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Linux

Slackware 15.0 RC1 Released 76

Posted by EditorDavid from the 28th-anniversary dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader ArchieBunker writes: Slackware, one of oldest Linux distributions, has just announced the long awaited version 15.0 RC1 is available for download from the usual mirrors. Here's the changelog.
Phoronix points out it's been nearly a decade since Slackware 14
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Slackware 15.0 RC1 Released More

Slackware 15.0 RC1 Released

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  • I recall punching holes in floppy disks... (Score:3)

    by Goatbot ( 7614062 ) on Saturday August 21, 2021 @08:24PM (#61716337)
    Just to get enough 1.44Mb floppy disks too create the Slack install disks, that is when I finaly finished my 33.6kpbs download from sunsite. Think I I put this on a 486DX100 with 16MB of ram. That box was thousands of dollars.

  • It seems the BSDs and even Arch are the most popular minimalist installs for those wanting highly configurable or small footprints. Those are still being updated more regularly

  • My first install was slack v.3. Worked just fine on a 486-DX with a 500 meg hdd, X, and an internal 33.3 modem. Made some of my first posts on /. with that rig around 1997.

    • Somewhere in the late '90s I got a Slackware disc, and had no idea what I was even doing.

      I made a little more progress with a RedHat distro.

      Those were the days when I couldn't figure out why I had to mount a filesystem, and where were all of the files hiding?

      #GoodTimes

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hjf ( 703092 )

        Hah! I still have a set of CDs my mom bought me on a trip to the big city. It had Slackware, RedHat, SuSE, a mirror of Sunsite, and something called Metro-X, some sort of commercial X thing.

        The only distro I could make work was Slackware since all HOWTOs seemed to follow slackware's filesystem structure. And I couldn't understand Red Hat and its "RPMs".

        • Was that one of the Walnut Creek CD sets? I went through a few generations of those in the mid-late 90's before settling on the distribution I was going to stick with. Slackware was the first one I tried but I had to move on when I could not get shadow passwords to work and I needed them for either nfs or samba.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hjf ( 703092 )

            No, these are "InfoMagic LINUX Developer's Resource January 1998"

            • Ah, the bad old days... An InfoMagic CD 6-pack is where I got my start, too, in 1996. I remember having to jump through some hoops to get X to work, but it felt awesome once it was running. My first was Slackware 3.0 with the venerable 1.2.13 kernel. I figured out how to rebuild the kernel (turning on ARCnet and a few other things) and even wrote a driver for a custom ISA card that I had. I chose slackware at the time because I didn't know any better. I eventually upgraded the kernel (manually, i.e. n

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by hjf ( 703092 )

                My first was something called MonkeyLinux, I remember it coming in two floppies, which i downloaded somewhere. Must have been around 96 or 97.

                I had absolutely no idea what I was doing at the time.

    • Made some of my first posts on /. with that rig around 1997.

      Clearly not with your current user account, as that would be impossible.

  • Sure, I'm sure everyone has some nostalgia stories about using Slackware back in the day, and kudos to Pat for keeping his project going.

    But who is Slackware for these days?

    Back in the day I liked it because it had significantly less crud than the RedHat and Debian derived distros. No poorly written guis for basic tasks, no obscure distro-specific settings, no weird dependencies etc. It allowed me to have a minimal system and keep it up to date with minimal fuss. The downsides at the time were minor and eas

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crow ( 16139 )

      The example you cite is exactly the reason I love Gentoo. Since I'm compiling everything from source, I have almost full control over which optional dependencies each package is built with. And toss in the added plus that I can add my own local patches to any package, and have it built with them (really nice when things don't get accepted upstream).

      • I always thought the idea of compiling *everything* from source was silly, since most packages won't see any performance improvement from doing so.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by crow ( 16139 )

          Performance isn't a significant reason for compiling from source. It's all about configuration. I don't run the Gnome desktop, so I can turn off that desktop integration included in many apps and avoid installing tons of packages. I have several packages where I've written patches, and Gentoo automatically includes my patches when updating the packages, so as long as they still merge cleanly, it just works with my changes.

          I also really like the Gentoo init scripts system, but that might be just because I

    • We will have to agree to disagree. Slackware has been my daily driver desktop at home for 20 yrs. In that time no harder to set up and configure (and sometimes easire) than the Windows versions over that time period (Windows is stil NOT easy to do a clean install). 4 systems now on Slackware64-15.0 RC1. I think I'll fire up Steam and play a game after I check email, update my calendar and to-do list, log on to the bank and pay a few bills, while listening to the local jazz station via mplayer.

      It is nic

      • Why are you listing the most basic of activities as though it's some sort of accomplishment that you can do them on Slackware?

        Nothing you've said negates anything I said. YOu're sticking with Slack because you *like*, that's it. It's no longer the best choice for any demographic, and that's not just a matter of opinion.

        A full install is recommended for *everyone*.

        Fair enough about mplayer being an up-stream choice if true. I'm not asking for a perfect desktop and never did, I'm happy with my Alpine and Awes

        • This was slackware trying to compete with other desktop orientated distros, which was never it's niche and not a battle it can hope to win.

          You're initial complaint was the Slackware can't be and isn't a "desktop distro" (whatever that means these days of mobile devices). The examples I provided are exactly what a "desktop" is used for - and it ain't programming by the vast majority of users. Slackware is no harder to install or maintain than anything else. What has spoiled most people is the pre-installed nature of commercial operating systems resulting in users not understanding how to install anything themsleves. So you had a bad experienc

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • kudos to Pat for keeping his project going.

      Especially considering he was in some financial trouble a bit back. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/95ry8p/the_author_of_slackware_unraids_underpinning_is/ [reddit.com]

    • "security theater of OpenBSD" says the guy whose OS has secure remote login and filetransfer system from OpenBSD team and who might even be using the superior SSL libraries of them if he's smart.

      hahaha, right, theater.

  • I have been running RC-1 since Tuesday... Mind you my install has considerable modifications, such as Eric's multilib packages, and there is some stuff I compile myself to keep on the bleeding edge. Main desktop has been on Slackware since 2006 or so. No complaints, it just works.

  • I got curious and peeked, and am boggling at how Slackware still looks exactly the same as when I played with it back in 1995.

    The installer looks the same, the package format is the same, the tools are the same... It hasn't evolved at all, really.

    I suppose there's people who like this, and I'm thinking of installing it in a VM for nostalgic reasons, but it's just surprising to see this in this world of fast-paced software evolution.

    • I got curious and peeked, and am boggling at how Slackware still looks exactly the same as when I played with it back in 1995.

      The installer looks the same, the package format is the same, the tools are the same... It hasn't evolved at all, really.

      I suppose there's people who like this, and I'm thinking of installing it in a VM for nostalgic reasons, but it's just surprising to see this in this world of fast-paced software evolution.

      If you want an OS that "evolves" then user Windows or MacOS, or one of those other *Nix that constantly muck around and thus crash. Why should an installer "evolve"? etc.

      An OPERATING SYSTEM is simply something to allow people to launch application software and get stuff done, and does not need to be the center of attention. Nobody uses an operating system to compose music, write a novel, etc.

    • Finally, someone that gets change for the sake of change, isn't always good.

  • Slackware read the second distro I tried, after Ygdrasil, and the one I stayed with the longest. Good times.

  • Thank you, Patrick! (Score:3)

    by rastos1 ( 601318 ) on Sunday August 22, 2021 @02:41AM (#61716845)

    I started on Slackware at about 25 years ago and stick to it to these days. For office work, web browsing, development, server tasks, ...

    Yeah, perhaps it is not for everyone. I use it because it does not change much, the skills ingrained in muscle memory work the same as years ago and you can always drill down the bottom and see how something works and how to tweak it.

    Re-installing to fix a problem? How quaint!

    Sometimes it happens that I want a piece of software that is not included. I used to compile from sources and learn a lot along the way. And eventually _always_ got it working. If that is not your cup of tea, there is always SlackBuilds.org.

    The problems that I occasionally face are in realm of KDE and/or Firefox eventually eating all the memory :-/ but I do not think that it is a problem of the distro.

    I'm a bit surprised that Slackware caved in and started to use PAM ;-)

    I tried Ubuntu on desktop and was struggling to even install gcc or tracking down how some package was created so that I can turn on some feature that was not included. I also shiver when installing some package pulls in hundreds of dependencies - but that has probably more to do with development style of this era. I do not agree that Ubuntu is for power users. It want to appeal to the masses. It is for users that do not want to understand what's going on under the hood. I don't think that is a definition of a power users.

    Another thing that bothers me is that when you search for a solution to a problem, all the "advice" assumes that you have some ubuntu clone/systemd/Network manager/ufw, ... if you do not have that or some of that is broken or you have unusual setup, then you are SOL. Very seldom you find someone who really has understanding of the underlying issues. And if you do, it is a Slackware user.

    • My favourite Linux distro is Slackware, since it is super fast. OpenBSD is second. However, I mostly use Fedora, for SW compatibility with some engineering tools I use.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by KD7YDL ( 8568213 )
      Let me give my thanks to Patrick also as I have been using Slackware since 1996 (Slackware 3.1). Slackware 3.1 had the new Linux kernel 2.0!!!! I will be the first to admit that Slackware is not for everyone, however, for me it has and continues to be a great reliable distro and it is my "go-to" distro to get my work done. Excellent platform for coding and development. The amazing thing to me is that the install is pretty much the same as when I started using it. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" stil

    • tracking down how some package was created

      If you or anyone needs to do so, this is easy on Ubuntu and other Debian variants. Here's the magic: First, make sure there's a matching deb-src line for every deb line in your /etc/apt/sources.list . You can then:

      sudo apt-get build-dep hello # install the build dependencies for Hello
      apt-get source --compile hello # download upstream source, patches, build scripts, and build it

      It will run a full build, printing out the commands as it does.

      I haven't used Slackware since going to Debian long ago, but I s

  • Slackware was my first distro, I think in 1996. For some reason it came on a PCW cover CD, with basically no instructions. I had no idea where to look online for help either (and back then, when I was at uni, the nearest internet connection was a two-mile walk away). I did, however, have a spare hard drive, so I had Windows 95 on one, and Slackware on the other, and used bios settings to dual boot. Respect to those who went through the floppy rigmarole, I guess I got to do it the lazy way, only having to bu

  • Timing (Score:3)

    by computer_tot ( 5285731 ) on Sunday August 22, 2021 @07:07AM (#61717233)
    The comment about Slackware 14.0 being almost a decade past (nine years) feels like a weird comment. Slackware has had two major releases since then, 14.1 and 14.2. The latter is five years old. Which makes me think the author isn't aware of Slackware's naming style for new versions.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dow ( 7718 )

      Slackware's naming style... is a bit of an amusement. I remember having some bundle called Slackware 96 once... and later Slackware 3.5... and some years later after all the other distros were releasing a new Major version number every year or so, Pat felt people were judging his Slackware software on its low version number so skipped a bunch of major version numbers to catch up. There was no Slackware 5 or 6. Then for a few years kept up with making many more Major version number updates rather than lots o

      • I haven't used it for a while. Do you still have to edit XF86Config by hand to get the mouse to work?

        I last used Slackware maybe three years ago with 14 and at that point, the mouse worked without any editing of XF86Config. As I recall, I didn't really need to do anything display-wise other than get the video card's drivers installed. It was a work computer so I didn't do anything particularly hardcore on it though. The mouse worked w/o editing though.

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