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Linux Software

Slackware 5.0 Coming 122

Posted by justin++ from the glibc-at-last dept.
cyan writes "It appears that Slackware is finally going to be glibc based. This was revealed today via an announcement which was sent to the slackware-announce mailing list. A directory called "slackware-current has appeared on cdrom.com, so people may take a look at what's in store if they wish. Note that this should in no way be considered "stable", it's more for testing purposes. Check out the ChangeLog.txt for details; looks promising for all us Slackware freaks ;) " It seems the Slackware folks have been quite busy recently...
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Slackware 5.0 Coming More

Slackware 5.0 Coming

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  • This is good to hear. Despite all the crap the Slack guys have taken for sticking with libc5 for so long, I think their timing is perfect. When glibc2 first came out, a large portion of the software out there, which was all written for libc5, wouldn't compile against it without extensive tweaking. (My personal theory is that that's the reason that so many newbies (which tend to use Red Hat) are convinced that compiling is hard, but that's beside the point...)

    Then we reached the point where some things were requiring glibc2, but many things still didn't compile under it, so Slack 4.0 included glibc2, but was still based on the old stable libc5. Now, however, most everything compiles under glibc2, so it's time to make the transition... and that's what Slackware's doing.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Might have you beat. A 486/66 with a 170HDD, RH6.0 and X. But no emacs and no compilers but I do have 20meg free on it.

  • Xmms, realplayer G2 require glib2 but i got them running on my SLack 4 box. How, you ask? Compile thead safe libs and libstdc++ with glib2. Or just download the packs from the server above. Solve the problem just don't whine about it.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The average Slackware user is not the average Red Hat or SuSE user and usually able to compile and upgrade from source him/herself.

    With a little help from /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/Glibc2-HOWTOI installed glibc2 on my Slackware 3.5 box _without_ any problems. Recompiled (and upgraded while I was busy) a bunch of other libs and programs and voila, my system is glibc2 based. Without having to reboot.

    Sure, there's libc5 binaries left but they'll dissapear as I continue to upgrade packages. I thought this was the true Slackware way.. do it yourself. I've heard people with perfect Internet connections say: "I am going to buy the new RH because it has a newer version of SomeProg" while most of them could have easily downloaded and compiled the latest version themselves, and I know they have the skills.

    But perhaps I'm just plain old-fashioned.
  • >I've installed Windows 95 on a 486 DX-33 with a >120meg HD and 8 megs of RAM. It _crawled_, but >still ran.

    I installed 95 on 486 66mhz, with a 200mb HD and 4 megs of ra,m, it was aweful.

    Linux is Muy Bueno. It runs on anything from a lowly 386, to the latest and greatest Alpha processor.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Wow, a distro that gives back to the community (what has Slackware done in the past 1-2 years), is getting press attention (not to mention venture capital from a heavy hitter), and adheres to the spirit of Open/Free Software and you have the nerve to call them lame. Have you even *tried* Mandrake?

  • Well then mrpacmanjel , can you help me out?!?!
    I had Slack 3.6 running on my Compaq 486/33 LTE with XFree86 on that compaq-vga chipset. I upgraded to 4.0 and I cant get it working to save my life. I accidentally deleted my old XF86Config file and am at a loss. Please e-mail me [mailto]...
    Thanks for any help,
    Johnny O
  • Sorry, there is no good reason to use slackware anymore. It's always late, it's missing many packages, and its package management sucks.

    I find it interesting that some people have the balls to say that having few packages and a braindead package manager is a feature...

    If you want a small distro, Red Hat is indeed not
    what you should choose, but Debian is just fine.
    As for too many packages in Debian, well, just don't install them.

    It's also interesting that some people think that
    the mere presence of RPM or dpkg, and a bunch
    of pre-built packages somehow prevents them from
    rebuilding from source...

    Sure, if you're an old time linux user, slackware
    is fine, but that's because you don't care what
    distrib you use since you rebuilt your whole system anyway.
    As for new users, I shudder at the though of them
    trying slackware instead of a saner, better built
    distro.
  • Likewise: your car, refrigerator, alarm clock, photocopier, fax machine, etc... Yet, we're not expected to tear all of these things apart and know how they work before using them. "I'm sorry, you can't have that cup of decaf until you grok the chemical process by which it came to be. And you better be able to build a Mr. Coffee from scratch, or you don't deserve to live." Why must we constantly measure our computer peckers against one another by pulling this ridiculous bullshit that would get us all laughed out of any other sane community?
  • Hmmm, I like this idea! A few modifications of course. GNU utilities should be OS neutral (of course), so it should be generic enough to handle packages for non-Linux and non-GNU systems. Make it work with BSD, Solaris, etc., and you'll have a winner. Have a low-level translation layer, on top of which would be a LSB layer or a BSD layer, etc. Such a system could even be adaptable to d.f. systems like Windows.

    It needs to be generic, and it will probably need a project site to upload various .gpm packages to until the distros catch on. Also create a generic packager on the order of automake/autoconf (autopack?).

    I'm already working on my own projects. Anyone out there interested in taking the ball and running with it?
  • Is there a reason to recompile ALL daemons even on a server? If I use apache and default package does not suite me, I can still recompile and rebuild the custom deb or rpm package and install it. ANd it still will integrate with the whole system and not get on your way.. Another thing I like about Debian (not sure about redhat), a simple, 'apt-get update;apt-get upgrade' will sync your system with the latest packages available on ftp mirrors, so pretty much you don't have to worry about security updates.
  • Xmms doesn't require glibc2. I compiled it myself with libc5, but did have to create thread-safe Xlibs first (this is easy, just install libc5 linuxthreads and recompile from the Xfree distribution).

    On FreeBSD xmms runs even without thread-safe Xlibs, since it runs without threads at all. That's also possible, without any performance loss.

    Btw on single-CPU systems using multithreading brings nothing, only bugs and hard-to-debug programs. It is way easier and more reliable to do concurrent tasks within a single process with interrupts etc.

  • I'll tell you why it took so long: because some irresponsible distribution vendors (almost all except for Slackware) last year came with glibc2.0 based distributions. glibc2.0 is incompatible with glibc2.1, but since it has the same major release number, they cannot coexist. This is what has created a real mess.

    Note that the glibc developers have always said that glibc2.0 was an alpha release. It should never have been used in the real world!

    If everyone would have done like Slackware, wait until glibc2.1 is out and stable, then everyone would do the switch now, and it would have taken only a few months instead of more than a year.

  • Here's a challenge - try doing that with Windows95/98/2000 !!!


    You can do it, by much the same method (hand-picking packages to install). I've installed Windows 95 on a 486 DX-33 with a 120 meg HD and 8 megs of RAM. It _crawled_, but still ran.


    I can get Windows 98 down to 200 megs without too much effort. Not sure what the minimum size is.


    The biggest difference that I know of is that Windows performance suffers terribly with less RAM, less disk space, and a slower machine, while Linux's doesn't (unless you're doing compiles or using processor-intensive applications or have a huge desktop).


    I haven't used BSD extensively, but I suspect that it behaves similarly.


    Windows 2000 is a renamed NT 5.0. Different beast from the 9x series, and more resource-hungry. I have no idea what the minimum practical installation size is for it.

  • Actually, the glibc run times have been included in the Slack distribution since Slack 3.6

  • I've been thinking about doing this (I think it'd be a GREAT way to learn more about Linux!). One
    thing I oughta warn you, if you're sticking with the stable kernel tree - 2.2.12 won't compile with gcc 2.95 according to the notes - you gotta use 2.7.2.

    Anyway, about your own linux - do you have any advice on what to install and what order? I'll likely be waiting for Linux 2.4 & XFree86 v4 before I try doing mine, but I've got a lotta research to do first!
  • What is the time estimate on this? I run Slack 4, and am itching for Slack 5 with glibc2, amongst other additions :) Kevin
  • I personally use slackware because most of it has to be configured and maintained by hand after the initial installation. There are scripts to simplify some of it, but I ignore many of them (netconfig will munch any tweaking I've done to the networking setup). I enjoy hand-tuning the configuration, and dislike distributions that have extensive autogeneration scripts that try to do all of the configuration for me (coughcoughCalderacough).


    This is just personal taste. Slackware is actaully very _unfriendly_ for casual users or users who don't want to have to be constantly tinkering with the guts of the system when installing or reconfiguring something. I just happen to like configuring things myself.


    I'm told that Debian is also good for this, and doesn't _make_ you do this, but I haven't had a good reason to switch so far.

  • Check out the Slackware Advocacy (beta) web site [slackware-advocacy.org]. Here are your reasons:

    • Stable
    • Solid
    • Simple
    • Sensible
  • Slackware's package management sucks. One thing that I hate most about it is that you can NOT upgrade the distribution without reinstalling and trashing the whole system and its settings.

    I have a Debian box, that I have been using for 2 years without reinstalling. It was 1.3(Bo), then upgraded to 2.0 (hamm), then 2.1 (slink) soon will install 2.2 (all upgrades over ftp using dselect ftp access method). RedHat Is very upgradable too. I have a 5.2 system that began its life as 5.0. Use slackware if you want but you'll have to reinstall it whenever you need to upgrade it, I don't fell like it, have better things to do...
  • i would love it if it this would be glibc2.1. it's amazing how obsolete glibc2.0 is getting (mozilla).
  • Just click on the drop box that shows HTML formatted in it, and switch it to your preference.
  • It is really hard to talk about why one likes a distro more than another with out it becoming an opinion poll. As for me ,I bought my first 52 floppy set from LSL in the early 90's, I continue to like the fact that a Slackware machine is closer to a roll you own. When you use RPM's to manage that packages on your machine you loose some flexability and freedom in your design. I like compiling my own applications and setting the directories the way I want them. And editing those pesky files....... I love it. Finally to be short and specific, It is my box mistakes and all. I built, configured, compiled and screwed up all by myself.
  • I've noticed that everyone keeps complaining that Slackware doesn't include a good package management system and therefore is a weak distro. Well guess what folks, the RPM program is distributed under the GNU license! You can download it, compile it, and start using RPMs no matter what distro you have. Of course, most binary RPMs are glibc based and won't work on current Slackware setups, but that's no biggie because SRPMs (source RPMs) are just as easy to use as RPMs! In a few simple commands you can have a package installed and compiled, in a couple more simple commands you can have it gone again. You might as well go ahead and learn how to install .tgz's by hand once you are comfortable with the file system, but having RPM installed is still nice for the (oft mentioned) reason of "this program SUCKS! rpm -e gnome!"

    Oh yeah, one word of advice, you will need to pretty much always use "--nodeps" when installing RPM on a non-RedHat system because it will think there is absolutely nothing installed on your system and will fail when it checks for package dependancies.

  • So did the Red Hat IPO prompt the slack slackware people to pull their thumbs out of their collective asses and start to make some progress?
    I love slackware to death... it's what I started on with linux. It was sad to see it fall behind. This is definitely a good thing. Maybe some VCs (venture capitalists) waved some cash under their noses? Who knows?

    -ali
  • Yeah, I have ported a slack 4.0 on my 386 halfway and find utils broke at me too.

    It seems that there is a port on ftp://sagen.hoxnet.com that *has* find, but that i686 specific code in it..
  • Sorry if I sound rude but...

    Pkg management is a lie. If you ever find yourself administarting a commercial unix you won't find any rpm's.

    No. What slackware needs is a good bootstrap building procedure like "make world" on bsd combined with some sort of simplified cvs, again, like bsd. I run FreeBSD and Slack, and FreeBSD impressed me with this.

    That would kick the shit out of any other linux distro...

    On account of rpm's and deb's, they make you lazy.
  • Why must we constantly measure our computer peckers against one another by pulling this ridiculous bullshit that would get us all laughed out of any other sane community?

    Because many of us went through HELL and back to be able to do what we do with our systems - we're not the kind of people who look at 2 years learning to figure out how to really use Linux well as a waste of time. We consider that 2 years an investment in our future - because we know how things work. In our eyes, any program which tries to hide it's inner workings from us is a problem - which is precisely why we're saying "no" to Windows for servers at least.

    And I think anybody needing to tweek bad enough would figure out a way to get water boiled and beans ground. I consider not knowing how to boil water to be a serious lack of ability for the average human over 10 years old, don't you?

    Blink.
  • We've all got things we're working on I betcha, but I'm gonna at least draft a spec. Check my site for more information (www.psychodeli.com)

    I'm gonna go work on that right now :)
  • ...because we didn't jump the gun and base our distribution on prerelease glibc versions. That sorta goes against our whole stability philosophy. Other distributions had a head start when glibc2 finally got an actual release. Good for them. We weren't interested enough in a head start to use prerelease software. It's just the way we do things.

    --Logan
  • Okay, I felt a need to respond to this. The answer is no. We've been working on the glibc2 version since the release of 4.0, because we decided glibc2 was ready and it's relatively safe to base our distribution on it. Most of the recent progress in other arenas (website, mailing lists, etc.) has been largely due to the fact that three of the core team members are, in fact, in school (and have also been working). Just recently have we had some real time to put into the Project.

    I'm not sure why people have the impression that we "fell behind"... our marketing isn't up to the speed of some other distributions', and we waited til glibc2 looked reasonably stable to start basing Slackware on it, but that's really just a matter of sacrificing a head start to retain our (I think) well-deserved reputation for stability... just a difference in philosophy. I think a lot of people have (had?) a poor understanding of the libc5/libc6 issue, based largely on a "newer is better" and "everyone else is doing it" kind of thought process.

    --Logan
    Slackware Linux Project
  • 1. Small, yet complete dist that remains true to Unix.

    2. Installed from *.tgz packages, which means no new package format was used, and I can unpack slack even on a win machine..

    3. Always the emphasis is on "robustness". You can check bugtraq for all RH's or Debian's bugs (e.g. /tmp/.X11-unix bug.)


    Inother words:
    RH is for windows haters.
    Slack is for Unix lovers.
  • OK, and people that tinker with their cars and know their engine inside out, don't. Granted, they get much better performance out of their cars, and they probably have fewer problems with them because they know exactly when something goes wrong, but they don't insist that everyone else should be the same way. They still accept that most people have better things to do, so they should just go buy a new car from the dealer and go to Jiffy Lube every few months. I honestly believe that 90% of the people with this extremist attitude don't even believe in it, they just want to do anyhting possible to avoid being labeled a newbie.

    I'm also not saying that it's a waste of time to learn how to use one's system... quite the opposite. But ultimately, it's not for everyone, and if it weren't for things like rpm, we'd have much more trouble attracting non-Linux users and breaking into the workstation market. I use my machine primarily as a workstation, so building stupid applications like my CD player from source so I can squeeze 2% extra performance on them (not bloodly likely on my piece of shit Cyrix P150) just isn't worth the effort. What possible benefit does that get me? Gee, I know that my CD application is rock solid because I built it from source! Who cares? And at the other end, my aging Cyrix box really doesn't have the time (nor do I) to built XFree86, but I've come to trust someone else to do that for me. Of course, if there weren't source available I'd probably start looking elsewhere, but I don't feel this overwhelming urge to waste an entire day trying to build that source tree. It's a giant bloated piece of crap. I download the SVGA server, run it, and forget about it.

    I've only been using Linux for four years, so I still consider myself a relative newbie with only a moderate level of skill. But... if some of these people stopped trying to be the most badass, hard kore users, we MIGHT stop scaring away the tourists.
  • How did I get First Post, you ask? This story came up on NewsNow before it made it to the front page of Slashdot.org. Interesting.

    News Now NewsLink: Linux [newsnow.co.uk]
  • Hey at last!

    This is one of the best distributions of Linux I have used - it was also the one that introduced me to Linux back in '96.

    I remember thinking - "Hey this is really cool...but not very useful!"

    It's now 1999 and I now have a home network with a 486 server running RH5.2 - Samba, Apache etc..
    I also use AbiWord, netscape, Lynx, Gimp and a s***load of other USEFUL apps -
    I guess one has to eat one's words!
    .
    .
    Anyway where was I? Oh yes..

    I still think Slackware is one of the best distribs.

    The thing I like about Slackware above the the other distribs is that; it is compact, very flexible installation and the authors prefer stability over 'new features'.

    Hell, it is running on a 300Mb partition on my Compaq 486/25 Lite laptop and Xfree is installed!

    Try doing that with Red Hat!

  • I got so fed up of waiting for this to happen that I rolled my own setup. Everything on my system I have personally compiled, and all is glibc2.1, except for findutils which fails to compile. I can unfortunatly only work on it at weekends, until I change jobs.

    This weekend I will be upgrading to gcc-2.95.1, installing PPP. KDE 1.1.2 should be out the week after.

  • Hell, it is running on a 300Mb partition on my Compaq 486/25 Lite laptop and Xfree is installed!

    Try doing that with Red Hat!

    I've got RH5.0 on an AMD 486/66 in 100MB+80MB of HDD, admittedly sans X, but with emacs and GNAT.

    - Aidan

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I dont see this moving to stable till 2.4 kernel is released this fall. Also this has been on slackware.com for weeks now as news but just monday there was a /slackware-current dir.
  • finally, my first distrib, going to be based on glibc. No more fighting to get things to work (as w/3.4 and whatnot). I may still move to Debian (to stick w/the same init script type), but at least now I may be able to feel some Linux nostalgia :)

  • As an ardent Slack user since 3.0 (kernel 1.1.12), I love Slackware! It's great to see the glibc support rolled in. Unlike RHAT, SuSE (I've tried both), Slackware is solid and reliable.

    Many people that I know switched from Slackware to RHAT to be able to run Oracle. All of those who switched say that as soon as Slack is glibc based, they'll switch back!

    I wonder how many other users will switch back to the most stable Linux distribution around?

  • What exactly is the difference between GLIBC and the current standard (I forget its name)? How will this benefit all of us Slack-users?


    If I understand correctly, the main functional difference is a different format for binaries. This means that you can't link object files produced with glibc with object files produced with libc5. This doesn't matter if you're compiling everything from source code (because your compiler will give you the same binary format that the rest of your system uses), but it makes it impossible to link in libraries that you receive just as binaries (object files) that are in the wrong format.


    Disclaimer: I haven't messed with the compilers in detail, so I may have missed several very large points :).

  • You'll notice that, yes, it's the same author. The first and second post were posted within minutes of each other. Could it be, they do indeed appear to originate from the same person.

    Anyway, my evil-bastard-modded Slackware 3.6 (now on Kernel 2.2.9 w/ Andreas patch 3 + devfs, as well as Cyrus, and some Slackware 4.0 packages) server will remain the same, but I am quite eager to get glibc2 on my desktop machine :-)
  • The whole libc5/glibc2 transition took orders of magnitude longer than it should have, thanks to the foot dragging efforts of slackware among others (Hiyah, Caldera!).

    Why is this important? The next time you hear some Berst wannabe complaining about incompatibilities amongst the distributions, this is one of the big things they're talking about. Programs compiled against libc5 won't run if only glibc2 is installed, and vice versa.

    I'm not suggesting that distributions jump on every bandwagon that comes along, but how many years ago was development on libc5 stopped in favor of glibc2?

    This is why I support a Linux Standard Base.
  • Jee, XMMS works fine!

    ftp://rasputin.linuxos.net

    Look at the Slackware packages. I love it! :-)
  • Someone asked for a "Why Slackware" type advocacy thing, and here's my lame and feeble attempt at such a thing.

    Let me begin saying that in 1996 I first started messing with Linux based on a couple of books, an unleased book and Linux Configuration and Installation. LC&I was written by Pat Volkerding, the creator of Slackware, and at that time at least Slack was the predominant Linux distribution.

    The case to be made for Slack is quite simple really - once you learn where stuff is, you know where to find stuff. It's the old Windows versus Linux argument all over again - with Slack I can fix my system when it breaks, because I've gone through enough Pain And Suffering (tm) learning about it to know where stuff goes. Now I can make my system sit up and beg. I pity the po' fools who get themselves a copy of redhat to "mess with linux" and end up using Windows a week after because they were unable to accomplish anything with their new OS.

    The case to be made for using Slack is the case to be made for using Linux.
  • ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/slackware-current/GL IBC_WARNING: "These packages are linked with glibc-2.1.1, so don't install them on Slackware 4.0 or earlier. They will not work unless you've installed glibc-2.1.1."
  • pkgtool is your friend.
  • From /usr/src/linux-2.2.12/README -
    - Make sure you have gcc-2.7.2 or newer available. It seems older gcc
    versions can have problems compiling newer versions of Linux. This
    is mainly because the older compilers can only generate "a.out"-format
    executables.

    And from my dmesg:
    Linux version 2.2.12 (root@elvii) (gcc version 2.95.1 19990809 (prerelease)) #1

    Seems to be working thus far. :)

    The only "showstopper" bug I've seen in gcc 2.95+ is not using -fno-strict-aliasing flag under 2.95 to compile kernel and similiar code results in broken stuff.. which top-level kernel makefile (at least) seems to use automatically, if required..

  • No, that's not my point, but that is what many people are saying here. I just feel compelled to point out that this is absurd. I'm not saying I don't like Slack, it's great for people that want a clean system, and I think the distro-war is ludicrously stupid. But... Lambasting people that want to use RPM/DEB/whatever packages is silly. A computer is a tool, used to solve OTHER problems. Many people don't have the time to build every last miniscule program they intend to use from source. And if I'm using a machine that (OS-wise) looks very much like every other RedHat (or Debian, or whatever) machine, why should I duplicate all that work? I quite often download some app I see to check it out. My console ends up looking like this:

    $ su
    $ rpm -U foo.rpm
    $ exit
    $ foo
    [ Realize it's some really lame package I don't want. ]
    $ su
    $ rpm -e foo.rpm

    I'm done! I'm sorry, but I can't justify building something that resides on my machine for less than a day from source. Maybe I'm just wierd in my usage habits, and I should stop trying out new software, but ultimately it seems silly to villify RPM and friends, who have done more to make Linux accessible to the masses than anything else. (And given his pragmatic view of things, I have to believe that Linus would approve of packages/prebuilt binaries.)
  • waved some cash under their noses?

    Not a very charitable thing to say.

    Money doesn't buy everything.

  • Whenever you stuck with rpm's, you're only option is to use rpm's to keep the database up to date. No way of telling the thing that you just added libfoo.bar.so.1.2.3 by *hand*...

    And not the whole UNIX world is packing stuff in *yet another pkg format*...

    The point is better made with debian, whose pkg format is even more obscure on the internet (Can't you remember all those site's saying "when we have time we'll make *.deb's"?).

    Pkg management should be kept for the *base* of your system, and thus be reduced to a minimum.

    It's not I want to piss off rpm's, it's just that I don't want my system to be dependant on a format.
  • I meant: what innovations has Slackware contributed *to* Open/Free Software (as in software developed by that particular group)? (BTW, Mandrake had differentiated itself enough from Red Hat so that it qualifies as a separate distribution...well enough to win awards).

  • You obviously haven't done a minimal Debian install. I have, and went so overboard that all I was left with was ed as an editor.

    As for dependencies, I have a clue about what I'm talking about, thank you very much. You can compile your stuff from source and either create
    your own packages to make the dependencies happy
    to simply use --nodeps to ignore dependencies when
    you install packages later. It's not all that hard, really...
  • I'm not sure how this guy did it at work, but he sez he did a "typical or full" installation of RedHat, and there was no compiler selected! Woah....

    Redhat 5.2. Full install. Gimme everything.

    Hey, where's g++?

    Not to mention the millions of layers of redirecting scripts and config files one has to go through just to find where something happens in a script. [Shudders].
  • I don't consider Slackware more solid that some other distributions (but I wouldn't include RH in the list). BTW, why is it that when you critize slackware, people compare it to RH, There is more than just RH...

    As for security and bleeding edge, sure slackware being so behind lets the other distribution maintainers find and fix the bugs and picks them up way later.
    If that is what you're looking for, then just run Suse 5.2 or RH 5.2, or even 4.2
    Now, by running ancient distributions, it also means that you get ancient packages with known exploits, unless you apply all the known fixes...
    Frankly, I'm not convinced

  • Gee, Red Hat gets flames for making something easy (GUI tools, RPM, linuxconf) and they get flamed for making something hard (command-line rpm)...geez

    And what would you do if Slackware had a GUI install, GUI tools, etc.? Would you still want to use it?

  • I have a Slackware 2.3 CD from 1995. It's a modified version in a 4CD set (it has the RedHat mother's day release, ewww). The cool thing is that it is using Kernel 1.2.8 and the ELF beta libs (also has kernel sources from first to 1.2.13 and 1.3.15). A nice piece of history.

    The libc4 to libc5/ELF transition took over a year. Why did the libc5/glib transistion take longer? Seems it's only been a year and a half. I'm glad of that time because it means a) I can use Slackware 4.9 for a stable 2.2.x/libc5 setup (like my current server), and have the 5.0 (possibly unstable, but good) glib on the desktop.

    If you haven't noticed, most versions of the glib to the point in time were't quite good enough, at least when we are talking about uptimes of months or years.
  • No, we won't.. Slack is simply to slow adopting what ends up being pretty much standard.. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE slack, but the horrors of setting up international support, glibc, etc.. will mean I won't use it again..

    I don't want to get stuck having to upgrade every package by source on the machine again.. I like to use alot of source, but some things just get to much..
  • What's all this excitement about Slackware being GlibC based. Personally I would rather run an OS based on an older stable core than one based on a beta core. If I wanted a beta core I would run Windoze.

    And as far as GlibC support. The runtime support for GlibC binaries has been there since Slack 4.0
  • Slack 4.0 actually includes glibc2, it just doesn't use it for its primary libc. What it doesn't have that XMMS (which I run pretty constantly) and Mozilla (which I'm actually posting this with) require is thread-safe Xlibs. You can download and install those; it's simple. There's a handy link on the XMMS site, and you just uncompress the tarball into the Xlib directory, and you're good to go.

  • Ahhhg! (Score:1)

    by Shiska ( 131 )
    This is good, but we still need a good package management system in slackware. ...I have to admit, I've defected to debian because of that very fact.
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  • I'm not trying to start flames so don't consider this an invitation, but my IMPRESSION of Slackware, which I've gotten only second-hand from Slashdot and a few distrib comparison reviews, is that Slackware is a dusty old distribution with a fanatical following but it's not relevant any longer. (If that's not true - they certainly have a perception problem, but if there's something truly great about Slackware they might not give a damn about 'image'...) So what would Slackware's target audience be interested in that isn't served by Mandrake6, Caldera, SuSE or Debian -- name say 3 things that are exclusive to this distrib? What's the most recent review of the currently-shipping Slackware?

  • OK, so you've installed Red Hat and played with everything, and seen about a Gig of HD space go "bye bye" with all the ferver of a hungry tiger to a sleeping zebra. Now you have a ton of crap, and my guess is that you're not going to use all of it. If you feel like really hacking your system, you have to go around RH's config/init/rc files, and make sure not to break too much. After a bit you're getting sick of package dependancies, and the possible bloat they entail.

    That's why you use Slackware. It's dumb. Rock simple. Somebody put a cute installer (that you will rarely ever use to install anything after the initial install) on Linux, and made it mostly work (remember how Slack's 3.something had a umount that wouldn't umount NFS directories on 2.0 kernels?). The rc files weren't a mess of calls to other files, and "." this file for config information. They were very straight ahead, and just did the work.

    Now would this be good for the home user with little experience? Maybe, if he/she/it were trying to learn as much about the workings of Linux as possible. If this person just wanted to play, then maybe some other distribution would be a bit better. Most of the customer installs I do, I use RedHat because they have vendor support available, and the upgrades can generally be done by the end user by doing the RPM dance. But when it comes to a simple machine to take care of bidness without a whole lot of GNOME/KDE/E/config files/fancy UI to deal with system tasks, I'll deal with slack. Glad the change happened.

  • For the record, I really like packages... I think having the ability to download and install a package easily is a really handy thing to be able to do. I'm annoyed at the fact that each package format seems to be heavily laden with distro specifics - here's what I think would be a dandy thing to do:

    [ GNU PACKAGE MANAGER ]
    - [ SYSTEM FILE TRANSLATION LAYER ]
    - [ ACTUAL SYSTEM FILES/DIRECTORIES ]

    Now each package contains a file which references MACROS... the macros being configurable things we can expect on any GNUPM system. The translation layer, which is accessible to the package manager, deals with how all the macros translate into the real details of the operating system. The translation layer could easily consist of a bunch of scripts, which deal with things like updating library paths and suchlike.

    Why would this be handy? Well, first of all, it would be a project by a bunch of people rather than a specific distribution. This would be a fine thing in and of itself. Second, it would be by its very nature designed to hook into any operating system. Third, you could build any kind of front end for it you wished; and fourth, the init file structure and the binary location structure and the everything else structure you've come to know and love remains consistent - merely you now have a mechanism for automatically installing software.

    I could see each of the distros jumping on the bandwagon as well since it would help unite the community in making all distros handle packages in the same way relative to their own structure
  • Ah, yes, the zillion floppy installs...downloading SLS via a 14.4Kbaud modem from some OPUS/Maximus BBS somewhere, making the floppies...a long time ago on a machine far, far away!

    Slackware is good because it is simple. I've adminned Solaris systes, Novell Netware systems, OS/2 Server, and Red Hat, in addition to Slackware. Red Hat's configs, init files, and RPM drives me (in the words of Harlan Ellison) Bugfuck! Other people who have been adminning for a long time as well say even less polite things.

    ttyl
    Farrell
  • Actually, and I'm speaking as a huge slackware fan (though I also think SuSE is really nice), most of the h4xX0rz that I know use Slack and hate everything else.
  • There is no comparison between pkgtool and apt. Face it... it's very basic. Why not just create a better solution?
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  • | Hell, it is running on a 300Mb partition on my
    | Compaq 486/25 Lite laptop and Xfree is | installed! Try doing that with Red Hat!

    How's RH 5.2 on a Sparc IPC with a 200 meg hard drive for ya? :)

    Point being, you can scale down pretty much any Linux distribution by hand-picking packages. Slackware was really nice when I was starting out with Linux becauwe it was easy to get a working system from just floppies (Didn't have a CDROM or a network card in my first Linux box!)
  • That appears to be a poll, not a review.
  • Ahhh the wonders of Linux!

    Here's a challenge - try doing that with Windows95/98/2000 !!!
  • Can you be more specific? Oh, what's the point...

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