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Slackware 5.0 Coming
cyan writes "It appears that Slackware is finally going to be glibc based. This was revealed today via an announcement which was sent to the slackware-announce mailing list. A directory called "slackware-current has appeared on cdrom.com, so people may take a look at what's in store if they wish. Note that this should in no way be considered "stable", it's more for testing purposes. Check out the ChangeLog.txt for details; looks promising for all us Slackware freaks ;) " It seems the Slackware folks have been quite busy recently...
This is good to hear. Despite all the crap the Slack guys have taken for sticking with libc5 for so long, I think their timing is perfect. When glibc2 first came out, a large portion of the software out there, which was all written for libc5, wouldn't compile against it without extensive tweaking. (My personal theory is that that's the reason that so many newbies (which tend to use Red Hat) are convinced that compiling is hard, but that's beside the point...)
Then we reached the point where some things were requiring glibc2, but many things still didn't compile under it, so Slack 4.0 included glibc2, but was still based on the old stable libc5. Now, however, most everything compiles under glibc2, so it's time to make the transition... and that's what Slackware's doing.
Ok, it may not require glibc. I thought it did. glibc was listed as a requirement on the specs at Linuxberg.
If I was wrong, I'm glad you corrected me. But saying that someone is lying just because their info wasn't correct... hrm.
I'll let you think about it
Have a good one
Civ CTP is awesome! Thanks Loki!
Romans 10:9-10
Might have you beat. A 486/66 with a 170HDD, RH6.0 and X. But no emacs and no compilers but I do have 20meg free on it.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Xmms, realplayer G2 require glib2 but i got them running on my SLack 4 box. How, you ask? Compile thead safe libs and libstdc++ with glib2. Or just download the packs from the server above. Solve the problem just don't whine about it.
I just looked for confirm and I cannot find it on LinuxBerg. I did read it somewhere though.
Civ CTP is awesome! Thanks Loki!
Romans 10:9-10
The average Slackware user is not the average Red Hat or SuSE user and usually able to compile and upgrade from source him/herself.
/usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/Glibc2-HOWTOI installed glibc2 on my Slackware 3.5 box _without_ any problems. Recompiled (and upgraded while I was busy) a bunch of other libs and programs and voila, my system is glibc2 based. Without having to reboot.
With a little help from
Sure, there's libc5 binaries left but they'll dissapear as I continue to upgrade packages. I thought this was the true Slackware way.. do it yourself. I've heard people with perfect Internet connections say: "I am going to buy the new RH because it has a newer version of SomeProg" while most of them could have easily downloaded and compiled the latest version themselves, and I know they have the skills.
But perhaps I'm just plain old-fashioned.
>I've installed Windows 95 on a 486 DX-33 with a >120meg HD and 8 megs of RAM. It _crawled_, but >still ran.
I installed 95 on 486 66mhz, with a 200mb HD and 4 megs of ra,m, it was aweful.
Linux is Muy Bueno. It runs on anything from a lowly 386, to the latest and greatest Alpha processor.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
Actually, it wasnt glibc 2.1, it was glibc 2.07 that was in the original slack4.0 upon its release, and it was marked experimental, not standard release, like you might find in the /contrib directory. To use it you would still have to set up a cross compiler to support your older libc5 based binaries, and anything you might want to compile for glibc. All in all, not worth your while unless you were extremely bleedin' edge, and refused to leave slack,.. I was considering leaving slack for 3 reasons,.. lack of additional software that SuSE comes with,.. the fact that I could pick up SuSE in Barnes and Noble, and have a hard copy instead of a downloaded one, and lastly,.. because it didnt support glibc2.1, which many programs are beginning to require. The main libs for slack4 were still libc5. Slack5 should be the first with glibc2.1, but I'm still unsure,.. Slack is stable, and wonderful, but its development is relatively slow, and I like haveing a hard copy around, and I don't feel like sending away to walnut creek, I'd rather buy it in a store.
With an average of 4 hours sleep, a wedding in 3 days, driving over 300 miles each day, I was lead to have very little time to get this together to demo to someone I don't see very often.
Notice that I am not whining about being busy either. I am, however, giving you background information as to why I didn't have the free time since telling you "I didn't have the spare time" didn't get the point across in the orginal post above.
I love "doing it myself". I grabbed the redhat CD that day so I could just download an rpm and get things together quickly.
Why do people assume that anytime someone doesn't do something that it is because they are evil in some way. Look at the post above. The guy remarks with "LIES!".
Perhaps it's time to bump the threshold up a notch.
In short, I think we should try giving someone the benifit of the doubt occasionally.
I'll do the same for you now and dismiss this all as "you were just joking" but this thread is still good for slashdot posters in general. The signal/noise ratio had started to get a lot better after the moderation came in.
Take care,
Joseph
Civ CTP is awesome! Thanks Loki!
Romans 10:9-10
Well then mrpacmanjel , can you help me out?!?!
I had Slack 3.6 running on my Compaq 486/33 LTE with XFree86 on that compaq-vga chipset. I upgraded to 4.0 and I cant get it working to save my life. I accidentally deleted my old XF86Config file and am at a loss. Please e-mail me...
Thanks for any help,
Johnny O
Sorry, there is no good reason to use slackware anymore. It's always late, it's missing many packages, and its package management sucks.
I find it interesting that some people have the balls to say that having few packages and a braindead package manager is a feature...
If you want a small distro, Red Hat is indeed not
what you should choose, but Debian is just fine.
As for too many packages in Debian, well, just don't install them.
It's also interesting that some people think that
the mere presence of RPM or dpkg, and a bunch
of pre-built packages somehow prevents them from
rebuilding from source...
Sure, if you're an old time linux user, slackware
is fine, but that's because you don't care what
distrib you use since you rebuilt your whole system anyway.
As for new users, I shudder at the though of them
trying slackware instead of a saner, better built
distro.
It will compile, yes.
It won't compile without bugs.
If you send in an oops from it, Linus & co. will (and already have for others) send it back, telling you that they'll care when you reproduce it with 2.7.2.
Like the Changes file says, caveat emptor when it comes to non-2.7.2 gcc.
Likewise: your car, refrigerator, alarm clock, photocopier, fax machine, etc... Yet, we're not expected to tear all of these things apart and know how they work before using them. "I'm sorry, you can't have that cup of decaf until you grok the chemical process by which it came to be. And you better be able to build a Mr. Coffee from scratch, or you don't deserve to live." Why must we constantly measure our computer peckers against one another by pulling this ridiculous bullshit that would get us all laughed out of any other sane community?
Hmmm, I like this idea! A few modifications of course. GNU utilities should be OS neutral (of course), so it should be generic enough to handle packages for non-Linux and non-GNU systems. Make it work with BSD, Solaris, etc., and you'll have a winner. Have a low-level translation layer, on top of which would be a LSB layer or a BSD layer, etc. Such a system could even be adaptable to d.f. systems like Windows.
.gpm packages to until the distros catch on. Also create a generic packager on the order of automake/autoconf (autopack?).
It needs to be generic, and it will probably need a project site to upload various
I'm already working on my own projects. Anyone out there interested in taking the ball and running with it?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Is there a reason to recompile ALL daemons even on a server? If I use apache and default package does not suite me, I can still recompile and rebuild the custom deb or rpm package and install it. ANd it still will integrate with the whole system and not get on your way.. Another thing I like about Debian (not sure about redhat), a simple, 'apt-get update;apt-get upgrade' will sync your system with the latest packages available on ftp mirrors, so pretty much you don't have to worry about security updates.
If that were true this wouldnt be news now would it? slack4.0 had glibc2.07 development libs,.. unstable. Its main libs were libc5 based. slack 5 should have glibc 2.1, which is NOT an unstable core, which is why they are using it. *DUH*
Don't move to debian. At least that's my advice. At a time I thought I needed a glibc2.1 based system urgently I tried too (after Redhat) and I found it a horror. Redhat is even better. Especially if you want to run unstable, upgrading from the latest release causes real package mess. Debian has way too many packages, and has broken everything in too many small packages. E.g. even emacs is broken into 4 pieces, where liblockfile is a seperate one. Also, since every Debian package has an own dedicated maintainer, I hear from several people that they are overdedicated, and tinker too much with the packages, applying all kind of non-standard patches and trying to do fancy things.
Sure they do. That's why they've been releasing non-thread-safe software, and non-internationalizable software for the past three years.
But enough sarcasm.
I said all *important* daemons, dude! Read before you post! This does not include things like talkd, telnetd, rlogind, or the rpc services. However if you want a relativly simple setup like pop3 with a non standard mailspool or apache+SSL+MySQL+PHP there is no distro that even comes close to a useful prebuild solution.
In addition, distros mostly include older versions of the daemons and if you want to install the newest revision from sources it usually interferes badly with your distro-provided layout of the package. And no, reinstalling from SRPMs or source debs just doesn't cut it either.
However, I agree that the easy update mechanisms of debian are a major plus on a desktop machine. But this is not needed on a server, except for your high volume servers and security related problems. And those you would compile by hand anyway, see above.
On FreeBSD xmms runs even without thread-safe Xlibs, since it runs without threads at all. That's also possible, without any performance loss.
Btw on single-CPU systems using multithreading brings nothing, only bugs and hard-to-debug programs. It is way easier and more reliable to do concurrent tasks within a single process with interrupts etc.
Note that the glibc developers have always said that glibc2.0 was an alpha release. It should never have been used in the real world!
If everyone would have done like Slackware, wait until glibc2.1 is out and stable, then everyone would do the switch now, and it would have taken only a few months instead of more than a year.
Unfortunately, press attention and backing from venture capitalists has very little to do with reliability, or the quality of the product. Take MS for example, which has both. And unfortunately you lost me with "adheres to the spirit of Open/Free Software"...last time I checked most distributions were predominantly Open Source or Free Software Foundation friendly...so that point is pretty mute. I'm sorry but I come from the days when linux fit quite nicely on a 300 meg partion, so these newer bloated distributions annoy me somewhat. This news about slackware going to glibc is very good news. And yes I've tried Mandrake...when it was called Redhat...ugh.
I ran Redhat for close to a year, and finally got so fed up with RPM, that I switched to Slackware. I downloaded and compiled the RPM tools however so that if somthing only comes in RPM's or won't compile I can still use it. I really hate that with RPM's its all or none. You can compile and install some stuff by source that a RPM requires and then install that rpm with out using the -f tag. (force if I remember right.) I don't like how your don't have alot of control over RPM's without having to remember every goddamn flag. I would love rpm's however if I was a system admin and has alot of box's that ran Linux, but for one or two systems rpms are more trouble then there worth at least for me.
You can do it, by much the same method (hand-picking packages to install). I've installed Windows 95 on a 486 DX-33 with a 120 meg HD and 8 megs of RAM. It _crawled_, but still ran.
I can get Windows 98 down to 200 megs without too much effort. Not sure what the minimum size is.
The biggest difference that I know of is that Windows performance suffers terribly with less RAM, less disk space, and a slower machine, while Linux's doesn't (unless you're doing compiles or using processor-intensive applications or have a huge desktop).
I haven't used BSD extensively, but I suspect that it behaves similarly.
Windows 2000 is a renamed NT 5.0. Different beast from the 9x series, and more resource-hungry. I have no idea what the minimum practical installation size is for it.
How about the LACK of reliance on packages?
Other distributions may wank openly about having 3500+ packages, but Slack people just roll up their sleeves and do it by hand.
The concept of packages is sound. I use them all the time to roll out upgrades to my army of Slackware-based servers. Things get compiled on my workstation, are tarred up, and then get shot out with some custom software. The servers dump 'em in the right place (they're all identical, OS-wise), and that's that.
The problem is the widespread whining and general lameness that comes from using *foreign* packages constantly. That is, ones you don't make yourself. Ever see a story on here that talks about something new coming out (in source form) followed by some twit posting "but when will the RPM/DEB/whatever be available?"
Jesus christ, if you want it now, stop being a wuss and go compile it from source. Otherwise, STFU and wait for someone to do it for your lazy ass.
Packages made by other people should be for installing the OS and little else.
Actually, the glibc run times have been included in the Slack distribution since Slack 3.6
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
I've been thinking about doing this (I think it'd be a GREAT way to learn more about Linux!). One
thing I oughta warn you, if you're sticking with the stable kernel tree - 2.2.12 won't compile with gcc 2.95 according to the notes - you gotta use 2.7.2.
Anyway, about your own linux - do you have any advice on what to install and what order? I'll likely be waiting for Linux 2.4 & XFree86 v4 before I try doing mine, but I've got a lotta research to do first!
What is the time estimate on this? I run Slack 4, and am itching for Slack 5 with glibc2, amongst other additions :) Kevin
This is just personal taste. Slackware is actaully very _unfriendly_ for casual users or users who don't want to have to be constantly tinkering with the guts of the system when installing or reconfiguring something. I just happen to like configuring things myself.
I'm told that Debian is also good for this, and doesn't _make_ you do this, but I haven't had a good reason to switch so far.
Check out the Slackware Advocacy (beta) web site. Here are your reasons:
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
Slackware's package management sucks. One thing that I hate most about it is that you can NOT upgrade the distribution without reinstalling and trashing the whole system and its settings.
I have a Debian box, that I have been using for 2 years without reinstalling. It was 1.3(Bo), then upgraded to 2.0 (hamm), then 2.1 (slink) soon will install 2.2 (all upgrades over ftp using dselect ftp access method). RedHat Is very upgradable too. I have a 5.2 system that began its life as 5.0. Use slackware if you want but you'll have to reinstall it whenever you need to upgrade it, I don't fell like it, have better things to do...
i would love it if it this would be glibc2.1. it's amazing how obsolete glibc2.0 is getting (mozilla).
-- adraken
Just click on the drop box that shows HTML formatted in it, and switch it to your preference.
It is really hard to talk about why one likes a distro more than another with out it becoming an opinion poll. As for me ,I bought my first 52 floppy set from LSL in the early 90's, I continue to like the fact that a Slackware machine is closer to a roll you own. When you use RPM's to manage that packages on your machine you loose some flexability and freedom in your design. I like compiling my own applications and setting the directories the way I want them. And editing those pesky files....... I love it. Finally to be short and specific, It is my box mistakes and all. I built, configured, compiled and screwed up all by myself.
No hour on a horse is ever wasted. Winston Churchill
Actually, slashdot has forced us all to push the "HTML Formatted" menu, and change it to Plain Old Text just before submitting. I guess it stops flames (when you're done flaming, you're probably too tired to answer and idiot box.).
Oh yeah, one word of advice, you will need to pretty much always use "--nodeps" when installing RPM on a non-RedHat system because it will think there is absolutely nothing installed on your system and will fail when it checks for package dependancies.
So did the Red Hat IPO prompt the slack slackware people to pull their thumbs out of their collective asses and start to make some progress?
I love slackware to death... it's what I started on with linux. It was sad to see it fall behind. This is definitely a good thing. Maybe some VCs (venture capitalists) waved some cash under their noses? Who knows?
-ali
I rolled my own glib2 base libs and Xlibs and began compling all new and some old packages against glibc but could not get glibc++ to build with gcc 2.7.2.3. That put some projects to a halt.
Yeah, I have ported a slack 4.0 on my 386 halfway and find utils broke at me too.
It seems that there is a port on ftp://sagen.hoxnet.com that *has* find, but that i686 specific code in it..
Sorry if I sound rude but...
Pkg management is a lie. If you ever find yourself administarting a commercial unix you won't find any rpm's.
No. What slackware needs is a good bootstrap building procedure like "make world" on bsd combined with some sort of simplified cvs, again, like bsd. I run FreeBSD and Slack, and FreeBSD impressed me with this.
That would kick the shit out of any other linux distro...
On account of rpm's and deb's, they make you lazy.
Why must we constantly measure our computer peckers against one another by pulling this ridiculous bullshit that would get us all laughed out of any other sane community?
Because many of us went through HELL and back to be able to do what we do with our systems - we're not the kind of people who look at 2 years learning to figure out how to really use Linux well as a waste of time. We consider that 2 years an investment in our future - because we know how things work. In our eyes, any program which tries to hide it's inner workings from us is a problem - which is precisely why we're saying "no" to Windows for servers at least.
And I think anybody needing to tweek bad enough would figure out a way to get water boiled and beans ground. I consider not knowing how to boil water to be a serious lack of ability for the average human over 10 years old, don't you?
Blink.
keeping the world safe for prematurely grumpy old men for oh, about 7 years now
It's worth note that RPM is included in this newest release of Slackware; check the /ap1 disk-set if you don't believe me...
It's still not the default package managing system, however, because of the fact that RPM's can lead to more problems than they're worth at times. Slackware gives you the option of doing things yourself (and thereby knowing that, if you do it right, it will work), or letting you have something else do it (and thereby being able to bitch and whine on usenet when RPM screws up your system).
Happy hacking,
john
We've all got things we're working on I betcha, but I'm gonna at least draft a spec. Check my site for more information (www.psychodeli.com)
:)
I'm gonna go work on that right now
keeping the world safe for prematurely grumpy old men for oh, about 7 years now
...because we didn't jump the gun and base our distribution on prerelease glibc versions. That sorta goes against our whole stability philosophy. Other distributions had a head start when glibc2 finally got an actual release. Good for them. We weren't interested enough in a head start to use prerelease software. It's just the way we do things.
--Logan
1. Small, yet complete dist that remains true to Unix.
/tmp/.X11-unix bug.)
2. Installed from *.tgz packages, which means no new package format was used, and I can unpack slack even on a win machine..
3. Always the emphasis is on "robustness". You can check bugtraq for all RH's or Debian's bugs (e.g.
Inother words:
RH is for windows haters.
Slack is for Unix lovers.
Slackware offer's one thing I have not found in other distributions. When Slackware 4.0 was released, they also release version 3.9 at the same time. Slackware 3.9 offers all the updates of 4.0, but it uses the latest 2.0 kernel. This was important to me because I could not get Portslave to compile under 2.1+ kernels. So I got the latest most up-to-date software which was still backwards compatible with my older software. I am a Network Admin for a Canadian ISP (5 Pops--all using Slackware). My previous experience with *nix was BSDI. The transition from Berkley (which was the most popular *nix for ISPs at the time) to Slackware was almost transparent. -Andrew
OK, and people that tinker with their cars and know their engine inside out, don't. Granted, they get much better performance out of their cars, and they probably have fewer problems with them because they know exactly when something goes wrong, but they don't insist that everyone else should be the same way. They still accept that most people have better things to do, so they should just go buy a new car from the dealer and go to Jiffy Lube every few months. I honestly believe that 90% of the people with this extremist attitude don't even believe in it, they just want to do anyhting possible to avoid being labeled a newbie.
I'm also not saying that it's a waste of time to learn how to use one's system... quite the opposite. But ultimately, it's not for everyone, and if it weren't for things like rpm, we'd have much more trouble attracting non-Linux users and breaking into the workstation market. I use my machine primarily as a workstation, so building stupid applications like my CD player from source so I can squeeze 2% extra performance on them (not bloodly likely on my piece of shit Cyrix P150) just isn't worth the effort. What possible benefit does that get me? Gee, I know that my CD application is rock solid because I built it from source! Who cares? And at the other end, my aging Cyrix box really doesn't have the time (nor do I) to built XFree86, but I've come to trust someone else to do that for me. Of course, if there weren't source available I'd probably start looking elsewhere, but I don't feel this overwhelming urge to waste an entire day trying to build that source tree. It's a giant bloated piece of crap. I download the SVGA server, run it, and forget about it.
I've only been using Linux for four years, so I still consider myself a relative newbie with only a moderate level of skill. But... if some of these people stopped trying to be the most badass, hard kore users, we MIGHT stop scaring away the tourists.
Oh wait--this isn't Red Hat. dot oh releases are actually stable with Slackware, so there's no need for the "scrambling bugfix" release. Anyway, it's good to see continued development for the venerable distributions, and the (eventual!) addition of glibc support will be valuable.
--Jean-Paul Alderac
How did I get First Post, you ask? This story came up on NewsNow before it made it to the front page of Slashdot.org. Interesting.
News Now NewsLink: Linux
--Jean-Paul Alderac
I got so fed up of waiting for this to happen that I rolled my own setup. Everything on my system I have personally compiled, and all is glibc2.1, except for findutils which fails to compile. I can unfortunatly only work on it at weekends, until I change jobs.
This weekend I will be upgrading to gcc-2.95.1, installing PPP. KDE 1.1.2 should be out the week after.
I heard there are also Slackwomen.
It ISN'T the first post. HAHA
I just don't run it currently because of the pain in changing the libs. I don't have the spare time. Unfortunately XMMS needs glibc so I decided to wait. This is great news!
Civ CTP is awesome! Thanks Loki!
Romans 10:9-10
Only Real Men [with small hard drives] use slack!
I dont see this moving to stable till 2.4 kernel is released this fall. Also this has been on slackware.com for weeks now as news but just monday there was a /slackware-current dir.
finally, my first distrib, going to be based on glibc. No more fighting to get things to work (as w/3.4 and whatnot). I may still move to Debian (to stick w/the same init script type), but at least now I may be able to feel some Linux nostalgia :)
sorry
As an ardent Slack user since 3.0 (kernel 1.1.12), I love Slackware! It's great to see the glibc support rolled in. Unlike RHAT, SuSE (I've tried both), Slackware is solid and reliable.
Many people that I know switched from Slackware to RHAT to be able to run Oracle. All of those who switched say that as soon as Slack is glibc based, they'll switch back!
I wonder how many other users will switch back to the most stable Linux distribution around?
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
If I understand correctly, the main functional difference is a different format for binaries. This means that you can't link object files produced with glibc with object files produced with libc5. This doesn't matter if you're compiling everything from source code (because your compiler will give you the same binary format that the rest of your system uses), but it makes it impossible to link in libraries that you receive just as binaries (object files) that are in the wrong format.
Disclaimer: I haven't messed with the compilers in detail, so I may have missed several very large points
What exactly is the difference between GLIBC and the current standard (I forget its name)? How will this benefit all of us Slack-users?
Beware TPB
You'll notice that, yes, it's the same author. The first and second post were posted within minutes of each other. Could it be, they do indeed appear to originate from the same person.
:-)
Anyway, my evil-bastard-modded Slackware 3.6 (now on Kernel 2.2.9 w/ Andreas patch 3 + devfs, as well as Cyrus, and some Slackware 4.0 packages) server will remain the same, but I am quite eager to get glibc2 on my desktop machine
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The whole libc5/glibc2 transition took orders of magnitude longer than it should have, thanks to the foot dragging efforts of slackware among others (Hiyah, Caldera!).
Why is this important? The next time you hear some Berst wannabe complaining about incompatibilities amongst the distributions, this is one of the big things they're talking about. Programs compiled against libc5 won't run if only glibc2 is installed, and vice versa.
I'm not suggesting that distributions jump on every bandwagon that comes along, but how many years ago was development on libc5 stopped in favor of glibc2?
This is why I support a Linux Standard Base.
Jee, XMMS works fine!
:-)
ftp://rasputin.linuxos.net
Look at the Slackware packages. I love it!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Someone asked for a "Why Slackware" type advocacy thing, and here's my lame and feeble attempt at such a thing.
Let me begin saying that in 1996 I first started messing with Linux based on a couple of books, an unleased book and Linux Configuration and Installation. LC&I was written by Pat Volkerding, the creator of Slackware, and at that time at least Slack was the predominant Linux distribution.
The case to be made for Slack is quite simple really - once you learn where stuff is, you know where to find stuff. It's the old Windows versus Linux argument all over again - with Slack I can fix my system when it breaks, because I've gone through enough Pain And Suffering (tm) learning about it to know where stuff goes. Now I can make my system sit up and beg. I pity the po' fools who get themselves a copy of redhat to "mess with linux" and end up using Windows a week after because they were unable to accomplish anything with their new OS.
The case to be made for using Slack is the case to be made for using Linux.
keeping the world safe for prematurely grumpy old men for oh, about 7 years now
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/slackware-current/GL IBC_WARNING: "These packages are linked with glibc-2.1.1, so don't install them on Slackware 4.0 or earlier. They will not work unless you've installed glibc-2.1.1."
-- adraken
pkgtool is your friend.
-Joe
Surely "Slow, unsteady"?
No, that's not my point, but that is what many people are saying here. I just feel compelled to point out that this is absurd. I'm not saying I don't like Slack, it's great for people that want a clean system, and I think the distro-war is ludicrously stupid. But... Lambasting people that want to use RPM/DEB/whatever packages is silly. A computer is a tool, used to solve OTHER problems. Many people don't have the time to build every last miniscule program they intend to use from source. And if I'm using a machine that (OS-wise) looks very much like every other RedHat (or Debian, or whatever) machine, why should I duplicate all that work? I quite often download some app I see to check it out. My console ends up looking like this:
$ su
$ rpm -U foo.rpm
$ exit
$ foo
[ Realize it's some really lame package I don't want. ]
$ su
$ rpm -e foo.rpm
I'm done! I'm sorry, but I can't justify building something that resides on my machine for less than a day from source. Maybe I'm just wierd in my usage habits, and I should stop trying out new software, but ultimately it seems silly to villify RPM and friends, who have done more to make Linux accessible to the masses than anything else. (And given his pragmatic view of things, I have to believe that Linus would approve of packages/prebuilt binaries.)
D00D! Slack is small and beatiful and does not load your box with craploads of shitty soft on a minimal install. A minimum useful RedHate install is around 100 Megs and includes X and a shitload of unneeded prgrams and dependencies. And the package manager does not allow you to strip it down because it would brake the dependencies and the whole system severely. Plus with every RedHate install you get a minimum of half a dozen *severe* security problems for free. It just plain suxx.
...
Repeat after me:SLACK RULES, REDHATE SUX,
1) Stable...the only distro that waits for something to become stable before basing the OS on it (hint: glibc has been an unstable devel lib all this time) 2) Not stuffed with nonsensical software I don't need...other distros have dependencies way beyond what should be. 3) A readable init setup. 25 files total not including inittab. Count the files in an init setup on any other distro and I can guarante it to be at least 3 times that. 4) Fastest to install custom setup. Slackware doesn't have those silly target audience installs. How can you know if the person who made that setup has the same idea about what should be on the system as you? To do a custom install in any other distro you have to pick each and every package and hope you get all the dependencies (SuSE is the only one of those that checks). Slackware has that option available, or you can choose a menu of *related* packages to install and the system will choose everything which is required. The only package I have to delete after that kind of install is fvwm2.
If you want craploads of shitty SW and a f***ing registry use Windows and troll somewhere esle.
If you want a small distro, Red Hat is indeed not what you should choose, but Debian is just fine.
Debian is a lot better than RH (I actually prefer Debian at home) but a minimal useful Debian install contains about 5 different editors, 3 different console text libraries, 2 or 3 install methods , at least a dozen of stupid library dependencies and is still roughly double the size of its Slack conterpart.
It's also interesting that some people think that the mere presence of RPM or dpkg, and a bunch of pre-built packages somehow prevents them from rebuilding from source...
It does, because it constantly interferes with its stupid dependency resolution conflicts. You obviously have no clue what u are talking 'bout. Please educate yourself befor posting bullshit.
I started with SLS, and Slackware is just the most familiar to me.
Whenever you stuck with rpm's, you're only option is to use rpm's to keep the database up to date. No way of telling the thing that you just added libfoo.bar.so.1.2.3 by *hand*...
And not the whole UNIX world is packing stuff in *yet another pkg format*...
The point is better made with debian, whose pkg format is even more obscure on the internet (Can't you remember all those site's saying "when we have time we'll make *.deb's"?).
Pkg management should be kept for the *base* of your system, and thus be reduced to a minimum.
It's not I want to piss off rpm's, it's just that I don't want my system to be dependant on a format.
I have a Slackware 2.3 CD from 1995. It's a modified version in a 4CD set (it has the RedHat mother's day release, ewww). The cool thing is that it is using Kernel 1.2.8 and the ELF beta libs (also has kernel sources from first to 1.2.13 and 1.3.15). A nice piece of history.
The libc4 to libc5/ELF transition took over a year. Why did the libc5/glib transistion take longer? Seems it's only been a year and a half. I'm glad of that time because it means a) I can use Slackware 4.9 for a stable 2.2.x/libc5 setup (like my current server), and have the 5.0 (possibly unstable, but good) glib on the desktop.
If you haven't noticed, most versions of the glib to the point in time were't quite good enough, at least when we are talking about uptimes of months or years.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
What's all this excitement about Slackware being GlibC based. Personally I would rather run an OS based on an older stable core than one based on a beta core. If I wanted a beta core I would run Windoze.
And as far as GlibC support. The runtime support for GlibC binaries has been there since Slack 4.0
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...
This is good, but we still need a good package management system in slackware. ...I have to admit, I've defected to debian because of that very fact.
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Your honor is perfectly understandishable.
I'm not trying to start flames so don't consider this an invitation, but my IMPRESSION of Slackware, which I've gotten only second-hand from Slashdot and a few distrib comparison reviews, is that Slackware is a dusty old distribution with a fanatical following but it's not relevant any longer. (If that's not true - they certainly have a perception problem, but if there's something truly great about Slackware they might not give a damn about 'image'...) So what would Slackware's target audience be interested in that isn't served by Mandrake6, Caldera, SuSE or Debian -- name say 3 things that are exclusive to this distrib? What's the most recent review of the currently-shipping Slackware?
Why do I have to include HTML tags in the posts to keep them from becoming one long monotonous line now??? The last post was formatted into 3 paragraphs but I did not htmlize it, I didn't used to have to and I shouldn't have to....shouldn't that be fixed?
OK, so you've installed Red Hat and played with everything, and seen about a Gig of HD space go "bye bye" with all the ferver of a hungry tiger to a sleeping zebra. Now you have a ton of crap, and my guess is that you're not going to use all of it. If you feel like really hacking your system, you have to go around RH's config/init/rc files, and make sure not to break too much. After a bit you're getting sick of package dependancies, and the possible bloat they entail.
That's why you use Slackware. It's dumb. Rock simple. Somebody put a cute installer (that you will rarely ever use to install anything after the initial install) on Linux, and made it mostly work (remember how Slack's 3.something had a umount that wouldn't umount NFS directories on 2.0 kernels?). The rc files weren't a mess of calls to other files, and "." this file for config information. They were very straight ahead, and just did the work.
Now would this be good for the home user with little experience? Maybe, if he/she/it were trying to learn as much about the workings of Linux as possible. If this person just wanted to play, then maybe some other distribution would be a bit better. Most of the customer installs I do, I use RedHat because they have vendor support available, and the upgrades can generally be done by the end user by doing the RPM dance. But when it comes to a simple machine to take care of bidness without a whole lot of GNOME/KDE/E/config files/fancy UI to deal with system tasks, I'll deal with slack. Glad the change happened.
- Dan
There is no comparison between pkgtool and apt. Face it... it's very basic. Why not just create a better solution?
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Your honor is perfectly understandishable.
./configure, make, make install! It's easy!
Can you be more specific? Oh, what's the point...