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Slackware 13.0 Released
willy everlearn and several other readers let us know that Slackware 13.0 is out. "Wed Aug 26 10:00:38 CDT 2009: Slackware 13.0 x86_64 is released as stable! Thanks to everyone who helped make this release possible — see the RELEASE_NOTES for the credits. The ISOs are off to the replicator. This time it will be a 6 CD-ROM 32-bit set and a dual-sided 32-bit/64-bit x86/x86_64 DVD. We're taking pre-orders now at store.slackware.com. Please consider picking up a copy to help support the project. Once again, thanks to the entire Slackware community for all the help testing and fixing things and offering suggestions during this development cycle. As always, have fun and enjoy!"
It seems that deb/rpm people don't like/understand Slackware.
No hour on a horse is ever wasted. Winston Churchill
Or you could just use the torrent page.
But, if you want to download your operating system from a completely unknown and untrusted source, go right ahead.
Granted, TPB would probably link you to the same torrent, but why would you take the risk? Because you find searching, poring over a search list, and deciding on one that looks safe is a more efficient use of your time than just going to the source's torrents?
Slackware is for people who don't understand packages? I think you have that one backwards mate.
Anyone who uses Slackware regularly understands much more about Linux than your average debian / ubuntu user, and is certainly not going to be burned by the "complexity" of a package management system. This is because much of the configuration is manual.
It's often quoted... if you use Ubuntu, you'll learn Ubuntu. If you use Slackware, you'll learn Linux.
I've been using Slackware since '96, and I continue to use it in various capacities today. Installing Slackware and playing with it, writing programs for it, was seriously the best thing I ever did for my knowledge of computers and for Unix environments. I have skills that far surpass any of my co-workers or friends, and have often been the only one that could sort out issues with any sort of Unix environment.
Thanks Pat for the hard work.
http://www.slackware.com/getslack/torrents.php
Since when did you need TPB for this kind of sharing. Ain't best place for torrent of sotware on its offical pages? Thou, http://www.legaltorrents.com/ really could use linux / opensource section.
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
I would argue that Slackware is for people who have a better understanding of how the system fits together than many (but certainly not all!) of the rpm/deb package users. I use Slackware in an Enterprise setting on 70+ servers that cover everything from email to web-hosting to firewalls to custom built "sales presentation" devices. For us, slackware gives us complete control over the systems, without having to guess at what other services or programs may muddle with different parts of the configuration. It's easy for us to disable and remove any services that are not necessary on a particular computer, and we have our own custom installation, testing, and deployment scripts that allow us to keep machines with similar purposes up to date and in sync. While we could accomplish the same things with virtually any distro, Slackware is (for us) the easiest to do these things with, and "Just Works".
The main purpose of Slackware is to provide a Linux distribution that is very BSD-like. People familiar with FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD that need to use Linux will find Slackware very pleasant to work with.
Linux users that have no experience with UNIX and the CLI will find themselves stumbling around and complaining and asking stupid questions like: "Does Slackware have a real purpose?"
I look forward to upgrading.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
Yes, Eris knows you don't even need to be a SubGenius to appreciate the benefits, one can never have too much Slack. Please excuse me, I just got run over by a Fnord.
Watashi wa chikyubutsurigakusha desu.
Yes, one can never have too much Slack.
I can think of a few bungee jumpers who would beg to differ.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Slack is great but overweight. I'd rather have a more minimal distribution, preferably something that fits on a a single CD. That said, it lives up to expectations -- everything plus the kitchen sink.
The cause of distro bloat these days is upstream laziness, particularly on the part of X and the DE (Gnome/KDE) developers. It's a running joke about how you can forget any hope of getting a clean X install without having to hack various bits into shape yourself.
So distro makers have to ship everything themselves, if they want to be sure that everything is going to work with their distro. With something like Debian that changes everything possible purely because they can, upstream shouldn't necessarily be blamed so much, but I suspect Patrick probably tries hard to be as standard as he can, and still has problems.
Slackware Slim wanted. I have to agree, trim it down to CD or even better, downsize it down a few megabytes so one can run it off the flash drive.
You can expect to get yourself into distro wars, but arguing from the Slackware side rather than Ubuntu side.
There are some other, more minor, technical differences but that is the main thing.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Slack is great but overweight.
Slackware, overweight? You obviously don't know what you are talking about.
Usually, you only need the 1st CD to install a minimal Slackware system, including fluxbox if memory serves well. CD2 is usually KDE and XFCE. CD3 are optional packages. CD4 through CD6 is source code.
Since I have installed Slackware on countless servers, I hope Slackware 13.0 still follows this simple rule.
And "Everything plus the kitchen sink" is precisely the opposite of the Slackware philosophy (= KISS).
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
This release is, IMHO, a real milestone for Slackware. A major version jump in the desktop, a new package format, a 64-bit version, ext4, 2.6.29/30 kernels with all their goodies...wow, it's come a long way. Thanks to Pat and all other Slack'ers for putting it all together. Waiting eagerly for my subscription to arrive (yes, I put my money where my mouth is and Slackware is well worth the support). :-)
TPB really helps me find my torrents. This kind of file sharing is exactly what BT is great for.
I've used DistroWatch since the first time someone told me to try out Debian in college and it turned out I needed a different distribution because Debian was for me to start out on. Very memorable learning experience.
Even today, the site does a really good job of keeping up to date. An example is Slackware 13.0 that was released today and there in one paragraph with all the links you could want and direct links to mirrors for torrents and the MD5s.
A lot of times when I want to know what a distro is up to, I click that pull down bar -- like say Fedora -- and get a convenient history of recent releases with a paragraph about the release. Hats off to the people who maintain that site.
My work here is dung.
It comes with lots of cool games.
When I first gave Linux a try back 1998, I tried slackware. It came with a game called "X Server". If you won, you got to see pretty colors and stuff. If you lost, that's to say, if you set the refresh rate above what you monitor could take, you got a smoking monitor.
It was almost as scary as FEAR.
> I've been trying to get into Slackware lately but I just can't seem to get
> use to it. Are there any realb benifits to tranfering to it.
It may or may not be for you. That's the beauty of Linux. Use what you feel
comfortable with.
> Right now I run Arch and I just came from Gentoo, and I like the speed
> aspects of both and the optimization ability. Would there be such option in
> Slackware
You can recompile every package to your specifications. See the Slackbuilds.
Whether there's any actual benefit to doing so remains to be seen.
Ditto for actual source you download. Optimizations are a CFLAGS away.
Okay, I'll bite, Mr. Troll.
I was actually just thinking about this. Slackware is *just like* LFS in its simplicity. This is a good thing for those who desire it. Slackware is an LFS system that has been tested for stability and provides a simple, easy for an admin to takeover package management system. Slapt-get provides higher level package management for those who desire it--including support for dependency resolution.
Believe it or not, not everyone wants to be met with GUI greeters, setup wizards, beginner-oriented defaults, and enabled-by-default automatic updates.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
Its purpose is to be an absolute garbage, unpolished Linux distribution. You may as well LFS.
And this "absolute garbage, unpolished" distribution also happen to be the oldest still-existing distribution in the Linux world. Surprising, that.
Hmmmm... Maybe they are doing something right, after all? Like, perhaps, being stable, complete and a joy to work with?
As opposed to, say, the RPM-Hell, bugged-to-the-bone, over-bloated and absolutely nonsensical but politically correct other distribution(s)?
Just a thought for you...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Actually it's the step between Ubuntu and LinuxFromScratch. I've run Slackware for quite a while and learned a lot from it. But you won't run into the problems that LFS gives you. However, for a normal desktop or server something with apt is way easier to administrate. I wouldn't run Slackware in a server/desktop production environment. Maybe in a embedded system when you need a tighter system.
It's been a while since I used it, but I liked Slack when I did. It didn't use the SysV init system used on almost all other Linux distros, but instead opted for BSD-style startup scripts. At the time I liked that - after getting very used to SysV these days though I think I'd be more or less indifferent on the issue.
Also, Slack was a bit more "raw" of a distro - it's package management included no real dependency handling, making it for the most part just an easy way to install binaries. Usually rather than relying on the package manager (as I often do in other distros now) it was just easier in Slack to download the source tarball and manually compile and install it. That was nice in that I pretty much always had the latest version of any program that I cared about, but the downside was that sometimes as older versions of libraries and such lagged, it would eventually hit a point when upgrading something like Gnome manually became a very, very long task of tracking down all the packages that needed to be upgraded, and sometimes fixing them (as sometimes they'd have libraries in non-standard places and such - not a common occurence, but it did happen).
Slack also didn't ship with any of it's own GUI tools. What you got was basically whatever Gnome or KDE shipped for you to use.
All in all, it was a fast and lean system that lended itself well to a person who wants to tweak things to keep them working exactly how they want. These days though, I've just found that Ubuntu on servers and Mint on the desktop is 90% as good of a system to use while being 20% of the effort to maintain, so I just use them instead.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I loved Slackware for many years, from 1995 to 2008, when I had 4 Slack machines in the house. However, it was the upgrading itself that finally turned me. I found it nigh impossible to actually "upgrade" a pre-existing configured system in use without critically damaging libraries and needing to reinstall from scratch, and worse, reconfigure and fiddle for about 10 hours to get everything working again the way I liked it. In my 20s I had that kind of energy and enthusiasm. Not any longer.
Yes, I have switched to Ubuntu/Mythbuntu, but have brought all my Slackware knowledge with me. Debian package management is divine. The switch has turned out to be the best of both worlds, Ubuntu's polish with my Slackware config skills, with the result of a brilliantly tuned machine that's nigh hassle free.
Check out SLAX
Sounds to me what you really want is something like a busybox based system.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
what are the advantages of using Slackware? What can I expect?
More hands on experience with the guts of a running Linux system instead of hands on experience with a package manager? That may or may not be an advantage for your particular application but it's a nice option to have.
Slackware was the first Linux distro I ever tried and I've remained partial to it ever since. My introduction to Linux came in the form of a $1.99 CD (hard to download the distro in the dialup era) that had Slackware, Debian and Red Hat on it. I picked Slackware because it had the coolest sounding name. I think it was to my long term benefit because I got a lot of experience with the nuts and bolts of Linux through sheer necessity. I don't know as if that would have happened if I had picked one of the other two.
I run Slackware for my servers at work and my firewall/nat/misc server at home. I spend more time setting it up but the knowledge of what's going on and the level of customization that I can achieve makes it worthwhile, at least IMHO.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Aside from Gentoo, I've found that to be common with every Linux distro I've tried.
My Babylon
Quite frankly, if you don't know what it is, then you're not ready for it, so it doesn't matter.
I've run Slackware in production plenty of times for years at a time with no issues, maybe you just don't how to configure it for your purposes? You don't HAVE to pick every package you want, but it does give you that option. It sounds more like you're not familiar enough with the installer to manage a successful installation to end up having only the tools needed for the function said production machine is going to require.
That said, I've not had much of a problem with package management for Slackware, maybe you should check out /var/log/packages, learn to use grep, put together a few simple scripts, and check out slackbuilds.org.
I'll admit this does require more working than just slamming a distro because it doesn't take 3days+ to install or doesn't have a nice pretty GUI that's point'n'click easy. But what I do know? I just want stable/secure servers that aren't that difficult to patch, to me Slackware covers all that once you get through the learning curve.
You know that "Ubuntu" is Swahili for "too lazy to install Slackware" right ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
so recompile with your root fs built into the kernel. that's probably what most slackware users do anyway. leaving code required to boot as modules is a headache waiting to happen. if you don't want do build a custom kernel, you can always stick with the huge kernel used for installation
I think the statement about the generic kernel only refers to installation on nonstandard drives (eg. dmraid with various fakeRAIDs). If you stay in the realm of /dev/hd# /dev/sd# and common controllers interfaces like Compaq Smart Array for instance, you won't need an initrd to boot your kernel.
And if you find the Slackware way (which, IMO is the most generic approach) cumbersome, pray explain how to boot an nVidia MediaShield fakeRAID RAID5 partition without an initrd for instance, as I would be very interested to hear it. I recently had to do the latter, and I found that using initrd with good old Slack was a breeze, since Slackware leaves everything you need at your fingertips, along with a *detailed* README of how to do it. Didn't even have to google to figure out how to craft an initrd.
Looks like these truths are not so self-evident after all...
> Explain what slackware is
It's a Linux distribution. There are many other Linux distributions, but this one is Slackware! :-)
Quite frankly, if you don't know what it is, then you're not ready for it, so it doesn't matter.
I've got mod points again, but they never get spent, because I consider it to be a sign of greater integrity, to refute posts I disagree with, rather than simply down modding them.
Slackware was my first Linux distribution, during the mid 1990s. At the time, I'd only previously had exposure to UNIX at all via an ISP's FreeBSD shell account, and so I barely knew what it was at all.
A newcomer who is willing to learn is actually going to be far better off with Slack than with Ubuntu or Debian.
There is a much greater degree of simplicity within Slackware's overall design. Less complexity means less potential opportunities for things to break due to random, uncontrolled interactions of the various parts, and even more importantly, it also means that when something does break, it's a lot easier to find the source of the problem and fix it.
Using a system like Slackware is also going to give a user good mental habits as well, and teach them how to recognise a genuinely sound distribution design when they see one. Debian's greatest problem isn't so much that it's a terrible design, but more that the people who design and use it actually think that it's great.
Slackware is actually a privately-held company, so it does not have to disclose profits or losses.
However, ever since it has been created, it has provided the mains source of income for Patrick Volkerding, so I guess profits must have been steady, if not spectacular.
I'll note that Slackware has been forked countless times -- probably because it provides a stable, simple and highly-customizable platform for experimentation. Just like Linux (the kernel) itself, by the way.
Besides, this is open-source. Profits, IMHO, are definitely *not* a proof of software quality (See: Software, Microsoft)... But why waste a good troll arguing rationally, right? Go back under your bridge, little troll, I have wasted enough time with you like that.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Really? I don't think I've reinstalled any of the Slackware installs (of which there are plenty) since ~2000, other than for corrupt filesystems.
Before doing a Slackware upgrade, definitely consult UPGRADE.TXT and CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT. Together they provide a very simple set of instructions for doing your upgrade, as well as a list of which packages have been split or merged, and details on any software that's been replaced and may need to be reconfigured.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Did Patrick ever get over his irrational hatred of PAM and HAL? Or are these still left as an exercise for the student?
There's nothing irrational about HAL hatred, at all. Have you seen some of the error messages the HAL/Dbus combo can produce on Ubuntu?
Irrespective of whether or not HAL/Dbus are evil, however, the simple fact is that they're also unnecessary. I don't understand for the life of me why people don't simply use udev rules and the kernel's own hardware notification system for hotpluggable hardware. Is it because HAL apparently comes with a database of most hotpluggable software as well, so you poor babies don't have to look up device names in order to write said udev rules?
The bottom line is that most of you want to be morons. You crave indolence, stupidity, and ignorance. You want whatever system you're using to feed you, burp you, and change your nappies...and then, as often as not, you're the same people who show up in the Ubuntu forums crying about how your machine won't function, and simply stops at a black screen.
Slackware doesn't facilitate wilful ignorance, stupidity, or laziness. You want something that does, and so Slackware gets abused whenever it is mentioned in front of you.
It isn't Slackware that's the problem; it's your desperate craving to avoid having to think.
You're a sick man.
How about that Windows Distro, it doesn't seem to work like that. Also, is Windows Debian Based? I've heard that Debian is always way behind in updates and usability.
Aside from Gentoo? Gentoo is as capable as anything else once you get it set up. That's a consistency of Linux as a whole. Once you get it fully configured it just works, forever. I've had gentoo *desktop* boxes with uptime in the years before I decide to upgrade the kernel (usually motivated by some slashdot article with cool new kernel features, not a necessity). And FWIW, I've tried switching to Ubuntu a few times, and had to quit due to obnoxious memory leaks, much slower binaries, and an extreme difficulty to configure anything non-standard. I'm not saying gentoo is right for everyone, it's not, but I can't imagine picking ubuntu if you're a linux expert. If you were having to constantly do maintenance work on gentoo, you probably didn't know what you were doing...
Please explain your comment on Gentoo. I've been running Gentoo for a while and find that once it is setup I don't have to touch it. In fact I just upgraded my home system after not touching it for over 1.5 years. It took about a day to upgrade (please save the "Gentoo sucks" comments) but I went from kde 3.5 to 4.3 with little hassle.
Mr. Fluxx, I just can't let that comment go by without challenge. We, lusers in general, mock Microsoft and it's monopoly. We mock the mindset of people who just use Windows because it's all they know, and they are unwilling to learn or to explore. We mock conformity, in general.
I change OS's from time to time, just to see what's happening in Suse-land, Debian-land, Ubuntu-land, Solaris-land - well, you get the idea. Each flavor of Linux has it's good points, and each flavor has something that I don't think highly of.
I could name a favorite, and do everything in my power to sell that favorite, while denigrating the other flavors of Linux. But, not only would that be petty - it may actually impede innovation!
Which of us is to say that one team or the other will NOT stumble over the best thing since sliced bread in the next year or ten? At the moment, Ubuntu seems to be leading the way toward "The year of Linux on the desktop". But, how can you read the future? Anything can happen. Most especially, anything can happen when we don't have all the facts. Computer science is still in it's infancy.
Linus and his associates could conceivably have a flash of inspiration tomorrow, and rewrite the kernel in a manner that turns the computer world on end tomorrow. Or, more likely, a bunch of hackers do the same, to spite Linus and his entrenched hierarchy. Soon after, ALL the flavors of Linux that we love today may be replaced by "The Next Big Thing".
What I'm trying to say is, don't be a dick. If slackware looks like a waste to you, that's cool. Keep it to yourself. The kind of crap you posted just gives ammo to the astroturfers who are pushing the MS agenda.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Talking of Mach, that joke just flew over your head at at least twice the speed of sound.
I write bullshit
A BSD style init script system rather then a SYSV one. It's easier to grok, IMO.
disclaimer: when i graduated college, i switched to ubuntu, which is much easier to break when you muck around with init scripts and packages and such, but requires much less mucking. Slackware still holds a special place in my heart, though.
Sorry, no.
My philosophy is do it the long, hard, manual way once so you learn it, then automate it with the computer. The same reason I'm using network manager instead of writing WPA-supplicant rules by hand; or using IKE instead of writing IPSec SPAs and SPIs by hand.
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, now I want to be able to move on and do something else while having the computer handle the tedious details.
Nice rant, though.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I won't say this for sure, but my first reaction is "YDIW." If one follows the instructions for upgrading from one release to the next, there won't be an "critically damag[ed] libraries" or "reinstall[ing] from scratch" at all. Granted, the docs are generally better since the 11.0 days (sorry, I have to toot my own horn with that), but even before then, they were good enough.
Gee, who gives a rat's ass. If popularity was worth a tinker's damn, then we'd all just use Windows.
If you want a distribution who enjoys being the Keeper of the Toilet Paper, then fine - use it - but leave the rest of us alone.
Please define "advanced features"
I'm not fond of Slackware in a production environment because upgrading and package maintenance is a pain in the ass. Instead of typing (for example) rpm -q *program*, you have to teach people how to determine which binary version is present, where it is
$ ls /var/log/packages/*mysql*
$ whereis mysql
and coach them in installing new ones
# installpkg package.tgz|tbz|txz
and making sure the dependencies are okay
now finally something true ;)
nothing will prevent you from installing a new package to discover that it doesn't run because of some missing library except your experience and trial & error.
I'm not terribly fond of "off the shelf" rpms, but it's easy to make my own
it's also easy to create slackware packages
and then put them in my own repository, and push them out to every machine that needs one. It's a simple and effective infrastructure, and one that can be grasped by minions who are not capable of scratch building binaries with weird dependencies.
first, true - slackware has no official repositry management, although there are several solutions included in latest versions. i personally haven't tried them as i rely on my own simple scripts...
second, if minions can't grasp building binaries on slackware, they won't be able to create those rpm packages as well. on slackware you have one large package, while on other distros you would need those -dev packages, which might be even harder to grasp for them - "hey, i have curl installed !!11!"
Rich
http://www.slax.org/get_slax.php ? although slightly outdated at times, quite minimalistic.
also i have scripts to create hackish single-cd version of slackware install, although since version 11 or 12 it doesn't fit with x and kde on a single cd anymore, only the "server version" does :)
Rich
Despite the flamebait mod, I was hoping to get someone to give me some advantages. Disappoingly the only real 'advantage' that anyone has given so far is that it's more bare-bones and thus forces you to learn learn.
What does the Slackware experience bring to the table that distinguishes it from other distros, beyond a certain level of nostalgia?
1) Most Unix-like of the Linux systems (may or may not be something you care about).
The big reason I like this aspect of Slackware is summed up by the old saying: If you learn Red Hat, you know Red Hat. If you learn Debian, you know Debian. If you learn Slackware, you know Linux.
2) Stability as #1 development priority, Security as #2, everything else isn't even on the radar (so if you want a system that never needs a reboot, Slackware's your distro. If you want a 64bit system....well, it just got there. If you want bleeding edge...compile it yourself.).
3) Total control and heavy involvement in the system internals (though I hear Gentoo offers as much).
This is another major aspect for me. It's isn't one for everyone though, and I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. But if you want to know how your system works, and you want to learn Linux sysadmining, Slackware is for you. I like it because I'm the computer equivalent of a gearhead, I get a kick out of it. Again, absolutely not for everyone.
In short, Slackware doesn't try to be a desktop OS that holds your hand and wipes your ass. You get the tools you need and you're off on your own. Some people like that. Some don't. If you don't, then fine. But don't come in here and try to shit on those of us that do. I don't shit on your (rhetorical you, not necessarily referring to parent or any other specific value of "you") hobbies. Slackware never tried to be a mainstream, mass-market system. It's Pat Volkerding's personal operating system. If you like it, he provides it so you can use it too. If you don't, bugger off then.