Slackware Linux 8.0 Reviewed 66
lotion writes: "When the Slackware Linux project was cut loose from its parent company in April many devoted users wondered if the project would continue. Patrick Volkerding vowed it would. Despite the upheaval that accompanied what amounted to corporate abandonment, Volkerding and the team made good on that promise. On June 28, 2001, Slackware Linux Release 8.0 was made available.
The full review is here at Maximumlinux.org."
Re:Cool S/390 support! (Score:1)
Re:Slackware (Score:1)
Also the package system is made of simple shell scripts. The BSD style init scripts are simpler to understand and modify than the other Linux distros. You can actually see how things works. It is very difficult to use Slackware without learning something.
This is why I think Slackware should be ban. In fact I'm surprised that the DMCA did not explicitely ban the use of such distros. I guess nobody tipped the FBI about this.
From The Troll Archives (Score:1)
The morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all
And even if I could it'll all be gray but your picture on my wall
It reminds me, that it's not so bad -- it's not so bad
Dear Rob, I wrote but you still ain't callin
I left my email, my ICQ, and my yahoo chat at the bottom
I sent two emails back in autumn, you must not-a got 'em
There probably was a problem with your sendmail or somethin
Sometimes I scribble email addees too sloppy when I jot 'em
but anyways; fsck it, what's been up? Man how's your boxes?
My boxes is linux too, I'm bout to be a compiler
once I learn gcc,
I'ma compile for miles ah
I read about your Palm Pilot too I'm sorry
I had a friend lose his Palm over at the airport in Maradonna
I know you probably hear this everyday, but I'm your biggest fan
I even read all your bullshit Linux news and BSD scams
I got a room full of your posters and your pictures man
I like the way you sold your ass too that shit was fat
Anyways, I hope you get this man, hit me back,
just to chat, truly yours, your biggest fan
This is Stan
Dear Rob, you still ain't called or wrote, I hope you have a chance
I ain't mad - I just think it's FUCKED UP you don't answer fans
If you didn't wanna talk to me outside your Linux World
you didn't have to, but you coulda signed an autograph for Matthew
That's my Senior sys admin he's only 26 years old
We waited on a 9600 baud for you,
four hours and you just said, "No."
That's pretty shitty man - you're like his fsckin idol
He wants to be just like you man, he likes you more than I do
I ain't that mad though, I just don't like bein lied to
Remember when we met in Boston - you said if I'd write you
you would write back - see I'm just like you in a way
I never had a clue about shit either
I gcc'd shit with my wife then beat her
I can relate to what you're saying in your page
so when I feel like rmusering I read Slashdot to being the rage
cause I don't really got shit else so that shit helps when I'm depressed
I even got a tattoo of slashdot across the chest
Sometimes I even packet myself to see how much it floods
It's like adrenaline, the DDoS is such a sudden rush of blood
See everything you say is real, and I respect you cause you tell it
My girlfriend's jealous cause I talk about you 24/7
But she don't know you like I know you Rob, no one does
She don't know what it was like for people like us growin up
You gotta call me man, I'll be the biggest fan you'll ever lose
Sincerely yours, Stan -- P.S.
We should be together too
Dear Mister-I'm-Too-Good-To-Call-Or-Write-My-Fans,
this'll be the last packet I ever send your ass
It's been six months and still no word - I don't deserve it?
I know you got my last two emails
I wrote the @ signs on 'em perfect
So this is my payload I'm sending you, I hope you hear it
I'm on my modem now, I'm doing 9600 on the infohiway
Hey Rob, I drank a fifth of vodka, you dare me to code?
You know the song by Deep Purple by Depache Mode
its irrelevant by playing on my linux player
while I write some php scripts and play some Dragonslayer
That's kinda how shit is, you coulda rescued me from drowning
Now it's too late - I'm on a 1000 downloads now, I'm drowsy
and all I wanted was a lousy letter or a call
I hope you know I ripped +ALL+ of your pictures off the wall
I love you Rob, we coulda been together, think about it
You ruined it now, I hope you can't sleep and you dream about it
And when you dream I hope you can't sleep and you SCREAM about it
I hope your conscience EATS AT YOU and you can't BREATHE without me
See Rob {*screaming*} Shut up bitch! I'm tryin to page
Hey Rob, that's my senior admin screamin in the cage
but I didn't cut the power off, I just rebooted, see I ain't like you
Re:Slackware is dying!!!! (Score:1)
have you used it lately? you couldnt be further from the truth.
>You all are still in denial
you are a moron, we dont hold that against you.
>Slackware is a dying distro.
just because it was the first distro, just because its the most stable, secure, and unix-like, its dying?
>how many ISPs/Companies are going to trust a distro named "Slack"ware.
at least two which i've worked at, and are extremely happy, any company who does research and doesnt stop at the marketese.
>Poor choice of a name.
Debian? RedHat? Slackware? i guess its a judgement call there, but i personally think RedHat is a worse name choice than slack, and they too are quite successful.
and to that last bit of drivel... If you're a windows user in denial, or a person who doesnt have enough brain cells to use a fork but still wants to be a 'hip geek' go with mandrake. if you raise that iq bar by about 10pts putting you at about 80, by all means go RH or Deb. If you consider yourself intelligent, or wish to use a powerful, fully configurable OS which doesnt strive to be the next windows... Slackware is your best choice. You will learn more about unix without effort, you will come to appreciate the simplicity of things like SystemV init scripts, and you wont make an ass out of yourself by trolling slashdot with such empty bullshit as this person has done.
this has been a public service announcement paid for by the anti-troll assoc. and slashdot members against FUD
Re:Slackware Security (Score:1)
This is one of the major reasons why I use Slackware instead of those other distros. I don't want an auto-updater. I prefer to admin my own machine, thank you very much, and I want to know exactly what I'm installing and why.
Red Hat needs an automated tool. It's held together by a inconsistent patchwork of Python and shell scripts. To configure anything yourself you usually need to reverse engineer a script or two, which is a PITA. Don't even get me started about how many times I've been let down by the install/uninstall scripting and dependency checking in RPM. Running Red Hat, you really need to use up2date or Red Carpet, otherwise you'll be banging your head against thw wall in frustration.
Instead of the hot glue, duct tape & bailing wire approach of Red Hat, a Slackware system holds together because it uses old fashioned, no-nonsense text config files, it places things right where a UNIX veteran expects, and it takes advantage of the file system to organize things. Any person who has administered a major commercial UNIX or BSD will feel right at home in Slackware, and utterly confused in most other distros.
Slackware takes the KISS approach and makes it work.
Wimp! (Score:1)
ttyl
Farrell
Not my first either... (Score:2)
Slackware and Toms, both keeping the heart of the Linux movement alive.
ttyl
Farrell
(what? I'm sentimental?)
Valuable lesson #2: (Score:2)
Re:stupid hippies (Score:1)
Re:Sparc Support (Score:1)
We had to change the name so it wasn't copyright infringement.
www.splack.org
splack.sourceforge.net
We want to bring it up to Slackware 8.0 quality and then release it.
I hacked on the TFTP configure scripts yesterday... It's coming along.
Re:From The Troll Archives (Score:1)
Bravo! Quality work troll! What's really freaky is 'Stan' was playing when I started to read your comment, heh.
LI (Score:1)
_.|..
Re:Blasted LILO! (Score:3)
If you are using Mandrake, then the problem may not be with LILO. Mandrake 8 turned out to be incompatible with my Gateway E4300 as work... overwrote the SCSI drivers in bios. A boot disk appeared to work for a few boot cycles, but corruption recurred. (Fix: fdisk
I'm seriously thinking of looking into some old Linload documents, though. What with my number of partitions, and my multiple disks, nobody can get lilo to fit into the MBR anymore, and even with three boot disks, I don't feel comfortable about depending of floppies. (Besides, it's slow and clumsy.)
Grub might be an answer, I have a bad feeling about it, but I only tried it in the context of Mandrake (see above), so perhaps the problem wasn't with Grub at all.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:This should help (Score:1)
However, if he didn't have a Linux boot disk, he probably didn't have a Windows one either
Re:Slackware Security (Score:2)
Updating your software to be the "latest and greatest(?)" is ALWAYS a bad idea! I'm not proposing that, what I'm pointing out is the NEED for automated security updates.
I do run update/upgrade on my debian unstable box at home every night, and every few days I have to check out what's broken and see if I can submit a bug report. I have a few other servers which use stable which if you knew much about debian, is mostly feature frozen. Debian has a rigorous packaging standard and a great QC division. I'm fairly confident that packages coming out of the pool are good enough for a power user. Packages in the stable distribution have gone through many iterations and integration testing. Security updates applied in haste may not have the same level of testing, but I'd much rather have exploits corrected than wait for complete integration testing.
Re:Slackware Security (Score:2)
Finally I'm not talking about a daily BIND update, but security updates on the stable version of your distribution (for redhat this would be 6.2, slackware 7.whatever).
Spend some time reading up on system security... what do all these guys the pundits interview say? Keeping current to the security flaws in your system is more than a full time job. You cannot at the same time as you add users, change passwords, bail users out (oops, I deleted that file! oh I screwed up and mailed out HR info to EVERYONE! oops, I wasted the website... etc etc...) keep up to speed on the security issues reguarding every element of every system you control.
If you plan on using a UNIX of professional quality, then you rely on the individuals integrating and packaging your software to
Can you make the state of each piece of software on your system your full time job? If not, remember that there is a hacker who can. Your box is theirs for the taking.
Slackware Security (Score:5)
Slackware needs some method of keeping current. On a stable debian box with updates pointed at security.debian.org a nightly (or hourly!) call to apt-get update; apt-get upgrade (with appropriate flags to resolve prompts you might be given during the package upgrade) will assure that you have the latest security patches applied. BSD has make World, redhat has up2date, mandrake has urpm... these are all inferior, but fine alternatives. Even microsoft has windowsupdate (which was also subjected to defacement the other day ha!) and various unattended install methods which come with the OS.
How can you do this in slackware?
Re:Slackware Security (Score:1)
Re:Waiting for my copy. (Score:1)
You're opening up a pretty big security hole there.
Re:Cool S/390 support! (Score:1)
Typical Cost $2.7 million
IBM Hardware
S/390 System Configuration
4 GB ECC Memory
576 GB DASD
(60) Channels
(6) OSA/2
(1) Internal Battery
Cool S/390 support! (Score:3)
So now it's:
$0 - Slackware O/S
$5,000,000 for a machine to run it on (S/390)
Priceless - the reaction of all those ego-centric Windows people
Re:Cool S/390 support! (Score:2)
only one? Cheap bastards.
sorry not my argument. (Score:1)
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
be nice to their server. (Score:5)
When the Slackware Linux project was cut loose from its parent company in April many devoted users wondered if the project would continue. Patrick Volkerding vowed it would. Despite the upheaval that accompanied what amounted to corporate abandonment, Volkerding and the team made good on that promise. On June 28, 2001, Slackware Linux Release 8.0 was made available. It is a very current distribution in terms of most of the component versions. Both kernels 2.4.5 and 2.2.19, glibc 2.2.3, KDE 2.1.2, Gnome 1.4, XFree86 4.1.0, and Samba 2.2 are among the major items. Two retail packaged versions will soon be available; one with and the other without the companion book, Slackware Essentials, for $39.99 and $49.99, respectively. The downloadable version on which this review is based comprises three CD's in ISO format.
The first is a bootable install CD. For those whose systems are incapable of booting to a CD-ROM device, floppy bootdisk images and utilities are included. The second CD contains extra packages including additional window managers, ham radio packages such as the excellent F6FBB packet radio BBS, a mirror of the Slackware online book, Linux HOW-TO's, FAQ's, and Zipslack which allows installation of a small installation of Slackware on a DOS partition or Zip disk. The third CD contains the sources.
For puposes of this review I installed Slackware 8.0 on a freshly wiped hard drive. The hardware configuration can be viewed here.
The setup utility is text based, which seems like an anachronism in these days of fancy graphical installers. Potential users should not be put off because the utility is very easy to use and walks you through each step. The install disk includes fdisk and the excellent menu driven cfdisk for drive partitioning. If the drive is not already partitioned, the setup utility exits to a command prompt where the partitioning software must be run. Once complete, typing setup at the prompt puts you back into the setup utility where you select the partitions, select the mount points, and format them.
Setup asks for the source from which the packages will be installed, which seems a little strange since the installation was booted from the CD.
Once the source is selected setup then asks for the type of installation and groups of packages. Selecting the default installation types (such as "full") will install kernel 2.2.19 as the default kernel. If you intend to use kernel 2.4.5 or have a SCSI based system there are special considerations which are only vaguely touched upon in the documentation. If that's what you want go here for a little help.
Once setup is finished installing packages it will ask if you want to configure LILO, a modem, basic networking (it correctly identified and installed the module for my Realtek 8139 based NIC), and finally prompt the user to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to restart the system.
Slackware 8.0 does not use a graphical login manager. Login is done through the console, though users may manually configure a graphical login manager should they desire. After login entering startx at the prompt will invoke the GUI. The default is KDE which was fine with me since I like KDE. This is easily changed (go here for how) for those who prefer something else.
It did not install the driver modules for my soundcard requiring me to manually edit one configuration file. (Go here to read what worked for me.)
I consider my user experience level with Linux to be somewhere shy of intermediate. But I remember installing Slackware Linux several years ago from floppy disks whose images took several hours to download over the blazing fast 14.4kbps connection I was using at the time. I did it on encouragement from a friend who suggested it would be easy. At the time it wasn't. It took me over two weeks before I got everything to work right. How things have changed.
Re:Slackware is dying!!!! (Score:1)
have you used it lately? you couldnt be further from the truth.
I agree with AC, after enduring Redhat and Debian, I found Slackware to be "just right". Debian, for instance, is truly annoying with the million question gauntlet...
just because it was the first distro...
Hmmm. Are you sure? My first Linux experience was with SLS
(Troll writes:)
>Poor choice of a name
How about MicroSoft? Small and limp... Yep, that's a good name.
this has been a public service announcement paid for by the anti-troll assoc. and slashdot members against FUD
Go, get 'em tiger!
Re:Slackware Security (Score:3)
autoslack.
(see freshmeat.net for details.
Re: LI (Score:1)
Glad to see it stay alive. (Score:2)
Re:Slackware Security (Score:4)
Slackware Linux is not meant to be opperated "bare." The reccomended security configuration includes an in incredible A.I. system abbreviated as "S.Y.S.O.P." Through its amazing abilities, the S.Y.S.O.P. system monitors a steady feed of bug reports (the famed B.U.G.T.R.A.Q. system, first implemented in 1997 as an experiment in networking S.Y.S.O.P. systems over long distance, high latency networks in an asynchronus way) for information on what to do with the system. They will tirelessy maintain and care for you server installation, and can ever create whole new bits of software in the pursuit of their goals!
While you Debian people may be happy to just blindly upgrade your BIND installation every few weeks, it has been found that through proper use of a S.Y.S.O.P. system, you can ditch the automated upgrades by moving to another DNS server altogether! These amazing devices will also help end users if they are clustered sufficiently to preventy burnout.
An intelligient S.Y.S.O.P. -- no server should be without one!
--
Video Performance? (Score:3)
Anyway, I installed slack 8 a couple nights ago, and my main concern is that I can't find any X server besides the frame buffer X server. Oh, excuse me, there's print-only as well. Anyway, the VESA framebuffer is nice to install with, although the slack 8 interface takes no advantage of it, BUT it's not really nice to keep running in VESA mode.
Most of us have accellerated graphics cards, to say the least; do you really want to keep running that GeForce in VESA mode? I was told in the #slackware channel that one has to compile one's own X server for a particular card...? Now, I know slackware is a DIY distro, but this seems like a huge step backwards. I used to be able to plug in the precompiled mga driver for my Matrox card, but no longer by the looks of things.
If anyone else can prove me wrong, I'd love it. I like lots of other things about slack, but I'd really rather not need to compile X just to get accelerated graphics performance.
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Re:Waiting for my copy. (Score:1)
Re:Waiting for my copy. (Score:2)
it was a php error, not slackware (Score:2)
and on your second point
Re:Cool S/390 support! (Score:2)
i can tell you right now (Score:2)
-----
Re:Blasted LILO! (Score:1)
Whoah, you really took a wrong turn. All you need to do to fix a corrupted lilo is stick in your slackware install disk, reboot, type in the proper parameters at the boot prompt (for instance if your root partition is /dev/hdb1 the paramaters are "root=/dev/hdb1 ro",) boot up, type "lilo" at the prompt after boot, remove the install disk, and reboot.
If the problem is bad hard drive geometry you can fix that in BIOS. You certainly didn't need to format or reinstall.
"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
Don't run X as root! (Score:1)
Silly silly person. Don't run X as root. Run X as user, when you need to do something as root, su in an xterm and start whatever you need running as root there.
"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
Re:Video Performance? (Score:3)
slackware essentials (Score:1)
Re:This should help (Score:1)
Nice to see it still chugging. (Score:1)
It was a major improvement over Soft Landing Linux, and still remains the most UN*X-like Linux available. Like most of its strong userbase I was woo'd away with advanced and integrated package management and the inate simplicity provided by apt-get.
I remember how broken was my spirit when Red Hat became the primary distribution on the Infomagic Linux CD kit.
Re:Video Performance? (Score:1)
I just run xf86config (CLI I know..but it works) choose my video card by name and slack installs the correct driver. I then just startx and all is fine. I've used S3 Virge, Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro, Voodoo1 (pass-thru) and now Nvidia TNT2 Ultra. All worked right away. The only hitch is..if you want accelerated graphics with Nvidia, you must download nvidias' drivers, untar and type make..it installs itself. Then change then 'nv' in
I've tried Mandrake, RH, Caldera, Storm, Corel, and Suse distros and ALWAYS come back to Slack. Patrick does a wonderful job.
Re:Don't run X as root! (Score:1)
Why not put xhost +localhost in your .xinitrc, then set your DISPLAY in /root/.profile? Or if you su -m, you keep your environment, does that keep $DISPLAY?
Kindly refer to: (Score:1)
http://www.gnu.org
Thank you.
KFG
Re:autoconf 2.50 drama (Score:1)
Re:Has anyone read... (Score:1)
Re:slackware essentials (Score:1)
8.0 + the book = $49.95
8.0 = $39.95
The book = $19.95
Re:Slackware (Score:1)
Hurray for slackware! (Score:1)
Now I have slackware 8.0 iso! Hurray! Hurray!
Blasted LILO! (Score:2)
It's always fun to turn your computer on and see it say "LI" and stop responding. There's a lesson to be learned kids. Always use a boot disk.. unless of course all your floppies are 10 years old and don't work right anyhow.
autoconf 2.50 drama (Score:1)
my only complaint is that it shipped with autoconf 2.50, which is seriously broken and should not be used if want stuff to compile correctly. a good idea would be to get a previous version, rather than using the one that comes with it.
--
Re:Video Performance? (Score:2)
Perhaps you've taken a wrong turn somewhere?
Whoever told you that you had to compile your own X server was likely playing with you because you seem to have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Honestly, XF86_SVGA is the one you want, and combine it with whichever one of the loadable drivers you prefer (XFree86 4 and later uses a loadable driver module system donated by MetroLink, IIRC).
If you have an older card (many S3 cards, for example), you aren't supported under XFree86 anymore (as of release 4) and will have to stick to an XFree86 3.x distribution or downgrade before you can get accelerated graphics.
Re:Valuable lesson #2: (Score:1)
Re: LI (Score:1)
Re:Linux Sucks (Score:1)
Re:Video Performance? (Score:1)
Re:Slackware Security (Score:2)
Also see... (Score:5)
"I am a man, and men are
animals who tell stories."
Re:Video Performance? (Score:1)
:)
Re:Slackware hackable! (Score:1)
First, www.slackware.com is running slackware.
The main ftp is currently hosted at sourceforge which is running debian.
Regarding that screenshot, they didn't really "hack" the slackware webserver, and it's not because it's running slackware. Chris from the Slackware core team already commented that is was a "sloppily written" script in their website. [slackware.com]
Vitality (Score:1)
---------
-King Arthur "One, two, FIVE!"
-Dude with coconuts "Three, sir."
Bad, bad review (Score:1)
I'm getting fed up with "reviews" that only talk about installing the system. Yeah, OK, Slack doesn't have a graphical installation, and you may be asked to compile some things yourself, or edit some config files by hand. Right.
But... I don't know about you, but I tend to install an OS *once* (and usually, because I have never met an OS that installed exactly as I want, devote an afternoon to it) and use it *every day*.
Reviewers... install the OS. Play with it. Use it as you would use your normal environment, at work and at home, for a couple of weeks. Then tell us your gut feeling.
Typical use cases:- at work. I want a quickly-setup, rock-solid system that I can forget about to get on with the task at hand and earn my salary. Setting up extra services and altering the configuration must be very fast, no-nonsense.
- at home / play. I want a fun distribution which I can spend hours trying to discover. Stability isn't that crucial since I switch off my computer every day (hey, it's a laptop which I lug around everywhere I go). "Cleanliness" is very important since I want to be able to install and remove new gizmos (often in alpha or pre-alpha versions, often requiring newer versions of libraries, often before a .rpm exists) at a whim.
How does Slack cater for either of these needs? I haven't read that in the review. I am severly disappointed.
Sylvain.
And it goes on and on... (Score:1)
21 July 2001: Compiled kernel 2.4.7
22 July 2001: Installed Slackware 8.0
23 July 2001: Recompiled kernel 2.4.7
25 July 2001: Compiled kernel 2.4.8
27 July 2001: Installed Redhat 8.0
28 July 2001: Recompiled kernel 2.4.8
31 July 2001: Installed Slackware 8.1
2 August 2001: Compile kernel 2.4.9 etc...
Sure it's fun being a 1337 linux user.
Re:From The Troll Archives (Score:1)
I'm a karma whore and now I see where it has gotten me...
XDFGF
My life sucks
Re:Blasted LILO! (Score:1)
ill save the stories.. but ill let you use your imagination.. windows and linux in same hd (differnt partitions)
now the lesson part of this post...
i had installed win2k (ntfs) on a hd... i then installed debian linux on another hd.. problem was i didn't want to write lilo on my MBR on my windows hd cause of previous experiences withthat....
so i wanted my nix to be master and windows slave... this way linux can handle everything that delt with boot without touching the windows side. but since windows was alrady installed as master it didn't want to boot as slave (i guess it though.. "uh no boy! im no slave im a master!) again afriad to touch my windows side (it breaks so easy) someone (credit goes to andy (sheepdog))suggested tricking windows into thinking it was master. great i thought... but how... and here it was... just a few extra lines in lilo.conf and windows everything boots perfect!
other =
label = dos
loader =
map-drive = 0x80
to = 0x81
map-drive = 0x81
to = 0x80
table =
now that i think was beautiful.. to see those two guys get along....
thanks you lilo for making this all possible... (now i have to link this to main post).... see lilo isn't that bad.. its good.. (done)
funny how.. (Score:1)
anywho, i say: kudos to Patrick for not commercializing his project and making it as great as it is for years for those damn hardcore linux user - like i am