Slackware 8.1 rc1 Announced 297
Demerol writes with word that "about 12 hours ago, Patrick announced the that Slackware is now in Release Candidate stage in preparation for the long-awaited 8.1 release. Hundreds of updated to the current tree in the last few months have had all the slackers drooling, and now it is almost upon us. Now, I don't want to hear any more talk of Slackware being dead. Thanks. ;) Here is the ChangeLog
and the Userlocal announcement"
Come on people (Score:0, Interesting)
I've been looking forward to this... (Score:3, Interesting)
I was going to download Slack so I could install the base and just do the ./config, make, make install dance for a buncha stuff I like to use, like evilwm. My intentions was to pull something together from installing just the bare libs and packages I need, and create a desktop box for myself that just plain works.
Slackware may not be for everyone, but that doesn't make their efforts any less relevant. They're a proven distro. Looking forward to this!
gz vs. bz2 ?!?!? (Score:0, Interesting)
Will ESR join the Slackware team? (Score:1, Interesting)
Why I don't use Slackware anymore... (Score:2, Interesting)
I just don't have the time to spend a few hours grabbing the latest source patches and doing a recompile. I use to like to compile everything from source so that I could optimise it for my machine but real life eventually got in the way of that and it stopped being fun.
So for the past 3-4 years I've been using Mandrake. But the first thing I do is 'rpm -e linuxconf drakx* kde* gnome*' etc. The reason I like it is not because of the ease of use but because Mandrake is really quick to release security updates and all it takes is a simple urpmi command to download them. Plus every release comes with tons of new toys that I like to play around with when I'm bored.
There's lots of other reasons I choose Mandrake too but I mean this as constructive critisism towards Slackware so I'll leave those out.
Comming from a BSD background I always felt right at home with Slack but when you just want something that you can use and keep up to date and secure with minimum effort then it just doesn't cut it.
I don't feel that you need to be user friendly and geared towards windows and mac users to fill this gap. Just a few command line tools that make a UNIX administrator's life easier when it comes to managing what's installed on the system (and the pkg_* tools are not up to speed on this IMO).
So I'm going to go off on a limb here and get ready to be flamed by all the Slackware lovers. I would probably switch back to Slackware if they were to switch to rpm or deb pkg. They can keep the "no easy configuration tools" or the bsd-style init scripts which I love so much. But I really need a way to customize my system and keep it up to date with minimal effort.
I know Slack has come with rpm installed optionally for a while but all of the system stuff like glibc, bash etc. should be installed as rpms so that it's really easy to updgrade them without taking hours to recompile.
--
Garett
Re:Walnut Creek CD-ROM? (Score:3, Interesting)
They were acquired by BSDI, because of their support for FreeBSD. Then BSDI was acquired by Wind River Software, entirely for BSD/OS. Pretty much everything associated with them is dead now, AFAIK. Well, FreeBSD has survived, because its development was never dependent on commercial support. And slackware has been hurt by the loss of all of its paid developers, but its always just pretty much been Pat's distribution and despite the lack of support 8.1 looks to be coming along very nicely.
I used to be a slack user... (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't use it anymore because all of my boxes (including my server) are running linux from scratch [linuxfromscratch.org] which while being much longer to setup (especially the first time), it is the ultimate learning experience. Everything on my workstation was compiled manually by me, including the shell, the compiler, X, etc...
One good thing about slack and linuxfromscratch is that you *know* exactly what is installed on your machine.
Slackware seems really up to date (Score:2, Interesting)
Slackware isn't anymore using old outdated software. Take a careful look in the changelog and drool.
Also note the boot/root disks supporting the new journaling filesystems directly from a fresh installation.
//Pingo
Great! (Score:2, Interesting)
Great this is good news!!! This is cause for a celebration!
One Happy Slackware User, and Plenty Distro Wars (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a happy Slackware user. I've been a Slack user for years - and not just out of "being used to it". I used Slackware in my first job, I built mailservers on it in my second job, I used it to run a complete ISP [mailbox.net.uk] in my third job, and a complete domain registry [centralnic.com] in my fourth job (incidentally, I'm still on a heck of a salary and really enjoy my work).
I've actually looked at other distributions to make maintainence easier, but:
- Debian I found was populated by anal freaks who were real religious fanatics - we had a department full of Debian people and I said "ok, let's do Debian then" and two years later I'm finding it hard to work out just where they put everything [1].
- RedHat just had too many problems and decided to SetUID root a load of crap (plus there's the obvious rootkits).
- SuSE fell apart at the seams.
So I went back to Slackware.It's quite funny when someone came along, found a security hole such as the recent OpenSSH hole, and tried to crack a Slack box - it was fairly obvious from the start, because the rootkits failed. Then I built Slack packages for tripwire and stuff.
Pat's got it right, IMHO. It's a good, simple distro with decent ground-up building. And there's a lot of misconception that you have to build stuff on Slack boxes - you don't - you can quite happily build packages.
I now run Slack on my laptop, on the company servers, on my desktop, and loads of other places. It works for me. I'm pleased to see Pat's finally got it together for 8.1 (I've been following the updates for some time).
But one bit of advice: update slackware.com - it's bloody old.
Snogs,
Joel.
[1] Admittedly I haven't got used to it in the same way I got used to Slack, but there's enough people in the company who can get used to Slack. Standardising means getting other people to learn it too.
Re: too bad slackware.com sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
alt.os.linux.slackware has known that rc1 on was out for a few days now and someone on the group even makes the effort to make current ISOs on a weekly bases. Other innovations mentioned in that group are the ability's to easily install slackware from ftp or DOS.
Re:I used to be a slack user... (Score:2, Interesting)
Recently I've switched to Gentoo Linux [gentoo.org]. It's the same no crap, basic distro that Slackware is with the added benefit of everything being compiled for your specific system and knowing exactly what goes on your system like LFS.
The reason I use Gentoo over LFS now is the package system (it's like BSD ports) is genius. I would recommend Gentoo to any Slack or LFS user.. you get all the benefits of the two plus an easier way of installing and uninstalling apps.
One Hell of a Change Log (Score:2, Interesting)