Slackware 8.1 is Released 326
MrSnivvel writes: "Slackware 8.1 has been released. Highlights of this release include KDE 3.0.1, GNOME 1.4.1 (with new additions like Evolution), the long-awaited Mozilla 1.0 browser, support for many new filesystems like ext3, ReiserFS, JFS, and XFS, and support for several new SCSI and ATA RAID controllers. Remember to buy your copies at http://store.slackware.com. List of download mirrors here. Public releases of Mozilla AND Slackware in the same month, I'm so happy I've soiled myself."
Slackware is dead, my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
why slackware is slackware and redhat is redhat (Score:5, Insightful)
Highlights of this release include KDE 3.0.1, GNOME 1.4.1 (with new additions like Evolution), the long-awaited Mozilla 1.0 browser, support for many new filesystems like ext3, ReiserFS, JFS, and XFS, and support for several new SCSI and ATA RAID controllers.
Redhat on 7.3 [redhat.com]:
The new features in Red Hat Linux 7.3 Personal offer everything needed for a personal productivity workstation, from installation through system maintenance.
See any difference on the way the message is put? If not, try and make your grandma decide which one contains features that she can benefit from.
Re:Timing is everything (Score:5, Insightful)
The user has full control. There is no crappy config tools to get in the way. This is why it is so good for learning Unix and Linux because you have access to the raw system.
In slackware if I want to change the bitdepth of X windows I have to edit it with a text file. At first this might seem silly but when a Redhat user is trying to do something complicated his fancy tools hold him back. Slack users do not have that problem, they understand how the system works.
Slackware is also very stable thats why it doesn't use GCC 3.1 out of the box.
Re:Slackware is dead, my ass (Score:1, Insightful)
And if you really wanted to learn linux then you would use Linux From Scratch like a real uber-geek.
I'm just glad that when the revolution comes, people like you will be at home reading about it on slashdot.
Re:HAHAHAHA ! Slackware is dead ! (Score:1, Insightful)
Q: What's the French battle cry?
A: "We surrender!"
Re:Slackware is dead, my ass (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. Slackware was over my head whenever I tried it--7.x or something. The idea of a fistful of ASCII
Now that I have spent some time with a RH distro, and grasp *nix-think to a sufficient depth, I'm strongly considering a return to Slack...
A question for the community: the reason to go for Slack over, say, Gentoo, is that Slack arrives as canned object files ready to install, whereas Gentoo assumes we have a pipe, time and skill to pull down all the source over TCP/IP and compile from scratch, no? In other words, Gentoo requires a higher level of skill than Slack to build and tweak?
Seems so long ago (Score:3, Insightful)
After using it for a bit and becoming more acquainted with linux however, I could see that even the latest downloadable version of Slackware (I got 3.0.0 from the book "Linux Unleashed") had really old versions of things, so I "upgraded" to Redhat, which in those days, at least on #linux was the leetest of the leet.
At this point I could ask if slackware is more up-to-date these days, but then that would be a very "Ask Slashdot" thing to do, since I could just go and check for myself.
graspee
Re:Slackware is dead, my ass (Score:3, Insightful)
This is actually the *problem* with Slackware/Debian. I want to learn, so I
don't mind reading documentation, but most of the people I know don't care at
all, they just want "click-n-run"
This is going to be a long thread, I can tell. You shouldn't confuse
"click-n-run" with "wanting to learn". I always recommend slackware if anyone
asks me what is a good first distro, partially because it is less hand holding.
I had a friend who went to a tech school and had a class on linux, they gave
him mandrake. Do you know what the problem with that is? You don't learn
"linux" per say, you learn a distribution. You don't learn fdisk, you learn
disk-druid and drakeconf. You don't learn tar zxvf, you learn rpm -ui. You
never learn how to do things without a gui, because as long as you are using
these things, you are never faced with the need to. Slackware and LFS (as was
mentioned earlier) will teach you "linux". If you want to learn to build a
house, you don't go out and buy a house and walk around the inside examining
it, you read a book and build a house. Granted, not everyone wants to learn
the internals of an OS to a high degree, that's fine. But don't say a person
wants to learn, when all they really want to do is get up and running. FYI,
slackware is very easy to get up and running.
SealBeater
Re:Slackware is dead, my ass (Score:3, Insightful)
Because in my mind, both are completly ok choices. There are some people who just want to use a computer. This is why Windows has such a huge market share. Most of the people don't care one way or another. And if RedHat can give them that, then there's nothing wrong with them using it. People like us though, we Slackware users, are a different breed
BETTER DEAD THAN RED....HAT (Score:1, Insightful)
All Linux distributions need Kazaa-like installers (Score:3, Insightful)
Download a bootnet floppy or static Linux executible which checks a list of mirrors, tests bandwidth to find the fastest, and downloads the ISOs and/or does your install.
RedHat up2date seems to use such a mechanism; download times off this network are much faster than updates.redhat.com.
I screwed up my main Linux system this weekend, and hunting for a fast mirror on win98 is annoying.
Re:Slackware is dead, my ass (Score:2, Insightful)
Or better Yellow Dog Linux :))
Re:why slackware is slackware and redhat is redhat (Score:3, Insightful)
redhat has it's place, it's designed for the non-skilled because of the point and click ease of use. (YES, linus is not an expert, he is a kernel programmer! there's a big difference between programmers/designers and administrators.... I would never want linus to edit rc files or
I am talking what each is designed for. and I remember I mentioned that I use RH in all corperate deployment desktops and servers)
anyone that tries to think that RH was designed for the guru/expert is blind. IT"S CORE DESIGN IS TO MAKE IT SIMPLER.
quit freaking out, take a breath and actually READ a post before flaming it hard.
Re:Slackware is dead, my ass (Score:3, Insightful)
But think for a second - in 1994 you would need to be more technically knowledgeable that you needed to be in 2002 - 1994 was pre windows 95 and the PC world was still DOS based - you needed to know what you were doing - and running a BBS was hardly a point and shoot thing...
In other words dont you think that you may have had more knowledge of how a computer ticked than the average mum and dad these days ? Slackware is not forgiving if you have never used a command line - i put it to you that none of us had a problem but then i suggest you find your mum or your boss and give it to them and get them to run it - you may find what im getting at...
I have been branded as a troll on here for expressing my opionion more times in the last week than in 5 years previously - so at risk of it again please understand that when i say Slackware is not a beginners OS i mean not someone who has only ever used windows and has NO understanding of how and OS actually works - Joe Average. Sometimes we all forget that we are a lot more techincally skilled than we realise.
Re:Timing is everything (Score:1, Insightful)
Never saw that behavior with Red Hat. Is there a case of this happening with other distros, or are you making things up?
Nono, it's true. I've seen Red Hat do this often. If you admin redhat the normal way (eg. editing text files) it's a hell of an annoying experience. Find file with (say) hostname in. Edit hostname. Next time you reboot, the goddamn system has replaced it with one it had elsewhere. Talk to Red Hat fans about why it does it that way, they say it's for 'Ease of updating' or some such, cos the config files are comfortably distant... What's wrong with a plain text config??? I never had a problem with 'Ooh, I'm updating, let's see: tar cvfz backup.tgz
Finally Red Hat (and lots of other distros) have just added an awful lot of cruft in order to simplify life for the maintainers (I assume). It tends to break some of the 'standard' ways of doing things. Why, I remember back in the days of Red Hat 5.1 there used to be endless warnings all over every config file I tried to edit; "DO not edit this by hand! You'll break (whatever the editor was called that you were supposed to use)", LinuxConf I think it was, which, coincidentally, was my introduction to the security risks inherent in a Red Hat distribution that hasn't been severely edited.
Red Hat is broken, as far as I'm concerned. Unless the new version magically fixes all of these things, which, to be honest, I doubt.