Slackware, Oldest Linux Distro Still In Active Development, Turns 24

sombragris writes: July 17 marked the 24th anniversary of Slackware Linux, the oldest GNU/Linux still in active development, being created in 1993 by Patrick Volkerding, who still serves as its BDFL. Version 14.2 was launched last year, and the development version (Slackware-current) currently offers kernel 4.9.38, gcc 7.1, glibc 2.25, mesa 17.1.5, and KDE and Xfce as official desktops, with many others available as 3rd party packages. Slackware is also among the Linux distributions which have not adopted systemd as its init system; instead, it uses a modified BSD init which is quite simple and effective. Slackware is known to be a solid, stable and fast setup, with easy defaults which is appreciated by many Linux users worldwide. Phoronix has a small writeup noting the anniversary and there's also a nice reddit thread.

Comments

So is Slackware a millennial?

[roman_mir]

If Slackware is a millennial, does it mean it only has 5-6 seconds of attention span for ads?

Still king

[Orgasmatron]

I've been using Slackware since before Slackware 96 (a Windows 95 joke, you see, and my memory is dim, but I seem to recall that there was once some semi-serious questions on which one would be released first) and I haven't yet found anything I wanted to do that I couldn't do in Slackware.

Mythtv backends? Slackware. Frontends? Slackware. Webserver? File server? Mail server? DNS server? All Slackware. iptables/ebtables bridge/router/firewall/VPN abomination? Slackware, baby!

Runs great on my litebook too. In fact, not counting my Pis and other appliances, the only linux box I have that isn't Slackware and probably won't ever become Slackware is my CNC controller - and that is because EMC comes as an installable/live ISO.

My personal favorite was setting up iSCSI targets. The examples and documentation are all written for enterprise distros, but they just wouldn't work. Load slackware, write a couple of slackbuild files, fire up the compiler and BAM! $10,000 in hardware outperforms the dedicated SAN boxes other people are spending 6 digits on. Hell, I think I paid less for my entire DRBD bulk slave than some of the quotes that I got for annual maintenance on commercial SAN "solutions".

Oh, and if I recall correctly, Patrick is one of the handful of other 4-digit UIDs still active here. I haven't talked to him in a while. If he is still in MN, I should make a point of getting up to his remote part of the state to buy him a beer.