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Is Slackware Fading Away? 531

Posted by Hemos from the don't-fade-away dept.
A reader writes "I just read over on userlocal.com about how David Cantrell announced he is no longer actively developing protopkg and autoslack (these are 2 apps that could have brought slack out of the stoneage but still kept to slacks philosophy of K.I.S.S.). So is it almost "game over" for the first commercial linux distribution which used to be the heavyweight champ?"
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Is Slackware Fading Away? More

Is Slackware Fading Away?

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  • I doubt it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by riggwelter ( 84180 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @09:45AM (#2506776) Homepage Journal
    Slackware occupies a niche - that of the most UN*X-like GNU/Linux, people who want that will continue to use Slack.


    And just cos a couple of apps are no longer going to be developed, the distro doesn't end. It'll keep on going for as long as the project developers want to, simple as that.

    • Re:I doubt it (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Slackware and Debian appeal to two completely different crowds.

      The people who use Slackware like having a minimalist package system that coexists nicely with software compiled from source and doesn't get in their way. They like the fact that Slackware sticks to the traditional system configuration method of editing familiar text files in /etc and doesn't rely on a wealth of symlinks, scripts, and automated tools. They like the fact that Slack releases tend to be very stable with relatively few bugs & updates. They like the ability to scale Slack down to a very minimal installation. Many like to be able to know exactly what is installed on their system and what is going on, and how to control it. And many like it because it is the most familiar distribution for people with a commercial UNIX background.

      On the other hand, Debian seems to appeal to people who always want to run the latest & greatest stuff and don't want to know or care about dependencies and the details of exactly what software is on their system, and are willing to live with more bugs and constant updating. Debian users are also willing to give up some power and control to avoid learning a lot about manual configuration, although not nearly so much as Mandrake users, for example. There is also a whole separate class of Debian users who choose it primarily because it's not commercial and/or because it's called GNU/Linux.

      If I were to sum it up, I'd say that Slackware primarily appeals to people who have a UNIX sysadmin backgroud prior to Linux, people who need a minimal install for older HW, control freaks, and perfectionists. Meanwhile Debian is preferred by people like to stay on the bleeding edge and the hardcore free software proponents.

      If old time Slack users start jumping ship, it seems more likely to me that they will go over to the BSD side than start using Debian.

      • Re:I doubt it (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hawk ( 1151 )
        > Debian seems to appeal to people who always want to
        > run the latest & greatest stuff


        they're not going to be very successful . . . if you want to run anything even vaguely recent, you need to use either the unstable or testing distributions.


        >There is also a whole separate
        >class of Debian users who choose it primarily because it's not
        >commercial and/or because it's called GNU/Linux


        And there's another large crowd of us for whom our systems suddenlty announcing themselves as "GNU/Linux" was the last straw and went and looked at FreeBSD again (and have never looked back . . .)


        >If old time Slack users start jumping ship, it seems more likely to me
        >that they will go over to the BSD side than start using Debian.


        That I'll certainly agree with. However, I'll concede that Debian is quite often the last Linux distribution that many people use as their experience grows--that is, the last step before switching to *BSD :)


        hawk, running for cover

  • No, not a chance (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by jjccss ( 238401 )
    It will never fade away as long as I keep using it. Sorry redhat, debian, mandrake, etc. I like linux, not windows.

  • "*BSD is dying" ask/.?? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @09:45AM (#2506780) Homepage Journal
    There will always be slackware fanatics to keep it alive.

    There will always be linux hobbiest that will have slackware installs.

    There will always be one developer working on some part of it.

    It might not always stay up with the rest of the distros (especially large ones like debian, redhat, and SuSE), but it won't "die".

    This ask slashdot sounds a touch like the *BSD is dying troll ;-)

  • Not gameover.. not yet. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spectrum ( 92555 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @09:46AM (#2506783) Homepage
    So, the other day i'm trying to install linux (a linux with some sort of package management abilities) onto a firewall (486sx, 40meg HD, 8 meg ram).

    The kernel killed debian's setup program shortly after startup.. But trusty 'ol lightweight slakware rose to the challenge to breathe new life into that machine.

    I was impressed. :)
    • not yet... not ever...

      It really is things like these that make slackware stand out. This is what brings out the difference between windows and linux. Thank god for slackware, I dont have to use DedRat lindows or the like!!

    • Yup, one can really trim down an install of Slackware to run on pretty much anything with a couple megs of RAM and about 40megs of HDD space.

      I installed Slackware on a 486DX-33 w/12Megs of RAM and a 100meg hard drive to act as a print spool for an old laser printer on our network. Shut down all services except what was needed for printing, installed SSH for remote admin, and let it loose.

      You can pretty much shape Slackware for whatever job you need a Linux machine to do, and you can do it easily.
    • So, the other day i'm trying to install linux (a linux with some sort of package management abilities) onto a firewall (486sx, 40meg HD, 8 meg ram).

      One word, baby. NetBSD. I ran a web/file/mail server on a Quadra 700 with a 200 meg drive for months.

      The hardware has since been changed over from the Mac to a Dell 486. Seamless and fast.

      --saint

  • Linux Is Still Prizing Quality over Consistency (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FreezerJam ( 138643 ) <smith@vex.nTEAet minus caffeine> on Thursday November 01, 2001 @09:46AM (#2506786)
    ...which is fine as long as quality is the only determinant of a successful OS.

    I could even suggest that K.I.S.S. is, in part, a decision to pursue quality. But it does mean a less comprehensive product - 'right out the box'.

    Linux will likely never die, because those want control over the lower layers of their OS, AND who have the skills to manage it, will always choose Linux-like systems.

    But lots of non-technical people want to install their OS once, and never have to worry about recompiling the kernel because they didn't have SCSI support and wanted to plug in a new device they just brought home.

    Perhaps, in the absence of a single first choice of a distro among the Linux users, there heeds to be a single *second* choice.

    ....cjs
    • Linux will likely never die, [people] will always choose Linux-like systems.

      is that it then for OS's. Do we have nothing new to look forward to. That's depressing.

      Fortunately I know that a new paradigm will emerge, like so many times before, and we will all end up with fond memories of the penguin

  • slackware was the first distro i used as well and in my prolific distro trying out faze i got very used to the standards used in most other distros for things like /etc/rc.d/init.d symbolic links.
    now i have it (slack) running on my router because i wanted it to be simple and "bare knuckle" as one user expressed it. and it is. everything seems like a huge deal to get it going over there.
    cron is not working properly, and has no default logging. (they don't use vixie).
    but most other problems i have worked out.
    it's just not as shiney, but as a DIY kinda guy i gotta say i like it that way. for all the power and ease of the big distros they have stuff that is big and just gets in the way sometimes.

  • Slackware isn't dead. It's just not for everyone. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jsprat23 ( 148634 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @09:48AM (#2506795)
    I don't think Slackware is quite dead. I switched to Slackware 7.0 after Red Hat screwed up my partition tables. I now use Slackware 8.0 and haven't looked back since or regretted my dicision. Sure Slackware takes a little more time to maintain, but the people who use Slakware aren't above using ./configure; make; make install to get the programs they need/want.

    I've never had a problem with the stability of a Slackware distro because Patrick Volkerding puts out a quality distro with out a ot of bloat.

    Thanks for such a good distro Patrick.

    Adam

    • I remember when the book Linux for Dummies [bn.com] came out. My first thought was "well, now I have to make the switch to BSD". While that may not have been bad in and of itself, I did then come to my senses and realized "Oh wait, I use Slackware, never mind".

      Uh Oh! There's a Slackware for Dummies [bn.com] now, too. Maybe I'll have to switch to BSD afterall? Well, as long as Patrick doesn't try to make Slackware be the replacement for Microsoft Windows, then it will remain my choice.

  • Patrick Volkerding is a very resourceful man. Besides... To some people, Slackware is the only real Linux distribution. I seriously doubt that this will cause any major problems for Slackware.

  • One hobbyist would hope not... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tarsi210 ( 70325 ) <nathan@nat h a n p r a l l e . com> on Thursday November 01, 2001 @09:50AM (#2506805) Homepage Journal
    From the: But-we-need-you-around,honest! dept.

    Slackware has been a stalwart distro for me ever since I discovered Linux, and continues to be the #1 distro I run on my machines. Now, I have many, many vintage machines, as I'm into collecting and restoring older machines. [computershelter.org] Slackware works very well for this, as well for various servers that I maintain.

    Mind you, the setup and interface has never been stellar, and leaves most normal users coughing in the dust. However, for those who need max flexibility and a thin system (like these 386 machines and such need), this is an excellent one. I personally don't see any huge loss by not having these tools....come to think of it, I've never used them anyway.

    On the other hand, if Slack exists because of commercial sales, then the loss of these tools and others will be its demise from lack of revenue.
    • I'm also a big collector of computer hardware. My only problem with slackware is that it's so X86 centric. Though because of that, I've grown fond of running OpenBSD. (I haven't had any need to use NetBSD, yet.)

      There was a sparc port but it died. Stampede (the Mandrake of the Slackware world), was going to have a fancy build system for a bunch of platforms, but I haven't seen anything out of those guys in months.
  • We just need to figure out if it will rise again. Basically, Slackware is a great distrobution for nerds and intelligent novices. However, the lack of package management holds it back. Consider a large installation base. If there's an update in one of the packages you use, you can publish that onto an ftp server, and then have the debian boxes patch themselves. Slackware can't do that, to the best of my knowledge. I used slackware intensively up to and including 7.1. It is a GREAT distrobution. Really. You're on your own, and if you fuck up it's usually you fucking up, not some inconsistent package management system. Use it if you want to learn Linux the hardcore way.

    Again, you end up spending a lot of time just keeping the system up to date. The major distrobutions are becoming easier to maintain. Basically, Slackware has an ever decreasing market niche. Too bad.

    Oh - I write this from a slack 8 desktop.
    • IMO, the automatic updates and package management should be used by sysadmins that know what they are doing in the first place. I learned from compiling source code and it's helped me out a lot over the years.

      As far as security updates for packages that are included in Slack, what's so hard about downloading it and typeing:

      upgrade newpackage.tgz

      Personally, I don't trust something that "updates itself".

      Don't even get started about Linux on the desktop for the newbies. It's not ready yet...but that's another discussion entirely.
    • A consistant package management system would be great... But then again, RPM hardly ever works right anyway. I think that I will just stick to the source. Long live Slackware.
    • However, the lack of package management holds it back

      This is a common misconception. pkgtool makes it very easy to add, update, and remove packages, and the simple package format makes it easy to make your own. In combination with installwatch and install2slack, maintaining multiple machines is a no-brainer.

      If you want pre-built packages for slackware, you might try linuxmafia [linuxmafia.org], where you can find contributed packages for a wide variety of software.

      Now, if you mean that slackware's package management system doesn't check dependancies, you'd be right. It's not as if it doesn't exist, though.

    • >If there's an update in one of the packages you
      >use, you can publish that onto an ftp server,
      >and then have the debian boxes patch themselves.
      >Slackware can't do that, to the best of my
      >knowledge. I used slackware intensively up to
      >and including 7.1. It is a GREAT distrobution.
      >Really. You're on your own, and if you fuck up
      >it's usually you fucking up, not some
      >inconsistent package management system. Use it
      >if you want to learn Linux the hardcore way.

      It seems to me that, if one needs to distribute software to many machines at once, there are easy ways to do it besides relying on a particular distribution's packaging tools. For instance, the unix labs at UT Austin use Debian, but most software (as far as I can tell) is actually stored on a central NFS server and run directly from that machine. It works great.

      I administer several Slackware servers for our UT's student union. When I need to add a new piece of software or make an upgrade, I do it on a test server first (either compile a new package, or find it on Linuxmafia.) Once I ensure that it works, I run rsync on the other servers and viola!, they 'patch' themselves! Sometimes I have to run lilo if I upgrade the kernel on the other machines, but that's it.
    • I'm going to have to disagree on the "lack of package management holds it back" argument.
      Current package management systems in use (rpm, deb, etc.) rely heavily on the package maintainers. You're trusting them on several issues that seem kind of hairy in a large production environment.
      1) The binary package does what it's supposed to (read: trojan free)
      2) The software within was compiled to an architecture that you can handle (Nothing like finding -i386 meant to your package maintainer that 686 optimizations were included (not so good on some chips, like the AMD k6-2's))
      3) Everything was built with reasonable options
      4) The package plays nice and doesn't replace files from other packages on your system.

      Personally, I'm more than happy compiling everything from source, especially now that a "./configure ; make ; make install" describes the build instructions on a huge number of available applications.

      Want to roll it out on your large production system? Build the package on your test machine, use makepkg to build a slackware package, and then install it all over your network. Slack's concept of packages may be a bit simple (yes, they're basically gzipped tarballs with a manifest), but installpkg, removepkg and makepkg have been enough for me. (If you're using the makepkg angle, it's quite a bit easier removing things, especially if you're generally bad at keeping track where all the stuff is landing to begin with)

      I won't bother with all my other anti-package arguments (dependencies, etc.)

      As long as there are people that enjoy slackware, it will keep going. My question to the poster of the article (not that comment I'm replying to) is "When did commercial acceptance become the _only_ thing we care about?"

      -transiit

      • I'm going to have to disagree on the "lack of package management holds it back" argument.
        Current package management systems in use (rpm, deb, etc.) rely heavily on the package maintainers. You're trusting them on several issues that seem kind of hairy in a large production environment.
        1) The binary package does what it's supposed to (read: trojan free)
        2) The software within was compiled to an architecture that you can handle (Nothing like finding -i386 meant to your package maintainer that 686 optimizations were included (not so good on some chips, like the AMD k6-2's))
        3) Everything was built with reasonable options

        It seems to me that all these problems are solved by debian's source package scheme. (Ie, apt-get source package; cd package; review & edit source and build scripts to your liking; dpkg-buildpackage) Yes, the maintainers could potentially throw in trojans, (although package signing prevents anyone else from doing this), or just get lazy and make mistakes in the packaging. But most of those mistakes can and should be caught by the package management system, and provide the user enough flexibility to correct the problem. (I know .deb's do.) And being able to see the source code readily means that source deb's are just as safe as source tgz's.

        4) The package plays nice and doesn't replace files from other packages on your system.

        Isn't this really one of the basic reasons to have a package management system? When you do a 'make install', you're blindly telling the installation scripts to install themselves. I know in my experience I've had more then a few cases of 'make install' causing chaos, whereas any package management system worth its salt will point out these conflicts and give me the option to specify more precisely what should be done, or simply back out and cancel the installation.
        • Debian source packages....hm....and the advantage of this over a source tarball from the original author is what, exactly? You save yourself maybe five minutes of finding the most current version? The thrill of wondering what's changed from the official release by the package maintainer?

          When you do a "make install", you're only doing so blindly if you don't bother to look at the makefile to begin with. So you've got a choice: Take a chance with a package manager or a blind "make install" OR just be dilligent to begin with.

          Unfortunately, I haven't found a package manager worth its salt yet....rpm-based systems tend to be so picky about dependencies that you either have to go along with whatever it tells you (which is a much lower level of choice than what I expect) or you force installation (which often tends to push the rpm database even further into its little fantasy world.) Apt, from my experience, tends to do whatever the hell it feels like. Nothing like watching it install libc5, remove libc5 and then reinstall libc5 on successive runs of "apt-get upgrade". (Here in the fifth circle of hell, we've only got low-bandwidth connections and a lot of mud.) What finally drove me over the edge was that I decided the system I was working on didn't need an MTA, so I told it to get rid of exim. It did. And took at with it. So, thinking it was annoying, told it to go get at again. It did. And brought zmailer with it.

          I tend to view package management as it's defined these days as a great tool for the lazy, cowards and the otherwise uninterested. When it really comes down to it, if I were to find myself responsible for a large number of debian-like boxen, I'd probably just set up a box to act as the primary package source and populate it myself. Call it paranoia, but one of the big things that got me excited by Free software was the amount of choice that comes with it. If you're experience is all about having a package manager do all the fun work, then by all means, go right ahead.

          -transiit
    • All this talk about packaging and update pains gives me an idea.

      Does anyone remember the old Fidonet-technology file echos? They were automated distribution networks of shareware and other public-domain files that BBSes would carry to always offer new files to users. You would dial up to your master server, it would download the files to you, then you would run a program called a file tosser to import them into the file areas of your BBS.

      Something like this that passes around .tgz files instead of RPMs would give this autopatching ability to slackware, or at least distribute the files properly. If the boxes are fairly homogenous you might even be able to get away with auto-configure'ing and make'ing the packages.

      Just a thought..

  • I Love Slackware (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CtrlPhreak ( 226872 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @09:51AM (#2506815) Homepage
    I have to say I'd still consider myself a newbie when it comes to linux, well not quite but definetly not an expert. I love slackware because it's what you make of it. It isn't bloated like many other distros (Mandrake SuSE, etc...). It comes with a good assortment of apps and doesn't take 2 gigs of your drive installing things which A) aren't documented, B) aren't referenced and C) you have no clue they're there till you go digging and find out they are just peices of crap. It's simple, and it is configured exactly how you want it. People say it's dying because it doesn't cater to the brand spanking newbie like windows does or mandrake is trying to do. I did not start out on slack and would like to thank mandrake for giving me that start in linux life, but at some point you have to take off the training wheels, and move to that 10 speed.

    So what if one developer is stopping work on some tools? It's opensource right? Isn't part of the point that if they are needed and people want them someone will pick it up and finish them? 2 tools don't make a distro, and 2 tools stopping development by their primary guy doesn't kill a distro. GO SLACKWARE!

    • Re:I Love Slackware (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wyren ( 184914 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @10:45AM (#2507074)
      As someone who remembers the first Slackware release and has been using Linux since version 0.12 (two-floppy + gcc and uemacs), I'm not only proud, but also determined, to keep using Slackware on my servers. It's dependable and stable, and it installs easily in under 1GB. Slackware doesn't fight me when I want to make configuration changes the traditional way, either, so 31 years of collected wisdom still applies and can be found on UseNet, the Web and in O'Reilly books. Most importantly, Slackware doesn't replace key pieces of software with untested crap. SuSE and Red Hat have their strengths, but for small, reliable server installs you can't beat Slack. If Slackware disappears, I'll probably switch my servers to OpenBSD. Until then, I'm keeping my subscription to Slackware.
      • Small installs aren't limited to slackware you know.... I just finished creating a mp3 player for my network with a P133/32mb ram and a 3G hard drive. The debian install is only about 160 megs though, base files plus apache, php, and mpg123.

        Don't forget that just because a distro has requirements of a PIII and 2G of hard drive means that that's what it actually requires. Slack *is* nice and small yes, but that's not to say that other (major) distros can't be nice and small either.
  • Slackware made the transition from SunOS 1 to Linux a bit easier. Although it still really hurt. But hey, at least I got a usable compiler with slackware and linux, unlike the "other" upgrade path from SunOS 1. :-/

    Just another Sys5 drone, nowadays.

  • Slackware will always have a place... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mr. Neutron ( 3115 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @09:53AM (#2506826) Homepage Journal
    ...somewhere in between the "full desktop" linuxes and "build your own linux." Slack doesn't need fancy apps or installations to justify its existence. All it needs is, every few months, to:

    -Upgrade to the newest kernel, make sure everything is compatible
    -Upgrade to the newest compiler and basic libs, and make sure everything is compatible
    -Make sure the system is compatible with the latest, greatest hardware.

    A bonus would be up-to-date GNOME and KDE, but is it really necessary? For Slack fans like myself, it's better to get a simple, basic OS and then add whatever desktop stuff I see fit. It's build-you-own, without most of the pain of build-your-own.

    Redhat, Mandrake, and SuSE have been pissing me off lately with installs that take 1800 MB of disk space, and 10,000 background daemons that eat up 80% of the available RAM. If I want to install a useful system with X and FVWM to do Web browsing, check e-mail and log into remote UNIX boxen, all on a Pentium-90 with 16 MB RAM and a 600 GB hard drive, the ONLY current distribution good for the job is Slackware.

    Slackware is for folks like me, who remember when Linux was *Linux*, and not a Windows wannabe.
    • It's build-you-own, without most of the pain of build-your-own.

      very well put -- I started off with Slackware in 1994. I tried Redhat for a while, but found myself spending most of my time trying to figure out what Redhat's scripts were failing to do correctly, and I moved back to slack. Last year, I tried Debian because I was getting sick of the lack of package support for slack, but I then spent most of my time learning how to use dpkg and trying to figure out what the hell got installed to my system on my last upgrade.

      Now, I'm happily back to slack, and I'll stay here. No other distribution enables you to know as much about precisely what's installed on your system as slack, and for somebody learning linux, I think Slackware is the best learning tool out there. I find that most of the other distributions try to do too much for the user (making it a "windows-like" experience), which makes learning what it's doing that much more difficult.

    • Do people really do that? The traits/interests/whatever that would lead one to use slackware, nad those that would lead tto KDE or Gnome, seem to point in opposite directions. Not just opposite directions, but opposite extremes . . .


      hawk

  • I don't think so (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @09:55AM (#2506836) Homepage Journal
    Slackware goes through its slow times (more like lulls), but overall it's a distro that's best suited to server admins and people with a Unix background. Slackware isn't a distro for people who love RPM or apt-get, but if you prefer downloading tarballs and building the app yourself (and the extra control you get by DIY), it's the stuff.

    Autoslack was cool, but not essential to the "mission" of Slackware. And perhaps someone will pick it up. I've been using Slack 8 since release, and I prefer hand-building anyways (then again, it's stable enough that all I've done is upgrade kernels and Mozilla so far). If you want it all done for you, you can always use Mandrake or Red Hat, and if you love apt-get, then go ahead and use Debian.

  • How I learned linux. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tweakt ( 325224 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @09:56AM (#2506838) Homepage
    If it wasn't for slackware I wouldn't have know how simple and elegant the whole system is. After the kernel it basically comes down to system binaries and rc scripts, thats it.

    With slackware, I was able to poke, prod, and tweak everything about the system to do anything I wanted.

    Installing new software usually consists of:

    wget somesite.com/release.tar.gz

    tar -xzvf release.tar.gz
    cd release
    ./configure
    make
    make install

    And I was HAPPY with that... it was cool, and I didnt have to wait for an RPM to show up, I could easily use pre-final release software, and configure the build options to whatever I want. If the build didn't work, I went in and tweaked the make file or even the source to get it to compile.

    But now with SO MANY shared libs and other dependencies, it gets to be a major pain in the ass to get one package then have to go get 15 other libs to get it to work. RPM solves all that, and I've come to accept binary distributions as making sense

    Times have changed I think. But if you still want to work with linux at the lowest level (excellant for learning) go seek out the Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org] (LFS) project. It's where you take a kernel and assemble your own distribution from scratch, making it work how YOU want it to, sort what slackware did for me back in the day.

    • But now with SO MANY shared libs and other dependencies, it gets to be a major pain in the ass to get one package then have to go get 15 other libs to get it to work. RPM solves all that, and I've come to accept binary distributions as making sense

      How does RPM solve all that?

      Part of the reason I switched from Mandrake to Slackware was because RPM wasn't solving all that, and I just couldn't keep my system up-to-date. I was spending lots of time hunting for RPMs and finding out about new dependencies (which restarted the cycle). And then half the time, there just weren't any RPMs for the stuff I wanted, so I had to build from source anyway. Then the RPM database would gradually start drifting away from what was really installed on my system, and then I got into the habit of force-installing every single RPM, because 99% of the time, the dependency messages were false-negatives. Then the 1% case would bite me in the ass, as some program crashed because something it needed wasn't installed. ARGH!!! I HATE RPM!

      (How do Mandrake and Red Hat users get by? I really don't know!)

      I keep hearing that Debian's apt-get is so easy, and I've been tempted a couple of times. But fear will protect me: Fear that someday I won't be able to get something I need in package form, so I'll install from source, and then the package database will be wrong and I'll have the same problems I had with RPM. As long as I keep that fear in my mind, I'll be safe from Debian's temptation.

      I'll steer clear of package management systems, thankyouverymuch. It's not "eliteness" or that I enjoy watching gcc do it's thing, justifying the cost of my Athlons. It's purely because of convenience and a desire to keep my hair instead of pulling it all out.

      • Re:RPM flame (Score:4, Informative)

        by nyamada ( 113690 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @02:30PM (#2508528)
        Just want to recommend that all RH users (and slackware too) check out checkinstall.

        It's a utility that automagically changes tarball installs into RPM or slackware package installs.

        I run it like this:

        ./configure
        make
        make test (if necessary)
        checkinstall

        Checkinstall first installs the build into a temp directory, builds the RPM or slackware package, and then installs the package.

        I've been using it for the past 8 months and it's saved me many times from giving up on the RPM database. The developer is working on getting Debian pkgs going too.

        It's available here. [asic-linux.com.mx]
  • I've used Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake and Caldera, but I far prefer Slackware for avoiding bloat. My old Firewall machine used to run Mandrake, and it was a dog. The poor little P120 had disk space problems and performance issues, so I 'upgraded' to Slack and it's been no problem ever since. Now I have Slackware on 3 out of 5 machines. I've never had a problem with the install, and I think the package management is just fine the way it is. Sure, it's not as convenient as apt, but with tools like rpm2tgz, I've never had a problem finding and installing packages even if they're not available as a Slackware package.

    I hope they can keep up all the good work they're doing going forward.

  • Not again, please (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ankit ( 70020 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @09:59AM (#2506854) Homepage Journal
    Every once in a while slashdot comes up with a story that says things like "the distribution that just won't die" (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/01/13162 22&mode=nested), as if it should have died long ago!

    I fail to understand why there is such an attitude against slackware.

    It is a really good distribution. It is simple, it is smart, and it is up to date!

    The only thing that is not present in slackware are things for which MS windows is (in)famous for). Fancy installs, dumb control pannels, etc.

    Slackware is as close to unix you can get using linux. There are no fancy 'linuxconf' like security holes, and wverything works as advertised.

    I use Slackware 8, and have switched to it AFTER trying Redhat 7.1 and Mandrake 8. Before this I was using Redhat for many years, and I regret the time I have wasted with it.

    And oh yes, like MANY others, I started linux with slackware... back in the days of kernel 1.2!

  • Ob: Pedantic (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Two points:
    1. Slack wasn't the first commercial distro. That honour goes to SLS or Yggdrasil
    2. I'm assuming userlocal.com is alluding to /usr/local. They're wrong. /usr is not "User", it's "Unix System Resources", and is pronounced "Yew Ess Ar"

    • Re:Ob: Pedantic (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lew Pitcher ( 68631 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @10:54AM (#2507109) Homepage

      I'm assuming userlocal.com is alluding to /usr/local. They're wrong. /usr is not "User", it's "Unix System Resources", and is pronounced "Yew Ess Ar"

      Sorry, you are wrong. "Unix System Resources" is a retro-nym for /usr, much like "Packet InterNet Groper" is a retro-nym for ping; both are incorrect 'explanations' for for terms who's origin and meaning have been hidden by time.

      /usr has always meant 'user' in Unix, and continues to mean 'user' even today. In the original Unix implementations, /usr was where the home directories of the users were placed (that is to say, /usr/someone was then the directory now known as /home/someone ). This has been confirmed many times by references to the historical documents (vid "Unix for Beginners" Bell Labs, 1978, or "The Unix Programming Environment", Bell Labs, 1984, which says (in part) "On many systems, /usr is a directory that contains the directories of all the normal users of the system.")

      In current Unices, /usr is where user-land programs and data (as opposed to 'system land' programs and data) hang out. The name hasn't changed, but it's meaning has narrowed and lengthened from "everything user related" to "user usable programs and data".

      So, you are wrong. Deal with it.

  • Long Live Slackware! (Score:5, Informative)

    by LazyDawg ( 519783 ) <lazydawg@ho t m a i l . com> on Thursday November 01, 2001 @10:02AM (#2506871) Homepage
    Even if they stopped developing it, made it illegal in the lower 48 states, systematically jailed or impounded Slackware users or fed us to ravenous wolves, I'd not stop using this distro. It has everything I want on the CD, plenty of office suites and window managers, no shortage of development tools, and a small/fast enough footprint to still work on an i386 with 16 megs of RAM. That's not half bad for software I started using six years ago.

    Lacking really ultra-advanced package management has never been much of a problem either. While the setup programs weren't quite as "saleable" as the pretty GUI frontends, they were colorful, used an easy-to-follow menu system, and gave a very detailed description of what they were doing, when, at all times. Compare that to, say, the Corel setup wizard, which kept crapping out on even slightly non-standard hardware.

  • So what's wrong with package management (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mckeowbc ( 513776 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @10:12AM (#2506910) Homepage
    *Flame on*
    I've noticed the majority of posts on this topic seem to be against distro's that use package management. I say wtf is wrong with package management? I use Debian for one reason, I like to use my computer, and not spend time compiling and configuring. When I want to upgrade, I want it done quickly. Call me lazy, I know I am...but I just feel I should spend more time enjoying my computer, and less time trying to get the software to work.

    *Flame off*

    • Re:So what's wrong with package management (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Glytch ( 4881 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @10:47AM (#2507079)

      I know I am...but I just feel I should spend more time enjoying my computer, and less time trying to get the software to work.

      It's a fundamental difference between various types of users. For some of us, tweaking the OS to work exactly like we want is enjoying our computers. I'm not saying either way is better, I'm just pointing out that people are different. :)

    • I'm not against package management tools. I'm just against braindead package management tools. dpkg and apt-get are the lonely exceptions to braindead package managment tools.

      The Slackare package stuff is like the rest of the system, simple, bare bones, and assumes you know what you are doing.

      When I want to upgrade, I want it done quickly.

      You can do the same with Slackware.
  • ...As long as my cd-rs don't delaminate or oxidize.

    I started out with zipslack because it was the only way i could try out this new Linux thing without destroying my happy little compaq term-paper writing machine. Of course I discovered FIPS a few months later. (College kids living on air and sunshine don't have the privilage of buying a new hd just to learn how to fsck.)

    Since then I've tried several other distros but none gave me the flexibility of Slack. Even the latest greatest Mandrake sucks the bilges when it comes to compiling a new kernel and configuring oddball hardware. With slack all the config files are easy to find and in plain english.

    And besides, this is just a message posting of one guy saying he's too busy to maintain one nifty program. bring on the tarballs!

  • (protopkg && autoslack) != slackware (Score:5, Insightful)

    by snookums ( 48954 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @10:18AM (#2506928)

    protopkg and autoslack were interesting concepts, but really little more that than in my view. As a long time (5 years) user of The Slack, I have come to know how to maintain the package database with simple tools like ls and grep, how to build new packages from source with only 1-2 minutes overhead on the normal build time, and how to use rsync and wget to keep my package store current. David's tools were just a way of automating what I do automatically anyway.

    I don't mean to down-play his work, just emphasise that these were tools to make life a little easier -- especially for those with a little less time and/or experience. They were not there to bring Slack "out of the stoneage", and the are not necessary for the continued vitality of the distribution.

    (By the way, what stoneage is the poster talking about? The lack of framebuffer eye-candy in the install? The lack of a package management system that can't handle alien packages? The lack of non-standard compilers, kernel and C library?)

    I don't see Slackware dying any time soon. Things have surely slowed down on the official development front since the developers stopped being paid to work on the distro, but security patches and updates to important packages (kde, vim, emacs) are still coming out.

    Slack has gone through some slow periods before, but often there is work going on behind the scenes. Just recently there was a long but very active "unstable" cycle, with many updates and improvements, leading up to the release of 8.0 (which contrary to popular belief DOES contain recent versions of core software). I think it is understandable that the distro is now in a "maintenance" phase, keeping important thing up-to-date but not embarking on major changes or attempting to keep every package at the bleeding edge. I'm confident that development will begin again when Patrick sees value in it.


    • By almost veryone's definition these are methods of installing software but not packaging systems, Packaging systems (that is EVERY one I know of with the exception of Slackaware's) are designed to manage software in small chunks with some kind of metadata describing how packages relate to eachother - i.e. dependencies.

      I've been sold the slackware `packagaing system' doesn't have dependencies. If that's true, it isn't a packaging system. Nothing wrong with that, but less call a software install method a software install method.
  • Why must every linux distribution be for the mass, and if it is not designed for the mass or stops heading towards that direction, it is labeled as dead or fading away? I am a geek, not your average internet geek. I dislike Redhate for the same reason I dislike MSWindows, made for the mass. The same reason I loved slackware is the same reason I like netbsd/openbsd. It kind of defines my geekiness, not most people use it, it might be more painful to others but it is more exciting for me. I do not think Slackware is dying or is fading away cuz it is not trying to appeal to the mass. For the hardcore geeks, it will always be a favorite. I only run 2 linux distributions, slackware & SuSE. Just my 2 cents. :-)

  • Slackware has me worried (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mrdisco99 ( 113602 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @10:21AM (#2506948)
    Slackware is an excellent distribution, which I hope never goes away. I prefer it over anything Red Hat, Mandrake, or SuSE have to offer.

    However, it's not the qualities of the distribution that have me worried about its future (so what if it doesn't do RPM?). After the "layoff" Patrick's helpers (David, Chris, Logan) have been forced to get paying jobs elsewhere and only help out on a part time basis, leaving Patrick to handle the bulk of development by himself. He's started a slackware-current which has a few package collections in there, but nothing close to a new distribution tree. I'm also concerned that the latest patches put out for 8.0 were in August.

    They've always been on time with security patches, but they've yet to release a patch for the kernel issues found a couple weeks ago. While, I don't mind so much downloading the new kernel source and recompiling it myself, I imagine there are many out there who don't know to do that. And yes, the newgrp exploit thing doesn't work in slackware because it uses shadow passwords instead of PAM, but the kernel bug is still there for exploitation by other means (su perhaps).

    The fact that David is no longer developing autoslack and protopkg is unsettling, but it doesn't concern me as much as the seeming lack of activity at the slackware site. Please, Patrick, tell me I'm wrong and that you've got something big cooking up back there...

  • Domain Registry uses Slackware (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jodrell ( 191685 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @10:27AM (#2506980) Homepage
    My company [centralnic.com] uses Slackware exclusively on all our servers all over the world, and on the desktops of the technical department (apart from me, I use RH). Nothing gets us worked up more than the release of a new Slack version.

    Part of the reason is habitual, but Slackware's simplicity and UNIX-ness is also very appealing for a large, complex network that needs a lot of work to operate. Its lean install (if you don't want it, you don't have to install it, if you do, put it on yourself) is perfect for mission critical stuff where security is important.

    That's why Slack will always have a place in our hearts and on our boxen.
    • Part of the reason is habitual, but Slackware's simplicity and UNIX-ness

      Pray, say, what does make Slackware more UNIX-ness than Random Joe Linux, hmmm?

      For whatever is worth, Interesting is a rather appropiate moderation in this case. It is genuinely interesting to see some people say Slackware is more Unix than other distros because it lacks something. I mean, I usually think of my distro as very Unix-like because the stuff it has, not because of what it lacks.

      [Slackware] is perfect for mission critical stuff where security is important

      Another interesting point, particularly if you take into account that quite a few people here are defending ./configure ; make ; make install as something good... (and a side note: exit status? what exit status?)

  • As long as there's a few hackers somewhere on the planet who want the Slack tradition to continue, it will.

    I myself have almost a dozen boxen installed with Slack, and it's about to be one more.

  • I've used Slackware off-and-on for a couple of years; it's one of three distros I've installed on a regular basis. Right now, though, I'm trending toward two distros: Debian and Mandrake.

    I use different distros for different purposes. My laptop, for instance, has a Mandrake 8.1 install, because I didn't want to spend lots of time making exotic hardware working with Debian or Slackware. Mandrake installed perfectly the first time, enabling all the laptop's devices without even a hiccup.

    My servers and cluster, however, run Debian-testing, because I can install a simple, tight, focused Linux for Beowulf or web hosting. I don't need KDE or X or any exotic drivers on my cluster nodes; I do need a reliable and concise install. Mandrake is too "fluffy" for my cluster... ;)

    As it stands now, Slackware is fading from my systems because it doesn't give me anything I can't get from Mandrake or Debian. If Slackware is going to survive, it needs to provide a unique value not found in other distros.

  • My First, My Last, My Everything (Score:3, Informative)

    by Spud Zeppelin ( 13403 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @10:37AM (#2507028)

    (with apologies to Barry White)

    Slackware was the first Linux distro I installed, more than 6 years ago. Since then, I've flirted with the GUI-package-oriented distros (Red Hat and Mandrake in particular), acquired disks of several others (tradeshow giveaways and the like), been exposed to Debian on servers someone else installed, but I've come back to Slack, to stay.

    Why? Several reasons really:

    • Once you've gotten used to installing it, it really is a very straightforward install. In fact, it should look VERY familiar to anyone who has ever installed FreeBSD.
    • It's rock-stable when it's released. I'm writing this on Slackware 8.0 now, in fact. It actually fulfills the promise of being useful both on servers and workstations with a single distro.
    • It is far and away the easiest "mainstream" distro to lock down. Want to ditch the RPC Portmapper? Comment out four lines (two of which are if and endif) in one rc file. None of those annoying system maintenance daemons that open up all sorts of vulnerabilities like some of those well-dressed distros from the East Coast, either.
    • It wasn't built for greed. This is a compelling argument, and you can make it in favor of Debian as well. Contrast this with those companies that have complex venture-backed and/or publicly-traded business models based on selling distributions. In fact, Slackware's very name is derived from Church of the Subgenius materials predicated on the rejection of greed ("Get Slack!").

    I think I'll go along with what others have said about this: even if Slackware, by name and/or business, were to go away, there are plenty of people in the Slackware community (myself included) who have the wherewithal, interest, and capability to "roll-our-own" Slack-like distros. I would expect, if it were to happen, to see all sorts of "children of the Slack" proliferate as a result, perhaps none with the singular momentum of the parent, but all with a specific niche to fill.

    • As reasons for still using Slackware, Spud Zeppelin writes:

      It's rock-stable when it's released. I'm writing this on Slackware 8.0 now, in fact. It actually fulfills the promise of being useful both on servers and workstations with a single distro.

      Historically, however, I'd like to point out that this has not always been the case. A lot of people back in the day switched away from Slackware to the new upstart Red Hat when the maintainer of Slackware put out releases where it was absolutely clear that nobody had ever tested *anything* much. Really, it was off-scale that way. This was interesting given that Slackware had started out as rebadged, bug-fixed version of SLS, which itself had problems in that the maintainer would make big changes to things like the kernel in for-real releases that ended up breaking things.

      Note that this is not a flame against either McDonald or Volkerding; Linux might have gone *nowhere* without their contributions. But it is pretty much a historical fact that distributions like these have tapered off as Linux has taken off. This is not surprising: the amount of effort it takes to deal with the complexity of packaging a modern Linux system has gone beyond what a single person can do. Corporations can do it, as can the very impressive distributed organization that is Debian, but not any lone hacker.

      It does make you a bit nostalgic. According to the lore, Ken Thompson used to send little "with love" notes along with the magtapes of what we now call Unix to remote sites. I can tell my grandkids one day about downloading SLS onto 40 or more 5.25" floppy disks and secretly installing a rebel Linux partition on the PC in my office at UCSD. It has to start that way if it's any good. It has to change at least a little bit if it's going to stay any good, or be good for more than a small circle of friends.

  • Some of us here remember SLS 1.02 of the 100+ 5 1/4 inch floppies, and SLS 1.03 of the broken jewel cases. And we also remember the broken promises for an update for SLS, as well as the outright fraud of taking advance orders, and then claiming that the computer with the CD masters and the payment records had been stolen out of his car.
    • Well, it wasn't that many 3 1/2 disks :) Luckily the university had a computer lab next door to my dorm and I had to run back and forth with 5 floppies while installing the system :)

      does anyone still have a copy of SLS laying around? It might be interesting to show to these newbies how far distributions have come...

  • Mod story -1 troll (Score:3, Informative)

    by osiris ( 30004 ) on Thursday November 01, 2001 @10:38AM (#2507039) Homepage
    That story seems to just be trolling. i mean, the slackware forum at www.slackware.com is always buzzing. doesnt seem like its dieing to me. i use slackware 90% of the time on my workstation to do just about everything i want. it runs the apps i want, i can install them no problem. the slackware community has been going fine for years without a package manager and still keeps its userbase.

    what does that tell you.

    Just because some apps are no longer being actively developed by the lead maintainer doesnt mean the distro is dead. thats the beauty of open source. if alan cox or linus decided that they no longer had time to work on the kernel, would people shout that linux was dead?

    i think not. as many people have said here, they are still using slackware, lots of people are. just because it isnt keeping up with the 'latest and greatest lindows distro' doesnt mean its dieing.

    As another poster said, slackware's goal is not to ipo, make a huge amount of money (although im sure patrick wouldnt mind that, heh), and take over the world. its to have a linux distro based on KISS. and it works.

    slackware lives on, and always will.
  • While i think Slack will always have its place, i do believe it is fading...

    I just downloaded Slack 8 last week, hoping to replace Caldera on my main system. I couldnt get Caldera to install very lightly, and after that i couldnt get a whole lot of programs(both .rpm and .tgz) to actually freakin install on it.

    So load the ONE cd into the drive.. go through the install. Not quite as nice of an install as other distros, but i managed to get it going.

    To my amazement, it seemed to install everything i wanted, KDE, XMMS, X, sound support, usb support, mozilla, and the latest and greatest versions of the kernel, libraries, etc. So i thought: Great! this'll be perfect, everything i need, nothing i don't!

    Then i rebooted, WOW what a fast boot time. Logged in, typed "startx". Nothing.
    Basically none of my hardware was set up, except my NIC. Now i do like Slack's KISS philosophy, however, if i want to install an OS, i want it to actually use the hardware i install it on.

    Every other current distro i've thrown on that machine(Athlon 1.2, SBLive, Geforce2, USB mouse, Linksys NIC) like RedHat, Mandrake, Caldera, SuSE... all the basic hardware worked after the install (granted to get 3d accel on the geforce i had to set it up with the detenator drivers, but at least X came up)

    So if slack is going to stay fairly used, I'd say it has to have better hardware detection at least.
    It has everything else going for it, but i'm not spending an additional 4 hours setting up my hardware post-install, its not worth it.

    However, I didnt waste the CD-R i put slack on, I had an old k6-300 i put it on to act as a router. So, yes, Slack still has its place, so i dont think it should just dissapear, but its not my first place for a workstation machine.
  • I always thought SLS and Yggdrasil were prior to Slackware, or at least very close contemporaries.

    Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure that Slackware was a modification of SLS.

    Anyone remember? Does anyone have SLS disks anymore?

  • I've used many different distros over the years - Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Storm, Caldera, etc. While they all had their good points, I didn't truly like any of them as much as I like Slack (although Debian did come close). Why?

    Part of it is simplicity. With distributions like, say, Mandrake, you get a lot of decisions made for you. That's the whole idea behind Mandrake and its kin. To hide the complexities underneath from the average user. But in so doing, they weave a tangled web that can be quite annoying for a power user to undo or modify to their needs. This is the opposite of Slackware - it gives you a powerful base of core software, with a few extra goodies thrown in. But if you really want to only install 50MB of stuff, you can do that. Don't want X? Gone. No KDE? No problem. And so on, and so on.

    For people like me, Slackware is a wonderful distro. It allows one to start out with a very functional system with more than enough to get started, and build their system from there. Unlike the other newbie-ized setups, KDE and GNOME are not thrust down my throat. I happen to like WindowMaker, and even before the installer nicely offered that as an option, Slackware was more than happy to oblige my choice of window manager. And while many would cite the fact that Slack is a non-RPM distro as a weakness, I don't miss it. In the past, compiling things would be a more worrying prospect for me, especially during the turbulent times when glibc wasn't yet standardized across the distributions. But honestly, I'm not bothered by compiling my software, and I generally don't have the problems I occasionally had with RPM systems (ever try to upgrade RPM itself? how many times have you had to upgrade tar or gzip?).

    All distros have their place - Slackware's place is with the power users, who don't want to be stuck with a Windows-wannabe setup. Slack harkens back to the day when men were men, installers were text, and Linux was Linux. And that's just the way I like it. ;)

  • I'm sure that Slackware will always have a place. I know plenty of hardcore Slackware users, and I don't think they have any intention on giving it up.


    We don't hear much about Slackware very often, that is true. In the last couple of years we've seen Linux IPOs, the domination of Red Hat, and many other flashy distros with neat logos and nice web sites (Corel, Mandrake, and so forth). Slackware has kinda stayed in the background of the Linux world, so to speak.

  • Get you news from reliable sources (Score:3, Informative)

    by (startx) ( 37027 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMunspunproductions.com> on Thursday November 01, 2001 @11:05AM (#2507161) Journal
    If the submitter had bothered to even glance at the slackware forum, he would have seen that David Cantrell and Chris Lumens have gone back to school now that Windriver dropped slack. Pat (who has always been the main man) has been busy shipping slack 8 and other business details he didn't have to worry about when wccdrom/bsdi was doing the publishing. He still updates -current occationally, and other than the latest fancy kernel, it's still one of the most up to date distros out there right now.
  • I can't see how anyone can assume Slackware would "fade away" because two applications cease development. That is similar to saying that if Netscape and IE decided to stop development, the Internet would "fade away." Slackware was not built or marketed for its new and innovative package management system, but for it's similarity to a truly GNU/UNIX environment and it's ability to show the user/administrator what goes on "under the hood" of a linux box. There are no bloated and clunky interfaces to hide the operating system from you, what you see is what you get. Some of the distro's out there (I'm not mentioning any names) are beginning to take on many of the aspects that keep users/administrators in the dark about the inner workings of Windows.

  • I was recently very grateful for Slackware. I wanted to install a modern, up-to-date distro on an ancient 486 laptop with a ~300MB hard drive. Red Hat, which is what I use on my desktop and on all my machines at work, just laughed at my naivete, thinking that I could install Linux on a drive so small. Slackware, however, worked without a hitch. See http://www.sonic.net/~rknop/linux/canonib150c.html [sonic.net] .

    -Rob

  • Could it be that the Slaktool project has a better system, and thus he gave up? Here is what the Slaktool people have to say about themselves:

    "Slaktool is a project to improve the Slackware package manager with all the features of the more advanced package managers while retaining the classic .tgz format. It does this by way of a generic library that links into the various GUI (or textmode) package managers.
    The library handles all the package operations transparently, and does not base around any GUI or text console."

    ttyl
    Farrell
  • does slackware have any relationship/roots in the church of the subgenius and their encouraging people to get slack [subgenius.com]?

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