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."

Comments

Re:No GNOME then?

[adbge]

Slackware hasn't officially packaged GNOME since 2005. There are various community projects which allow you to use GNOME on Slackware, however.

After a half dozen distros

[by (1706743)]

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.

Re:After a half dozen distros

[gmrath]

It's a little early yet, but I wonder: will there be any comments written by the slashdotter whose sig is '"Ubuntu" is an African word meaning "Slackware is too hard for me"'?

Re:After a half dozen distros

[plasticsquirrel]

I also cut my teeth on Linux with Slackware and used it for years, and it's the only reason I learned what I did about Linux. After switching to Ubuntu, I naturally got lazy and now I barely know what is happening on my own system. I can't remember the last time I compiled my own kernel, or really dug through "/etc" to figure out what everything does. That quote about Slackware has been around for a long time, and it has really earned the reputation as being THE distro to learn if you want to understand Linux. Its design is so clean and simple that it isn't nearly as intimidating as some people would expect. It also gives you a true appreciation for the elegance of the Unix design. Slackware is old school, from the era of beige boxes and Linux people who did things the old Unix way. It comes from the best place in the Linux tradition.

Patrick ("The Man") is also a stand-up guy who has been doing basically everything for the distro from the very beginning. He's a living legend in Linux history, and he had the guts to make the right call to drop GNOME when it became too convoluted to maintain. He also gave Slackware the Subgenius trappings, and is otherwise a true long-haired geek who really GETS the Unix philosophy and does things the Right Way.

Re:After a half dozen distros

[thegarbz]

Lazy may have little to do with it. Between fundamental changes in the way kernel handles various parts of the systems (what the heck is /sys anyway) and the move from actually setting something up to having things automated there are very few underlying fundamental things you can now change yourself when tinkering with a modern user friendly system like Ubuntu.

For one thing try and get Ubuntu to StartX with no screen attached. With older distros some level of xconfig would allow me to run X on a virtual framebuffer, but not Ubuntu. If Ubuntu isn't able to detect it via hotplug it just doesn't exist. Suppose you manually massage your fstab file then the gui filesystem utility in ubuntu breaks. In my case it's able unmount but not remount any file systems.

Re:After a half dozen distros

[BrokenHalo]

He's a living legend in Linux history, and he had the guts to make the right call to drop GNOME when it became too convoluted to maintain.

Pat's a great guy, but his dropping GNOME pissed off a lot of people too, though I understand his reasoning. KDE was at the time a lot easier to build, while GNOME was riddled with circular dependencies that made maintaining it a bitch of a job.

Fortunately for GNOME fans, the job was ably taken up by maintainers of the Dropline GNOME distribution. I have the impression they're getting a bit tired of it now, but others are around to fill the gap.

Re:After a half dozen distros

[BrokenHalo]

Learn Gentoo and you are Linux.

Not so sure I'd agree that. Most people I know who learn Gentoo are simply following a cookbook. If you really want to feel that you're in control, giving Linux From Scratch a try is a good idea, but most of us wouldn't want the burden of trying to maintain a desktop system with that.

I love me some Slack

[Riddler Sensei]

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.

Re:No GNOME then?

[Excelcia]

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.

Re:Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it's for us old farts who have long since stopped worrying about whether we're considered 'cool' but know how to spell 'Kernel' in addition to being able to build one.

Another modest announcement from Slackware

[Anonymous Coward]

Another modest announcement for a release that doesn't promise to change the world or make you hip.

Slackware: It gets the damn work done. Without the fancy.

Re:Wait...

[Rakshasa Taisab]

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.

Re:No GNOME then?

[Bing Tsher E]

to GUIfy the system configuration and file management.

Get real. That's what curses is for.

or TCL/TK if you insist on being fancy.