Slackware 10-RC1 Released

Chaxid writes "According to the latest Slackware ChangeLog, release candidate one of the next iteration of Slack is upon us. I asked Patrick Volkerding via e-mail if the 2.6 series of the Linux kernel would be included in this version, and this was his response: 'To have support for using the 2.6 kernel in the installer might not be a good idea quite yet, and it would delay the release a lot. I'm planning to wait on that for the next one'. It's worth noting the Slackware 10 RC1 is fully 2.6 compliant however." As TouchOfRed writes, though, "A test kernel 2.6.6 option is offered via the 'testing' tree. Slackware does not offer ISOs for the RCs (however there are some third party users that compile the RCs or the -Current tree regularly as ISOs), so if you are already running Slackware 9.1, you can use the excellent Swaret to upgrade to the latest packages (make sure you edit your /etc/swaret.conf prior of using swaret to allow for kernel upgrades and other options)." This release includes kernel 2.4.26 , Gnome 2.6.1+, KDE 3.2.3, GCC 3.4, XOrg 6.7 and more.

Can anyone say why they don't release...

[Dagny Taggert]

ISO's of RCs? Is it to help the guys selling ISO CDs? Seems to me they would want to make it easier to get and test.

How odd

[Anonymous Coward]

This release includes kernel 2.4.26 , Gnome 2.6.1+, KDE 3.2.3, GCC 3.4, XOrg 6.7 and more.

Not much interested in those. Half the reason I run Slackware is because it's not bleeding edge and bloated. Good to see they don't force 2.6 on the users.

Happiness :)

[Killjoy_NL]

It fills my heart with glee that a fellow dutchy is making (among other people of course) one of the more popular linux distros.

Congrats to him (and the team)

Terminology nit-pick

[johnw]

Surely you can't release an RC? You can issue an RC, but once it's released it's a release, not a release candidate.

PAM? 2.6?

[hkb]

Until Slackware has a solid PAM implementation, it will be delegated to my smaller, simpler tasks. And yes, I've read Patrick's rants about his dislike of PAM.

And 2.6 is quite stable, not to mention a hell of a lot faster than 2.4... so why are we still stuck in the stone age? If you want to be really elitist about it, stick with 2.2...

Wow, 10 already?

[Nick of NSTime]

Slackware was the first distro I ever used, way back in 1995. I had read about Linux in a small InfoWorld article, back when InfoWorld was tabloid size instead of regular magazine size. The article said you could run an entire operating system on a single floppy disk. Of course, I had to try this on my 386SX with 4M RAM. I downloaded Slack over a 14.4 modem and then copying it all to a set of floppy disks. I wish I could remember the name of that tool. Anyway, I ended up installing Slackware using UMSDOS so I could keep my DOS/Windows data.

I remember I had to completely reinstall Slackware any time I wanted to add a new piece of software because I didn't know how it all worked. The very first question I asked on a Linux newsgroup was, "What's darkstar?" It, of course, was the default hostname for a new Slackware install. Heh. Starting X would dump you into fvwm with only an xterm and a pager; not much has changed there. :)

Ultimately I used that Slackware machine to learn about Unix and make the move from client-focused to enterprise-focused. Those were fun times.

Re:Slack

[gorre]

Cousin to Gentoo I guess you would call it. Glad to see it's still chuggin along. I may just have to install it again one day.

No offence, I have used Gentoo myself for some time, but what makes you think Slackware is a cousin to Gentoo? The only thing that I can think of that they have in common is they're both Linux distributions.

Need some help...

[hot_Karls_bad_cavern]

Okay, i am a linux user of several years. Mostly Red Hat, but i've had Suse, Mandrake and Gentoo at various times, but never Slack or Debian.

i'm told it doesn't get more stable than Debian Stable, but i normally hear people say Slack is hard to install or hard to work with. Why is that? And can someone please clear that up for me? i'm not trolling, i just don't know enough about Slack to see why people would want to run it. Is it small and fast and just less "junk" to worry about for security reasons? Help me out!

heh, i've also heard Slack mentioned amidst some rather colorful expletives (i know the feeling though :(

Re:The only real linux distribution!

[LnxAddct]

Don't speak until you've used it. I've used nearly every distro including slack, debian, and fedora. Fedora is the only one that "just works" and works really well. It doesn't hide things from the user but its simple enough for newbies. I like slack, but Debian and Fedora IMHO are slightly better. Fedora has been my distro of choice since its first release. I can just give it to friends and they can use it, I can use it as a secure server, or anything I pretty much want. Debian does have some advantages, which is why I run it on most servers. And slack has its place, as does every distro, but the only thing that I see slack has that the others don't is the history. It is a great distro, but hardly the best, or the only one worth using. Oh, and the best community support I've seen has come from the Fedora community, ask a question in a debian or slack irc channel and you'll get nothing but trolled and told how stupid you are, even for fairly advanced questions(at least thats been the majority of my experiences), where as fedora always has someone willing to help.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Need some help...

[kevin_conaway]

Slack is great for those users who like to be able to tweak their systems down to the bone. Not to say you cant do this in other distros, it is just easier in Slackware. Its a very bare bones, highly configurable distro. That appeals to many folks (myself included).

Re:Wow, 10 already?

[ism]

The tool to write the images to floppy, rawrite?

I used that the other day for an old machine that couldn't boot from CD. First time I used that was about the same time you did. I got Slack 2.2 or 2.3 (can't remember) off a Linux Unleashed book. I give more credit to that book since it pointed me to the right distro for learning. Turns out it's a great server distro too!

Re:KDE

[Schrambo]

I do. I'm only a newcommer to the loving arms of slackware(9.1) for about 4 months now. The non-bloatness. With slackware I am in total control of my system. so what slack is manaul configuring and it doesn't have the greatest auto hardware detection. In my eyes thats a good thing. it makes you learn, and with slackware you learn fast.

Re:Fully 2.6 compliant

[13Echo]

I'm currently using 2.6.6 with Slackware 9.1, but I noticed this too... While it works fine, the hotplug system seems to not work as well as it did with 2.4.22. Most specifically, ALSA seems to act a little goofy, but it's nothing that can't be fixed by adding a specific init command to load the proper modules. As for the rest of the important stuff (power management, networking, etc.) - I just built all of that into the kernel instead of making it into modules.

Re:Can anyone say why they don't release...

[Short Circuit]

That doesn't really help those of us who burn ISOs at work in order to take them home, where we don't have an internet connection. (Yes, Linux is still useful without the Internet. :)

Re:Can anyone say why they don't release...

[boojit]

Sure it does. Just download the distro at work (using straight rsync or swaret or even FTP if you want but that doesn't work very well) and then build your own ISOs from the distro. It's a piece of cake, there is even a text file there to tell you exactly how to build the ISO. You can even build your own CD with just the packages you want on it, so you can have the whole thing on 1 CD if you want.

If all else fails, unofficial sites do release ISOs of the current releases. Some have been mentioned in this forum.

DaC

Re:KDE (mod parent up)

[murderlegendre]

You make such a fine point, I could hardly agree more. Slackware has contributed more to my general knowledge of *nix-like systems than any other single entity. Slackware *does* force you to learn, but allows one to do it at their own speed. After almost six years using Slackware, I can sit down at virtually any Linux distro (or for that matter, *BSD) and soon have the task at hand complete.

I don't want to perpetuate the old myth that 'if you know Slack, you know BSD', but Slack does more to stomp out the learned helplessness that cripples most user's *nix experiences, especially those unfortunate enough to have grown up in Walt Microsoft World.

I never thought that computing could ever again be as fun and rewarding as the days when I pounded out terrible BASIC on my C-64. Slackware has brought all of this joy back, in droves. I am forever grateful to Patrick for all his years of hard work. As an aside: visualize a distro maintainer that actually listens to user comments and wishes, and seems, by all accounts, to be a nice, regular person.

Re:Terminology nit-pick

[nine-times]

It seems like everyone is going "release candidate" crazy lately. It seems to me that "release candidate" used to mean "we think this may end up being the 'final' version, but we're going to do some testing, just to make sure. If we don't encounter any HUGE bugs, this will be final." Developers didn't even hit RC2 unless there was some big and unexpected bug in RC1.

Now, people are releasing release candidates as "a full release that we don't yet guarentee is free of bugs", but they don't exactly guarentee the final release is bug-free either, so I'm never sure what the difference is. Plus, they plan on going through 3 release candidates before the final release, which means that "Release Candidate 1" is never really a candidate for release as "final", and yet it is released. It seems like either the terminology or numbering schemes could use some revision to reflect what the developers actually mean.

Re:KDE

[happyfrogcow]

they are not at all mutually exclusive really, as far as applications go. If i have gnome libs installed and kde libs installed, I can run a gnome based app right alongside a kde based app.

hell, i have kde installed in slackware and never actually use kde as a desktop environment. there are a few apps that are built for kde that I use.

Re:Can anyone say why they don't release...

[ThisIsFred]

What's so bad about a Slackware subscription for $25 a year? Consider it a donation to the Slackware Project.

Re:Mod this one a troll Re:Slack

[ThisIsFred]

Who said this? Slackware and Gentoo appear to me as polar opposites. Slackware is simple and stable, Gentoo is fast and current. About the only thing the two have in common is that both are very powerful in the hands of clueful users, whereas RedHat/Mandrake layer on click-n-drool cruft that makes what should be simple fixes for simple problems into sheer frustration.

Re:Slack

[bbowers]

Slack is the oldest active Linux distribution, however it's worth noting that Slackware is a distribution of Linux and not a distribution "based on" Linux like many others.