Slackware: I'm Not Dead Yet!

New submitter xclr8r writes "The longtime tinkering and learning distro of Linux Slackware found itself at the center of rumors and speculation when its website was down for a few days. Caitlyn Martin, developer of Linux Yarok, voiced concerns in DistroWatch and declared that she would be basing the new project off a distro with a more secure future. Meanwhile contributors continued to plug along with additions to the change log. Eventually Eric Hameleers expanded on his initial communication of 'old hardware — lack of funds' to a more thorough explanation quoted in the article. Have your pop up blocker ready."

Comments

Re:Debian

[FudRucker]

I think if something happened to Pat V. where he could no longer continue with Slackware, Robby Workman and Eric Hameleers and a few others will pick up the slack (pun intended)

Re:Year of the Linux Deadtop

[lister king of smeg]

and where are all of the mac servers?

Re:We're not dead, but an old server is.

[Anonymous Coward]

If it works, is easy to maintain, is understandable with little effort, consumes few resources, why care about those bloated content management systems?

Re:We're not dead, but an old server is.

[lightknight]

No, no.

Cloud means multiple redundant servers, on the internet, running virtual machines. Usually hooked up to some 'pay as you go' billing & provisioning system.

And?

[shiftless]

Uh - a substantial fraction of Linux distros out there are derived from Slackware

Any of them that I (or anyone else) has heard of?

Slackware simply doesn't provide the basic features most distros call for these days, such as a package management paradigm. No, the "old UNIX way of doing things" isn't sufficient in today's world for widespread deployment across multiple systems and configurations.

Simply put, slackware fills a niche, which seems to be shrinking ever-smaller as the years pass.

It was great as an introduction to UNIX back in the Windows 98 days when I first tried it. Its floppy-disk sized images were helpful for a person like who me still had dialup. The experience I gained installing it and playing around was valuable, and it led me on to purchase a RedHat starter kit in the mall gaming store.

So yeah, Slackware has value as a basic bare-bones UNIX intro system.....but this is 2012....who needs that these days? Why install that with great pain and anguish when you can just install a complete, modern operating system with pretty desktop and everything, then get at the UNIX stuff little by little as needed or preferred?

Re:And?

[Noryungi]

Any of them that I (or anyone else) has heard of?

SuSE Linux was originally based on Slackware, if I remember well.

Slackware simply doesn't provide the basic features most distros call for these days, such as a package management paradigm.

I truly don't care about package management -- or paradigms -- much, really.

Slackware gives me 95% of what I need - the rest I can compile on my own, thank you very much.

No, the "old UNIX way of doing things" isn't sufficient in today's world for widespread deployment across multiple systems and configurations.

Simply put, slackware fills a niche, which seems to be shrinking ever-smaller as the years pass.

I would say exactly the reverse: Slackware allows one to deploy software and updates quickly and effectively, by knowing exactly what has been installed and how.

If by "niche" you mean people who know what they are doing, and like having a system with a minimum of hand-holding, then, yes, I agree that this is an ever-shrinking niche. I am in charge or recruiting people here at my work, and it's astounding the number of Linux "experts" who are unable to go beyond "yum install" or "apt-get install" into the real nitty-gritty of compiling software exactly as you want it.

Let's face it: a lot of so-called "Linux administrators" these days are little more than clicky-clicky Windows drones, people who almost never use a command-line and prefer staying with dumb GUI tools. Yes, I blame Ubuntu and Debian and Red Hat and the like for this sorry state of affairs. People who know Slackware are, at least, a lot more aware and a lot more knowledgeable in all things UNIX and Linux. The same cannot be said of a lot of people out there.

Feel free to moderate me to oblivion while I go and donate money to Slackware.

Re:Correction

[NoMaster]

Slashdot also has the dubious honour of adding to the problem, simply by posting this as "news" 11 days after Eric clarified the issue and 5 days after the linked story was posted.

How is it that actual "news for nerds" takes a week or more to appear here, while everyday events like new Firefox versions are often posted before they're released?

(And no, I'm not new here...)

Re:We're not dead, but an old server is.

[gl4ss]

and have the hellhole of upgrading the cms every few months for exploit bugfixes, needing a gig to serve two simultaneous users, not work with links.. the thing worked for a decade.

now, what they might/should do would be to move the system to a vm installation and run it for another decade.