An Old Hacker Slaps Up Slackware 240
cdlu writes "What do you get when you mix an old hacker with an old distribution? A good old review of the recently released Slackware 10.2." Joe Barr over at Linux.com (owned by the same company as Slashdot) lays down his thoughts on everything from the install to reliability and user loyalty.
Where's my slackintosh? (Score:3, Interesting)
OSTG (Score:1, Interesting)
Isn't it interesting that, for all the bitching Slashdotters do about corporate-owned shills, advertising, poor service, and biased reporting, they turn none of that critical eye toward Slashdot?
Slashdot's corporation has a vested interest in reporting pro-Linux stories and anti-Microsoft stories. Google uses Linux, so we get lots of pro-Google stories.
So, the next time someone is ranting about capitalism on Slashdot, point them toward the banner ads on the page and the fact that Rob Malda and the other editors are employees of OSGT, and that Slashdot is bought and paid for.
Good old Slackware.. (Score:1, Interesting)
It's still my favorite distributed when I need to install Linux fast (takes about 15 minutes), the CD contains lots of packages.
It is really a do-it-all-yourself kind of distribution, as the author of the article also found out.
Installed Slack in 1995 (Score:5, Interesting)
I like Slackware's minimalist approach, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Joe Barr (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good old Slackware.. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the number one reason I've been using it since 3.6 or so. The installer is good and simple, with no multi-level dependencies to get tripped up on, or to cause unwanted bloat. The defaults are all "wrong" for what I want, but deselecting them is quick. And if you need to add just one package, mount the CD and do an installpkg. The number two reason is it's a great distro if you absolutely don't want a GUI.
I had actually given up on Linux in favor of OS X on cheap older Macs, but I needed Linux for something recently, so I downloaded and burned the first two CDs and it installed nice and quick. The only problem I had was that the hard drive had an earlier Slackware install, and I ran a full install on top of that. I had already moved the /etc directory out of the way, but the package lists were still in /var. So I nuked them and installed it again with no more problems.
well to be honest... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Seems like a basic review of a basic Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Well said. Slackware was the first distro I personally installed (around version 9.0 IIRC) and I still use it on my webserver that just sits there and I rarely touch (I think the uptime is about 8 months now). It is not necessarily for the light-hearted, but if you're a CS, CE, or EE student who wants to get down and dirty with operating systems and knows enough to be dangerous, Slackware is definitely an excellent distro to start on because it is simple yet robust. The other distros (outside of maybe gentoo and debian) are getting away from complexity and are moving towards usability. This is just fine for the wider market, but if you want to play with the inner workings, it's harder to find anything easier to start with than Slackware. Once you master Slack, you can head onto Gentoo and make a relatively smooth transition if you really want a customized box. You could also migrate back towards Ubuntu, Red Hat, or SuSE and be able to get that much more from those distros. Don't count Slackware out just yet.
Re:32bit Slackware on AMD64 (Score:3, Interesting)
What is Slamd64?
Slamd64 is an *unofficial* port of Slackware to x86_64.
This is like saying that if someone's rip-off of Red Hat's code crashes on you then Red Hat is crap. There is NO port of Slackware to 64-bits. There doesn't need to be. Slackware 32 is blinding fast already and does what it's designed to do, run on any 32-bit of above computer, EVEN 64-bit X86 compatibles. Just cos it's not optimised for it, it doesn't mean it's slow or "wrong" to run the 32-bit version. In fact, even the early Pentiums and 486's are still supported by the base install. There's even still a way to install from floppy, for goodness sake.
Slackware is designed to be stable, secure, and predictable. That's why it's targeted at and used by servers, not desktops.
Great things about Slackware (Score:5, Interesting)
Consequently you don't find stuff hand hacked and installed in strange places. If the man page says its in "X" location, that's where it is. Too many distros take a third party app, modify it so that the way they install it is different from what the original INSTALL file says, which makes it fustrating to troubleshoot.
Slackware - i know no other OS (Score:4, Interesting)
Slack 10.2 makes it tons easier to boot from CD and even get the network up before you even boot into your installed OS, to be able to download any patches or setup NFS you need or copy special conf files down.
If you want to do a complex install like I have (setting up software RAID on a 2.6 kernel running an AMD64-Dualcore with a Shuttle ST20G5), you can setup the raid from the boot CD, install everything, and patch your
Without Slackware, I probably would have never been interested in Linux at all.
Re:First post for slackers (Score:2, Interesting)