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Slackware Documentation Project Begins In Earnest
New submitter vtel57 writes "A recent thread at Jeremy's LinuxQuestions.org lit a fire of enthusiasm for a new Slackware documentation initiative. A new SlackDocs Wiki has been started on Alien Bob's (Eric Hameleers) server. There is also a new mailing list for discussion and coordination of the project. All interested parties are encouraged to visit and participate."
Who's Earnest?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Actually in three months, Slashdot headline: "Slackware Documentation Project Begins In Earnest"
The answer to all your problems
And lasted for 2 whole minutes of everyone keeping a straight face before a raucous chorus of laughter erupted.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
First distro I ever installed back in 1996 and still my favorite. It doesn't get much nerdier that Slackware (except perhaps OpenBSD). I am glad it has survived all this time.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Err, unless you count the man pages, the documentation included in an install in /usr/doc, or the community forum over at linuxquestions.org... In my experience on Slackware and Ubuntu, I'd even say that finding help in the documentation on Slackware is easier, simply by virtue of not being bogged down with useless forum postings, and dealing with the fact that from one version to another, changes by Canonical change the way things break, and how to fix them, while Slackware doesn't deal with that kind of upstream shenanigans. Criticizing Slackware for lack of a repo-based package management system, I could see (though not necessarily agree with), but the documentation has always been available. This is just an attempt at an upgrade to it.
It's a bit like Steve Jobs serving meals at a homeless shelter and letting the homeless decide what they want to eat.
Fixed for proper Steve Jobs analogy.
Because:
- No public bug tracking is required. Closed development process is a myth - it merely packages plain source installs of everything it uses and pushes patches upstream. Actual patches above-and-beyond the version is states it uses of a particular app/library are virtually zero.
- A primitive character-mode installer that lets you install it on ANYTHING. Literally, anything. And not worry about whether it supports VESA even, let alone KMS.
-.All administration is done from the command line. So you don't NEED X. Perfect for server installs, in my experience, but perfectly serviceable as a desktop if you want (which one? Have them all!)
- No dependency tracking - true, but the base install contains everything you need for a pretty substantial install. And if you're installing servers and working machine rather than desktops, you probably don't need to touch anything.
- Minimal feature set? Same as every other distro, just maybe not as integrated and automatic as you would like. That's a plus to me - I can tell EXACTLY what's going to load when and can cut out the crap on the installer before it even gets off the disk. Oh, and it runs all the latest kernels just fine.
If you think of PC's as "things that need a GUI", it's probably not for you. If you think of PC's as "things that get a job done, reliably, every time, with the minimum of extraneous resources consumed", then it's fabulous.
Hell, it took about two-three days to get ArmedSlack (the ARM port) working on Raspberry Pi. Still the only thing I'd use on that device, given it's low footprint and having to boot off my 2Gb card. And when you intend the distro to do nothing more than track GPS, dial up 3G, integrate with external electronics, etc. then a 100Mb install that still can be SSH'd into without even having to go looking for what to install is a big plus. And no GUI required.
The thing that distinguishes Slackware is that it was the first EVER distro. And it hasn't changed much. Sweet, simple, small, stable. Hell, I have 10+ year old machines still running on Slack.
So you install an updated version? Slackware does release updates you know.
Or if I installed/compiled the file myself, then I should be building the updates.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
If you want dependency tracking, you can install pkgsrc for Linux, as I did.
To anyone who really digs the Slackware way, the concept of a distro-mandated packaging system simply doesn't make any sense.
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
Slackware I've considered to be more "pure" in the sense you administer it the same way you administered a UNIX box - at the command line and all that. None of the fancy distro-specific administration tools or anything.
For me, it's a good way to learn the ins and outs of it but it's really a hacker's OS to play around with, screw things up and fix them, and have complete control. If that's your thing, great.
The other more popular distros which use tools are more for people who want to get stuff done with minimal fuss and call it a day. Sure you need some Linux knowledge, but most of your day-to-day stuff is taken care of for you so you can get your work done without having to mess with your system continually.
It's probably the closest to Linux from Scratch without having to compile and build everything yourself, or building it all yourself like Gentoo. Of course, this also means you can customize your system exactly the way you need to with just the libraries you need and not what the distro requires.
Your described PEBKAC.
Indeed, but which K and which C?