

Slackware 5.0 Coming 122
cyan writes "It appears that Slackware is finally going to be glibc based. This was revealed today via an announcement which was sent to the slackware-announce mailing list. A directory called "slackware-current has appeared on cdrom.com, so people may take a look at what's in store if they wish. Note that this should in no way be considered "stable", it's more for testing purposes. Check out the ChangeLog.txt for details; looks promising for all us Slackware freaks ;) " It seems the Slackware folks have been quite busy recently...
Good news. (Score:2)
Then we reached the point where some things were requiring glibc2, but many things still didn't compile under it, so Slack 4.0 included glibc2, but was still based on the old stable libc5. Now, however, most everything compiles under glibc2, so it's time to make the transition... and that's what Slackware's doing.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:no 4.1, 4.2, etc.? (Score:1)
Might have you beat. A 486/66 with a 170HDD, RH6.0 and X. But no emacs and no compilers but I do have 20meg free on it.
Re:I adore Slackware. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
A bit irrelevant (Score:1)
With a little help from
Sure, there's libc5 binaries left but they'll dissapear as I continue to upgrade packages. I thought this was the true Slackware way.. do it yourself. I've heard people with perfect Internet connections say: "I am going to buy the new RH because it has a newer version of SomeProg" while most of them could have easily downloaded and compiled the latest version themselves, and I know they have the skills.
But perhaps I'm just plain old-fashioned.
Re:Windows on small HDs (Score:1)
I installed 95 on 486 66mhz, with a 200mb HD and 4 megs of ra,m, it was aweful.
Linux is Muy Bueno. It runs on anything from a lowly 386, to the latest and greatest Alpha processor.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:RHAT, SuSE, Mandrake (*not* lame) WATCH OUT! (Score:1)
Re:no 4.1, 4.2, etc.? (Score:1)
I had Slack 3.6 running on my Compaq 486/33 LTE with XFree86 on that compaq-vga chipset. I upgraded to 4.0 and I cant get it working to save my life. I accidentally deleted my old XF86Config file and am at a loss. Please e-mail me [mailto]...
Thanks for any help,
Johnny O
There is no good reason to use Slackware (Score:1)
I find it interesting that some people have the balls to say that having few packages and a braindead package manager is a feature...
If you want a small distro, Red Hat is indeed not
what you should choose, but Debian is just fine.
As for too many packages in Debian, well, just don't install them.
It's also interesting that some people think that
the mere presence of RPM or dpkg, and a bunch
of pre-built packages somehow prevents them from
rebuilding from source...
Sure, if you're an old time linux user, slackware
is fine, but that's because you don't care what
distrib you use since you rebuilt your whole system anyway.
As for new users, I shudder at the though of them
trying slackware instead of a saner, better built
distro.
Re:Package Managers are for Wusses (Score:1)
Re:I like this idea. (Score:2)
It needs to be generic, and it will probably need a project site to upload various
I'm already working on my own projects. Anyone out there interested in taking the ball and running with it?
Re:Screw it ... (Score:1)
Re:I adore Slackware. (Score:1)
On FreeBSD xmms runs even without thread-safe Xlibs, since it runs without threads at all. That's also possible, without any performance loss.
Btw on single-CPU systems using multithreading brings nothing, only bugs and hard-to-debug programs. It is way easier and more reliable to do concurrent tasks within a single process with interrupts etc.
Why the switch took so long? (Score:1)
Note that the glibc developers have always said that glibc2.0 was an alpha release. It should never have been used in the real world!
If everyone would have done like Slackware, wait until glibc2.1 is out and stable, then everyone would do the switch now, and it would have taken only a few months instead of more than a year.
Windows on small HDs (Score:2)
You can do it, by much the same method (hand-picking packages to install). I've installed Windows 95 on a 486 DX-33 with a 120 meg HD and 8 megs of RAM. It _crawled_, but still ran.
I can get Windows 98 down to 200 megs without too much effort. Not sure what the minimum size is.
The biggest difference that I know of is that Windows performance suffers terribly with less RAM, less disk space, and a slower machine, while Linux's doesn't (unless you're doing compiles or using processor-intensive applications or have a huge desktop).
I haven't used BSD extensively, but I suspect that it behaves similarly.
Windows 2000 is a renamed NT 5.0. Different beast from the 9x series, and more resource-hungry. I have no idea what the minimum practical installation size is for it.
Slackware already supports GlibC since 3.6 (Score:1)
Actually, the glibc run times have been included in the Slack distribution since Slack 3.6
Rolling your own Linux (Score:1)
thing I oughta warn you, if you're sticking with the stable kernel tree - 2.2.12 won't compile with gcc 2.95 according to the notes - you gotta use 2.7.2.
Anyway, about your own linux - do you have any advice on what to install and what order? I'll likely be waiting for Linux 2.4 & XFree86 v4 before I try doing mine, but I've got a lotta research to do first!
ETA? (Score:1)
Why I personally use Slackware (Score:2)
This is just personal taste. Slackware is actaully very _unfriendly_ for casual users or users who don't want to have to be constantly tinkering with the guts of the system when installing or reconfiguring something. I just happen to like configuring things myself.
I'm told that Debian is also good for this, and doesn't _make_ you do this, but I haven't had a good reason to switch so far.
Re:Why Slackware (pls be short and specific) (Score:1)
Check out the Slackware Advocacy (beta) web site [slackware-advocacy.org]. Here are your reasons:
Screw it ... (Score:1)
I have a Debian box, that I have been using for 2 years without reinstalling. It was 1.3(Bo), then upgraded to 2.0 (hamm), then 2.1 (slink) soon will install 2.2 (all upgrades over ftp using dselect ftp access method). RedHat Is very upgradable too. I have a 5.2 system that began its life as 5.0. Use slackware if you want but you'll have to reinstall it whenever you need to upgrade it, I don't fell like it, have better things to do...
is it only glibc2.0 or is it glibc2.1? (Score:1)
Re:Slack posting busted!!! (Score:1)
Re:Why Slackware (pls be short and specific) (Score:1)
Slackware and RPM (Score:1)
Oh yeah, one word of advice, you will need to pretty much always use "--nodeps" when installing RPM on a non-RedHat system because it will think there is absolutely nothing installed on your system and will fail when it checks for package dependancies.
Red Hat IPO == slackware wake-up call? (Score:1)
I love slackware to death... it's what I started on with linux. It was sad to see it fall behind. This is definitely a good thing. Maybe some VCs (venture capitalists) waved some cash under their noses? Who knows?
-ali
Re:Too late for me.. (Score:1)
It seems that there is a port on ftp://sagen.hoxnet.com that *has* find, but that i686 specific code in it..
pkg management (Score:1)
Pkg management is a lie. If you ever find yourself administarting a commercial unix you won't find any rpm's.
No. What slackware needs is a good bootstrap building procedure like "make world" on bsd combined with some sort of simplified cvs, again, like bsd. I run FreeBSD and Slack, and FreeBSD impressed me with this.
That would kick the shit out of any other linux distro...
On account of rpm's and deb's, they make you lazy.
Re:Package Managers are for Wusses (Score:1)
Because many of us went through HELL and back to be able to do what we do with our systems - we're not the kind of people who look at 2 years learning to figure out how to really use Linux well as a waste of time. We consider that 2 years an investment in our future - because we know how things work. In our eyes, any program which tries to hide it's inner workings from us is a problem - which is precisely why we're saying "no" to Windows for servers at least.
And I think anybody needing to tweek bad enough would figure out a way to get water boiled and beans ground. I consider not knowing how to boil water to be a serious lack of ability for the average human over 10 years old, don't you?
Blink.
Re:I like this idea. (Score:1)
I'm gonna go work on that right now
Re:RHAT, SuSE, Mandrake (lame) WATCH OUT! (Score:1)
--Logan
Re:Red Hat IPO == slackware wake-up call? (Score:1)
I'm not sure why people have the impression that we "fell behind"... our marketing isn't up to the speed of some other distributions', and we waited til glibc2 looked reasonably stable to start basing Slackware on it, but that's really just a matter of sacrificing a head start to retain our (I think) well-deserved reputation for stability... just a difference in philosophy. I think a lot of people have (had?) a poor understanding of the libc5/libc6 issue, based largely on a "newer is better" and "everyone else is doing it" kind of thought process.
--Logan
Slackware Linux Project
1, 2 and 3 (Score:1)
2. Installed from *.tgz packages, which means no new package format was used, and I can unpack slack even on a win machine..
3. Always the emphasis is on "robustness". You can check bugtraq for all RH's or Debian's bugs (e.g.
Inother words:
RH is for windows haters.
Slack is for Unix lovers.
Re:Package Managers are for Wusses (Score:1)
I'm also not saying that it's a waste of time to learn how to use one's system... quite the opposite. But ultimately, it's not for everyone, and if it weren't for things like rpm, we'd have much more trouble attracting non-Linux users and breaking into the workstation market. I use my machine primarily as a workstation, so building stupid applications like my CD player from source so I can squeeze 2% extra performance on them (not bloodly likely on my piece of shit Cyrix P150) just isn't worth the effort. What possible benefit does that get me? Gee, I know that my CD application is rock solid because I built it from source! Who cares? And at the other end, my aging Cyrix box really doesn't have the time (nor do I) to built XFree86, but I've come to trust someone else to do that for me. Of course, if there weren't source available I'd probably start looking elsewhere, but I don't feel this overwhelming urge to waste an entire day trying to build that source tree. It's a giant bloated piece of crap. I download the SVGA server, run it, and forget about it.
I've only been using Linux for four years, so I still consider myself a relative newbie with only a moderate level of skill. But... if some of these people stopped trying to be the most badass, hard kore users, we MIGHT stop scaring away the tourists.
An Easy First Post (Score:1)
News Now NewsLink: Linux [newsnow.co.uk]
Re:no 4.1, 4.2, etc.? (Score:2)
This is one of the best distributions of Linux I have used - it was also the one that introduced me to Linux back in '96.
I remember thinking - "Hey this is really cool...but not very useful!"
It's now 1999 and I now have a home network with a 486 server running RH5.2 - Samba, Apache etc..
I also use AbiWord, netscape, Lynx, Gimp and a s***load of other USEFUL apps -
I guess one has to eat one's words!
.
.
Anyway where was I? Oh yes..
I still think Slackware is one of the best distribs.
The thing I like about Slackware above the the other distribs is that; it is compact, very flexible installation and the authors prefer stability over 'new features'.
Hell, it is running on a 300Mb partition on my Compaq 486/25 Lite laptop and Xfree is installed!
Try doing that with Red Hat!
Too late for me.. (Score:1)
This weekend I will be upgrading to gcc-2.95.1, installing PPP. KDE 1.1.2 should be out the week after.
Re:no 4.1, 4.2, etc.? (Score:1)
Hell, it is running on a 300Mb partition on my Compaq 486/25 Lite laptop and Xfree is installed!
Try doing that with Red Hat!
I've got RH5.0 on an AMD 486/66 in 100MB+80MB of HDD, admittedly sans X, but with emacs and GNAT.
- Aidan
Re: (Score:1)
Dont look for 4.0 till the 2.4 kernel is out (Score:2)
excellent! (Score:1)
5.0 DOH poo poo on me (Score:1)
RHAT, SuSE, Mandrake (lame) WATCH OUT! (Score:1)
As an ardent Slack user since 3.0 (kernel 1.1.12), I love Slackware! It's great to see the glibc support rolled in. Unlike RHAT, SuSE (I've tried both), Slackware is solid and reliable.
Many people that I know switched from Slackware to RHAT to be able to run Oracle. All of those who switched say that as soon as Slack is glibc based, they'll switch back!
I wonder how many other users will switch back to the most stable Linux distribution around?
glibc and libc5 (Score:2)
If I understand correctly, the main functional difference is a different format for binaries. This means that you can't link object files produced with glibc with object files produced with libc5. This doesn't matter if you're compiling everything from source code (because your compiler will give you the same binary format that the rest of your system uses), but it makes it impossible to link in libraries that you receive just as binaries (object files) that are in the wrong format.
Disclaimer: I haven't messed with the compilers in detail, so I may have missed several very large points
Retard, look at the first post. (Score:1)
Anyway, my evil-bastard-modded Slackware 3.6 (now on Kernel 2.2.9 w/ Andreas patch 3 + devfs, as well as Cyrus, and some Slackware 4.0 packages) server will remain the same, but I am quite eager to get glibc2 on my desktop machine
Finally! (Score:2)
Why is this important? The next time you hear some Berst wannabe complaining about incompatibilities amongst the distributions, this is one of the big things they're talking about. Programs compiled against libc5 won't run if only glibc2 is installed, and vice versa.
I'm not suggesting that distributions jump on every bandwagon that comes along, but how many years ago was development on libc5 stopped in favor of glibc2?
This is why I support a Linux Standard Base.
Lies! I love Slackware, and I have XMMS! (Score:1)
ftp://rasputin.linuxos.net
Look at the Slackware packages. I love it!
RE: Slackware Review (Score:2)
Let me begin saying that in 1996 I first started messing with Linux based on a couple of books, an unleased book and Linux Configuration and Installation. LC&I was written by Pat Volkerding, the creator of Slackware, and at that time at least Slack was the predominant Linux distribution.
The case to be made for Slack is quite simple really - once you learn where stuff is, you know where to find stuff. It's the old Windows versus Linux argument all over again - with Slack I can fix my system when it breaks, because I've gone through enough Pain And Suffering (tm) learning about it to know where stuff goes. Now I can make my system sit up and beg. I pity the po' fools who get themselves a copy of redhat to "mess with linux" and end up using Windows a week after because they were unable to accomplish anything with their new OS.
The case to be made for using Slack is the case to be made for using Linux.
i answer my own question... glibc2.1.1 (Score:1)
Re:Ahhhg! (Score:1)
Re:Rolling your own Linux (Score:1)
- Make sure you have gcc-2.7.2 or newer available. It seems older gcc
versions can have problems compiling newer versions of Linux. This
is mainly because the older compilers can only generate "a.out"-format
executables.
And from my dmesg:
Linux version 2.2.12 (root@elvii) (gcc version 2.95.1 19990809 (prerelease)) #1
Seems to be working thus far.
The only "showstopper" bug I've seen in gcc 2.95+ is not using -fno-strict-aliasing flag under 2.95 to compile kernel and similiar code results in broken stuff.. which top-level kernel makefile (at least) seems to use automatically, if required..
Package Managers are for Wusses (Score:1)
$ su
$ rpm -U foo.rpm
$ exit
$ foo
[ Realize it's some really lame package I don't want. ]
$ su
$ rpm -e foo.rpm
I'm done! I'm sorry, but I can't justify building something that resides on my machine for less than a day from source. Maybe I'm just wierd in my usage habits, and I should stop trying out new software, but ultimately it seems silly to villify RPM and friends, who have done more to make Linux accessible to the masses than anything else. (And given his pragmatic view of things, I have to believe that Linus would approve of packages/prebuilt binaries.)
Re:Red Hat IPO == slackware wake-up call? (Score:1)
Not a very charitable thing to say.
Money doesn't buy everything.
That's your only option (Score:1)
And not the whole UNIX world is packing stuff in *yet another pkg format*...
The point is better made with debian, whose pkg format is even more obscure on the internet (Can't you remember all those site's saying "when we have time we'll make *.deb's"?).
Pkg management should be kept for the *base* of your system, and thus be reduced to a minimum.
It's not I want to piss off rpm's, it's just that I don't want my system to be dependant on a format.
Re:RHAT, SuSE, Mandrake (*not* lame) WATCH OUT! (Score:1)
Re:There are 1000 good reasons to use Slackware (Score:1)
As for dependencies, I have a clue about what I'm talking about, thank you very much. You can compile your stuff from source and either create
your own packages to make the dependencies happy
to simply use --nodeps to ignore dependencies when
you install packages later. It's not all that hard, really...
Re:There is no good reason to use Slackware (Score:1)
Redhat 5.2. Full install. Gimme everything.
Hey, where's g++?
Not to mention the millions of layers of redirecting scripts and config files one has to go through just to find where something happens in a script. [Shudders].
Re:There is no good reason to use Slackware (Score:1)
As for security and bleeding edge, sure slackware being so behind lets the other distribution maintainers find and fix the bugs and picks them up way later.
If that is what you're looking for, then just run Suse 5.2 or RH 5.2, or even 4.2
Now, by running ancient distributions, it also means that you get ancient packages with known exploits, unless you apply all the known fixes...
Frankly, I'm not convinced
Re:The hell is dosen't (Score:1)
And what would you do if Slackware had a GUI install, GUI tools, etc.? Would you still want to use it?
Maybe you should change your mind.. (Score:1)
The libc4 to libc5/ELF transition took over a year. Why did the libc5/glib transistion take longer? Seems it's only been a year and a half. I'm glad of that time because it means a) I can use Slackware 4.9 for a stable 2.2.x/libc5 setup (like my current server), and have the 5.0 (possibly unstable, but good) glib on the desktop.
If you haven't noticed, most versions of the glib to the point in time were't quite good enough, at least when we are talking about uptimes of months or years.
Re:RHAT, SuSE, Mandrake (lame) WATCH OUT! (Score:1)
I don't want to get stuck having to upgrade every package by source on the machine again.. I like to use alot of source, but some things just get to much..
Slackware already supports GlibC (Score:1)
And as far as GlibC support. The runtime support for GlibC binaries has been there since Slack 4.0
Re:I adore Slackware. (Score:2)
Ahhhg! (Score:1)
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
Why Slackware (pls be short and specific) (Score:2)
Re:Why Slackware (Score:1)
OK, so you've installed Red Hat and played with everything, and seen about a Gig of HD space go "bye bye" with all the ferver of a hungry tiger to a sleeping zebra. Now you have a ton of crap, and my guess is that you're not going to use all of it. If you feel like really hacking your system, you have to go around RH's config/init/rc files, and make sure not to break too much. After a bit you're getting sick of package dependancies, and the possible bloat they entail.
That's why you use Slackware. It's dumb. Rock simple. Somebody put a cute installer (that you will rarely ever use to install anything after the initial install) on Linux, and made it mostly work (remember how Slack's 3.something had a umount that wouldn't umount NFS directories on 2.0 kernels?). The rc files weren't a mess of calls to other files, and "." this file for config information. They were very straight ahead, and just did the work.
Now would this be good for the home user with little experience? Maybe, if he/she/it were trying to learn as much about the workings of Linux as possible. If this person just wanted to play, then maybe some other distribution would be a bit better. Most of the customer installs I do, I use RedHat because they have vendor support available, and the upgrades can generally be done by the end user by doing the RPM dance. But when it comes to a simple machine to take care of bidness without a whole lot of GNOME/KDE/E/config files/fancy UI to deal with system tasks, I'll deal with slack. Glad the change happened.
Re:Package Managers are for Wusses (Score:1)
[ GNU PACKAGE MANAGER ]
- [ SYSTEM FILE TRANSLATION LAYER ]
- [ ACTUAL SYSTEM FILES/DIRECTORIES ]
Now each package contains a file which references MACROS... the macros being configurable things we can expect on any GNUPM system. The translation layer, which is accessible to the package manager, deals with how all the macros translate into the real details of the operating system. The translation layer could easily consist of a bunch of scripts, which deal with things like updating library paths and suchlike.
Why would this be handy? Well, first of all, it would be a project by a bunch of people rather than a specific distribution. This would be a fine thing in and of itself. Second, it would be by its very nature designed to hook into any operating system. Third, you could build any kind of front end for it you wished; and fourth, the init file structure and the binary location structure and the everything else structure you've come to know and love remains consistent - merely you now have a mechanism for automatically installing software.
I could see each of the distros jumping on the bandwagon as well since it would help unite the community in making all distros handle packages in the same way relative to their own structure
Re:Why Slackware (pls be short and specific) (Score:1)
Slackware is good because it is simple. I've adminned Solaris systes, Novell Netware systems, OS/2 Server, and Red Hat, in addition to Slackware. Red Hat's configs, init files, and RPM drives me (in the words of Harlan Ellison) Bugfuck! Other people who have been adminning for a long time as well say even less polite things.
ttyl
Farrell
Re:Slackware! (Score:1)
Uhm... no. (Score:1)
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
Re:no 4.1, 4.2, etc.? (Score:1)
| Compaq 486/25 Lite laptop and Xfree is | installed! Try doing that with Red Hat!
How's RH 5.2 on a Sparc IPC with a 200 meg hard drive for ya?
Point being, you can scale down pretty much any Linux distribution by hand-picking packages. Slackware was really nice when I was starting out with Linux becauwe it was easy to get a working system from just floppies (Didn't have a CDROM or a network card in my first Linux box!)
Re:Why Slackware (pls be short and specific) (Score:1)
Re:no 4.1, 4.2, etc.? (Score:1)
Here's a challenge - try doing that with Windows95/98/2000 !!!
RPM doesn't force me to do anything I don't want (Score:1)