Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Operating Systems Upgrades Linux

Slackware 14.0 Arrives 183

First time accepted submitter SgtKeeling writes "After 5 release candidates, a new version of Slackware has been released. From the website: 'Yes, it is that time again! After well over a year of planning, development, and testing, the Slackware Linux Project is proud to announce the latest stable release of the longest running distribution of the Linux operating system, Slackware version 14.0! We are sure you'll enjoy the many improvements. We've done our best to bring the latest technology to Slackware while still maintaining the stability and security that you have come to expect. Slackware is well known for its simplicity and the fact that we try to bring software to you in the condition that the authors intended. We will be setting up BitTorrent downloads for the official ISO images. Stay tuned to http://slackware.com/ for the latest updates.'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Slackware 14.0 Arrives

Comments Filter:
  • Torrents are up now (Score:5, Informative)

    by SgtKeeling ( 717065 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @07:20PM (#41495615) Journal
    Torrent files are now available here: http://www.slackware.com/getslack/torrents.php [slackware.com]
  • by Mr Foobar ( 11230 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @07:24PM (#41495637) Homepage

    Then I know all is well with the world.

    Thank you, Patrick!

  • Can I still use my "boot" and "root" floppies...?

    Though I've moved... not "up", really, but more "over" to Ubuntu, you're the source of many fond memories.

    Here's to hopefully many more fine releases to come. And, to be clear, I switched to another distro about the same time Patrick announced his intended "retirement", so it wasn't due to a lack of well-earned loyalty...
    • by yellowcord ( 607995 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @07:38PM (#41495721)

      You can still install via floppies... In fact looking at the FAQ page it looks like they haven't changed anything in the 16 years since my first install of Slackware. You can install through serial if your heart so desires.

      • by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @08:19PM (#41495967) Homepage

        You can still install via floppies

        LOL, I wonder just how many of us have installed it from floppies?

        It's only within the last 3-5 years that I threw out the 100 or so Slackware floppies from the very first time I installed Linux way back in '92 or '93 -- a 0.99a kernel, a huge pile of floppies, and the best fun to be had at the time.

        Ah ... installing Slackware with X-windows onto a 486-DX33 with 8MB of RAM and 320MB HDD. Good times that was.

        Xv for porn^H^H^H^Himages, slip to multi-task on a dialup connection, xdvi to preview output from LaTeX, gcc for coding, netscape for the few wbe sites that existed, usenet, ftp, and all the goodies to go along with it. I still remember the sheer awesome of having that environment.

        At one point, my computer had more CPU and RAM than the Sun workstations my friend could access at school ... of course, we had it tough, we only had VT100 access to old VAXen and printers with green-bar paper. And the DOS/Windows machines of the day were largely useless and crashy.

        The fact that everything is now mostly three orders of magnitude bigger is kind of amusing in retrospect. But at the time, it was some pretty cool stuff.

        Knowing UNIX and C got me my first job out of school. I may need to spool up a VM to put this on, my Ubuntu box is getting a little creaky and I've been hearing some things that make me want to find another distro anyway.

        • I managed the A, N, and D sets and most of X in 120 MB (8MB of which was swap!) on a 386DX25 with 8MB RAM :)

        • by Weaselmancer ( 533834 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @09:29PM (#41496337)

          A friend of mine in college gave me my first slack. He built his own computer (very cutting-edge in those days) 486-33. Got slack running on it. And used it for one of the greatest pranks I've ever seen.

          Two other friends of ours were roommates. One worked day shift, the other worked night shift. The only communication they had for months on end was a chessboard. First roomie was a chess nut, and quite a good player. Second roomie wasn't so great.

          So the Slackbox was devoted to running Gnuchess turned up to max. It would take 10 hours to compute a move. Second roomie would call Slackbox, get his move, and go to work. When he would come home from work he would dial up Slackbox and input First roomie's move.

          This went on for months. First roomie had no idea how he was getting his ass handed to him. Was a great laugh when everyone came clean about the prank.

        • by jbolden ( 176878 )

          I never did a fully Linux install from floppies but I did use distributions like Debian which required floppy boot. So you got the CD and that contained disk images you had to burn to 2 floppies to get the kernel booted enough to install the rest from CD.

        • Slackbuilds [slackbuilds.org] may sweeten the deal, too. Chances are if you want something that's not part of Slackware, someone's already done up a build script for it.

      • by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @09:50PM (#41496409) Homepage Journal

        The FAQ page also notes that Slackware is Y2K compliant. Good to know, just in case time ever starts moving backwards.

      • You can still install via floppies...

        I installed OS/2 first, pulled the distro from a BBS, then installed Slackware from boot floppies and the FAT partition where I downloaded the distro. If I remember correctly, this required significantly fewer floppies. And the 9600 baud modem could spend all night pulling down the distro for the next morning.

        What a nightmare

      • You can still install via floppies...

        No, you can't. The kernel hasn't even fit on a floppy for many years now.

    • by spauldo ( 118058 )

      I switched because I got sick of waiting on glibc. Once Slack 7 came out, Debian's package management had me hooked. Something about Slack 7 just never felt right to me - I was too used to 3.x.

      (Of course, back then I was downloading and compiling the X and GNOME source about once a month, but at least I didn't have to worry about the main system).

  • Sing it (Score:5, Funny)

    by kelemvor4 ( 1980226 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @07:31PM (#41495687)
    For slack's a jolly good distro...

    For slack's a jolly good distro...

    For slack's a jolly good diiiiistrooo...

    Which nobody can deny!
  • by AntEater ( 16627 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @07:38PM (#41495725) Homepage

    I downloaded and installed it onto my system from DVD. The system booted up. It found my network card and configured itself via DHCP. I didn't edit xorg.conf but startx loaded up the KDE desktop using the full resolution of my monitor. Plugged in a USB stick and it opened up a file manager with it's contents loaded. I used the system for quite a while and I only had to fire up the terminal to edit /etc/inittab to change the default runlevel to 4 so KDM would load at boot time. Fully an hour into this and I only had to edit one text file?!? What is this? I wanted Slackware, not Yoobuntoo or some other watered down, hand-holding, pick-out-my-clothes-for-me distro! Where's the pain? Where's the challenge? How can I project my true alpha-geek status by casually mentioning that I run Slackware if it's going to be this easy?? If this keeps up I'm going to have to switch to one of the BSDs or Linux from scratch. With my luck, they'll probably automate that process with shell scripts or something as well.

    • by nurb432 ( 527695 )

      Hate to break it to you but us in the BSD camp haven't been hand editing much lately either to get the basics going. I haven't edited a xorg.conf in years, or ttys to get x/kdm to run..

      Many ports even add themselves to rc.conf to auto start....

    • by diego.viola ( 1104521 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @07:54PM (#41495835)
      If you want pain go and use Windows.
      • by ThePeices ( 635180 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @08:15PM (#41495953)

        If you want pain go and use Windows.

        Yeah im using Win7 and the pain is unbearable. Im constantly having to....umm...well, ill think of it later im sure.

        Oh yeah and then it is a right pain in the arse having to constantly put up with ...umm....well actually, nothing yet.

        hmm having to think hard here...oh yeah, It runs so poorly on all of my ....actually, no it runs fast.

        umm....Out of the box after a fresh install i have to always...actually do nothing, it just...umm...works.

        and then theres all the obscure configuration of......errr.....well, nothing, it just works...again.

        Sorry OP im having a hard time here, what was your point again?

        • by AntEater ( 16627 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @08:36PM (#41496029) Homepage

          If you want pain go and use Windows.

          Sorry OP im having a hard time here, what was your point again?

          The point is that using Windows is painful. Your post reminded me of this thing I read about... I think it was called Stockholdm syndrome.

        • by mvdwege ( 243851 )

          I have a lab full of PC's that I just reinstalled this week that disagrees with you about having to do nothing on a fresh install.

          It was the good old Windows-not-recognising-anything, find-and-download-drivers dance. Windows has gotten better, but it still is a piece of crap.

          Never mind the complete absurdity when I first mistakenly downloaded the Win7Pro ISO instead of the SP1 ISO. That one didn't even recognise a SATA CDROM at boot. How old was SATA when Win7 was released?

          (And before someone whines about t

          • It's your own fault. Have not people been telling you to stop downloading software from untrusted sites ?

            You will get viruses and such if you insist of downloading from sites of disreputable companies
            who many times has been found guilty of intellectual property theft in courts.

            It's asking for trouble. Do what most people do - use a torrent!

        • by celle ( 906675 )

          "Sorry OP im having a hard time here, what was your point again?"

                You forgot about the three days of updating and rebooting after a fresh install. At least that was how long it took the last time I did it 6 months ago when I needed windows for a short stint of work.

    • by fredgiblet ( 1063752 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @07:58PM (#41495871)
      Install Gentoo
      • +1. Install gentoo if you want to edit files and play with the terminal.

        I think there is a GUI installer on the LiveDVD :-/. Download the minimal CD instead (also works as a pretty competent rescue disc if you don't have SystemRescueCD kicking around).

    • by MrDoh! ( 71235 )
      Ha! Someone who's used Slackware a lot before I can see!
    • You might want to try out Debian or Arch Hurd! I'm sure you won't be disappointed. Heck, if you could replace GNU Mach 3.0 w/ Minix 3.0, you'd be off to the races. Oh, and learn how to live only in emacs, and learn Lisp. You'll be all set!
    • by tsa ( 15680 )

      That's interesting. I used Slackware between 1995 and 2006 or so (you know, the days when next year was the year of Linux on the desktop), and then I bought a Mac and never looked back. Yes I tried Ubuntu and some other distros before doing my bold move but they also needed a lot of tinkering back then to get them to do what I wanted, and I was getting sick of having to do that all the time. Now that Apple is, how shall I put it, behaving strangely, I might go back to Linux one day or another. It's good to

  • I was surprised to see Network Manager added to Slackware. I think I might be moving my laptop back to Slackware.

  • Pat and Slackware (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IceNinjaNine ( 2026774 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @08:32PM (#41496015)
    My system at work: Redhat Enterprise 6.

    My primary system at home for the last sixteen years: Slackware.

    If you use it, and you love it, please buy a DVD or contribute if you can. I do.

    Remember, Patrick isn't some big conglomerate screwing everybody out of money; he's just a good guy putting out an old school yet quality distro and trying to make a living. He's got a family too.
    • by fm6 ( 162816 )

      So, why do you love it?

      • Simplicity, efficiency, and longevity. Slack hasn't changed all that much and gets the job done for some of us. That being said, it is definitely not for everybody. If somebody's really in the "I wanna learn Linux" mode, Linux From Scratch might be a better choice.
        • by fm6 ( 162816 )

          Well, that was a simple and efficient summary. Longevity remains to be seen.

      • by fikx ( 704101 )
        Easiest to change.
        not adding software or anything, but if I don't like how something works , Slackware is still easiest (at least for me) to figure out how to alter to do what I want...be it automating something at start-up, to changing how X works, to moving something or changing layout, I'm more likely to be able to manage what ever weird idea I have for my PC in Slackware than other distros. Slack has everything put together with screws and bolts instead of welds. When I'm done changing something in Sl
    • by FrankDrebin ( 238464 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @10:00PM (#41496473) Homepage

      My primary system at home for the last sixteen years: Slackware.

      All that and a /. id in the 2 millions. Presumably Slackware just got internet support.

  • by apharmdq ( 219181 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @08:43PM (#41496053)

    I've been waiting for this one for a while. Running Slack on my PC, my netbook, and my 10 year old laptop. I even managed to sneak it onto my work computer! Here's hoping Slackware keeps going for a long time . . .

  • Why Slackware? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by INowRegretThesePosts ( 853808 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @08:48PM (#41496067) Journal

    What advantage does Slackware have that makes up for its inconveniences?

    • Re:Why Slackware? (Score:5, Informative)

      by MrDoh! ( 71235 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @09:04PM (#41496167) Homepage Journal
      Good question. For me, purity, everything being in the 'right' place. After using SCO Unix for so many years (pre-crazyness), slackware felt right. The install was the same, it put things pretty much in the same place, tons of scripts/code I had just worked right off, and when they didn't, it was intuitive to fix. Also used to keep up to date with linux kernels more actively than others (probably because it assumed it's users were more techy and wouldn't have a problem editing what's needed). As to why to use it today compared to more friendly distros? Hmm, tough call. I'm not aware of anything it does that others don't do these days (though it's been a few years since I've used it in anger, probably a VM laying around somewhere with it). I'll download it, set it up in a VM (always useful to have for various reasons), and get back to the thread!
      • As a very early adopter of Slak and one who used it for 15 years before moving to BSD I can say the primary attraction to me was it was the most 'unix' like of the distros. I put things where they should go, they looked like they should and it never got much involved in package management sticking with zipped tars (though it did have scripts to 'manage' those if you wanted). With slackware you could do a lot more on your own and with less fear of breaking something.

        When I upgraded my last aging slackware

    • Re:Why Slackware? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Seeteufel ( 1736784 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @09:07PM (#41496181) Homepage
      Tradition, Slackware is the real thing. Nostalgic. It is the oldest distribution out there. It is ported to S/390. It follows the unix principles.
    • Because its more of a barebones distro. You add only the parts you need and maybe learn a bit in the process as well. Today I don't think you could even begin to configure Ubuntu using only a text editor. On a normal day do you even use 10% of the bundled programs on Ubuntu?

      • Because its more of a barebones distro. You add only the parts you need and maybe learn a bit in the process as well. Today I don't think you could even begin to configure Ubuntu using only a text editor. On a normal day do you even use 10% of the bundled programs on Ubuntu?

        Some bloat is the price for ease to use. And think Ubuntu runs fine even on lousy hardware (not counting very old hardware, but then you have Xubuntu or Lubuntu).

        I used to run Gentoo myself, for the fun and the speed-freakery (although t

      • debootstrap won't even install a kernel until it ask it to. That's pretty bare bones.

    • Re:Why Slackware? (Score:5, Informative)

      by apharmdq ( 219181 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @10:12PM (#41496543)

      The Slackware documentation has a summary on what makes it stand out:
      http://docs.slackware.com/slackware:philosophy [slackware.com]

      In other words, it really doesn't have a lot of inconveniences after all. I think the biggest reason I moved to Slackware in the first place was the glut of dependencies that were installed whenever I installed a package in Ubuntu. With Slackware, you start out with a good portion of the packages you need, and manage the rest when you do third party installs. And while that may seem challenging, it ends up being fairly easy, since once you have your install set up and customized the way you like it, you can run it for years without having to make any drastic changes.

      Also, the packages are all plain vanilla software, with very few distro-specific patches. While this tends to make the distribution seem less "uniform" out of the box, you also end up with more stability.

      Full version upgrades also tend to be easier and more stable overall. Granted there's more work done under the hood, and there's always a chance you can mess up, but I've found that every time I've made a mistake, I've been able to rectify it using some simple method.

      And that brings about the most important aspect of Slackware. It's the distro that puts you the closest to working with Linux, without having to delve through layers of "convenience" UI. It may seem harder at first, but after a bit of learning, you'll know Linux better than just about any other distro. (Excluding Linux from Scratch.)

      That said, Slackware isn't for everyone. If you just want a distribution that takes the minimum effort to get going, you're probably better off with some of the other big names. But if you have the time and a bit of spare hard drive space, I recommend giving it a try nonetheless. Just be patient.

      • It may seem harder at first, but after a bit of learning, you'll know Linux better than just about any other distro. (Excluding Linux from Scratch.)

        You know, it's interesting you bring this up. I had started my experience with Linux on Slackware in 2004 but haven't used it for about a year now (Windows 7 for the day to day desktop I'm typing this on and CentOS for my server). I had recently (last month) considered giving LFS a crack and started flipping through my VMs to see which distro I wanted to use as

    • Re:Why Slackware? (Score:4, Informative)

      by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Saturday September 29, 2012 @12:38AM (#41497015) Journal

      Slackware packages always include full devel libs and headers, and you never have to work-around the package manager fighting you about missing dependencies (which you compiled from source). Plus, the startup scripts are vastly simpler than those used in other distros, though not as simple as the BSDs.

      In short, Slackware is probably the friendliest distro to learn with, and has many of the features that people like about BSD, while still being Linux. I wouldn't deploy it to 50 machines I have to maintain, but it's a great choice for your one Linux desktop.

    • What inconveniences? Slackware is not for everyone. It can be used by everyone, of course, but it's meant to be set up and maintained by people who understand the basics of UNIX OS administration. If you are willing to (1) read the bloody manual and (2) edit plain text files in an editor of you choice, then you will find that Slackware is one of the most convenient distributions around.
      • What inconveniences?

        Pardon my ignorance, but don't you have to manually keep track of package dependencies on Slackware?

        How exactly do you install (say) Emacs on Slackware?

        • Emacs is included, as is the build script. From my experience, the build scripts often work with higher versions, so upgrading to the bleeding edge is straightforward: get the source and run the script.

          Thanks to sbopkg [sbopkg.org], slackbuilds.org, and the collections of build queue files, installing almost everything else is extremely painless and can be achieved in a simple menu-driven [google.com] interface.

          As for dependencies, no one tracks them except for the slackbuild maintainers. This may sound insane to people who tas

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What inconveniences? Not having adds from Amzon flashing on your desktop?

    • Simplicity and long-term convenience. The complications caused by those "conveniences" of other distros have a way of getting in the way at unexpected moments and making life very inconvenient. Doing the configuration right the first time by learning to understand what you're actually doing may take extra effort but pays off in the long run.
  • by VXneko ( 682884 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @08:50PM (#41496085)
    I'm sorry I left you for that whore Redhat but she was much easier (she came with the book). I went around the block a few times and am happy with Arch now... I'm sure you wanted to know that. I still think of you and your floppies from time to time...
  • ahh slackware... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Osgeld ( 1900440 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @09:04PM (#41496165)

    at one point I was left with a shitty old laptop, no cd drive, a hard disk with the slackware files on a dos partition, and a copy of "running linux". I learned a LOT over the next few weeks

    and would not want to do it again ... but totally suggest that anyone interested in linux does it at least once.

    • by omarius ( 52253 )

      This.

      I would not have the career I have today if it weren't for Slack, _Running Linux_, my 486SX/33, and the friends I was blessed with those fine days.

  • Slackware is the only distro that supports my HP NetServer [oneeyedman.net]. It may seem trivial, but there is an "old driver" and a "new driver" for the drive controller, and the new one doesn't work. Slackware is the only distro I have found that can boot the "old" (functional) driver. It saves me multitudes of issues
    • If you're happy with Slack then whatever, but I think I would have built my own Debian kernel by now.

      • Especially with Slackware, I always recompile my kernel. But I need an up and running system first. If I have no disk I can write to from start, it doesn't do me a whole lot of good
        • Especially with Slackware, I always recompile my kernel. But I need an up and running system first. If I have no disk I can write to from start, it doesn't do me a whole lot of good

          Is that odd monolith really your only computer? You can cross-compile from another system that's not even running Linux, if you have to.

  • Ah the joys (Score:4, Interesting)

    by santax ( 1541065 ) on Friday September 28, 2012 @09:52PM (#41496419)
    Slackware, you came on a more floppies than wing commander 2 did. And those where a lot of single sided floppies... I liked you, didn't understand much of you but I was young. You thought me well. Then I got a job working for SuSE and so I switched. During me work I discovered that apt-get was a little better than yast. So I switched to Debian. I went on to other employers, sometimes forcing me to use Windows. I still love Debian and use it, but I am typing this on Windows. Because I played a game before checking slashdot. Slackware, you thought me. You got me fired up for linux. And despite being a Debian-man now, I still think about you every so often. I hope you will see version 20. But please, on less floppies.
  • I am a Debian user. I have experimented with Slackware. Most recently I installed Slackware 13.37. But after a month I went back to Debian simply because I prefer to work with apt-get. I am personally more efficient with Debian. Having said that Slackware has been around for a long time. People who use it don't just like it...they love it. Slackware must be doing something right. My personal experience is that the community support on IRC #slackware is outstanding and must be one of the reasons for the d
  • by yanyan ( 302849 ) on Saturday September 29, 2012 @12:52AM (#41497063)

    Thank you, Patrick. Slackware changed my life. :-)

  • by fast turtle ( 1118037 ) on Saturday September 29, 2012 @09:34AM (#41498661) Journal

    Posted 14 hours ago and I still can't reach the main page for slackware. Pretty big slashdotting this time around. At least the distrowatch link to the torrent works

The only person who always got his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.

Working...