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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! ;)
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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.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
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)
The rugged individualists all left Slackware and went to Gentoo. After the fighting got out of hand, those that didn't move off to one of the Gentoo forks went to one of the BSDs.
The rest of us got sick of spending most of our waiting for our system software and applications to compile and moved Debian. Some of us got sick of Debian's lack of polish and went to Ubuntu. Probably a few went back to Slackware.
In the meantime, predictably so, a bunch of n00bs started using Ubuntu mostly because we told them it was a good idea. Now the Ubuntu forums are filled with n00b posts flaming the world because 'Ubuntu sucks' and 'it ate my computer', etc.
Personally, I'm getting sick of the whole mess. Slackware is looking cooler by the minute... ;)
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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
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.
One simple example would be : getting the hardware to work. Followed closely by getting the wifi to work.
Ubuntu is getting much more user-friendly with every incarnation, but it still has a rather long way to go before it will reach the ease-of-use of a recent Windows platform IMHO.
Seriously, I like Ubuntu and I have 2 portables running myself + have put it on my mom's computer since she wanted a localized OS. The personal ones are for me playing around with it a bit since I'm curious what's all the fuss about. The other one is in use by my toddler-girl who enjoys to play GCompris on it or watch some DVD-rips of Dora The explorer on it. My moms is being used solely for a bit of mailing (Thunderbird) and browsing (Firefox).
In the old days, those 3 computers (all dell portables btw) ran Windows2000 Professional. Setup was simple : put in Wind2k cd in the tray, startup, go through the setup, download the driver installations from Dell and run those too. At worst you had to fiddle around a bit with tcp settings. After that the system was up and running and I'd lost half a day at most per machine... (format + setup + setting up mail accounts etc takes a bit of time).
Getting Ubuntu running on them has been a hassle for all 3 of them.
* getting video running has been HELL : with only 1 out of 3 I managed to get the nvidia blob to run after reading days and days of forums, trying out every single trick they propose. The two others still run in 'software' mode, which is fine for firefox/thunderbird or GCompris (more or less), but has cost me several days trying anyway.
* wifi wasn't always (properlty) recognized : pcmcia went mostly fine, usb was hell. Finally got it working via ndiswrapper
* each time there is an upGRade something breaks and I'm back in the 'problem-chasing' game =(
As a side-note : people always complain about Windows Update pushing lots of bytes, but boy oh boy, same is true for ubuntu IMHO. Not that I find that a bad thing per-se, but then again, stop complaining about Windows.
If there is one thing to be learned on slashdot, it has to be sarcasm.
I always felt that a decent package manager was one of the things that really seperated Linux from Windows. :)
I agree with the rest though.