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Slackware 12.2 Released
pilsner.urquell submitted a quote from the announcement saying "Well folks, it's that time to announce a new stable Slackware release again. So, without further ado, announcing Slackware version 12.2! Since we've moved to supporting the 2.6 kernel series exclusively (and fine-tuned the system to get the most out of it), we feel that Slackware 12.2 has many improvements over our last release (Slackware 12.1) and is a must-have upgrade for any Slackware user."
I'm sure both of you still using Slackware will be very pleased! ;)
My blog
They'll be more pleased than all the rugged individualists using Ubuntu.
As a 10 year veteran of Slack, I really like that Patrick is still doing the work, but I don't even have to go to the page to know that PAM still isn't supported, and that there's not a package manager that can compete with yum/apt-get/ports.
Last year I switched to Ubuntu on the desktop and CentOS on the server. I look back at Slackware with a lot of fond memories, but managing even a medium sized installation of Slack machines was just too time consuming to continue.
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It's nice to know that some things just don't change. Niagara Falls keeps falling, the New England Atlantic is always just a bit too cold to really enjoy swimming in, and my first Linux distro keeps on going.
Kudos, Patrick! Long may you release! (And, since I just found out about 20 seconds ago that he's a month younger than me, I look forward to seeing Slack releases into my nursing home years. "Why, when I was your age, youngster, we used xf86cfg to set up X; none of this X.org junk! You kids have it so easy!")
As far as I can tell the only reason this distro exists is to hinder Linux adoption by Windows users.
Windows User: I'm looking to try out Linux but I don't know which distro I should use
Ubuntu Fanboy #1: Ubuntu
Ubuntu Fanboy #2: Ubuntu
etc, etc, etc...
Ubbuntu Fanboy #1323423: Ubuntu
And then some idiot pipes in because he feels he needs to 'throw his props in for Slackware' and confuses the fuck out of the potential Linux convert.
xf86cfg? LUXURY! I remember using xf86config. Make a typo entering your monitor's scan rate? Too bad. Try again from the beginning, or edit the file with vi.
/usr/games/fortune
You make me feel like a third wheel!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Hey slackware users, how's that russia economic crisis? Fixed that y2k bug yet?
One of the plusses of this distro was that it was able to run on ANYTHING from the 80386 on up... with the move to the 2.6 kernel, is that still possible or do I need a Pentium as a minimum machine?
(yes, I have 25 80386 machines out in the wilderness (solar powered) of Canada doing remote sensing work all running Slackware)
about 700 Users
The short answer: yes. He suffers from an acute form of a widespread mental and ethical deficiency known as Liberalism:
http://cbs2chicago.com/governor/Blagojevich.mental.health.2.884667.html
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The honeymoon is over, Barry Soetoro.
I started with Slackware, from my memories, Slackware is from a time when "distribution" had another meaning. The idea was: "here, I compiled the main stuff for you", and from that point you were alone, compiling almos everything (gcc, libc, making the ELF transition by hand)...
I remember the 30 floppy disk set - Just for the base installation. If you wanted to install the entire system, you needed about a hundred floppies.
Make a typo entering your monitor's scan rate? Too bad. Try again from the beginning, or edit the file with vi.
After procuring a new monitor, natch.
The opposite of progress is congress
+1 LOL
I remember those days, and the warnings involved
"You *can* physically break your monitor if you set the values wrong"
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Ah yes, the horrible memories of downloading, copying to floppies and installing from said floppies because the machine in question didn't have a CD-ROM drive (and no spare drives around). And on dial-up....
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/27/1212214&from=rss and so on. It's nice to see that some distro maintainers have the "right" values about what to focus on. In a world of wussies, Slackware still stands tall and proud!
xf86config is old-school now? I guess I'm getting old, when I started using *nix the standard practice was to run through xff86config as accurately as possible and then manually editing your config to make everything work properly (trying to run X immediately after running xf86config generally resulted in some pretty odd behaviour or if you weren't so lucky, broken hardware).
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Okay, the truth of the matter is that I've forgotten some of the XFree86 nomenclature; I, too, hand-edited the /etc/X/XF86Config (?) file with emacs the first time I used it, to set it up to run on my 16 MHz 386SX, 8 MB of RAM (I fully populated that MO(B|F)O) with my Hercules mono card (I had an amber monitor: neener. No greenscreen here, baby.), and my two 20 MB drives -- 40 MB of storage!
Man, did that machine rock.
Used it many years ago and recently installed 12.1 on my eeePc. Surprised to see nearly nothing had changed, but I think that's a good thing. I like the fact that I essentially get a base system that I can just take over and manage myself. It doesn't install a bunch of stuff I don't want, and installing new software from source is pretty simple. Maybe it's just me, but package managers always end up giving me issues with certain software (ruby comes to mind) and I end up having to build certain things from source anyhow.
I looked up irrelevant in the dictionary:
-adjective:
1. not relevant; not applicable or pertinent: His lectures often stray to interesting but irrelevant subjects.
2. Law. (of evidence) having no probative value upon any issue in the case.
-Synonyms:
1. (Linux Distributions), Slackware: His new release has totally gone Slackware on us.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
be 'very poorly Disc0ssion I'm and that the floor that comprise for *BSD because 'You see, even
There = in or at that place
Next time, please use the correct one.
Thank god there was a floppy option. Can you imagine downloading a 640MB CD image at 14.4?
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Actually, on my first notebook I used brain and pocket calculator to set up X. There was just a tiny bit of memory lacking to run it at a better depth with the standard resolution - so I tweaked /etc/X11/XF86Config to get better depth with a rather odd resolution. Basically sacrificed a few lines at the bottom of the screen.
Slackware was my first experience with Linux many years ago...(1997/98ish?). Especially installing from floppy disks.
However, I now use Ubuntu & Mint linux on my pcs at the moment.
The way to look at the Slackware "distribution" is to see it as a bare bones, vanilla-type system.
Not having a "package" system is a *feature* of Slackware and it still uses tarball-type packages to this day.
Slackware is based on a different philosophy from today's distributions and I think it's refreshing to see this.
As far as I know there are no "corporate sponsors" funding Slackware's development - Patrick does it in his spare time.
One thing that most people on Slashdot seem to miss is that this is the original spirit of Linux and any software associated with it.
In fact I may install it on an old 450mhz PIII laptop I've got kicking about.
Good Luck Patrick you have my utmost respect and I hope Slackware continues for a very long time.
Right... despite PAM is a powerful system and concept for a lot of things, for people that 1) is just learning the OS and 2) really wants to have full control of a handy and simple OS, PAM is overkill, as a lot of other subsystems on most distros.
The last Slackware distro I used was 3.4 (in 1997/98) and the tgz packages, few boot scripts, etc. were a nice (and attainable) challenge for anybody interested in understanding the main user level OS components.
Now I use Ubuntu, and I will continue using it (specially since I no longer do sysadmin) but the last time I tried to change some static IP route, it was a real mess with all those DHCP daemons and network applets trying to be too wise and resetting my manual changes... I missed a "plain" Linux like Slackware.
Oh, I don't have to imagine it... Thanks for bringing back the memories.
*shivers*
If my Dad can use Slackware, anybody can. The real fun is when my step-mom can't get XP to recognize her camera so my dad had to DL the pictures and copy them to a USB stick.
Folks who haven't tried Slackware since the mid '90s really have no busness commenting about the distro. It's come just as far as all the rest, but somehow managed to stay true to the idea of being stable and reliable that has been there from day one.
If you want to be a point-and-click drone and only need to do email, then Slack will work just fine. On the other hand, I rarely have any problems compiling stuff either (haven't had to google for strange libs since I left redhat in the dust).
Yeah. And figuring out the correct frequences by trying to minimize the noise made by the monitor! When kids these days talk about how hard installing Ubuntu or Fedora or whatever is, I want to hit them with a big bat...
It is retards like you that make it clear that Linux will continue to be a complete joke on the desktop.
Go fuck yourself retard. The sooner the Linux/open source community tells idiots like you to fuck off the better.
It's really too bad they couldn't have sat down and taken the time to code it right in the first place. Then they wouldn't have to release a new version every few months.
"Slackware sucks, it has no package manager."
"Slackware sucks, it takes so much time to get an uber elite desktop with avant and spinning cubes."
"Slackware sucks, it's so much harder to install than Ubuntu."
"Slackware sucks, you spend way more time on the CLI than other distros."
There are still some of us left that don't think the primary goal of every linux distro is to become a clone of the Windows desktop. There are less and less of us left that want to kick the hell out of anyone that thinks the command line should go away or be used as little as possible. Slackware is what it is - a robust linux system that tries to be as unix-like as possible.
If you want your hand held for you, and you don't understand what *nix truly is and can do and don't really care - if all you want is a simple drop-in replacement for Windows - go download Ubuntu. Each distribution achieves a different goal. THAT's the real beauty of linux, not its potential to become "grandma's operating system".
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
What about 64-bit Slackware?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
She left him and took the child processes with her.
And despite those warnings, I never did manage to explode a monitor or cause it to cease functioning ( short of dropping it off a three story building). I did manage to set Lp0 on fire though ( with the help of some accelerants).
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Ah, the joys of floppy install sets..
Clearing out an old box of disks I came across a couple of my second Slackware distro set floppies (SLS/T1, the other is Illegible[Blackcurrent&Pernod stained label, v.looong story]) , marked Feb '94, which was the second time I'd ever installed linux on a box.
The floppy images were lovingly downloaded to a Sparc 2 ( the only networked box in the lab back then) then written out via the hit-and-miss Sun floppy drive to said floppies, then transferred to the PC at the other end of the lab (ISTR, 'twas a 386 dx 33, 170 Meg HD 16 Meg RAM). Great fun, started at around 5:00pm, finished around 6:30am the next morning, still leaving me with 2 1/2 hours of playing before I had to start work again at nine.
My first Slackware distro install was sometime in December '93, done in a similar manner, but using only seven working floppy disks. I started with around 20, but the Sun floppy drive kept fubarring them (a not too uncommon occurrence), had no replacements at hand, and the shops were closed, so ended up having to overwrite the seven working disks with the next wanted floppy images in sequence, another all-nighter starting around 5:30pm, ISTR I actually finished the install at around 11:00am(ish) the next day.
As far as I can tell, in both cases, this must have been Slackware 1, and that I must have been quite mad back then...
Still run Slackware (Basically 12 with local hacks and non-packaged software), my desktop, server and firewall are all Slackware boxes. I've tried other distros, but for some reason keep coming back to Slackware.
yes I am a karma whore.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Horrible memories? Slackware was my first Linux installation. I used a set of floppies from MS Office 4.3(?) to create the disk sets. It was a thing of beauty. Reading my monitor's manual to find the refresh and sync rates, trying to get cdrom support in the default kernel. I learned more that first weekend with Linux than I did the entire time I spent running windows 3.1. Slackware has come a LONG way since 1995. BTW, I still admin. three servers at work running Slack.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
For third party software, check out slackbuilds.org. It is run by several members of the Slackware team. There is also a tool called 'sbopkg' (www.sbopkg.org) that provides a nice command line or dialog-based interface to slackbuilds.org and lets you easily build third-party packages.
Another thing that rarely gets mentioned is just how long Patrick and the Slackware Security Team provide updates. They are /still/ providing patches for Slackware 8.1 released in 2001. That's a damn long time.
I've been using Slack on various machines for 8 years now, and it's still one of my favourites. I keep it installed on my parents' PC so that I don't have to drive down there every week to fix a Windows virus or a Ubuntu fuckup.
Happy New Year, it's 1984!
Heh, I did something like that too once. Had a monitor that had a top resolution of 800x600, but I thought it was a little to low so I tweaked the settings so i could have something like 900x675.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
I agree that upgrading 99% of the software might not make perfect sense, especially if the machines don't have local accounts, but if you don't regularly upgrade the packages that provide services (ssh, apache, bind, etc), then you're opening yourself to a world of hurt.
You operate by what I refer to as the "soft juicy center" security model. There's a hard outside and a completely unprotected center that, if reached, is completely and utterly vulnerable.
Logically, your external network connections might be secure, but you should consider physical security as well. How difficult is it for someone to plug something into a data jack and get access to the network? Or how difficult would it be for a "maintenance man" to put a laptop in the ceiling?
You're probably saying "no one would even want access to my networks" but that's definitely not assured. Aside from your competitors, you've also got people at your company (or who used to work at your company).
It's good practice to make sure that you are protected internal and out, and it makes for a lot less excuses later if something does happen.
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> Make a typo entering your monitor's scan rate?
> Too bad. Try again from the beginning
Then it's not old-school, but shitty UI design. One could always get the UI right, no matter the epoch or hardware.
Try again from the beginning, or edit the file with vi....with your remaining eye?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
tl:dr
UI design !?
Back to your basement, kid. And your ooh-shiny gui windows. There was hardly any GUI installers back when slack was growing up. I have magazines that heralded the arrival of them GUI installers.
You probably grew up with xorg.conf, didn't you? That's ok, I occasionally watch Point Break.
The way to look at the Slackware "distribution" is to see it as a bare bones, vanilla-type system.
I view Slackware as a construction set for building Linux boxes. You can build anything you want with it - desktop, server, whatever. This is different from other distros that are a Linux box in a can. Open the can, pour out the contents, go.
I also like the fact that Slackware doesn't try to hide the fact that it's Unix. Many other distros are trying too hard to look like Windows.
My very first Linux box was Slackware. I've used Debian on Sun UltraSPARC boxes, and messed around with the embedded stuff on teeny tiny computers. But for general day-to-day use, I always come back to Slackware. Because it works.
Yes, I'm typing this on a Slackware box. Three cheers for Slackware! Thanks, Patrick!
...laura
Why the negativity ? Why can't everyone in the Linux/BSD/OpenSource communities raise their glass and say "Congratulations! Good work!" I thought we were on the same side here. Today, you pop in a "modern" linux distro and 97% of the time, it just works. Some kid grabs an install disc for fedora or ubuntu, and he boasts to his friens "yeah, I run linux". Yet they have learned nothing. I am proudly a slackware and debian user and always will be. Run RedHat/Fedora and you learn RedHat/Fedora. Fine. Run Ubuntu and you learn Ubuntu. Run Slackware and you learn Unix/Linux. Slackware is run at many universities as a major portion of the network. It is run in libraies, schools, and even some business. Not to mention many many home users around the world. There were 3,000 visits and downloads to the slackware site in aug 08. Some say there is no package management. Well yes there is. There is no dependency checking but the most needed dependencies are already part of the install. And if you get a message saying you need something, then go get it. [rhetorical] Whats the big deal? Dont blindly follow the script kiddies into ubuntu land. "Yeah dude, I run Linux." No, you clicked "OK" or "Continue" a few times and ripped a DVD. Ooooo you're a linux god. :p
Go get Slackware or pure debian.
Slackware: Myths and Cliche
http://www.osnews.com/story/3329/Slackware_Myths_and_Cliches_--_Another_Newbie_s_Point_of_View
Slackware is so stable you only need to update when Glib becomes obsolete, so I'm good until at least Slackware 13.1
User interface? You've never done it. There wasn't an interface, other than a keyboard and text. It was a progressive script hacked together and we were grateful, because we didn't have to write the X11R86.conf file from scratch anymore.
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X11R6.conf I mean. :-)
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Slamd64 is excellent. I've been using it for just over a year now. My SETI@Home CPU benchmark went up by 55% by going from 32-bit to 64-bit.
With more than 512MB of RAM on an x86 box, a 64-bit Linux is vastly superior due to the way the kernel lays out the memory map and the extra registers.
It's a real shame that there isn't an official 64-bit Slackware, but Slamd64 is more than good enough. I've been on Slackware since 1995. I've used Debian, CentOS, RedHat, SuSE, KNOPPIX and Ubuntu and I will never leave Slackware unless I am forced to.
All of my old boxes run Slackware. All of my new ones will be running Slamd64.
Maybe Pat and Fred should team up semi-officially?
Stick Men
Hello,
I am a former Debian user that switched to Slackware this summer. (I prefer Debian to other derived distributions like Ubuntu for a number of reasons).
What I like from Slackware is it "vanilla" approach. In fact, I think other "distros" (like Debian itself) are getting quite bloated, and this can be hell if trying to find the cause of a bug: you may spend much time comparing to other distros and/or searching if the problem is in the thousand of patches applied or in the original "upstream" package.
I like the Slackware's initialization scripts too.
On the other hand, nobody can beat Debian's huge software repository. Nevertheless, if you still want to install a non-standard package I guess it's much easier to do in Slackware (at least if you want to follow your "distro way").
Also, I could configure my rt73 usb dongle and WPA2 almost immediately in Slackware. I have felt pain with Debian (Lenny) and Ubuntu (using their official packages) and have not been able to do it yet.
I had a 14inch monitor I originally used with my Amiga but with X managed 1240x968 (or something like that). It was interlaced, and whined a bit. Every few months it needed a slightly different setting as for some reason it could no longer handle the frequency. I had to adjust vertical stretch to minimum and have the horizontal control all the way over to one side, and iirc a few lines along one edge were funny colored.
Been using Slackware for over 10 years ;)
Seems to be two camps in this discussion... The hardcore slack users who hate on the Ubuntu "noobs", and the Ubuntu users who claim Slack should only be viewed as a piece of nostalgia.
I have used both distributions quite a bit and enjoyed both. I started out with Slackware, and one things for sure, I learned a lot about navigating Linux systems. Eventually, I got sick of manually compiling/installing every package so I made the switch to Ubuntu. I was actually quite impressed with Ubuntu and its ease of use. I would say the best things about Ubuntu would be ease of use and installing packages using Synaptic. However, you don't really learn how the underlying system works. Recently, I've re-installed Slackware to get back to my roots. I think Slackware is much better as a server or as a simple desktop.
I think both distros have their own place. To the Slackware veterans, you can't deny that Ubuntu has made a huge impact on converting Windows users to Linux. Even if they may be noobs and flood forums with noobie questions, converting users to Linux can be only a good thing, right? Also, personally I have found Ubuntu forums to be some of the most helpful and friendly. Pat and Slackware are keeping it real as usual, enough said.
Is that someone is making very major decisions about the software you run on your machine. If you are the normal Linux moron who only cares about Desktop BS(why in god's name dont you people just use Macs?) then you get upset about having to understand what is going on. I get upset when I have to fight over figuring out how to compile out the stupid mistakes people put in binary packages. This is why I greatly respect people who use BSDs or Slackware and always wonder a little about someone using Debian or Umbatu, do they know what they are doing? Or are they just playing at it because they think apt-get makes them UNIX gods. RedHat I think is a little different because at least they have a good business support system. Same goes for Solaris for the same reason. It is time for the Linux hobbist to find a new toy and quit trying to make a beautiful system into god damn Windows!
I'm too slack to download and install this ware.
What's with the mods modding down funny posts lately?
I like that SELINUX is still not compiled in.
Everybody else is cattering to NSA
People complain about Slackware's usability all the time. What I always see neglected is the fact that Slackware, as a distro, Just Works far more often than any other distro I've played with.
Slackware will install and work on a wide variety of exotic hardware, both modern and obsolete. It can be easily installed on machines that don't boot from CD, or even have a CD drive.
I've never encountered a machine that wouldn't install and boot slackware, with a working command line and network support, just by using the scripts that come on the install discs, and following the instructions.
Legalize recreational marijuana. Seriously.
Why do you still have to include irqpoll=off it should be like that by default.
Old machine option
I originally tried Slackware because I read somewhere that it was the distribution most similar to Unix. Other than more manual configuration, it seemed pretty much the same as other distributions.
slapt-get. Just as good, if not better than the others.
C'mon people! What's up with the torrent? Is no one seeding this yet?
Kudos, Patrick! Long may you release!
...And I thought this was a family channel?!?
The Illuminati would kill me, but I'm not rich enough to take notice of.
I have said "User Interface", not "Graphical User Interface", there is a distinction. Learn to understand what you're reading, it's a useful skill.
I know I haven't done it, just like you've probably never been entering the boot sequence on the front panel using switches and blinking lights :) my point is, is undo THAT difficult to implement? If I've been designing a tool like that, I'd store the questions, answers so far, etc in an array, and in case the user has entered a magic sequence like "!undo" I'd go back to the previous question. Here, UI problem fixed with 30 seconds of thinking.
Ah yes, the horrible memories of downloading, copying to floppies and installing from said floppies because the machine in question didn't have a CD-ROM drive (and no spare drives around). And on dial-up....
Yes to all of the above (at separate times). This was before CD burners were common, so we just downloaded the floppy images. There was one benefit though, when some friends and I got an assignment to install Linux (Slackware was about it back then, except for Yggdrasil and Red Hat) on all the computers in a lab. We got all 60+ floppies, and just went around the lab, assembly-line style. Using floppies actually allowed pipelining (although I didn't know that term for it back then). Side note: our original idea was to use free AOL floppies, but too many of them failed, so we had to buy some :-)
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
Good Slackware 12.2 review http://www.xstore.co.za/wordpress/?p=307
I sell frozen yogurt which i call frogurt
Keep on working your ass off trying to compile everything and you could be spending quality time with your family. Configuring operating systems is similar to a religion to some of these people.
6-10-16-28 40 hrs and what do you end up doing formating and installing windows again.
People give Mark S shit about Ubuntu but you can just slap it in the drive and spin. You can work on your shit and finish all the while not sweating wondering how compiz is configured.
Slackware is so freaking stupid.
Debian fixed all the problems 6 years ago assholes move on and get over it.
Slackware should be King! Right now I'm logged in to one slackware setup using WPA-PSK wireless, chrooted to another one and running a guarddog firewall that was set up when I logged in to the first one. Try that with your Ubuntu's...
I can say yes to all the cookies in the world and they still get dropped by the wayside plus I get a running summary of all the scanners trying to find an open port. Ciao
Wow! I didnt think there still existed people who still have so much idle time on their hands. Compiling is like so 80ish. I left that world back around Redhat 5 and have never looked back. Never again will I waste time out of my life debugging other folks codes trying to get things to work. Bah!