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Slackware, Oldest Actively Maintained GNU/Linux Distribution, Turns 25

Posted by msmash on from the streak-continues dept.

sombragris writes: Slackware, the oldest GNU/Linux distribution which is still actively maintained, turned 25 this week. The latest stable version, Slackware 14.2, was released two years ago, but the development version (-current) is updated on a fast pace. Today the development version offers kernel 4.14.55, gcc 8.1.1, glibc 2.27. mesa 18.1.4, xorg 1.20, and the Xfce and KDE desktop environments as default, with many more available as third-party packages. Other points of note are that Slackware is systemd-free, opting instead for a simple BSD-style init.

Since its first release ever, this has been a distro with a strong following due to its hallmarks of simplicity, speed, ease of maintenance and configuration. Happy birthday Slackware!

2 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Is Slackware usable? by junk · · Score: 4, Informative

    Slackware was my second distro but the first (RedHat) was only on the box for a couple days before my really geeky friend shamed me into using Slackware. Soooooooooo painful. Soooooooooo hard to use. I was soooooooooo lost. I'm so much better off for it. I've been using Linux since the 90s and haven't ever stopped. I've run Slackware on laptops, desktops and servers for a lot of that time. I'm much lazier now and much more employed, so I use something with a native package management system that handles dependencies and laziness. When my home racks are online though, they're Slackware because it works, has always worked and will always work without any BS.

    Patrick and team have done a great job for a long time and they deserve a lot of thanks for their work.

  2. SLS still works....if you don't mind upgrading it by crispi · · Score: 3, Informative

    Via a lot of compilation it's possible to update SLS 1.05 to the latest tools. I haven't the heart to delete /etc/motd. Big challenges were getting ELF going. getting libc6 going and cross compiling 64 bit from 32-bit. Now it's a 100% 64-bit system: /:softland:~$ cat /etc/motd

    Softlanding Software (604) 592-0188, gentle touch downs from DOS bailouts.
    Welcome to Linux SLS 1.05. Type "mesh" for a menu driven interface.
    Fresh installations should use "syssetup" to link the X servers, etc. /:softland:~$ uname -a
    Linux softland 4.16.14 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Jun 10 02:52:51 EST 2018 x86_64 unknown /:softland:~$ ld -v
    GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.30 /:softland:~$ gcc -v
    Using built-in specs.
    COLLECT_GCC=gcc
    COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/usr/libexec/gcc/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/7.3.0/lto-wrapper
    Target: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
    Configured with: ../configure --target=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --build=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --host=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --enable-languages=c,c++
    Thread model: posix
    gcc version 7.3.0 (GCC)