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SlackWare 4.0 is available
crunge writes "SlackWare 4.0 is now available. It is based on the 2.2.x kernel. It is still libc5-based (but glibc 2.0.7pre6 compatibility libraries are available for those who want/need to run glibc2 applications. (My understanding is that the next release will be glibc2.1-based).
Grab it from the usual usual places.
I've been using the final beta for about a week-- it's real sweet on a 486 with 8 MB RAM. On another 486, I did a floppy install of the first beta.
There will always be a place for Slackware-- the servers-in-the-closet, the Linux-can-do-it routers, etc.
RedHat may be winning over Micros~1 converts, but if you don't know Slack, you don't know jack.
You should try the alien software package (try Freshmeat). It can convert rpms to other forms (including *.tgz).
RPM is good. If you are so concerned with having source files why not try source RPMS? Or download things from source and build your own RPMS. My system is damned organized thanks to it. If I want to delete an entire software package (no poking about in lib, bin, include, etc for file names that may apply for me) I simply remove the entire packag and its corresponding files from the RPM database.
I agree that RH is making everything easier, but that is because as of yet, linux is still primarily a hobby. Most people like to do fun things with their computer (e.g. play a game, program a game, type a novel, etc) very few want to constantly worry about keeping the system up to date. This is why debian's "apt-get update" is so appealing to me.
...you have to have RPM installed for MC to be able to do that.
libc5, in my experience, runs faster than glibc, because when you are not concerned with threadsafe design, you can "cheat" in the design of the library (static globals, or static variables in functions). In other words, if you don't run threaded apps at all (apache isn't threaded (yet), ftpd isn't threaded, heck, most software on the linux cd's aren't multithreaded) there is no true need for libc5.
userspace implementations of pthreads mean:
1) your kernel doesn't have the overhead of keeping track of threads. IE, kernel tasks are greatly simplified with userspace threads... Think of processtable size if you have to do this all in the kernel.
2) having your kernel keep track of threads results in more overhead that outweighs some benefits, especially in uniprocessor systems. Syscalls are required to do thread work. I don't think most users have SMP systems, yet.
In fact, if you check out books on threading, the best system is a hybrid kernel-user space threadlib.
my smallest slackware 4.0 install so far :
hardware :
386SX-16, 10Mbps 21040 tulip, 43MB HDD, CGA (80 x 24)
software :
36MB total (A and N series with large stuff removed)
4MB swap.
runs :
webserver, ftp server, samba (win95 server), netatalk (apple fileserver), lpr print server,
mail handler.
Hi - too lazy to log in... (actually am RAK)
:)
I thought you might find mc useful. Just take
your generic RPM, open it up with mc (or an
equivalent tool) and copy the tarball that's
inside it to anywhere you want... then procede
manually, unhampered by the RPM "install"
procedure.
Yup... there is a tarball in each of those RPMs.
Cheers,
RAK
I remember back when Slackware was first announced, and he was going to charge like $30 for a set of floppies that you could install off of.
:)
And the flame war which resulted at the nerve of some guy suggesting that Linux should be anything other than totally free.
Even if it did take you 2 days to download with a 2400 baud modem...
Ahh the good ole days.
I tend to agree with this person that Linux as a product wasn't ready for the sudden infusion of newbies. Linux has historically required you to know your machine inside and out to get everything working okay. Red Hat, however, changes that. This does 2 things. First, unfortunately, it empowers a lot of people who really have no business using Linux *YET*, before it's ready for them. This is bad, not so much for us ( I LOVE to answer questions and help people along ) but for them and their lost productivity, data, etc.
But the other effect it has is a good one. It enables those of us who know what we're doing to have an easier time of managing our systems, so we can concentrate our efforts on more important, bigger jobs like security, coding, or advocacy, etc. I remember when I ran slackware (Which I loved then and still do), and 5/6 of my time was spent keeping up-to-date on all the latest libraries. I never got ANYTHING pre-compiled.
But now, with RPM, I can let somebody else sweat the small stuff. The way I see it, I've already mired through the learning process, I already tore my hair out tring to make QT install where I want it and still link right, I already read all the docs on how to compile X, I already know that I CAN do everything I need to get my system working like a charm. Now, I don't have to anymore and can concentrate on other things.
One of my wiser fellows once said "You use Slackware when you're starting, until you know how to do everything yourself. Then you go to Red Hat so you don't HAVE to do everything yourself anymore." To that I would add, you don't have to with Red Hat, but you still can if you choose. I use RPM, but I don't use any form of GUI like GLINT or LinuxConf. I know my system as well as I did when I was a Slackware user.
Not all Red Hatters are lame, I guess is the short version of my point =)
Long live Linux, and may distribution wars never cease, for they make us all stronger.
~ Josh Litherland (fauxpas@cc.gatech.edu)
(Sorry for long post)
As a newbie using linux, slackware, patrick, offered some of the best support i have ever had and as a result i was able to get slackware running in one evening and get connected to the net, (mind you i had never touched linux before in my life). I would hate to see it go the way of the dinosaur's, like the previous message seems to imply.
There is nothing stopping anyone from installing from source on a system that uses package management. There is a lot more to package managers than just the simplicity of pre-compiled binaries.
For one, it makes distibution of software on a farm really easy. I build my own apache rpms, then distribute and install them automatically onto my web farm using autorpm.
Second, package mangers offer a good layer of security. It is very easy to see if any trojans have replaced one of your core files simply by comparing the file to the hash stored in the package manager's database.
Finally, it offers a consitency check and a built-in software inventory system.It is also nice to know that you won't do some braindead thing that will break some important software, overwritting a key file with a 'mmake install'. It is also good to know what software depends on what software so you don't accidentally uninstall something, or install a commercial package only to learn afterward that it requires something you don't have.
The effort involved in building and maintaing one's own set of home-grown rpms has been, at least for me, much less than maintaining and administering a bunch of disorganized tar files.
I love Slackware. I used Slackware for several years, but switched to RedHat. The folks who think that RedHat or Debian is uncool because it is too easy are missing the point of Linux. Linux is great because it works, it is stable, and it is easy. It is this system administrator's dream come true. I for one am not going to go out of my way to be "cooler" if it makes my job harder.
I have fond memories of using Slackware. The first install I did past 1.0.99plwhateveritwas. A fine distribution, for the time.
A few more versions... then I got tired of, basically, having to reinstall linux. I guess as a newbie I should have learned all the intricate steps involved in upgrading each tarballed package but somehow something was always left out of the FD.
Then I heard of something called "Red Hat". And some Slackware folks commenting about the low technical expertise of people running and actually _using_ Red Hat's absurdly simple RPM system, and still _not knowing things_. I ran for Red Hat. Hey! Where'd that webserver come from! Whee!
Now, most of those particular folks I know have followed, and an IPO is anticipated. I sincerely hope that the result is that Slackware spur ahead of Red Hat and spur them forward as well, viva competition. I wish both factions well and will stay with or switch to the best IMO.
> I actually enjoy installing a distribution and having all of the software I installed actually work reliably, a feature which the other distributions, especially Debian, severely lacks.
Uhh, you are insane? Debian has far far superior packages than any other distro out there, the others only wish they could be half as good.
Uhh, try to go an order a debian cd set, you wont find any non-free software on it.
Packages in contrib are free, and the non-free section isnt distributed on the main (2cd) set.
So the "Official" distro is free.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
I mean, would You want to trust every program to something with the version number 2.0.7pre6?
I've seen a lot of problems with people who say ``I can't run that, I've installed glibc2.1'' or ``That's compiled for 2.1 and I just have 2.0.''
What I suggest is have your server run libc5 with linuxthreads and then add your glibc runtime of choice. When things settle down in the 2.1 series of libc, then switch to that.
Hmm... that's what slackware does.
Anyway, I like slackware, it feels like home. Isn't the nice thing about free unicies is that we can all get along?
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Well, actually, most of us use a compiler, so it's no struggle at all. YMMV if you're trying to produce the binary by hand...
Mind the Gap
AFAIK, it has GNOME and KDE. And to be honest glibc-2.0 wasn't all it cracked up to be. If the next version uses glibc-2.1, which is apparently much better (even if it's still not offically released), I don't see the problem..
Incorrect. A disk burnt with proper Joliet extensions works perfectly in Linux. (ie. the extensions are completely ignored) I I burn discs with both Joliet and Rock-Ridge on them all the time. They work happily in both Linux and Windows.
There may have been a buggy version or two of mkisofs that has given people this impression.
Ahh, you are correct. I tend to use disks that have both Joliet and RockRidge extentions, and in that case it seems that the RockRidge extentions are used in prefernce to the Joliet extents.
Basically, the command line will look like:
mkisofs -J -r -o output-filename root-directoryThis will create a an ISO9660 image file. You then use cdrecord or other similar program to burn the image to the disk. (In a pinch I've used Adaptech EZ-CD Creator on a Win95 box to burn an image created this way. You might also want to look into a program called xcdroast which is a nice graphical front end for mkisofs and cdrecord.
And, of coarse, you can always add more options - like bootable CDs, volume names, etc - when you are more comforatble with it.
...is the day I eat my socks. (I will, of course capture a video of it and stick it on a publicly accessible site somewhere.)
You didn't look very carefully at all then. KDE is the default interface with gnome available in /contrib.
Please note also that Slackware 3.9 is available as well. 3.9 is just 4.0 with the 2.0.37pre10 kernel for those who are hesitant to use 2.2. Check http://www.slackare.com for more info.
If you have a single box and enough time to keep up with every software update that comes across Freshmeat, you may be right. If you've got more than one machine to keep track of, frequently install on new machines, or just don't have the time to keep track of every release of every minor package on your system, distributions come in very handy.
.0 release was based on the 1.2.13 kernel), and I've been upgrading my boxen piecemeal for just as long. I've got entire ~ftp directories full of the packages I need to turn a freshly installed Slack 3.0 system into a 2.2.9 box. But, for all that, I'm sure I've missed as much stuff as I've upgraded.
/home volume, a couple of tweaks to support my peculiar hardware and network configuration, a few software packages I've added... most of which come with modern distributions, but just didn't exist when Slack 3.0 came out. At this point, it's easier to re-do my tweaks on an effectively new system than it is to upgrade the system I've got. And when I set up a new box, I'll have a more recent starting point for my upgrading, which will probably carry me through 'til Slack 5.0 comes out in 2003 with the 3.2.10 kernel.
I've been using a Slackware 3.0 CD to do my installs for years (and, for those of you who are used to Red Hat and SuSE and so on changing major version numbers every ten minutes, Slack's last
For me, a new Slackware release is a chance to update everything in one fell swoop. I can re-do the four years of customization that have gone into my oldest box. It's really not all that much, when I think of it. The
And, regarding the relative merits of the different distributions... your post seems to imply that you've never used anything but Red Hat 5.2. If that's the case, I can see how you might think all distributions are the same. As someone who's owned Slackware 3.0 and Red Hat 4.2 boxen, and extensively used Red Hat 5.*, Mandrake, and assorted other Slackwares between 3.2 and 3.6, I can assure you that they are *not* all the same. Oh, yeah, they can be _made_ to be the same, but it's pretty silly to start with a Red Hat installation when what you really want is something more like Slackware. That's why I use my Slackware 3.0 CD for new installations, in preference to my more recent Red Hat 4.2 disk... I find it easier to update Slack than to make Red Hat behave in something resembling a rational manner.
And I'd agree with you that Linux is pretty unusable unless you know what's happening inside your system. And, no, none of the distributions actually prevent you from learning that, but a lot of the stuff Red Hat does seems designed precisely to obscure it as much as possible. I know, it's not deliberate, it's just a side effect of making the GUI tools easier to use and simpler to write, but it feels obscurationist to an old-fashioned command-line junkie. And that's the reason I use Slackware instead of anything else (though I've been considering giving Debian a whirl). And that's why I just sent in my $40 for the new Slack 4.0 disks.
This is great - Although I am writing this from a RedHat install, I started on Slackware, and still like it because I can always pick a minimal number of packages, download them in one evening via my 28.8 modem, stick all of them on a zip disk, and have a very useable Linux system the next morning. If you ever need a quick and dirty Linux installation, Slackware is the way to go.
. There is a slight lag in features, but nothing that can't be downloaded and easily adapted. Slackware embodies the spirit of Linux (fly by the seat of your pants and figure it out yourself - failing that, turn to your peers), and encourages learning, hacking, and "thinking outside the box." I owe much of my Unix knowledge to using Slackware, and for that I am thankful.
Yes, I ran slackware. I was a real hacker. I singlehandedly installed gnome from source 4 or 5 times, in its entirety, because of how often I nuked my partition and started over.
Then, I realised that I was wasting far too much time compiling things. My Pentium 166 with 32 MB of RAM, which used to be state-of-the-art, now was taking an awfully long time compiling things.
So, for a while, I ran Red Hat. I liked it, too. Its printer management meant I didn't have to futz around with magicfiltres and linuxconf meant that, generally speaking, I didn't have to worry about much.
Then, I found Debian, and my saviour - apt-get.
Simply put, apt-get makes things absurdly easy. I don't have to worry about upgrading to glibc2.1 - apt does the worrying, the downloading, and the installing for me. With Debian I've finally set up the production box I knew Linux could be.
While Slackware will always hold a special place in my heart, for "where I started," Debian is where I am, and where I'm going in the future. Even though something still tells me it's a bit too easy, I just ignore that part of me. It's just too easy to tell my box to upgrade everything on my system to ignore it.
Posted by ICouldntGetTheAccountIWanted:
:)
Ooops. I meant the first distro _I_ used
Posted by bilbo.balings:
I once followed a thread on CIS Forums comparing VB and Delphi. Wich turned out IMHO to comparrissing dick lengths.
You'r two cents sound like a part of that thread.
-- Friends use whatever you like, and be happy
Linux has had Joliet-support for quite a while now, so the long file names will not be ignored.
--
All Glory To The Hypnotoad!
Check out www.slackware.com for more information on Slackware 3.9/4.0.
--
All Glory To The Hypnotoad!
That may be the impression presented by the glibc 2.0.x documentation, however, glibc developers recommended that distributions use glibc 2.0.x, and 2.0.x was on ftp.gnu.org (pre-releases are not allowed there).
-- Joel, Debian package maintainer for glibc
I for one am very pleased to see this distribution (that I run) continue to thrive. Way to go Patrick. :-)
http://gabrielcain.com/
Because there hasn't been time to build and thoroughly test a distro based on glibc2.1. Sorry, but if your distro is using a glibc2 prior to that, it's based on a pre-release developmental C library. Which smacks of stupidity, IMHO.
Err... Actually, MCC was the first distro. FWIW, the big advantage of SLS when it came out was that it had X-Windows! Forget "advance enterprise support" -- we were just wired that we would get to play xtank at home.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Would you mind informing all of us how Slackware has not kept up?
Did you bother reading the release notes or anything? KDE 1.1 is included in the normal install, and Gnome is in the contribs.
Why did this particular comment get moderated up? It's incorrect and rather pointless...
And you didn't exactly bother to look before saying Slack doesn't have KDE or Gnome, did you?
/me looks at his Slackware 4.0beta1 box running KDE 1.1, which was installed by default.
Of course you can. This is Slackware, after all.
It's getting a bit of a boring story but here it is again:
;-) and it runs quite fine.
Slackware has runtime support for glibc2
And if you want glibc2 building libs go to the contrib dir and install glibc2-devel.
I have a slack box ported to glibc2 ( A 386, Whooey, building egcs and glibc2 took *days*
"and linuxconf meant that, generally speaking, I didn't have to worry about much."
..except for possible exploits
http://geek-girl.com/bugtraq/1999_2/0317.html
It seems that the following distro is going to be
glibc2 based. What I've heard is that Patrick is
halveway a box with glibc2.1.1.alpha.what.have.you
The four point for upgrading slack to glibc2
1. Remove your libc.tgz package with pkgtool
2. Install the glibc2-devel.tgz package from the contrib dir
3. Rebuild egcs and binutils
4. Rebuild libgdbm and sendmail,ypstuff and perl
Enjoy your fresh and shiny libc6 box!
ftp://rasputin.linuxos.net/pub/slackware-packs/gno me
Read the readme's as gnome is a cmplicated package with lot of libs.
In other words: You have an imac
But you're entitled to your opinion.
Err, I guess the fact that slackware has Gimp and Netscape and KDE and Apache and QT and glibc run time support means that slackware "has not kept up".
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
So, er, ahem, I'm not saying you're dumb, but most people haven't had the problems you're describing...
Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty
Am I the only one who got a good laugh out of slackware doing exactly the opposite to other dists, by making libc5 primary and glibc2 for 'compatbility', rather than the other way around like everyone else? :) (we love you, don't ever change :)
Typically slackware
Commodore 64, Loading up the dance floor!
I origionally started with slackware 3 years ago, tried redhat, tried debian, tried susi, tried stampede...
:)
./configure ; make ; make install ... it just give you much more control with exactly as to what is installed on your system.
still using slackware today!
Part of the reason why i enjoy it is that it doesn't have all the 'automation' like rpms and deb files, i like having to go
This is very cool, though it has been a long time since I have seen anyone use this distribution....
Well, aren't you the l33test s00pa badazz0r to ever use a computer. I ph33r your h4rd core l1nux 31337n3zz.
Kill d n00beez and rapes their wimen.
I've been using slackware for 4 years now, and I don't really see any reason to change. I'm comfortable with it. I've done a couple Redhat installations for friends, and witnessed dozens of others, and I wasn't too impressed (never had an installation crash under slack...). Quite honestly, I find slackware's setup less confusing and easier to understand than Redhat's. I plan to try Debian sometime in the next 6 months when I have the time and HD space, but I will always, always have a slackware box.
marijane
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Can you keep it from installing this crap and
install Gnome instead?
I left slackware a while ago because of glibc2
but with them starting to support it I may
have to go back again. On the other hand this
forcing of KDE would be to hard to swallow.
I always found gnome unstable, until RedHat 6.0
Now it is quite stable and I have flushed KDE
for good with no regret.
As for looking like winblows, it is not quite as
bad as KDE in that regard.
I learned on Slackware. I still think it has one of the easier install interfaces, especially against things like dselect. I don't think I would have learned as much about compiling my own stuff if I had started on another distribution. It had and still has problems, but what distro doesn't? Here's to the distribution that also has the coolest name ever.
Well compiling with all the default options doesn't give you any more control, but there are a lot of packages that offer several compile-time options. For example, what do you think the vim-X11, vim-minimal, vim-color, and vim-enhanced RPMs are ? that's right, they use the same source tree, but use different compile time options. Another example: suppose you have motif , and do not want the statically linked version of (insert your favourite motif app). The answer: if there's no dynamically linked binary, just recompile. Oh, and not all rpms are relocatable ( so rpm -i doesn't let you choose where you want the package installed )
Compiling does, in some cases, give you much more control than just installing a binary.
I am not sure what you are talking about. Most ( almost all) linux software is open source, and the author almost always makes a source tarball available.
After obtaining it, with some difficulty (after all, it comes preloaded, so there's not as much demand), I tried to install it, and found I needed glibc2.
glibc2 is currently used by all of the distributions except for slackware. The problem is that slackware is not binary-compatible with the other distributions. Since no-one makes binaries for slackware, this means you usually have to compile it yourself.
You are off base blaming redhat for your problems, just as I would be off base blaming redhat because I can't install the binaries from kde.org on Solaris.
RPM does make life easier for people who havew an RPM based distro. Of course, it doesn't make life easier for win95 users ( duh! ) or anyone else. It certainly doesn't cause win95 users any problems though.
Most of your problems are a result of the fact that noone makes binaries for slackware because not so many people use it. If you can't handle the idea of compiling something from the source, then you need an easier distribution. OTOH, If you don't mind compiling, then slackware might be suitable for you.
Don't get me wrong, I love Slack... it's what I installed way back when I started with Linux, and it hasn't once left my system. However, I'm a little worried about it keeping up with Redhat and Debian and the others. Without most of the newer trinkets like GlibC and Gnome/KDE, I think it's really losing out. I hope Patrick reconsiders and adds these things in soon... I've always liked Slack's way of doing things (install, config, etc) and I'd hate to see it die on us
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
Sorry, this is the correct url for the slackware / gnome howto.
http://www.ncal.verio.c om/~hakker/slackware-gnome-HOWTO.txt
For those that keep complaining about Slackware not being a modern system, wise up. It is a base point for a completely customized distro and as fast as linux can possibly be on an intel machine. If your willing to put in the time (if you know what your doing, its not a lot of time), you can make Slack do whatever you want. Glibc2, sure fine. Changed directories, filesystems, etc. Sure fine. Compatibilty with RPM, DEB, tar balls, SLP etc. Sure, no problem. Run any program, compiled to your liking for optimum speed or install some stupid binaries. Ok. Run anything Xwise, including GNOME ( see link) and everyhing else. No problem. Have it be a bleeding edge work station or a server/switch that you throw in the closet or install from floppies. That is the whole point of slack. Start behind, do what you want to get current the way you like it. They didn't leave out glibc2 because they are lazy. There is so much complaining, you can probably expect to see it in next distro, but it is not in Slackware's style. This is also one possible reason why you don't see to many updates of the distro. I hope this one makes some of you happy. Slack kicks ass. /rant
Well, about a month ago everyone on slashdot was ranting about how 2.1 has become a bloated buggy piece of crap compared to glibc 2.0.. is this still true? It seems most distributions are moving to 2.1 anyway.
Has anyone had problems with slackware freezing up during kernel compiles on old cyrix machines. Particularly with cyrix 5x86/100 ? I'm running debian 2.1 on this machine now with no problems. Could this be an incompatibility with egcs vs gcc?
ftp7.de.freebsd.org
I have been using RedHat for a few releases, but with RedHat 6.0 I have had real problems. The PCMCIA install seems to have serious bugs, and for them to use glibc 2.1 seems to have been premature (it breaks Java and Netscape, among other things).
I'll probably install Slackware again on my other laptop; the combination of 2.2 kernel and pre-2.1 glibc could be quite good, and their install procedure has a better chance of working.
I hope that the market is big enough that three or four distributions with such different characteristics will be able to co-exist. It would be sad indeed if Linux only came as RedHat or Caldera. More hands-on distributions like Slackware and Debian are needed.
Again, it's tempting. But Slackware doesn't have the ability to install no non-freed packages {grin}.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
"Nothing forces me to do RPMs." Ok try going to http://glide.xxedgexx.com/3DfxRPMS_vb_glibc.html and installing the rpms for glide and stuff. rpm2tgz fails miserably with these packages and there is no tarball. What gets me is people releasing only rpms, i refuse to use rpm based system as i have hosed my machine (redhat5 at the time) 3 times with rpm before going to slackware. PLEASE stop releasing only rpms
can you post the syntax that works ?
thanks !
Agreed! I run just a handful of servers, and they are all libc5 based. glibc 2.x is there for an binary compatablilies.
I love Slackware since it is more about stability than doing the latest trend in Linux. I have used it on all of my productin machines, even getting rid of Redhat if needed.
Linux O Muerte!
You know there is nothing stopping anyone using Slackware from using package management either. You can always dowload RPM's tarball and install it.
----
"War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"
"War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"
Steven Wright
I have switched from Slackware 3.6 to SuSE 6.0 for that ONLY reason... the upgrading from libc5 to glibc2. I needed to demonstrate to the company that there was an incentive to keep linux around and that was Oracle.
I spent four months on the GLIBC2 problem (on and off) and finally gave up. My laptop is still slackware, and will remain so. But my workstation at home is SuSE 6.0. For the very same reason, i had to run apps like Oracle on it to work on on db design for work.
I am afraid that that by the time Slackware comes up to glibc2 i wont be using it anymore.
ciao, elmo
All of this is, of course, IMNSHO. Cheers, Elmo
I don't know about you... but installing linux has been a great learning experience... from my failed Debian attempt... to my succesfull RH 5.2 install... to the tweaking and optimizing that I've done with RH 6.0....
Hell, I bet that Red Hat isn't fully optimized for my system... so I can go two ways... slowly go through all the RPM packages... removing them and recompiling them with egcs or maybe making a few hacks here and there... OR I could forget about RPM's and maybe install slackware...
I respect the DIY (do it yourself) attitude...
I made my own sterio system... put together the hardware on every machine I've had since the 386 and even mucked with the win95 ini files (to remove IE4) before I discovered linux...
IF ALL THIS WAS EASY I WOULD KNOW NOTHING!!!
another consideration... the Joliet fs doesn't mesh well with linux AFAIK...
No distributions, then I wouldn't get a shiny new box or manual. I have to make do with the old ones. What about shiny new CDs, with cool new graphics.
Buying distros is a manner of supporting Linux (indirectly) it is also an easier way to make large scale changes. Or small scale changes that you have a problem figuring out.
My RH 5.2 system represents almost 4 months of screwing around, so I concur.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
*And* better cross-platform compatibility, let's not forget, shall we ? libc5 was much too linux-i386 specific to get ported to Alpha.
the day I bought my Alpha was the day I switched Slackware for RedHat.
The angry man always thinks he can do more than he can. -- Albertano of Brescia
With precompiled packages you have no control over the way it's compiled. That's the case for both .tgz's and .rpm's. .srpm's just as well, and AFAIK you can specify default optimization flags rpm uses. (Can't tell for sure -- still mostly build from tar-balls.) Gives you the optimization you need, and the ease of use of rpm --rebuild. ...
And if the only control you need is compile flags, you can use the
And packages built this way are easily upgraded, deleted,
The angry man always thinks he can do more than he can. -- Albertano of Brescia
I am fairly new to Linux (about 18 months)and have to admit I still do not understand pro's/con's of glibc and libc.. I don't really understand what the difference is, except that most of the disto's seem to lean towards glibc. Anyone willing to post a somewhat objective comparison (I am not a progamer,obviously) thnks
Can't sleep, clowns will eat me....
and dam proud of it :)
...
... Let the market determine the standard. If RedHat controls 90% of Linux market, then Redhat will become the standard.
Over the past 3 years I've supported/admin;
HP-Unix, ATT SysV *really*, and currently
SunOS/Solaris. What my point simple
If all you want to do is get Linux up and running
then it doesn' make any difference which disro you use... on the other hand if you want to learn UNUX
then Slackware is you best choice. More of what you learn will transferr over the UN*. The why Patrick uses the rc scripts and ~/.* scripts in home director mirrors what I see and work with everyday.
Parting shot - Linux Standard Base
Are the *BSD's compatible? Can I use some OpenBSD-package on FreeBSD?
--
Ha, ha, you know what the funny part is? You can do exactly the same thing with Slackware. Get the sources from ftp.cdrom.com (which, BTW, isn't some obscure and remote site), then rebuild everything with a single command. You can go have lunch meanwhile. You don't have to take my word, just check this:S lackBuild
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/slackware/source/
Because it is not out yet?
But the number of prereleases (17 or more) should produce a very good kernel.
- libc5 - older, proven to be robust in very "traditional" areas, lacks modern features. It is maintained only for bug fixes.
- glibc 2.0 - has many new features such as NSS and completely thread-safety, the latest release is 2.0.7pre6. That is the release you want on your server
- glibc 2.1 - the latest and greatest; glibc 2.1.0 contains some "issues" which make it unuseable on production machines. The next release (we are already at 2.1.1pre3) will fix most obvious bugs, but I wouldn't swear on this one within the next weeks (maybe months).
In my administrator job I don't count on bleeding edge software - it bites too often. IMHO the ideal Linux server will run currently 2.0.36 (2.2.x will mature) together with glibc 2.0.7pre6 as primary C library.Have a good night.
I installed RedHat on my desktop machine at work, basically to make
printing to our (non-PS) network printers easier...
One of the tools I used on a regular basis (on Slackware) was
Tkined/Scotty... I see there is a Scotty RPM, so I try to install
it...
All I get (after a few moments of HD activity) is the error message
"This package can not be installed." - THat's it - no reason WHY it
can't be installed... I do a dependency check - everything is OK
there... what the fsck is wrong with this thing???? I go out and buy
Maximum RPM.... nothing in there about error messages either...
Not since using Windoze 3.0 have I encountered such a brain-dead error
message... if a program has trouble doing something IT SHOULD SAY WHY!
for fscks sake, when making error messages MAKE THEM MEANINGFUL...
I would have to say that RPM is just a pain in the ass..
Hahahahaha! That has got to be the funniest post I have read in a long time. It's funny, because I agree 100percent!
And I don't understand previous arguments about how it is hard to break stuff with rpm's and whatnot. I and many others have completely broken gtk+ and glib, by using rpm's. On my slackware box everything works, and there are never false hopes of stuff running just because the rpm looked like it installed ok. Either I get an error compiling and dont do the make install, or it compiles great, and it gets installed. Viva la Slackware!
What is a distribution? It's a bunch of software on a couple of CD's. Sure it's nice to have one to start out, but then wouldn't it make more sense to upgrade the software you actually want directly from the creator?
What's the merit of installing RedHat 6.0 over 5.2 (which would apply in my case)? I spent a lot of time configuring my system the way I want it, I don't need anything overwriting it. Yes, I know, it upgrades cleanly or whatever, but the distributions are already outdated when they get on the market.
It seems to me that what is really going on here is this brand-mania in its infancy. Some people are Slackware-hackers. Oooh. Others insist Linux is unusable unless it's from RedHat. I say Linux is unusable unless you know what's happening inside of your system (whether or not that is good). To my knowledge none of the distributions prevent you from doing just that, but some peole do not appear to be interested in it.
My system hardly resembles the RedHat 5.2 anymore but it's my system and it's customized for me and I do not feel like trying other distributions just to join the discussion.
Even in the stable distribution, the configuration of certain packages would fail with segfaults or other errors, forcing you to configure them manually (which I find harder to do than compiling from tarballs).
/var/adm/ and find out what I installed, what it does, and what the names of the appropriate executables are because everything is saved in good old text files.
Also, dselect makes quite a few mistakes with package dependencies. I've had to force things to get them to install. It would even say that there was a dependency not met, and dump me in a screen listing packages whose dependencies were all met.
Dselect is far from intuitive as well, it makes new users cry, and myself as well because it takes me probably 2 hours to go through everything.
I would prefer it to be somewhat hierarchial, like SuSE's YAST, which is not perfect, but I like it very much.
Then after installing 800+ MB of software, I forget everything that I installed. In Slackware I can go into
Ok, I checked it out and that was the command I issued. I had a directory called slackware-4.0 which was a mostly complete mirror of the directory of the same name on ftp.cdrom.com. I was in the parent directory of it when I ran mkisofs. I got that line by searching for mkisofs on the forum at www.slackware.com.
/live (which is empty anyway). I've also placed the directory I used to generate the ISO there too.
If you still have trouble, I've (gulp, I may regret this, Slashdot effect and all...) placed the generated image on an ftp server at wiley229h022.roadrunner.nf.net port 4021. It's mostly complete minus 1.2 MB bootdisks, source, zipslack, slaktest, and
The server is on a cable modem in Newfoundland, Canada, so your transfer rate may vary.
There are no Slackware ISOs. However, it's only trivial to generate them. Download what you want from the ftp site (I recommend bootdsks.144, contrib, docs, install, kernels, modules, rootdsks. and slakware, though you can leave out docs, kernels, and modules safely) and add in anything else you may want to throw on the CD, WordPerfect, StarOffice, etc...
You can use mkisofs to generate the iso which you can burn on any machine (I ftp it to my brother's win machine which has a burner on it and use Adaptec software). Here's the command I used to generate an ISO which is bootable:
mkisofs -a -b bootdsks.144/.eltorito/eltorito.img -l -r -v -c bootdsks.144/.eltorito/boot.catalog -o slak40.iso -V "Slackware 4.0" slackware-4.0
This command generates a bootable ISO called slak40.iso from the contents of the slackware-4.0 directory.
That's it, burn it and boot it!
Why is everybody claiming that Slackware doesn't have this/that?
It has Glibc2. It has KDE by default, but I just installpkg Window Maker. Gnome is also there along with AfterStep, FVWM, OpenLook, etc..
I tried Gnome and couldn't stand it at all. It was too much like windows (I installed SuSE to try out Gnome, in order to try out the new MC. I was incredibly disappointed. But I like SuSE anyway, it will update packages like Debian, and is fairly easy to use install/use) and was horribly unstable. I'm not a KDE fan either but it's half stable and fairly straightforward to the new user.
Patrick has had to defend his insistence on basing the distribution on libc5 (remember, glibc2 is also there) for a long time. I wondered, he explained, I now agree. Slackware is meant to be *stable*. It always was, it was the whole philosophy from the beginning. Glibc2 still has a lot of trouble but is pretty much out of it now (with the notable exception of 2.1, ouch). The next release will definitely be glibc2 based though.
I actually enjoy installing a distribution and having all of the software I installed actually work reliably, a feature which the other distributions, especially Debian, severely lacks.
And besides, compiling software isn't *nearly* as scary as it once was.
./configure;make;make install
If a required lib wasn't there, get it and install that, too.
Now how hard is that? It could get even easier, if the process was wizardised like those nice win32 installers. Generally, if you can compile a kernel, you shouldn't have trouble compiling other software, if it uses autoconf. You don't even have to edit makefiles anymore.
Slackware is what I started out with when I first tried Linux. A friend told me what packages I should get and I downloaded them all at school, put them on floppies and installed at home. Since then I've tried both RedHat and Debian but I still prefer Slackware! These days I'm actually running FreeBSD but I have Debian 2.1 on a partition here. (despite the fact that it didn't even configure LILO right, like slack does.)
:-)
:-) Happy days are here again...
I prefer installing everything manually, although that makes for a messy system after a while. (That's why I like FreeBSD, you have full control over the sources from the ports collection, and yet you have a nice uninstall function.)
I don't use Debian though, because I really can't stand dselect. Now that slack 4.0 is out it seems like the perfect time to wipe that partition and start over.
It's really good seeing that the distro is still going strong and I'm looking forward till my CD's arrive.
Way to go Patrick, keep slack going!
needlejaw@angst:~$
Running a Slackware 96 system for quite a while, .RPMs. So one day I decided, ok, I'll just install RPM. So I started about doing this. After obtaining it, with some difficulty (after all, it comes preloaded, so there's not as much demand), I tried to install it, and found I needed glibc2. So, ok, fine, I'll upgrade to that. Found a FAQ, read it, got the binaries, started upgrading all my various utilities to the right level. Unfortunately, some of these utils could only be found as .RPMs! At this point I said to hell with it, and gave up. Granted, I'm sure that with enough perseverance I could have gotten things working. If it had worked smoothly, I wouldn't have learned anything anyway. But, for everyone who says that RPMs make everything so much easier than plain old tarballs, I can only reply, "for RedHat users.. and even then maybe not." When I was actually using a RedHat 5.2 system, even though I told it to install EVERYTHING, it seemed to not have c++. So I said, fine, I'll just re-install it via rpm. Only rpm already thought it was installed. So I had to force it to install with some strange flags (I don't recall, someone more familiar with redhat helped me out).
I've been constantly annoyed at finding software I want and then seeing it only comes in
Of course, I'm sure that all my problems could have been resolved with enough time and perseverance. And I don't mind spending that amount of time on something I really want -- it's a learning experience anyway. But all I've found is that RPMs definitely do NOT, overall, make my linux life any easier, and in many cases tend to shut out non-RedHat people...
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
That's one of the biggest things I love about most other Unices (FreeBSD, in my case) - you don't need to deal with distributions. One command updates the entire system, and another builds it and installs it. Instead of downloading a kernel package or dealing with applying a patch, just download the newest version of each file from the CVS tree. It also makes patching much, much easier, since the source people know exactly which version of the file you're patching. FreeBSD has both CVSup (compressed, 'updated' mode only) and CVS servers availible for public use. See here for more information on CVS and CVSup and how the FreeBSD project uses them.
From http://www.cdrom.com:
Slackware - Linux is a UNIX clone, developed by Linus Torvalds and
thousands of volunteers on the Internet. Slackware is a heavy-duty version of
Linux for mid-size businesses and departments but user-friendly enough for
home users. Preorder Slackware 4.0, or order Slackware 3.6 now for only
$39.95.
User-friendly enough and not orgasmically super-uber user-friendly with thought-sensing GNOME applets - now allows you to dream in one of many GTK themes!
Nice to see Slackware surviving. I'm a little
leery of automation, like to know what's going on
behind the screen. Patrick's distros are ideal for
me so have kept on using it in the face of the
"improvements".
I'll be buying it. Voting with your money is the only sure way to keep your favorite distros going, whatever they be. Downloading is nice but they need to make a living too.
I'm still on 3.2.
I'm happy with the new Slackware 4.0, but i'm still unhappy with Slackware Packaging. I compile everything i need for slack, but is it good?
.tgz PKGTool compatible, and you get the source. When you compile the source and install the binaries, you dont have all results best, because it will overwrite some things and maybe it will not be compatible with other things.
:) Patrick, create a powerful packaging tool for us, Slackware Linux users :)
;)
When you need to upgrade some lib on Slackware, you don't find a
As you install packages on pkgtool (.tgz), you dont have any backup, and you may lost your files...
I like Slackware so much, and i tried other dists too, but im still unhappy with Slackware Packaging
(sorry for some english errors
I've tried red hat (shudder), debian, and Slackware. Slackware always was the winner and always will be. hehe, from my 386sx 16mhz w/ 6mb of ram to the Dual PII 400s w/ 512mb ram, I love it, it kicks ass. Some of you clearly have visual inabilities (not noting the ammount of stuff actually included). If your bitching about something not being included, just do a partial install (the "expert" option) and then add whatever you need. wee. :) Long live Slack!
why not on 2.0.37?