistance'' is probably more of a hardware feature than a software one, wouldn't you think?

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. You might as well post a joke about sex on Slashdot, as a joke about Shakespeare.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slackware was the first distribution I used, a fairly long time ago (3.0? when 1.2.13 was the current kernel). I stuck with it for years until 7.0.0. My problem, I suppose, is that for me it was sort of in no man's land.

I compiled everything myself, for two main reasons: not everything was available as a Slackware package, and I patch a large number of packages to tweak them in a way I like. The issue with Slackware was package management: it has a package system, but not a terribly sophisticated one. I wrote a little Perl script that works similar to checkinstall, meaning I created all my own packages from source. But Slackware's package management just was not enough for me. No dependency checking, really no features at all, apart from recording the output of tar xfvz.

I could have, probably, gone with a distribution that does everything for you, and learned to appreciate that. Instead I wanted more control, and with Slackware, that would have been too haphazard. So I created my own distribution, with my own package system, init scripts, and so on. It really is from scratch, and it scratches an itch (hah!). I even ported over a lot of BSD tools to replace GNU coreutils, gzip, findutils, etc. It's been great fun.

Slackware was a wonderful learning experience for me but in the end it wound up either doing too much, or not enough, you could say. I'm glad it's the one I picked up first, but I've outgrown Slackware and can't see a need to use it again--I sure did defend it for a long while, though!

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[calebt3]

What did you switch to?

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched to the distribution I created. It's not based on anything. The init system was inspired very heavily by FreeBSD but I didn't use their scripts. The package manager is my own, too. Again inspired by FreeBSD, it's ports from sources.

I'm not sure what else is important in differentiating distributions. I've patched a number of the ports, but not heavily. My KDE, for example, won't look much different than if you installed from sources. I'm under the impression that many other distributions customize things like that, so I suppose that's another difference.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[mrbluze]

To some it is boring, yet to others it's a sign that not only is Linux not going to go away, but it is available for any business, government institution, school, person etc. to modify and use it as they please

I just read some reviews on Slackware, then Gentoo. I run Ubuntu at the moment. I think people bash Slackware because it's difficult to install and maintain compared to others. But if someone gave me the job of installing Linux onto a computer that will later be difficult to physically access and must work no matter what, say, for example, in an operating theatre, then Slackware is a worthy choice. Seems like it's possible to get exactly the features you desire with slackware and nothing else.

But it seems to me that everybody is thinking that every Linux distro's big wish is to pass the wife-test. Not everybody wants to design, build and maintain their own car. Most people just want a car that works and gets fixed for them, but it would be a sad day if we had no alternatives like slackware.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[MightyMartian]

And it's the fastest. I tried Ubuntu's server edition and found it a royal pain in the ass. Part of it, I suppose, is because Slackware was the first distro I installed (way back in 1993 or thereabouts), and has remained very conservative in its setup process, as well as maintaining all the default paths, so that a good deal of software can compile with little or no pissing around. It's packaging system isn't as pretty as Debian's, but is functional.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[Anonymous Coward]

Karma transcends all boundaries.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here here! Me too- SLS then Slackware- around 1994. I'm doing some RedHat, Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, etc. It's all fun, but I just can't warm up to the rpm thing. It's got some cool features, but it's easy to fsck up and then you're fscked. Slack packages are simple, clean, tight, and PLAIN TEXT readable and editable. An all around solid distro and like so many others- I've had NO problems, even when really pushing things like library version skew. The ONLY trouble I ever had was with ReiserFS...

Thank you Patrick! I truly hope I can make some $ and send you some!

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[drinkypoo]

I started with Slackware myself (version 2) with ye olde kernel 1.1.47 with the A, N, and D sets, and part of the X set. On a 386DX25 with 8MB FPM DRAM, a 1MB trident card, and a 120MB maxtor disk on an ISA IDE controller, I had a full development kit with the ability to build the system (though not enough disk space to do it, heh heh) and X with Netscape. Good times. Today, I have a real computer, so I can run a bloatier distribution.

Probably the only reason I would run slackware at this point is if I had a tiny, pathetic computer, and it was my only machine. With multiple systems, I'm more inclined to treat gutless wonders as platform-agnostic medium-thickness-clients and just use XDMCP to a fast machine if I need them to perform.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[Chris Mattern]

When you're installing a server OS for production use, boring is good. Very, very good.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[delt0r]

My wife is currently using slackware. I'm currently using slamd64 12.

Its all good.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[turgid]

How did you manage to wean her off of Windows?

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[MightyMartian]

I still do quite a bit of work building routers, mail gateways and file servers, and while I've tried everything from Mandriva to Ubuntu server edition to FreeBSD, I keep going back to Slackware. I'll admit that, after fifteen years of playing with the distro, I just feel more at home, but still, I feel more like I'm configuring the system I want, rather than working around the system someone else decided I should have.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've run slack on servers for 6-7 years. I can't stand RPM or .deb based distros; I typically want much finer grained control over systems than that.

The only reason I'd run a modern GUI based bells and whistles distro is if I had an overpowered general purpose machine that wasn't going to see any serious use. I recently installed 32bit xubuntu on an old laptop so a friend can use ardour, it uses twice the RAM when idle as my 64bit Gentoo based laptop.

Now clearly *ubuntu is a better choice for inexperienced users who want to do casual web browsing, IM and snaps of the kids/cats. Slackware (servers/workstations) and gentoo (workstations) are eminently suitable to dedicated installs where most of the packages are going to be custom patched or built from source.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[celle]

Not completely. The hardware is only half the system as without a good OS you've got about $20 worth of scrap metal. The OS still has to keep the file system stable through power surges and physical abuse, never mind everyday use. Especially when doing large data transfers which it was doing at the time. It also is responsible for being able to recover keeping the data intact and accessible as well. Without data integrity and access the whole point of using computers is lost, might as well keep a paper library and use a slide rule.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[abigor]

Yeah, but the stuff responsible for your file system integrity is the same stuff on every Linux system. Slack isn't unique because of having "better" code. It's the same across distributions.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[Baseclass]

My wife and my 11 year old son use Slackware.
Sure Slackware may be slightly more difficult to install than some other distros, but when it's all said and done, Slackware is incredibly lean and stable.

My son recently got a new PC for for his birthday and came pre-installed with Vista. He told me he wanted to keep Vista installed so he could do some gaming.
A week or so later he was so fed up with the bloat, the pop-ups, and restrictions he said "dad, can you put Linux on this for me". Made me very proud indeed.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[sam i am]

FYI: Slackware 12.0 came out in mid-2007.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[b100dian]

> My wife is currently using slackware
She cute?

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm kind of annoyed by all this "teh Ubuntu is for newbies" talk. I came up on Slackware, and I'll always have a place for it in my heart. That said, I run Ubuntu on my desktop now, because I can't be bothered to check a fucking mailing list for security updates or write a script to fetch them for me. I don't want to have to compile dozens of packages I use that aren't part of Slackware, and then keep track of security issues for that software. I just want a platform to run my apps that I don't have to think about, and the more "bloated" distros like Ubuntu and Fedora do that.

As for Gentoo... hey, you're entitled to your lifestyle choices. Just don't expect the rest of us to follow suit. :)

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[geminidomino]

My son recently got a new PC for for his birthday and came pre-installed with Vista. He told me he wanted to keep Vista installed so he could do some gaming.
A week or so later he was so fed up with the bloat, the pop-ups, and restrictions he said "dad, can you put Linux on this for me". Made me very proud indeed. Put linux on it, and buy him a car. He clearly deserves it.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[geminidomino]

Ditto. I switched to Ubuntu on my desktop recently, replacing Slack 11. Got tired of unimportant-but-often-used things breaking all the time... etc... Ubuntu keeps things in a mostly controlled state, at the cost of a little bloat. This PC dual-boots with XP for (rare) gaming, so it can handle bloat.

For servers though, yeah, still devoted to Slackware and FreeBSD.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[delt0r]

By not installing it ;)

Seriously, she likes the KDE games better anyway.

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good question. Probably why I'm not running Slackware any more. I'm running Ubuntu, which while it currently is running "memory-sapping 3D effects," they can easily be turned off. As for crashes, I haven't experienced a program crash since a buggy version of a game in 6.10 that I used to play (can't remember the name, it segfaulted). As for "potentially unrealised bugs..." Well, that's your troll showing right there I'm afraid. ALL SOFTWARE HAS POTENTIALLY UNREALISED BUGS. Notice how Slackware is at release 12.1 now? That's because there were bugs. Things to be updated. Newer versions of packages. If Slackware were so perfect in its last release that it had zero bugs then why are we talking about a new release in the first place?

So yeah, where -is- the fun in Slackware? Waiting for Pat to finally move to a version of the kernel that everybody is using? Trying to hack together your own packages with checkinstall? Hoping that they'll actually support 64 bit themselves instead of having to go search for a third-party port? You're obviously a Slackware fan, how do you have fun other than broadcasting your supposed superiority?

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[drinkypoo]

This is precisely my situation. Do I want to roll my own Linux-From-Scratch (Slackware is typically pretty far behind the curve, due to its few-and-far-between release cycle, which I realize does not bother some or possibly even many people) or do I want someone to take care of all that nonsense for me? I can use a minimal Debian (or sometimes start with the Ubuntu CLI) for server-type tasks and really not have any problems with that.

I spent some time with Gentoo and concluded that the only people who really need it are those with a K6. It's hard to find a K6 build of most operating systems and the K6 is a super-retarded x86, but an excellent processor. It whips some Pentium 2 ass, for sure, clock for clock. You do, however, have to account for its peculiarities. Gentoo will let you do this in every binary on your system (aside from anything precompiled) and that is as good as gold. Again, if you just like running Gentoo, that's cool too. I think it's silly, but it's not hurting me :P

The simple truth is that you can now get a 4GB USB flash for what, about eighteen bucks new any day of the week. So most anyone can afford the storage space to install Ubuntu server on a SFF router or whatever, and they can just disable all the services they don't want to use; they will be there if they ever want them. In fact, that sounds kind of cool. I think I'm going to go order a flash disk. I may be getting an iBook G3 here soon, and I understand even the modem is supported under Linux. It might be my new server/gateway...

Re:Que pasa? Nada.

[atraintocry]

I wouldn't say that Slackware is difficult to install or maintain, but for someone doing it without prior knowledge and expecting something like anaconda, no, they'll have some reading to do first.

Probably the thing I find most interesting about Slackware is the BSD-style startup scripts. They are a good example of the subjective nature of what's difficult: simpler in structure, so they're easier to create & maintain. But they're not as automagic as the SysV variety.

I run Arch myself...seems like a similar philosophy, but with more fun stuff and a kickass package manager bolted on.

Gentoo is different in many ways, perhaps not worth comparing to Slack other than its age. But TBH I don't know much about Gentoo.

Check this out: http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2006/04/mind-map-of-linux-distributions.html

Hooray for slack!

[lambent]

The first distro I ever installed, and the one that's changed the least over the years. You may say that is a bad thing, but Slack is the only distro i can think of that hasn't succumbed to bloat, rot, ego, or the all-things-to-all-people syndrome. It may have stagnated for a while, but it's good to see it get back to a more regular release schedule.

Re:Hooray for slack!

[muckracer]

> the one that's changed the least over the years

Overall I agree, but I wish Pat would remove sendmail already and include a sane MTA like Postfix. Sendmail needs to die.

Back from the dead.

[tumbaumba]

Could the Duke Nukem be far behind?

Fix URL, please - s/org/com/

[robw810]

The official Slackware site is at slackware.COM, not slackware.ORG. (and it's already dead as of comment #3).

Re:Fix URL, please - s/org/com/

[higuita]

actualy they are the same site, but oficially, its .com

All hail Pat and the Slackware Team

[stox]

They just keep going, and going, and going!!

Re: except you're wrong...

[robw810]

12.0 released in July 2007. When anticipating a /. arrival, minimizing content on the main page is good.

Bittorrents ...

[ClickOnThis]

... are listed on this page:

http://www.slackware.org/getslack/torrents.php

Re:Bittorrents ...

[notamisfit]

Seed you bitches! Rescue me from Ubuntu hell!

Re:Bittorrents ...

[MollyB]

Unconvincing username? Check. Better than AC by a long shot.

Obscure referential sig? Check. Can't say. I disable sigs like many here. Who cares?

Playing to current popular /. groupthink? Check. Since when is that a hanging crime around Slashdot?

UID around the one million mark? Check. Again, who cares? Nobody decides when they will be born. Lots of high-UID's are brilliant contributors.

Do the world a favor and kill yourself. Any of us could take that advice, but you won't find many volunteers. How about yourself? Exactly what do you offer the world that your absence would be missed?

(yes, I fed the troll. Got my Irish up...)

Re:Bittorrents ... (wrong tld again)

[robw810]

and again, it's .COM, not .ORG

Re:Bittorrents ... (wrong tld again)

[ClickOnThis]

and again, it's .COM, not .ORG Blame the summary. I clicked through to the announcement, then navigated to the torrent page. In any case, the .org and .com addresses both point to the same IP address, so no big deal?

So tell me...

[FoolsGold]

Why do they call it Slackware?

Re:So tell me...

[notamisfit]

Because it has the highest amount of slack in any Linux distro.

Re:So tell me...

[Nimey]

Patrick (the maintainer) is a SubGenius.

Re:So tell me...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's from the Church of the SubGenius.

Re:So tell me...

[Phroggy]

Yep, apparently they decided building Gnome is a pain in the ass, and somebody else was already doing a better job anyway, so why bother?

Re:So tell me...

[gambolt]

ask Bob

Re:So tell me...

[mrbluze]

Patrick (the maintainer) is a SubGenius [wikipedia.org]. Well, for a distro that was supposedly inspired by the religion, Slackware is not particularly funny or amusing but much of the installation process does make you think it's intended to make a parody of the user and teach them the true meaning of absurdity.

Re:So tell me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but it's supposedly the origin of the name slackware.

Re:So tell me...

[Vectronic]

It's not because of laziness that Gnome is missing... its because they don't like Gnome... and they wont offer it just because its "popular" because it goes against the principles of Slackware... or even Linux as a whole if you go by what Torvalds says...

Re:So tell me...

[Anonymous Coward]

If absurd means straightforward.

Re:Bittorrents ... (wrong tld again)

[robw810]

Modded "redundant" ?? I guess at least one of the people with mod points this time around needs a "-1 HUA"

Re:Bittorrents ... (wrong tld again)

[Frosty Piss]

and again, it's .COM, not .ORG

Looks like a mirror. Is there a difference?

Re: destination ip addresses

[robw810]

slackware.com has address 64.57.102.34 slackware.org has address 12.246.148.57

excellent question

[goombah99]

What exactly does go into making a "distro" anyhow. My only experience with this is making my own custom Knoppix CDs that woke up as apache servers. Seemed pretty freakin easy. it was sort of a chinese menu of what you wanted to leave in and leave out.

But of course I was standing on the shoulder's of giants. Someone created the look and feel of that and made all the config files work. But how much of that is what goes into a distro and how much is pretty much set by the packages them selves. e.g. choose gnome and is basically the look and feel set?

these days everything seems like it comes down to four looks, KDE or gnome in user interface and redhatish or debianish in directory layout and packages.

THe only distro I've played with that felt amazingly original in every aspect is Damn Small where everything is different and very tight. (never tried Puppy).

So what exactly goes on to make a "distro". What makes say ubuntu different than one of the four chioices (kde,gnome, debian, redhat)

Re:excellent question

[notamisfit]

Really, any distribution boils down to package selection, package management, and release engineering. As per your example, Ubuntu uses Debian unstable for packages and apt for management, but only supports a small subset of unstable, and releases every six months. Yeah, just about every GNOME and KDE distro looks the same (well, scratch that for KDE, considering how much Mandriva, SuSE, and Kubuntu patch it all to hell and think they're actually *improving* it). Slackware's more of a throwback to the days when a Linux distro was just an easy way to get a system up and running, as opposed to an all-inclusive software library.

Re:excellent question

[Ian Alexander]

If you think DSL is amazingly original then you should try SliTaz. ( http://www.slitaz.org/en/ ). They've crammed a working desktop into half the space of DSL, and it's a damn sight more functional, too. It's one of the most unique distro's I've tried so far.

Re:excellent question

[Anonymous Coward]

>(well, scratch that for KDE, considering how much Mandriva, SuSE, and Kubuntu patch it all to hell and think they're actually *improving* it)

Actually Mandriva has one of few distros what use upstream version of KDE. KDE developers like it when distribution builders works with KDE project together and does not "fork" own version from it as Kubuntu does.

There was story about this when KDE4 came out on dot.kde.org where KDE devels "thanked" Mandriva.

Re:excellent question

[turgid]

Making a distro is quite an involved software integration exercise.

It's not just about selecting a bunch of packages. It's about selecting the right versions of the source, configuring, compiling, testing, debugging, patching, testing, packaging, installing, testing, testing and more testing.

A lot of bugs in core utilities get found in this way, and obviously they have to be fixed. Whether that's the disto maintainer, the developers or random community members depends on the individual circumstances.

Bugs pertaining to architecture (big- vs. little-endiam, 32- vs. 64-bit etc.) get found. Bugs in shiny new cutting-edge versions of applications, obscure kernel bugs caused by very particular combinations of configuration parameters, you name it.

As the complexity of GNU/Linux and unix systems increases, it's an ever-increasingly difficult job. That's why large, diverse communities of testers and developers are important.

As for Slackware, it's simple, conservative, very high quality and very useful/usable.

It's a shape Pat hasn't done an official AMD64 version. I've moved to SLAMD64 for my newest machine now. I should really make a donation to Fred.

Re:excellent question

[dotancohen]

Seems a bit French for my tastes...

Seriously, it is nice to see that there are some people who don't assume that the whole world speaks English. However, French?!? Just looking at the login screen made me want to eat frogs.

Re:excellent question

[farrellj]

I built a custom distro, MfxLinux, based upon Slackware, so I have rooted around the innards of it, so think I can give you a much better answer...

Yes, a lot of a distro is the packages and release engineering...but a huge portion is making sure that everything works together, that all the libraries a program needs are installed, that if those libraries need other libraries or utilities that they are installed as well. It's also making sure that everything is working OK with the versions of libraries, compilers and utilities that are installed. Add to that testing everything with the kernel version. This is the real heart and main work of a distro builder.

This is the real core of an operating system, and it is something that Patrick Volkerding and company do very , very well.

ttyl
          Farrell, architect of MfxLinux

Re:Difference in .org and .com

[robw810]

Yes, there is a difference. Patrick controls one of them, and has no control over the other. Just because it's a mirror right now does not mean that it will be a mirror in ten minutes.

Re:is it still painful to install?

[notamisfit]

Eh, it's not too bad. It's ncurses based (no super-pretty, takes 10 minutes to load anaconda crap), and partitions still have to be done by hand (although cfdisk is a lot nicer than regular fdisk). All in all, just regular Linux install stuff (select packages, set time zone, configure network, yadda yadda yadda).

Re:is it still painful to install?

[aaronbeekay]

If you considered it "painful" to burn the CD, maybe Linux wasn't the best choice in the first place.

Re:omfg first

[calebt3]

Is this what you are looking for?

Xfce ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What manner of beast is this? Real Slackware users prefer fvwm2.

NB I can't imagine Volkerding not including fvwm2, skipping Gnome , yes, fvwm2 never.

Re:Xfce ?

[notamisfit]

WTF? 12.1 ships with FVWM 2.4.20. Along with blackbox, fluxbox (my personal fave), windowmaker, and twm, the REAL man's window manager.

Re:Xfce ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Real men use ratpoison.

Re:Xfce ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that but they name their window manager after it as well

Re:Xfce ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Real men don't use WMs, girly-boy.

Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[bogaboga]

Where as most distros I have tried will recognize and work well with the mentioned card, my efforts to have those distros recognize and fully utilize the remote control which comes with the card have failed at best! The whole exercise was full of frustrations culminating in giving up.

It's my hope that someone can tell me that "Yes, Slackware will work for you."

But will will not be surprised if Slackware turns out to be just like the distros I have tried.

If you asked me whether Linux sucks, I'd unequivocally say..."Yes it does, and it does so big time." All because of a remote control that does not work.

Before I get flamed, I would like to say I read and followed all howtos I could google and yes I am no newbie to Linux's command line.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[notamisfit]

You do know that hardware is a kernel thing, not a distro thing, right? If no other Linux distribution supports it, Slackware more than likely will not.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[Anonymous Coward]

Most distros do not install the librdf by default. Functions that require ir controls are run by this library or variants of it. So the hauppauge cards will work with x11 graphics but will not have full function. I would suggest that you try the myth tv setup distros, they are multimedia oriented and have remote control libraries installed by default. I have had ir devices working in Slackware for years but then again I prefer compiling things from source and in this respect Slackware is the best disto for this hands down. During the install you can specify that you want to create a development workstation and Slackware will install the environment flawlessly. Distros like Ubuntu are not developer friendly because they are sudo based and you will have a hell of a time compiling anything from source unless you get all the right development libs after install and setup a genuine superuser so that you can compile C programs.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[nawcom]

actually, if there is any known kernel module that gets your card to work, then of course slackware supports it.

I've been using Slackware forever, and there is one simple reason - it seems like it's the only distribution out there that is still Linux.

Wtf do I mean by that? Every linux distro out there is branching off into their own little world, making them look like they are complete different operating systems. In fact, a lot of new linux users look at distributions that way. They don't like the fact that, yes, I can compile the sources of all your special ubuntu software, and make my slack install literally clone your standard ubuntu installation. Hardly anything has changed in the framework of slackware since the beginning, which is why I look at it as the only distribution that "is" still "Linux"

Back to the parent post; you want to know how to get your wireless card to work? you compile the driver (a ton easier than you think) and read the README and INSTALL file that comes with it. Aka follow directions.

I had to deal with my girlfriend's openSUSE installation because she was struggling to get ndiswrapper to work. She had to download a new kernel, download patches for the new kernel that enabled ndiswrapper, which required more patches to the kernel in order to support the dependencies for the ndiswrapper module. After that, she runs the program to have it read the windows driver for her broadcom card, and it was a no go.
I come over, took a look at the situation, and I downloaded the source code for ndiswrapper, compiled it (a simple make; make install) - loaded up the module (modprobe) and ran the ndiswrapper command line program. it worked.

I guess you can use this as proof that linux isn't yet ready for your mainstream user, but it also shows that distributions are going in their own little directions. Slackware still works, and works well. I applaud the person who posted about stability and such, because it's true.

And for your PVR-150, here you go: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_PVR-150 - read up :)

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[bcat24]

Distros like Ubuntu are not developer friendly because they are sudo based and you will have a hell of a time compiling anything from source unless you get all the right development libs after install and setup a genuine superuser so that you can compile C programs.

Why exactly would someone need to be root to compile a C program? gcc works just fine on my Ubuntu box from an ordinary user account.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[X0563511]

Need root? "sudo su".

Problem solved, you are now in a shell with UID/GID of 0.

That said, I am now pulling down all the torrents (and I'll seed with my whopping 20k/s upload throughput). Can't wait for slamd64 to put 12.1 out! (64-bit pure slackware variant)

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[Anonymous Coward]

If you asked me whether Linux sucks, I'd unequivocally say..."Yes it does, and it does so big time." All because of a remote control that does not work.

Wow. Get some perspective, please. One single unsupported device, and you think it unequivocally sucks big time?

Nah, on second thoughts, I don't think you're serious, I just think you are trying to goad people into helping you. Low move. If you want help, annoying people on purpose isn't nice, even if it does occasionally get results.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... yes.

If you install everything you need, it will. It's working 100% with a PVR-150 with IR transceiver for me in a mythtv box running slackware 12.0 at this moment. Hell, it probably worked on slackware 11.0.

You will need to upgrade the kernel, download the firmware, and run this patched LIRC. But for someone using slackware, that's all in a days work.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[Neil Hodges]

Or even better: sudo -s

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[Neil Hodges]

Hey, that sounds like why I use Gentoo. Sure, USE != --with-, but it still grants a greater degree of flexibility than a lot of those (pure) binary distros, especially when it comes to kernel stuff.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[amiga3D]

"If you asked me whether Linux sucks, I'd unequivocally say..."Yes it does, and it does so big time." All because of a remote control that does not work." I'd say that the fact that the Hauppauge PVR-150 works at all on linux is a sign that linux doesn't suck. The fact is that despite the fact that Hauppauge and other similar manufacturers are hostile to linux and refuse to write drivers or to provide the info for others to write them there are still many cards that do work. This is a testament to the skill and ingenuity of OSS developers who should be lauded for their hard work and perseverance but instead are slammed by the ignorant who wrongly place the blame on them instead of the real culprits. If you want to bitch about your remote not working on linux....call Hauppauge and bitch at them!

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[Straterra]

Wait..You are going to say a whole OS sucks because you can't get a remote to work? You are aware there are fully compatible USB remotes, right?

It seems to be YOUR fault that you didn't investigate the hardware before buying it. You act as if Linux is the only OS to not have drivers for stuff.

I seem to remember 64-bit versions of Windows missing lots of print drivers.. Get over it, spend $25 to get a working remote.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[Skapare]

If you asked me whether Linux sucks, I'd unequivocally say..."Yes it does, and it does so big time." All because of a remote control that does not work.

If you asked me whether Hauppauge hardware sucks, I'd unequivocally say..."Yes it does, and it does so big time." All because of an OS that does not work.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[incripshin]

Some hardware can take a bit of work to get working. Maybe it wasn't configured into the kernel. Maybe it was built into the kernel and has to be loaded in with a slew of special options. You can't be afraid to get your hands dirty.

Another option might be to consider one of the BSDs, which all have their own kernels. If they have a driver, it would likely have been written by completely different developers. I have heard of cases where BSD drivers helped where linux drivers didn't.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[julesh]

It's my hope that someone can tell me that "Yes, Slackware will work for you."

Slackware will work for you if you know how to make it work. Slackware is a distribution for experts. Slackware is a distribution for people who don't mind^W^Wwant to get their hands dirty.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[shutdown -p now]

Slackware will work for you if you know how to make it work. Slackware is a distribution for experts. Slackware is a distribution for people who don't mind^W^Wwant to get their hands dirty.

Simply put, Slackware is a distro for people who have plenty of time to waste.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[zsau]

I wasn't an expert when I started using Slackware. I guess I was when I stopped, though. (I switched to Debian a few years ago because I wanted to run it on a PPC. I'm now back to x86 chips, but I'm too lazy do everything, and Debian's easy enough to use now, unlike when I started with Slackware.)

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[schon]

Slackware is a distro for people who have plenty of time to waste. No, it's the exact opposite. Slackware is a distro for people who know what they're doing and don't have plenty of time to waste.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[Anonymous Coward]

You are going to say a whole OS sucks because you can't get a remote to work?

No, he's badmouthing Linux so that Linux enthusiasts get offended and point out how he can get the remote to work. He's provoking people into giving him tech support.

It's increasingly becoming a nasty tactic some people use, I think it's on the rise since XKCD or some other webcomic suggested it.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[kv9]

Simply put, Slackware is a distro for people who have plenty of time to waste.

simply put, Slackware is a distro for people who have plenty of time to invest in something that they really like/care about and dont have a constant need to whine about the smallest thing that "breaks". but I guess that's a novell concept for you spoonfed motherfuckers.

I find the constant bashing of Slackware for being hard to use and arcane quite ironic (situational irony). simple is not hard and arcane. simple is efficient.

(disclaimer: I am no longer a Slackware user, but I still can appreciate something of real quality)

fuck em if they can't take a joke

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[swillden]

Slackware will work for you if you know how to make it work. Slackware is a distribution for experts. Slackware is a distribution for people who don't mind^W^Wwant to get their hands dirty.

Simply put, Slackware is a distro for people who have plenty of time to waste.

I applaud your highly-efficient lifestyle. It's not everyone who can completely avoid time-wasting entertainment activities like television, movies, fictional books, video games and fiddling with your computer's operating system.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[shutdown -p now]

I applaud your highly-efficient lifestyle. It's not everyone who can completely avoid time-wasting entertainment activities like television, movies, fictional books, video games and fiddling with your computer's operating system.

I didn't say one shouldn't waste time on enjoyable things, did I? Wasted a lot myself with Gentoo. You'll have to agree, though, that for the majority of users, it's not a particularly enjoyable activity - hence the warning.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[swillden]

I didn't say one shouldn't waste time on enjoyable things, did I?

You snidely implied that it was only for people who didn't have anything better to do. The fact of the matter is that nearly EVERYONE has significant free time that they spend on activities that they find enjoyable. It's not a matter of how much "time to waste" you have -- an ordinary amount of free time is adequate -- it's a matter of how you choose to waste it.

I agree with your new statement, that for most people fiddling with the innards of their operating system is not an enjoyable activity, but that's not at all the same thing as what you said before.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[Baseclass]

I run Knoppmyth on my DVR and the Hauppauge cards are very well supported.

On a side note, I recommend you consider the ATI Remote Wonder instead of the Hauppauge IR remote. It's RF and highly configurable.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[Hatta]

Did UbuntuDupe send you here?

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[ratboy666]

Yes, it will like your Hauppage card. With prodding.

On the other hand, YOU WILL NOT LIKE IT. Because you couldn't get it working on other distributions, you won't get it working with Slackware, either. As an "added bonus", Slackware has no GUI tools. No user manager, service manager, or graphical network configuration. Everything is configured with a text editor. Slackware doesn't even really like the SysV init system (although, it begrudgingly supports it), preferring the old-style BSD init instead.

Slackware is probably the only distribution (may gentoo, but I haven't looked) where it is pretty common to use init level 3, and startx when needed...

On the plus side of Slackware -- if you DO get your remote working with it, you will know how to get it working on any other distribution. Bad news is: you will probably end up bypassing all that "GUI goodness" and automated configuration to get the job done.

Slack philosophy is to use unaltered kernels, and unaltered packages, along with building wrappers. No custom patches. Easy to understand. The packaging tool is simply a tgz file, along with a catalog. Dependencies? For wimps. It is normal to have kernel sources on the machine. If you don't like "configure/make/install", don't use Slack. If you can't use vi or emacs, don't use Slack.

Good luck with your quest.

Re:Will it like my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card

[X0563511]

Oh, I was wrong about the "64-bit pure" part. Slamd64 is a multilib. If you want a pure variant, you may want bluewhite64 (which indeed already released 12.1, as of today)

Re:is it still painful to install?

[celle]

Painful? Go back to the kids room(windows) this board is for the adults. Spoiled little brats!!

Slackware doesn't fuck with upstream.

[karmaflux]

And that's why I use it.

Incidentally, "taunting" is not the same word as "touting."

Re:Slackware doesn't fuck with upstream.

[kokoko1]

True slackware never ever fucked with upstream provider.

its not bastardized

[ArchieBunker]

Some distros started moving config files around and going more towards GUI programs (redhat). At least with Slackware you can still expect to find stuff in the right places, inetd.conf in /etc. Stuff like that.

Re: destination ip addresses

[ClickOnThis]

slackware.com has address 64.57.102.34
slackware.org has address 12.246.148.57 True, but the www.slackware.com and www.slackware.org addresses both point to 64.57.102.34.

Re:is it still painful to install?

[Colonel Korn]

If you considered it "painful" to burn the CD, maybe Linux wasn't the best choice in the first place. He meant that he placed the CD in a fire.

Re:is it still painful to install?

[calebt3]

Why on earth would he do that?! That could RUIN IT!!

(I kid, I kid)

Re www ip

[robw810]

Aha! Whoever maintains the .org must have noticed and changed his www record, or perhaps I just haven't noticed that before. I'm betting on the first one. :)

Re:is it still painful to install?

[timmarhy]

you really do have to explain things slowly for some people.....

Congratulations, Pat!

[hitest]

Congratulations, Pat! Thanks for your dedication:-) I'll always be a Slacker!

What makes Slackware different...

[Tumbleweed]

It's Slacktastic, and chock-full of Volkerdingliciousness! Slackware - part of a well-balanced breakfast.*

* Notes: Not to be used as a flotation device. May stick to certain types of skin. Do not taunt Slackware.

If it's not good enough for Linus Torvalds

[Anonymous Coward]

...then it's not good enough for me.

ahh, the good old days...

[pjr.cc]

Everytime i see a post about slackware it brings back some old memories... slackware was the first distro i'd used (tho not the first time i'd used linux) and i think the only other options at the time were yggdrassil and sls.

Sooo many floppies. Its good to see it still survives and thrives.

Re:ahh, the good old days...

[sconeu]

According to Wikipedia, Slack is actually a derivative of SLS.

Kinda amateurish

[rastoboy29]

Slack was my first Linux distro, and I still fondly remember downloading the floppy iso's with so much excitement.  That's why recently I decided to give it another whack.

I have to say though, it lacks a lot of the polish of the more recent distro's, and this is not a good thing.  It's been several months so I don't recall the details, but I mostly just recall having the same sorts of issues that I had on other distros several years ago, but are now annoyance free in those other distros.

It's not just a matter of being slim and sleek--it's a bit emaciated ;-)

Re:is it still painful to install?

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is amazing. Its as easy as vista.

xfce?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want my damn fluxbox!

Re:xfce?

[Gazzonyx]

Fortunately Slackware has a GCC on board, and almost every library you could wish for. No one is stopping you from compiling it, using an RPM, or a deb, a slackscript, using makepkg and installpkg, a bitrock installer, yum, or apt. It's your OS; treat it as such.

Re:xfce?

[nijk]

It comes with fluxbox, too :)

Illness

[Tragek]

Whatever happened with Patrick's illness?

Re:Illness

[Zerbey]

It was some kind of infection I think, he recovered at any rate.

Re:Illness

[higuita]

he got the medication his doctor gave it and with time he got better...

the initial hit of the disease was strong and it was slow to heal, so he got scared... but with time and continue traetment he got well.

most diseases take time to solve, several are hard to diagnostic, but people must trust medics and if they dont, check with another medic and do more exams.

Nice.

[Gazzonyx]

Best. Post. EVER.

*Sorry, I'm not an orator such as Brutus... he's the honorable man*

OT: how is slamd64?

[Gazzonyx]

How is slamd64? I run Slackware on my 32 bit server, and BlueWhite64 on my 64 bit. The toss up was between slamd64/bluewhite64 and, IIRC, bluewhite had more seeds. FWIW, they've been less than a day behind Kurt, releasing an RC right after each Slackware RC (you can see them trail each other by hours on distrowatch.com, these guys must have concurrent rsyncs running to the compiler!). I've only had one issue with bw64, a bad obscure header file of all things... their 64 bit version of the library had some stupid typo in it or something. Other than that, it's been almost as good as Slack.

Re:OT: how is slamd64?

[TTK Ciar]

Slamd64 is very good. I have been using it on my home computer and a few production machines at work.

I ran into a bug in slamd64-10.2 that wasn't in slackware-10.2, but now I can't even remember what it was. The kernel versions will sometimes differ slightly between slamd64 and slackware, but otherwise it's a very faithful, straightforward translation of slackware into 64-bitland.

-- TTK

afterstep?

[Anonymous Coward]

slackware was my first distro too. I used fvwm, something else and afterstep. I loved afterstep a lot, but then versions after 1.x were too bloated for my taste. Is afterstep-classic still alive? shipping? I'll try slackware for just that if nothing else

I thought this was news for nerds....

[Skylinux]

WTF is going on here? I have been reading through the comments and it appears as if most "nerds" have been pussy wiped by other distros and don't understand the point of actually knowing your OS.

If you learn Slackware, you know Linux! Why is that you ask?
Because Slackware does not come with a bunch of highly modified packages, Slackware is build using tested and known to be working code. Configuration and partition is done by hand. Slackware does not crash if setup properly, it is a perfect OS for any server or Desktop.... if you know what you are doing but it is not for you grandma. It is an Operating System for "real" nerds :)

With all the bitching about lack of features in Slackware, it may be time for you "nerds" to go and load up Vista for the ultimate hand holding experience.

You all remind me of that computer technician we have at work, he thinks he is the freaking king but knows nothing about computers. He fixes issues by running every GUI tool on his thumb drive and hoping that one of them sticks. When I ask him how he fixed it, he has no clue and says that "Tool xyz" fixed it. When I ask him to run "regedit" his eyes open wide and he starts to sweat.... cold sweat.
Dude you are not a computer tech, geek, nerd, hacker .... whatever. Go home and learn something.... almost forgot, he is A+ certified, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Same goes for Slackware, use it, learn it, know Linux or use openSuSE and stop the bitching.

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[Dusty101]

Although the parent post's a bit... overcaffeinated, he has a point: maintaining a Slackware box teaches a lot about Linux overall. As a stepping stone for those who find it "as user-friendly as a rattlesnake", might I suggest they try out VectorLinux ( http://vectorlinux.com/website2/ )? It's a Slackware-derived distro that's easier to get to grips with, & runs nice & quickly on old boxes (which is why I often use it). Not totally pure in terms of 'free' (as in speech), but rather usable.

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[Gazzonyx]

Slackware was my first distro, and I can vouch for what you say; I learned more in my first week with Slackware, during which time I hosed my system about 3 times. Everyone laughs when I say that, but it's true. I always wondered why everyone thought that Linux was so 'fragile', as it took a pounding and then some for me to hose the thing. I later found out that you can't screw up a dozen compile and install cycles on most distros and expect them to keep running. I literally learned more about Linux during the install where I was dropped to a command line with the instruction 'use fdisk or cfdisk', than most people ever get on a modern distro.

At the time, I literally knew 'cd', 'ls', 'man', 'pine' and 'vi' from SSHing to a Solaris box for school - start with this tools, they're all you need to get started! Since I refused to look anything up online and didn't know that KDE existed (that was the coolest pleasant surprise ever!), I bumbled around the file system hierarchy for about three days trying to figure out how it worked, noticing the subtle nuances of the tree, trying to figure out where all my compiled programs installed to (I didn't know /usr/local, /usr and / were almost identical, it wasn't until I was looking for a library that I realized I kept tripping over different similarly looking trees) when I did 'make install'. Just that period of exposure as I got comfortable with Linux has really defined the difference between myself and most Linux users I know. Now, years later (I got Slackware-10.2 the week it came out... October or November three years ago), I run two Slackware boxes, a sabayon, BSD, and OSX at home, Redhat at work, and Solaris at school without ever having more troubles than remember which are BSD inits and which are SysV... just use /etc/rc.d/ and hit tab to find out ;).

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[shutdown -p now]

Slackware does not crash if setup properly, it is a perfect OS for any server or Desktop.... if you know what you are doing but it is not for you grandma. It is an Operating System for "real" nerds :)

What you say is the same thing that's repeated by Gentoo and FreeBSD fans all too often. There is some truth to it as I've found out (used Gentoo for a long time myself), but point is, these days, I do not want to toy with my OS (and let's be fair - that's what setting up Slackware really is), I want it to just work and not get in the way. That's why it's Ubuntu for me these days.

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm mostly Gentoo bitch...

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the bitching about lack of features in Slackware, it may be time for you "nerds" to go and load up Vista for the ultimate hand choking experience.

There, I fixed that for you.

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[turgid]

I have been reading through the comments and it appears as if most "nerds" have been pussy wiped by other distros and don't understand the point of actually knowing your OS.

Most have given up and left /. because their interesting and informative posts keep getting modded Troll or Flamebait whereas the ignorant rantings and astroturfers get modded up.

Maybe I'm getting old. I just come here to read the headlines now and go to other sites to find the actual news. Having said that, many things that make the front page are troll articles, vacuous speculation or just plain wrong

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[Anonymous Coward]

What you say is the same thing that's repeated by Gentoo and FreeBSD fans all too often. There is some truth to it as I've found out (used Gentoo for a long time myself), but point is, these days, I do not want to toy with my OS (and let's be fair - that's what setting up Slackware really is), I want it to just work and not get in the way. That's why it's Ubuntu for me these days.

So you're "toying" with Slack when you set it up? I suggest you learn the OS in earnest then; if it takes you more than five minutes to customize a Slack box after initial load then you're incompetent.

In addition, please do not lump Slackware and FreeBSD in with what is truly a toy: Gentoo. What a joke. It really is "Linux for Ricers".

I've worked as a sysadmin and software engineer with a UNIX specialization for seventeen years, and while I would agree that for most computer-illiterates Ubuntu is acceptable, for a professional Slack, Debian, or *BSD is the way. It's kind of like a butter knife versus a katana: both will get you there eventually, but the katana is for the adults who can handle it while the butter knife is for the rest.

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Zenwalk!

It's a very nice well polished distro.

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[xtracto]

If you learn Slackware, you know Linux! Why is that you ask?
Because Slackware does not come with a bunch of highly modified packages, Bah you whippersnappers kids who want everything spoon fed. If you *really* want to know Liux you should get LFS . And not that "Slackware" kiddie distributions. Where is the fun on that?

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[Anonymous Coward]

maintaining a Slackware box teaches a lot about Linux overall

I agree. Slackware makes you to do things the linux way, not the ubuntu or redhat or gentoo way. If you know how to configure slackware, then you know how to configure linux.

It might be described as the "vanilla" distro, as vanilla you can get without going to LFS. Packages are compiled from the source "as is" with preferably no modifications. Even the kernel source. This keeps it simple, and increases the chances of everything working together smoothly. Yet, it really is easy to use, once you understand what's going on. And you will understand, because it's all right there in front of you.

Mon Dec 17 08:55:16 EST 2007
Linux pompano 2.4.32 #1 Mon Jul 24 06:56:16 EDT 2006 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Li
  08:55:16 up 448 days, 1:41, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.02

This is from my samba file server at work, providing file storage for a network of about 30 windows computers of various diversity. I think that says it all.

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[Anonymous Coward]

I've run slack and FBSD on servers for years and I agree with most of what you're saying. I run Gentoo on the desktop now, it's no more a toy or for "ricers" than slackware is for sadomasochistic cli warriors.

Gentoo is exactly what you want it to be, you want to build with a conservative -march=486 feel free, I'll build ffmpeg with -mmmx -msse if it's all the same with you. Gentoo even has binary packages if you don't want to build the base system yourself.

If any distros are toys, it's the ones that have binary packagers and ship packages configured with --OMG-binary-packages-suck-we-must-enable-every-optional-component

Cheers,

AC
(ricer and sadomasochistic cli warrior)

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[shutdown -p now]

I've worked as a sysadmin and software engineer with a UNIX specialization for seventeen years, and while I would agree that for most computer-illiterates Ubuntu is acceptable, for a professional Slack, Debian, or *BSD is the way.

Tell that to Linus (who uses Fedora last I heard, and SuSE before that).

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[onefriedrice]

You are completely right. People will also have a similar learning experience going from something like Ubuntu to Gentoo. It's good for you; you will learn how your computer works. I suspect that most "nerds" today can't even use the command line beyond what online tutorials tell them to type in, and that's really sad.

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[Anonymous Coward]

All distros do that, stop boasting. Being a good fanboy won't earn you special Slacky points or a kiss from the deves. Seriously, congratulations to the Slackware team for releasing a new fine version, but congratulations to Gentoo, Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSuse and Fedora as well.

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[Anonymous Coward]

couldn't agree more. i use ubuntu but grew up on slackware (and it made all the difference) and still use it for servers and old machines. many ubuntu users cringe at the use of terminal while slackware vets smile and go to town. there is a major difference between knowing what button to push and actually understanding what is happening. i'm happy to see another release of this great os. i will weep the day that slackware ceases to be... unfortunately it will go silently into the night

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[Gazzonyx]

I've worked as a sysadmin and software engineer with a UNIX specialization for seventeen years, and while I would agree that for most computer-illiterates Ubuntu is acceptable, for a professional Slack, Debian, or *BSD is the way.

Tell that to Linus (who uses Fedora last I heard, and SuSE before that). SuSE is derived from Slackware ;). I think Linus is running Ubuntu or another Debian derived distro on his Mac, but he also distro hops a bit, IIRC.

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[Anonymous Coward]

My first full time distro was Vector, after which I moved onto slack. I toyed with debian here and there because at that stage slack had nothing like apt, but slack just always feels... right.

Re:I thought this was news for nerds....

[mjjzf]

Currently, my suggestion is Wolvix (wolvix.org) from Norway - lightweight distribution which uses Xfce and Fluxbox. It has nice wireless and multimedia support and a control panel inspired by that of the now-dead Libranet. The light version, Wolvix Cub, uses Abiword, Sylpheed, Audacious and other lightweight applications to keep it snappy, and it works.

System Requirements

[dotancohen]

The slack site lists these as the system requirements:
        * 486 processor
        * 16MB RAM (32MB suggested)
        * 100-500 megabytes of hard disk space for a minimal and around 3.5GB for full install
        * 3.5" floppy drive

Does one really need a floppy drive to install it? Of my two desktops and single laptop, none have a floppy drive anymore.

Re:System Requirements

[adamofgreyskull]

No. Last time I installed Slack on a machine it was from a CD.
I suppose it's just listed there as an absolute minimum requirement, e.g. if that's all you have, you can still install Slackware.
(Similarly, you don't need a 486 processor, but if that's all you have, it will run :)*

* Slackware is installed on my main machine, an Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (2GHz),2Gb RAM,GeForce 8600GT,Dual Monitor-ed monstrosity.
It's also on my wee internal test web-server, a Pentium MMX 166MHz with 16Mb RAM :D

Re:System Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you can burn an ISO image and boot off of a DVD to install it. However, if you wanted to install it on an older system using floppy drives, you could.

I've been using Slackware for 13 years now, it's brilliant. Thanks Pat, keep up the good work.

Re:System Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you can install without a floppy drive.
During the installation it asks if you would like to create a USB boot stick - instead of a boot floppy

Re:System Requirements

[dbcad7]

Been a long time, but I think you need a floppy drive any more.. Turning on my wayyback machine (late 90s'), I remember installing with boot and root disks that you made to get the system started.. the rest of the distro was on the CD.. but I really can't say for certain if it was still this way last time I installed.

Perhaps someone who's installed it in the last few years (It's been like 3 or 4 years ago for me) could give a definite answer.

Re:System Requirements

[Vectronic]

Ive been using Slackware since 7.0 (1999)... and I never had to use a boot disk (other than the CD itself)

And to redundantly answer the question, a Floppy Drive is not a "requirement"... more of a suggestion, but you can (usually) replace "Floppy" with "USB" or "External HD" or anything else... mainly just for backup purposes, or if you want to leave another bootloader and keep LILO/GRUB on the floppy/usb/etc...

While in redundancy... although I do tend to lean more towards hand-holding OS's (lately)... whenever the newest flashiest bloated OS im testing out fails... it's back to Slackware, which, in the decade ive been using it... has never let me down, not once...

Re:System Requirements

[turgid]

I've been running Slackware since 1995 (initially on a 486). Last year I got an Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz) and later upgraded it to a Athlon 64 X2 5200+.

I decided to give SLAMD64 a try. It's straight Slackware compiled for AMD64/Intel EM64T. Although I haven't done any serious benchmarks, my SETI@Home floating-point measured performance went up 55% when I installed the 64-bit client. The system is using memory more efficiently too (read up on the problems 32-bit OSes have with RAM of 1GB and above).

Re:System Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

No, absolutely not. All modern computers should be able to boot from the installation CD. Best of luck!

Re:System Requirements

[dotancohen]

I suppose it's just listed there as an absolute minimum requirement, e.g. if that's all you have, you can still install Slackware. I suppose if one defines CD-ROM drive as superseding a floppy drive, then that's fine. However, I don't perceive it that way, as the critical function of a floppy drive (reading and writing floppy disks) cannot be performed with a CD-ROM drive.

Re:System Requirements

[dotancohen]

I just found this on the FAQ page:

Q: Is it possible to install this operating system without a floppy drive?

Yes! And it's not much harder, either. First, you'll need a DOS partition. A DOS partition?!? I hope the FAQ is seriously out of date.

Re:System Requirements

[beej]

Does one really need a floppy drive to install it?

No! Slackware supports punchcards.

Re:System Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

I was also wondering, as the Installation Help page still talks of boot and root disks, yet the download mirrors no longer host .i and .s boot disk images. While browsing I found README_PXE.TXT which explains the installation options:

The number of available options for booting your Slackware installer is similarly limited: either you boot your computer from the bootable first CDROM of the Slackware CD set, or from the DVD, or using a USB stick. There is even loadlin, the DOS based Linux starter, but lets not concern ourselves with the past today. Slackware 12.0 abandoned the floppy boot altogether.

In other words, a floppy disk drive is no longer required and, in fact, no longer supported! The closest I could find to floppy disk-boot support (I'm trying to install to an old laptop) was ETHERBOOT_README.TXT, which states:

With this, all that was required of a given client machine was a functional floppy drive, ONE floppy disk, & BIOS support for floppy boot. Pretty straightforward.

In conclusion, it's definitely not for the faint-hearted. Maybe I'll just try floppy disks from Slackware 11.0 and see if I can perform the equivalent of a dist-upgrade to version 12.1... HTH, - Oli

Re:System Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

No, dude. You can start an install from CD1 and go from there. The floppy requirement is no longer really true. Pat's been slacking on updating that part of the site. Also, you'll really want a better CPU and more RAM and WAAAAAY more drive space (no less than 4 GB really).

Re:System Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

No you do not need a floppy...CD install using an ISO is generally my preferred form. However on an older machine (like, say a 486) that may not be an option and you CAN install/boot from floppies.

Re:System Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

"Of my two desktops and single laptop, none have a floppy drive anymore."

Weenie. Quit lying to yourself and go buy a Mac.

Re:System Requirements

[Sadsfae]

It also supports NFS install.

Re:System Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use OpenBSD instead, much cleanen, leaner and secure.

Re:System Requirements

[CCFreak2K]

Actually, since 2.6 is the default kernel, you can't even boot from a floppy anymore. You'll have to settle for CD-ROM or network boot. The 486 part is still the norm, though. Back in 11 or something, Pat changed the compile flags to compile for a minimum of 486.

Re:System Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

Alot of us old schoolers used floppies to get our first linux boxes rollin back in the day. Slackware actually had everything broken down in floppy 'disk sets'. This is back when alot of folks didnt have cdrom drives. And they certainly didnt have broadband. We downloaded floppy disk images over a modem, and we liked it!

I'm sure thats all gone. But it would be a shame to see them abandon their roots.

Re:System Requirements

[Kirkoff]

No, a floppy drive isn't necessary. You will have to burn a CD with a bootable image, however. IIRC, the CD images for Slackware that are available have already done all of the required stuff to make the boot image work.

Re:System Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

Does one really need a floppy drive to install it?

No, of course not. Some of the info on the official slackware site is a bit, uh, outdated. But the distro itself is certainly not.

Re:System Requirements

[junglee_iitk]

The website is not updated. If you actually read through the book [1], you will realize that it needs CD drive, and Floppy installation support was discontinued really really long time ago (when it was at version 7).[2]

[1] http://www.slackbook.org/html/installation-requirements.html

[2] http://www.slackbook.org/html/installation-requirements.html#INSTALLATION-METHODS

Re:System Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need a floppy, if you have a bootable CD or DVD.
But you can boot from a couple of floppy disks and do a network install too :)

Re:System Requirements

[junglee_iitk]

How old are you actually? Slackware discontinued Floppy support a long time ago!

<quote from http://www.slackbook.org/html/installation-requirements.html#INSTALLATION-METHODS%25gt;
While it was once possible to install all of Slackware Linux from floppy disks, the increasing size of software packages (indeed, of some individual programs) has forced the abandonment of the floppy install. As late as Slackware version 7.1 a partial install was possible using floppy disks. The A and N series could be nearly entirely installed, providing a base system from which to install the rest of the distribution. If you are considering a floppy install (typically on older hardware), it is typically recommended to find another way, or use an older release. Slackware 4.0 is still very popular for this reason, as is 7.0.

</quote%gt;

Re:System Requirements

[mikael_j]

As others have said, you don't need the floppy but as a bare minimum you can install from floppy.

I haven't actually done a Slackware install from floppies since I think it was Slackware 3.6, installing A and N (base and network) and then grabbing everything else I needed over a 33.6kbps dialup connection

/Mikael

Re:System Requirements

[Cro Magnon]

The 486 part is still the norm, though. Back in 11 or something, Pat changed the compile flags to compile for a minimum of 486.

Hmmph! In my day, Slack would install on a 386 with 2M RAM (4 recommended). It's getting more bloated all the time. Git off my lawn!

Re:Bittorrents ... (wrong tld again)

[Gazzonyx]

HUA?

Re:omfg first

[statemachine]

I'm sure he meant this.

In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Pear shakes YOU!

"sudo apt-get build-essential"...

[SEMW]

Distros like Ubuntu are not developer friendly because ... you will have a hell of a time compiling anything from source unless you get all the right development libs after install Yes, I can see how running "sudo apt-get build-essential" can be hell. I mean, at 28 characters it, umm, really puts a strain on my RSI. Or something.

Re:"sudo apt-get build-essential"...

[swillden]

Distros like Ubuntu are not developer friendly because ... you will have a hell of a time compiling anything from source unless you get all the right development libs after install Yes, I can see how running "sudo apt-get build-essential" can be hell. I mean, at 28 characters it, umm, really puts a strain on my RSI. Or something.

That's a little disingenuous. It takes a LOT more than build-essential, and you even left out a good chunk of the command line. Come on, it's a lot harder than you make it out to be. I mean, to rebuild Pidgin with modifications, for example, requires:

sudo apt-get install build-essential devscripts
sudo apt-get build-dep pidgin
apt-get source pidgin
<Make modifications & go to Pidgin dir>
debchange --nmu
fakeroot debuild -uc -us

See? Serious RSI city, and way too complicated for anyone who has no skills beyond those required to understand and modify large bodies of sophisticated C code.

And if you want to preserve your changes in a patch, to make them easy to apply to new releases of Pidgin, you have to add YET ANOTHER command (dpatch-edit-patch patch <patchname> <prevpatchname>), AND you have to edit the patch list file to include your patch in the build process.

Seriously unfriendly to developers.

Re:"sudo apt-get build-essential"...

[swillden]

Oh, forgot:

What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.

What's yellow and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice? Zorn's Lemon.

Re:"sudo apt-get build-essential"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Distros like Ubuntu are not developer friendly because ... you will have a hell of a time compiling anything from source unless you get all the right development libs after install Yes, I can see how running "sudo apt-get build-essential" can be hell. I mean, at 28 characters it, umm, really puts a strain on my RSI. Or something. No. I think he was talking about getting all of the dependencies for compiling (usually called *-dev to people in binary land), which from my experience from Ubuntu a year or two ago, is broken half of the time. Nothing like the bitch that it is downloading all of the mplayer dependencies manually because apt-get shits on itself. Whoopty doo "build-essential" exists.

ERROR:
aalib is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
alsa-lib is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
atrpms is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
faad2 is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
lame is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
libaa.so.1 is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
libasound.so.2 is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
libasound.so.2(ALSA_0.9) is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
libdv is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
libdv.so.2 is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
libdvdread is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
libdvdread.so.3 is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
libfaad.so.0 is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
liblirc_client.so.0 is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
liblzo.so.1 is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
libmp3lame.so.0 is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
libpostproc = 0.90-18 is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
libpostproc.so.0 is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
libxvidcore.so is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
lirc is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
live is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
lzo is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
mplayer-fonts is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
mplayer-skin-Blue is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
mplayer-skin-default is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
w32codec >= 4:0.90 is needed by mplayer-0.90-18
xvidcore is needed by mplayer-0.90-18

Re:"sudo apt-get build-essential"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Distros like Ubuntu are not developer friendly because ... you will have a hell of a time compiling anything from source unless you get all the right development libs after install Yes, I can see how running "sudo apt-get build-essential" can be hell. I mean, at 28 characters it, umm, really puts a strain on my RSI. Or something. Really with this result?

eric@ratpile:~$ sudo apt-get build-essential
[sudo] password for eric:
E: Invalid operation build-essential
eric@ratpile:~$

I call bullshit and still say Slackware is the best development distro hands down! Of course if you take the build-essential off the blacklist ....if you can find the blacklist of the apt-get config and first remove it with root privilege... my point is your statement is bullshit!

Re:"sudo apt-get build-essential"...

[geminidomino]

Actually, his mistake was even more elementary.

try:

domino@tiwaz:~$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
[sudo] password for domino:
Reading package lists... Done ...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
    build-essential dpkg-dev g++ g++-4.1 libc6-dev libstdc++6-4.1-dev
    linux-libc-dev patch ...

That said, huge slackware fan myself.

Re:"sudo apt-get build-essential"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Informative!?

Yes, I can see how running "sudo apt-get build-essential" can be hell. I mean, at 28 characters it, umm, really puts a strain on my RSI. Or something. Clearly you haven't compiled anything but trivial programs or maybe not even those!

Over some months I needed to install these and more:
autotools-dev automake libtool

source code manipulation:
vim, cscope, indent

scm tools:
cvs, subversion, git

man pages (!):
manpages-dev
glibc-doc (pthread man pages, good luck finding this!)

related tools:
valgrind, nmap, wireshark, curl, setserial, minicom, traceroute

libraries:
libxml2-dev libjpeg62-dev libcurl3-dev libagg-dev libboost-dev libboost-thread-dev zlib1g-dev libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig1-dev libming-dev libgtk2.0-dev libimlib2-dev libqt3-mt-dev

Some could be discussed, but most of them are really basic developer stuff.

Re:"sudo apt-get build-essential"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that is a bit of an exaggeration. To compile an application, you have to also have its build dependencies installed, so you have to run 'sudo apt-get build-dep '. After that, you're pretty much set (you can even use apt-get source ' to fetch the source automatically.

However, Ubuntu isn't the _best_ distro for development. Being able to have SVN/git/CVS builds done live whenever you install them and still have them handled by your package manager is nice (as with Gentoo).

ISOs are bootable - no floppy needed

[Steve Hamlin]

No, you don't need a floppy. The ISOs are bootable.

In addition to keeping with the spirit of Linux distributions circa 1995, Slack seems to keep actual documentation from that era as well. The system requirements you list, plus:

Q11: Is it possible to install this operating system without a floppy drive?

The only answer involves using LOADLIN to jump into a linux kernel from DOS. Wow! I appreciate the simplicity of Slack, but their main FAQ could include at least reference bootable CDs - it has been 14 years.

You're not their target

[Mr. Underbridge]

same stuff as in every other distro. the same "most advanced desktop environments available today" can be found in hundreds of other distros too. Why not advertise based on what makes slackware different from the rest than taunting the software that everyone else has?

To be honest, Slack isn't likely to pick up a lot of new users since it doesn't make heavy use of GUI config tools that don't link up right with actual config files. Though Slack's system is more reliable and deployable (in my opinion), these days people don't like that. Your average Ubuntu user won't settle for an ncurses based install screen either, won't want to format disks by hand, etc.

As a result, the announcement is likely targeted more at the existing install base than anything, so what matters is how 12 differs from 11 and what exactly comes with it. Which is what they've announced

Wait...

[hyperz69]

Did Slackware become relevant again, or am I in 1995 again? Guess I better go watch Friends, list to Nirvana, and load up Netscape while dialing up on Compuserve.

At the risk of a "Me Too"...

[Fallen Andy]

Same here. Slackware 3.0 was the first linux I installed. (OK, I'll admit I've used Multics, Idris, Interactive IX/386 etc.. and ported big apps to the last one of those). Looked at 11.0 and was *delighted* to see that it isn't bloaty. If I wasn't playing with the newest Debian right now I'd use it. It isn't a joke to say that anyone who knows Slackware well *really* knows Linux... Andy

smackware

[noshellswill]

The advanced desktop environs is a green, VT100 terminal. But that's not all! SLACKWARE comes with a foaming-mouth plastic dog that drools on keybpards and bites any hand that reaches for a mouse.

But what is the advantage of Slackware?

[walterbyrd]

Stability? Other Linux distros are just as stable, many have run for years without a hiccup.

Learning? Learn what? If you want to work professionally with Linux, you will find that most businesses want you to know redhat.

I use debian because I think it has the best package management in the business, among other things. If you going to do a better job of manually managing your packages, you are going to have to really fight to stay on top of your system.

Re:But what is the advantage of Slackware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stability? Other Linux distros are just as stable, many have run for years without a hiccup.

One need only tail /var/log/messages and look at the SSH worms for evidence of that.

Learning? Learn what? If you want to work professionally with Linux, you will find that most businesses want you to know redhat.

I'd take a self taught slacker over someone who learned RedHat because they thought doing so would land them a job.

I use debian because I think it has the best package management in the business,

Yeah, splitting of development packages is genius. No automagic packaging solution is complete without requiring you futz around with it for half an hour every time you want to build something from source.

If you going to do a better job of manually managing your packages, you are going to have to really fight to stay on top of your system.

Rubbish! At my last place, I was regularly patching 0day before vendors. My responsibility so spare me the banal "you shouldn't be doing that" response with some vague appeal to authority.

Re:But what is the advantage of Slackware?

[pilbender]

Stability? Other Linux distros are just as stable, many have run for years without a hiccup. That's true, but Slackware is typically one of the best. In fact *the best*, in my opinion of 13 years of use. It's not a lot different from Debian though in terms of stability. Debian has my respect there.

Learning? Learn what? If you want to work professionally with Linux, you will find that most businesses want you to know redhat. I have to disagree with this. When I mention that I *only* use Slackware in job interviews, I generally don't have to answer any more questions about system administration knowledge or any Unix knowledge for that matter. That's how much weight it carries! People have tons of respect for Slackware users and anyone you'd want to work for knows about Slackware. It's not the same with other distributions. Rock Linux might be second on this and maybe LFS (Linux From Scratch). They don't have the name recognition but they certainly carry respect by people who know about them.

I use debian because I think it has the best package management in the business, among other things. If you going to do a better job of manually managing your packages, you are going to have to really fight to stay on top of your system. Debian is a good distro. I don't like package managers and I don't like System V Init. BSD style is better in my opinion and I've used both a lot. Package managers are usually more trouble than they're worth. It's not that much work to keep your system up to date, especially if you stay in the "current" stream of Slackware.

As for the advantages? Just like anything else, it depends on what you want to do. I've never heard anyone regret using Slackware unless they never got past the installation. I'm sure there's no advantage for you to use it. But I find it to be the closest thing to computing nirvana there is. I spend the vast majority of my time *using* my system. I spend very little time on maintenance. This has not been my experience with other distros. It's the best, the simplest, the most stable, the leanest, the quickest to install (~20 min for a full install), the most complete for libraries and development tools, the least headaches, the least maintenance, it's easy to customize and understand, thriving community of users, and there was a time, *back in the day*, when Slackware was the favorite of the people of Slashdot. It's a different crowd now, no doubt. Debian had good respect and still does.

Re:But what is the advantage of Slackware?

[Cro Magnon]

Back when I used Slackware, most of the "easy" distros didn't quite install right, and their automated tools got in the way of fixing the problems manually. Also, once I got everything installed, I never had a problem with it. I did have problems with RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSe, and though Debian stable was nearly as reliable as Slackware, it was old enough that I kept trying Unstable, with predictable results. Slackware, though far from bleeding edge, had the best mix of reliability and current software of any distro I tried.

I haven't actually used it for years because package management really IS more time-consuming, but I respect its capabilities.

Great News

[Sadsfae]

Congrats Slackware Team! (Pat V. and contributors).

Slackware was my first distribution and the reason/medium that got me into Linux/OSS.

I am glad to see releases are still coming right along.

Wow. The slack is back.

[argent]

Got to echo many comments here... I thought slack had gone pink years ago.

Good to see them still there fighting the bloat. I'll have to see about getting some slack on a spare server somewhere...

(and y'all thought I was just a BSD pussy)

It's you that's amateurish

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point of slackware, it's a base distribution that you configure as you like. Obviously if you don't want to manually configure your distro, you don't want slackware.

Do people like you buy coffee beans and then slag of the brand because other vendors sell instant coffee? Do you buy fresh produce and then crap on the farmers for not supplying a ready meal?

If you want ubuntu or fedora, why not just go and install those? Really there's nothing wrong with slackware; PEBKAC.

same old story

[Danzigism]

same goes with me. 11 years ago is when I started using Slackware. i think it was the good old 2.0.36 days. it felt like I truly accomplished something just by getting it to install on my 486 with a Pentium Overdrive chip in it. Giving me an awesome 83mhz. ran like a champ. Back then however, there wasn't entirely too much to distinguish the difference between the distros. of course package management was one of them, but it seems to me that I didn't even start caring about binary packages until Debian showed me the way packages *should* be handled in the early 2000's. but regardless, Slackware was a pretty decent robust distro back in the day. but I think I'll give more credit to the 2.0.x kernel and ipfwadm in particular.

Slackware.. fond memories

[dan dan the dna man]

Yes it was Slackware that dragged me away from Yggdrasil Linux, before I decided that Red Hat was the way to go. Then after Fedora was released I jumped to Debian, where my heart lay for several years until I decided Ubuntu was the way forward :)

Guess I'm a bit of a distro whore :) Tried Mandrake and SUSE along the way too, but never got along with them. I guess Slackware is one of the most venerable surviving distributions?

How about a MAME distro?

[Yvan256]

Is there such a thing as a MAME Linux Distro? With better support for TV outputs (resolutions, refresh rates), USB and PS/2 control panels (I-PAC, etc), mini-ITX CPUs, GPUs and audio chipsets, FAT32 support?

I've seen lots of "MAME on Linux" pages if I do a search, but is there a MAME-specific Linux distro?

And if there isn't any, which distro would be the most basic one to make the perfect MAME cabinet (as in, the OS doesn't run background processes that would be useless for a game system).

Re:How about a MAME distro?

[Baseclass]

I like xmame.
There are several frontends available as well.

Re:How about a MAME distro?

[Hatta]

I'd recommend a minimal debian install. Don't select any tasks in tasksel and you'll get a small but functional system. Apt-get xorg, install SDLMAME (the Ubuntu packages work in sid at least), and Wah!cade.

Re:How about a MAME distro?

[Yvan256]

I forgot to mention that I want something that will not swap at all (or something that can have swapping disabled) since I plan on using a CompactFlash card as the IDE drive.

HUA

[Anonymous Coward]

Head Up Ass

alive?

[nazsco]

wasn't patrick dying from some lung plaque thing?

Re:is it still painful to install?

[nazsco]

it makes installing much faster

We're pussy-wiped? YOUR PUSSY-WIPED!

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk to me when you make your own hardware mofo! That's teh only way to know your computer!

Seriously, level of abstraction at work here. If you want to know Linux internals, assembling from scratch is helpful. If you want to *use* Linux to do something, you want a precooked distro.

He got better

[cansado]

There were a few stories circulating the internet around the time of his recovery (and my favorite: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=133323&cid=11133406), but they were all unsubstantiated. Plaque, cancer, hypochondria... I never did see a real answer. Maybe Miracle Max? I hear the chocolate coating makes it go down easier, but you shouldn't go in swimming after for at least, what, a good hour.

Re:He got better

[Anonymous Coward]

Plaque, cancer, hypochondria.

uhm, sorry if this is a typo, but he had plaque? Nothing a good dentist and proper oral hygiene can't fix quickly. If he had a plague, that would be greater cause for concern.

Re:is it still painful to install?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if you 7-digit-somethings were around back in the days, but burning CD's used to be painful. Although not half as painful as attempting to boot from them.

Praise Bob (and Pat)

[Tmack]

All praise Bob Dobbs and our Benevolent Dictator for Life Patrick Volkerding for another Slack invested release! I raise my cup of Frop in his honor. May my server continue its slack filled operations without downtime.

Tm

cheer up...

[sir fer]

no point being sad coz other people are dumb... PS i fit into the above group because my brain is full of physics...no room left for CLI commands ;o)

Re:cheer up...

[cbart387]

PS i fit into the above group because my brain is full of physics...no room left for CLI commands ;o) Don't feed into that line of thought. The computer is simply a tool. I use Fedora because it stays out of my way for the most part. I'm a programmer not a sysadmin, I don't want to spend hours configuring my system that take away from my projects. I do know my way around the commandline because it makes me more efficient with what I do, NOT that I SHOULD to be a 'real' nerd. You use the tools that work the best (for you) and CLI is faster (for me). The same is true, in my opinion, with a person's choice of a distro.

Re:cheer up...

[Gazzonyx]

To add to your comment, as coming from both your perspective (developer) and a Slackware users' perspective... As a software development major in college, I also like Slackware because, well, let's face it... a development box sometimes takes a beating. I need something reliable that if I accidentally blow something up, I know it will at least come back up to a working bash prompt. Also, I can't stand chasing down libraries and Slackware has just about every library under the sun already in the system. Finally, for testing, Slackware makes an awesome 'vanilla' base for a virtual machine. Every other distro that I've tried to use for making a generic testing machine base, has given me the option (in anaconda) to remove the packages I wouldn't be using, and then adds them back in during install to satisfy RPM dependencies. I should be able to take all the packages out of KDE so that I only have a desktop environment, and still have all my libraries installed.

Re:cheer up...

[cbart387]

Thanks for the perspective. Maybe when I graduate and have more time to kill I'll give slackware a try. The idea of having a robust and minimalistic install does resonate with me. :)

Re:is it still painful to install?

[geminidomino]

If you considered it "painful" to burn the CD, maybe Linux wasn't the best choice in the first place. He meant that he placed the CD in a fire. As it burned it hurt because
I was so happy for you!

(I am so sorry...)

Re:is it still painful to install?

[geminidomino]

Boot from them? Shee-it... remember when the CDRom interfaces weren't ATA, but part of the SOUND cards?

Of course, I have also loaded programs off a Radio Shack cassette player... Yeah yeah, get off my lawn.

Re:

[clint999]

Right on brother, its kinda like a straight-edge approach to life. Taking every day sober.err... on the other hand, screw that. I'd rather fall over on the floor from a 'crash', than sit there and fight the war on paper cuts!

Re:is it still painful to install?

[Anonymous Coward]

>you really do have to explain things slowly for some people.....

No, it's just that we don't speak fluent Moron, which appears to be your native tongue.

it changes, check the "history"

[higuita]

the front page may not change alot, but it changes, check the wayback machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.slackware.org

in each release Pat is removing the previous one...

but for those that really like slackware know that the real news arent in the front page, but in the changelog:
http://www.slackware.com/changelog/current.php?cpu=i386

go there and you will see many news!!

in there you also see that managing a distro isnt fetching the packages and compile, it requires alot testing tweak up and vision... and the changelog only have the public things, Pat and many other people have alot of work behind the scenes

Slack: doing nothing but getting what you want

[higuita]

Short version:
In a reference to the Church of the SubGenius and the real truth of the universe you get this rule:

"Slack is doing nothing and still getting what you want"

Longer version:
In the beginnings of linux, people had to fetch all kind of packages, build then and hope that everything worked... the first distros where just a pre-compiled of everythings and one of then was the SLS distro... but as most of things at that time, it had several of problems and bad decisions. Pat got tired of fixing then and as SLS was slow or didnt want to correcting things, he decided to pick up SLS and corrected things that didnt work or were (in Pat view) plain wrong... most people agreed with Pat and slackware replaced SLS (like Linus, Pat just wanted to fix his own problem, not do a full distro, but other people liked it)

so slackware was just a bug fix distro to help so people slack all the trouble of the initial linux usage and better enjoy it.

check the wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slackware
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius#Slack

Xfce 4

[Sigg3.net]

...a fast, lightweight, and visually appealing desktop environment...

Hey! You forgot sexy!

Zenwalk

[Sigg3.net]

Oh, and if you want a more user-oriented Slackware spin-off I recommend Zenwalk with a one-app-per-task philosophy, slackware core, netpkg and xfce desktop. And great nationalization/localization too.

//end commercial

I've found the ISO:s!!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.jumper.nu/slackware/slackware-12.0-iso/ Everything that the .com hasnt.

12.1 ISOs again

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry i got the url wrong. The correct one to the 12.1 isos is: http://www.jumper.nu/slackware/slackware-12.1-iso/