Slackware 11 is Coming

ejd3 writes "In the slackware-current changelog Pat has stated that 'Although there's still quite a bit in the TODO queue here I'm making my steps carefully as -current is very stable, and I think it should ship as a stable 11.0 soon so that we can get back to the business of breaking things in -current. :-)' How much longer will the slackers have to wait?"

No need to wait

Slackers just run what's in -current

Re:No need to wait

Slackers just run what's in -current

Quite right, its certainly it is stable enough. There even many many unofficial ISOs of the current tree you can grab at various sites including slackware.no [slackware.no]

Re:No need to wait

Or just install 10.2, then install slapt-get and add your favorite slackware mirror's -current as a source.

Re:No need to wait

I usually run the distribution I installed for years and years until I can't run new programs on it anymore, because of library issues and such. Then it's time to upgrade.

64-bit official?

Are we gonna see an official 64-bit release this go round? I had to switch to gentoo then ubuntu just to use my AMD64...

Re:64-bit official?

I had to switch to gentoo then ubuntu just to use my AMD64...

All you need to do is rebuild your kernel. A Linux distro is just a bunch of programs and config files, its not 64-bit specific.

Re:64-bit official?

You could use Slamd64. But regular Slackware will work fine on an AMD64: I believe that Pat is using one as his development machine. He wrote somewhere that he tried compiling 64-bit versions of various things, but he didn't see any performance improvement from it, so he abandoned the experiment. Of course it would be a different matter on a high-end server with lots of memory, but that's not Slackware's target market.

Re:64-bit official?

There are a couple of slack-based AMD64 systems besides SLAMD64. I liked SLAMD64, but haven't found it as trouble-free as some others apparently have. Frugalware claims to be pretty much Slackware with Pacman bolted on, and I liked it a lot. I also just downloaded something called Bluewhite 64 Linux, another unofficial port. That goes on my testing partition this weekend (replacing STX Linux, another Slackware derivative I was testing for installation on a friend/potential convert's older laptop).

So if Slackware is a niche player now (which I don't believe), then one part of that niche is as a base for new distros -- the excellent Zenwalk (which I run on my laptop), STX, Frugalware, Voltalinux (Slackware with pkgsrc?), Slax and Vector, just off the top of my head. Not as many derivatives as Debian, perhaps, but certainly a healthy number and probably indicative of a healthy distro.

I think Slackware's biggest "problem" is that it has little to no "community," at least as far as vocal fanboys (you know, the kind who visit Distrowatch to click through and drive up its numbers). I think it tends to attract and keep a self-sufficient, quieter crowd, and therefore its presence isn't as great as its numbers, if that makes any sense.

And text, of course. As soon as I boot up and people see text instead of a pretty splash screen I see that sphincter-tightening look come over some of their faces.

But beyond the entertainment value it's probably a bad thing.

Re:64-bit official?

I think Slackware's biggest "problem" is that it has little to no "community," at least as far as vocal fanboys (you know, the kind who visit Distrowatch to click through and drive up its numbers). I think it tends to attract and keep a self-sufficient, quieter crowd, and therefore its presence isn't as great as its numbers, if that makes any sense.

It makes perfect sense, as I'm one of those of whom you speak. I'm a UNIX professional who works with Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and Redhat AS. I run Slack on my workstation and on a couple of smaller servers because it is about as unobfuscated (at least from my perspective) as you can get. No glittery anything, just a very solid Linux.

I need to send Pat money this time around as well as I think I purchased 10.1 but not 10.2. Anybody who seriously uses Slack should do the same if they can afford it. He puts out solid distro, and he's a nice guy.

Re:64-bit official?

I think Slackware's biggest "problem" is that it has little to no "community,"

there is a huge slackware community, it's just very much like the BSD community. WEare simply too busy using it in embedded systems, and other places to take the time to run around posting to all forums "S1ac4war3 0wnz joo!" messages.

Slackware is the absolute best distro for doing really advanced things like stuffing it in an embedded device or making a super stripped down machine that makes an old useless 486 scream like a monster for a single important task... makes the best OS for a homebrew firewall that fits on a 8meg CF card.

I use it for developing apps for the gumstix embedded platform. installing the cross compilers for alpha processors is painless compared to a rpm or deb based distro.

Marketshare?

Having huge respect and sympathy for Patrick Volkerding I nevertheless wonder whether Slackware is (after being one of the groundbreakers for Linux) is becoming a niche - distro. Shame, really.

Re:Marketshare?

IMO Slackware is still the best Distro. I've been using it since 2.3 back in the 1.0 kernel days. I love its simplicity; it's designed so you can edit the config files yourself, none of the GUI tools so many distros like now with the actual config files hidden all over the place.

Re:Marketshare?

It's true that you don't need a GUI to configure Ubuntu. However, in my experience, if you're used to Slackware, the location of some config files in Debian-based distros can seem counterintuitive. Slackware is very simple once you understand it; I especially like the BSD style init system, it just makes sense.
Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is great too (I'm using it right now), and I haven't had much trouble configuring it the way I want. But after using Slackware regularly for a while, I can understand why he feels the way he does.

Distrowatch

Despite the Ubuntus, Suses and Fedoras out there, Slackware is still going strong. Still #11 in http://distrowatch.com/ [distrowatch.com] Will release 11 make it go up a notch or two?

RSN?

I love Slackware. Other then a brief gentoo thing, I've used nothing
but Slack since putting it on my 486. But shouldn't this topic have
come out next week/month/year when Slack 11 is *actually* released?

It'll be ready Real Soon Now. Let's really discuss it then.

Think it'll have 2.6 as its default? Huh, huh, huh?

--User0x45

Health Issues

Was there ever a follow up about Pat's health issues? Is he ok now?

Re:Health Issues

Other than noting that he is recovered, none that I've noticed. A private person, which I respect.

Slackware makes sense.

I've seen a few comments above from people saying that Slackware makes poor economic sense. I say it can make economic sense in many cases.

Slackware is a distro, like any other - and just like any other distro you tend to have to be familiar with it in order to get things done efficiently. However, what Slackware does let you get away with is to update packages direct from the developers without having to worry about exploding the "package database" or maintainance system. If you want "fancy" package handling systems you can use the likes of slapt-get or similar. Slackware won't tear you apart or breakdown into a locked up mess if you install something from a "non-slackware-approved" source package.

The default relative daemon sparseness of Slackware makes it quite easy to keep an eye on, especially if you're trying to keep an eye out for malicious things. The whole start up script system is rather simple enough too (will we get a soft-linked /etc/init.d though?).

That said, there's a few things which I wish were included by default in slackware (and perhaps will be in the future) but no single distro is perfect. Nearly all distros require some degree of tweaking.

Best of all though, Slackware is quick to download, quite often you only need the first ISO and you've got yourself a fairly comprehensive system ready to go, for someone who knows what they're doing.

Slackware user

I've always been a fan of slackware, its probably one of the most stable distros out there. It doesn't try to be bleeding edge and thats why hosting/developing on it is a real pleasure. I do wonder though why the 2.6 series kernel sat in testing for so long, then again maybe thats a stupid question, 2.6 isn't really a production kernel HA. I don't really like the way the LAMP stack is setup from the get go, I always ended up recompiling that stuff from source myself but I've done that with most of the distros I've used lately - maybe its just the wierd shit I do. Anyway good to see Pat is back at it giving us a rock solid and fairly politics free distro!

Yes, RSN, but that's news for Slackware because...

...it doesn't have a PR machine (even a volunteer one) behind it cranking out a steady stream of news. Look at Distrowatch Weekly's upcoming releases and announcements, and you see release roadmaps, schedules, plans, estimates and pre-order information going all the way out to December. Slackware is nowhere on there.

Even on userlocal.com, supposedly the Slackware community site, and the top items are from February and April (and the latter's about Zenwalk). Other distros start work on their next release before the current one is final, and we hear about it from one release right to the next. Hell, we heard about the Suse and Ubuntu delays for what would seem like forever if we didn't have all that "when is Debian going to release" and "Vista delayed again" coverage to compare it to. So Slack gets a RSN item on Slashdot. Seems small in comparison to all the coverage of alpha flights, umpteen betas, RCs and golden masters some distros get all over the web.

Personally, I'm happy to be using a distro done by a guy more interested in getting a solid product out the door than getting a good press release out the door.

slackware is fun

Linux is fun and slackware more fun :)

Slackware: It just works

I too am a fan of Slackware, and am typing this on a Slackware 10.2 system with a 2.6.16.9 SMP kernel (built from the kernel source [kernel.org]), to support one of those new dual-core Pentium 4 gizmos. In other words, it goes like stink...

Even though I can download the CD images, I always buy a copy of each new release.

It's not a crime for a Linux system to look like Unix, and if your hardware barfs over a text-based install, you really do have a problem. I like being able to download source (including kernels), build it and it just works. I still have nightmares about the time I tried to help somebody upgrade a kernel on a Fedora Core box. Shudder.

Slackware isn't a pre-packaged Linux system in a can: open the can and pour it out, ready to go. It's a construction set for building any kind of Linux system you want. And it's all the better for it.

Thanks, Patrick.

...laura

Slackware user turned FreeBSD

My first real distro was Slackware several years ago. It was a great learning tool for me. It forced me to learn Linux from the command line. No GUIs of any sort to setup devices.

It was stable, it was simple, it was perfect for a beginner who wanted to really learn Linux.

Since last year I've switched to FreeBSD. I do love FreeBSD but I didn'at switch because I got tired of Slackware. Right now I have a Windows machine and a FreeBSD machine. Probably next year I'll get a third computer as a dedicated mail server and put Slackware on there.

Though I'm not using Slack now, I will return to it.

Keep up the excellent work, Pat!

Slackware and the Easiness Factor

While I'm certainly more technically inclined than a number of people I know, I wouldn't describe myself as much more than a Linux power-user. I'm an Anthropology major with severe dyscalculia and have had little inclination to learn much more than Python, a little Lisp, and HTML + CSS; I'm not the 'typical' programmer geek or system administrator, but I wouldn't say that Slackware is any more difficult to use than SuSE, RedHat or FedoraCore. I originally started using Slackware (3.2) because I was careless with my Windows 95 installation media, and I couldn't re-install it after I had to replace the harddrive. It was pretty hellacious back then, but I was still using AOL for dialup and had never touched *nix of any flavour before. I ended up going right back to Windows. However, when Slackware 7 was released I decided to give it another go. On my circa 1997 PC, I didn't even have to recompile the kernel. Everything in the install worked out of the box (including X). Eventually, as I began to learn more about how Linux functioned, I taught myself how to re-compile the kernel and to do various other basic system administration tasks; I'm not sure I would've managed to learn quite as much about Linux had I started off using a distribution with an integrated package manager and so-called "hand holding" system administration utilities. I'm writing this post on a low-end Inspiron running Slackware-current. Yeah, it took me longer to configure the Slackware install than it did the XP install or the Ubuntu install, but Slackware is very easy to configure once you learn how. I gave my largley computer-illiterate mother an old desktop running Slackware with IceWM (I later switched it to KDE), and she hasn't had many problems with it. I doubt she could configure the system herself, beyond the options in KDE's control center, but it's certainly as easy to use as any other OS.

Finally

slackware 3

Re:slack is cool even for n00bs

That brings to mind one of the things that I think makes linux nice. As I want to keep my laptop happy, and as I am lazy, I just run windows. I do miss linux, though, mainly because with windows, you can't see the bones, so to speak. *nixes are more like gloves you can move your fingers about in, while windows seems more like... a hunk of wood. It is the control that makes it fun to use linux. An ease of use distro can reduce this fun and sense of control/accomplishment slack sounds like it can bring.

I tried suse, and was annoyed by the loss of control. Why isn't root's bash profile in /root? Because they want it to be easy, and not dangerous. For configure/make/install it is nice to add to path (gtklib I think it was, or something). Sure, I should stick to packages, and do things the suse way, whatever that is, but as I am not running a managed system of desktops, I just want to have fun and make it work.

Fedora has better hardware support?

Eh?

Linux is Linux is Linux. www.kernel.org has all the hardware support you need. Get a tarball, extract, configure and compile