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Slackware 13.1 Released
Several readers made sure we are aware that Slackware 13.1 release is out. Here's the list of mirrors. "Slackware 13.1 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.6.1, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy-to-use desktop environment, and KDE 4.4.3, a recent stable release of the new 4.4.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment."
cheers to the developers. they really work their slacks off.
on 4 architectures, I still have a special place in my heart for Slackware (though I use Arch and Debian on my main boxes now). Great distribution -- I even sent Pat "The Man" Volkerding home-made cookies when he was sick.
As the adage goes, Give a man Debian, and he'll learn Debian. Give a man SUSE, and he'll learn SUSE. But give a man Slackware, and he'll learn Linux. I certainly picked up more *NIX tricks from Slack than the other distros combined.
I started using Slackware when I began college, and I still use it today. I'm sort of a "medium" user. I can work the scripts and the config files, and I even compiled some custom kernels in the past. But I'm not a CS guy - I majored in music. Even I, with my liberal arts degree, find Slackware delightful to use and I appreciate it's lack of fluff and its overall feel of being MY computer.
I salute you Pat. May you keep on Slacking.
Ok, what's with excluding GNOME?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Unfortunately, Slackware hasn't carried GNOME since 2005. Mr. Volkerding dropped it because it was "too much work". There are other third party GNOME packagers for Slackware. However, GNOME isn't just a desktop - it needs support from underneath X for some things, so any set of GNOME packages makes changes to Slackware that are more or less compatible with a basic Slackware install. I used Dropline for a while, but came to the decision that I wanted my desktop to be officially supported on my distro, not an afterthought. And, in the end, the "one-man-distro" concept that Slackware is just wasn't enough any more.
This really made me sad. Slackware is the garage-built Apple II of the Linux world (I figure SLS was the Apple I). Unfortunately, Linux has moved on from what one person can really package together. Slackware losing GNOME was just a symptom of this larger issue. I know for a fact that many people have offered to help Mr. Volkerding with various aspects of Slackware. I know at least one of the major GNOME packagers for Slackware has offered to do all the GNOME work for Slackware. I myself have made the offer too. Mr. Volkerding just doesn't seem interested in a community for Slackware. As I said, a one-man garage OS just isn't enough, unfortunately.
I ended up standardizing on Debian for all my machines. I've ugraded two production machines across three versions of Debian now - it just works, always. Debian is conservative, which is perfect for production machines. And it has real package management.
Every time I see a new Slackware version it makes me sad. Like seeing an old man wheezing on for another birthday. I'd rather see it go now, than continue to bleed marketshare into complete irrelevancy.
Is VMWare a work requirement? If not, is kvm an option? I'm using kvm on slackware64 13.0 at work with no problems. An Ethertap bridge or qemu's userspace NAT works fine with Windows in an AD environment (although there are some limitations with userspace NAT). The Windows VirtIO drivers for disk and network were pretty easy to get working.
Yeah, and we're so old-fart'ish that at the time when we installed it on our system Slackware was the hottest new thing around.
Over the years every component in our systems might have been replaces 2-3 times each, yet the soul of the machine is still slack.
- These characters were randomly selected.
I'm admittedly a Johnny-come-lately Linux user, a mid-ish 20's (three cubed!) developer who switched to Linux (openSuSE) last spring. Loved it. Then a month ago, I (re)stumbled upon Slackware, which the online distro choosers (I know, I know) said was a match for me -- great performance mixed with not-quite-crazy learning curve, and even the learning curve would give me oh-so-adaptable "purity of Unix" skills. While downloading this new toy, I met Bob, who truly changed my life -- I became a fledgling member of the Church of the SubGenius. Later, while installing, upon seeing that one of the options was "Newbie: Use verbose prompting (the X series takes one year)"... that, my friends, is when I knew I was truly home.
True, but I always did do a lot of hand-compiling on my Slackware boxes. The thing is, Slackware offers a great platform for tearing stuff down and tinkering with it, while leaving enough of a world to stand on while you do so. I used Slack on my desktop systems for many years (from 1995) until I discovered Arch, which is similar in everything I like about Slack, but with a more powerful package system.
But Slackware is still my preference for any kind of server. It's so simple, I can set it up from bare discs in less than 30 minutes.
Better than Gentoo?
Well, I'd say that it's different but similar; not better or worse. Gentoo is great when you want to spend hours building and configuring the ultimate speed machine you don't have to update too often. Slackware is great if you want to get a simple, reliable and (not quite as) fast system up and running in about an hour (sometimes less). I switched from Gentoo to Debian then hastily to Slack back in about '00 and have been using Slack since. Other distros just feel bloated now; I recently tested out Ubuntu 10.4 and although it is very polished and great for non technical users I still just can't get past the fact that it seems overweight to me and I don't like the fact that I have to set the root password after install. The whole "protect the user from themselves" philosophy just doesn't wash with me.
I ended up standardizing on one size fits all tees for all the family. The dog looks stupid but they're a better fit on him than the goldfish.
I use Arch which has a rolling release cycle, the entire concept of upgrading through OS versions is a holdover from the days of physical media. The only OS version should be the date of the snapshot you use to bootstrap. That whole conservative distro thing, as applied to Debian, is nonsense. Running stable software does not and has never practically implied running last years software releases.
I never understood the criticisms of slackware there. I used to package stuff for servers, for desktops I used to maintain (compile) everything manually. That was the idea, Slackware was the no-nonsense base system and the administrator took care of the rest. With Arch, I package everything because it's so easy. With Debian and derivatives, the majority of users appear to use the default packages; OpenSSL for example :-o
Really? I've been thinking of doing one to address some of the braindeadisms that afflict most distros. No PAM, no UUID identifiers for drives, no KMS switching to non-24*80 text resolutions unless specifically configured to do so... Or perhaps the time has come for me to check out Slackware again?
I haven't been around Slackware in a while. I thought Slackware's main selling point back in the day was that it was an 18 floppy install. What's up with this 6 cd / 1 dvd thing? I get modern distros come with apps and stuff, but it just seems a sad day when a slackware iso is larger than a Windows iso (yes, I know the Windows iso doesn't come with apps, that's besides the point). Just saying. My first Linux box was a 486 with 12 meg of ram, 500 meg harddrive, I ran X, an FTP server and a webserver off of that thing.
Not trying to be a hater, just don't get this size thing. I guess I won't be installing this version of slackware on an old system I pull out of storage. Need to go find RedHat 6 I guess.