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Linux Software

Slackware 7.0 (Stable) Released 226

Posted by Hemos from the come-and-get-it dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "The ChangeLog as well as a readme for Slackware 7 are out and ready. Proceed with caution, ftp.cdrom.com's server has a new limit on the number of simultaneous user's (5000)... " It's out apparently - I cannot get on the servers though. Have fun!
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Slackware 7.0 (Stable) Released More

Slackware 7.0 (Stable) Released

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  • are there any features I would _really_ want / need, I'm quite happy with slackware 4, should I stick with it or upgrade to 7.0?



    _______________________________________________
    There is no statute of limitation on stupidity.
  • What, is their web server powered by a hand generator? Someone has to be there to keep it up? Or maybe (unlikely) they're running it on NT somewhere...

    -lx
  • Serious? From what I see on attrition.org they supposedly "hacker" replaced their site with a IIS page. Now which no brainer hacker would support Microsoft by replacing a hacked site with their stuff? And furthermore he replaced not just the default first one page, but even all the link pages!! Anyone figured this out?? Could be true with the stupid dinner notice now up there...
  • Ok, so you got your iso image - and tomorrow there'll be an update where 3 files in the whole download tree change; What do you do now, download another iso image to stay up to date?

    At a guess, using mirror might save some bandwith in this case :-)

    Bye
  • Appearantly, the web masters who run the M$ IIS site, DO know how to mirror..

    p.s. I take it the 5000 are anonymouse connections
    and the web masters of the mirrors have an account?

  • Not A Hack ! (Score:3)

    by FauxPasIII ( 75900 ) on Friday October 29, 1999 @05:11PM (#1576299)
    I just talk'ed one of the three developers of Slackware (we're both students at Georgia Tech, he lives within walking distance. ;-)

    The website WAS NOT hacked, they went thru various pages as a hoax to keep people from bugging them while they put the finishing touches on Slack 7.0. It is being moved over as we speak.
  • The topic for #slackware on irc.slackware.net implies that Slack7.0 final is a rumor... But the rumor is just a rumor, so... :/
  • Agree totally.

    My system used to be loosley based on an old Slackware (can't remember the version, but it came with a 2.0.0 kernel). I gradually upgraded over time, installing and upgrading everything from source, but in the end I built my own from scratch, using an old slakware to compile the basics. I also needed glibc2.1.

    I have tried other distros, SuSe, various Redhats and a couple of other lesser ones. It seems to be the case the most of the packages are misconfigured, or not properly tuned. And there are also problems with dependencies upon particular libraries. I now build everything from source - the only binary install on my box is Netscrape, and I had problems with that due to the C++ runtime libraries.

    Modern distros seem to be attracting the moron market - the users that think that all config is done through a GUI, To extend this, a UK Linux magazine hit the newstands. Pages and pages of screenshots of dialog boxes on how to setup IP addresses, with not a script sample in sight. A complete waste of £5, as the cover CD contains Redhat 6.0.

    If Redhat continues in this way, we are going to end up with a lot of clueless Linux admins, who havn't a clue whats going on underneath, in the same way now that the NT world is full of useless idiots. Point, click, drool, euch! Even where I work now there is a so-called Unix admin who can't extra a tarball. I dread to think what will happen in the future.
  • > I work about 30 feet away from attrition.org

    Excellent, the traffic between our 2 subnets must be enormous ;-)

    As for Slackware, hells yeah, I'm running a (very busy) mirror OF slackare, ON slackware right now, and it's not missing a beat... thank you, Ultra-Wide SCSI =)
  • Slack 7.0 is not out, not yet. I just talk'ed one of the two Slack developers who, like me, are students at Georgia Tech. Here's the deal.

    They are basically done, and are coordinating the last-minute shenanigans with Patrick. They are now moving the finished product into a publically accessible area as I type this (probably done by now). Then it will go live.

    On a related note, the web page has NOT been hacked, they've been playing around with it today for fun, and to keep people from bugging them while they get the release ready.
  • I am wondering when Slack 7 will be released on CD. I know last time it took a bit for Cheapbytes to get it on CD. Will CD-ROM.com also have the $1.99 CD's and all for 7.0? Will CD-ROM.com get em faster?
  • ncftp is the best ftp client in the world and of course allows continuous retries. This little console app beats the crap out of the 'doze clients I've tried.

    What the hell is CuteFTP? Can't find it at freshmeat :-). Does that run on unix?

  • I sure hope you don't do that to warez and mp3 servers.. hammering SUCKS.

    -Warren
  • Ok, sorry, I didnt realize that this was a pure Linux/UNIX site. CuteFTP is by far the best FTP client for Windows 9x/NT. And, no, I dont waste my time at warez servers.

    mduell
  • Iso image is awailable in the slackware-7.0 directory on cdrom.com...

    Al hails to Patrik... been using slackware the past 5 years... simply love it.

    Øyvind, tyfon@alfanett.no
  • those mp3s were only on there temporarily for a friend of mine. they ftp is meant for the slackware downloaders. i might have left them if someone didnt hammer me and kill my bandwidth. sorry
  • Slackware.com is back up with a new design and the official announcement of 7.0 stable...
  • No they didn't die.... they're getting Slackware 7, duh! :)
  • cdrom.com's ftp site has always been slow for me (Vancouver), and I'm on a 33.6 modem. The fewer the number of users, the better, I think.

    <tim><

  • Re:Yay! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Emacs version numbers are wierder than you know.

    It started off as usual : 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, but around 1.7 I gather they realised "oh, we have no plans to do a 2.x ever", and made it v17 instead. Since then, they've been doing 17.1, 17.2, 18, 18.1, etc...

    Strange world.

  • Heck I think this "hacked Slackware.com" is probably a joke. At the time of writing Attrition.org's Mirror Index says 10-28 for the newest entry, whereelse URL in the post above says 10-29.

    Could be Attrition.org noticed this weird change and is trying to mirror it, and IIS kinda supply a default page for them first.

    Shrugs
  • I've always been curious of this... who supports/pays for cdrom.com? Is it the people that mirror on it, or what? Do they make any money or is it purely a service? Also, what OS and how fat of a pipe do they have? Can someone give us some interesting info about them?

    -----
  • Volkerding (sp?) has shown excellent judgment, methinks. While glibc 2.0 was very nice, and indeed very stable, it was never meant to be put to such wide use as it has. People have bitched at the glibc team for breaking compatibility between 2.0 and 2.1, but that's entirely their prerogative, especially since there were warnings attached to 2.0 anyways. The blame really belongs with all the distros that put what they knew (or at least should have known) to be pre-release software into such heavy use.

    I understand this is the same reason the XFree team has closed their development process as well...

    Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty

  • /.'d (Score:1)

    by emmons ( 94632 )
    If they were hacked or not I don't know. Either way, attrition.org's server _cannot_ handle getting /.'d.

    -----
  • It is more like
    3.5
    3.6
    3.9 [4.0 compiled with 2.0.x headers]
    4.0 [compiled with 2.2.x headers]
    5.x [beta testing]
    6.x [beta testing]
    7.0

    The 5.x and 6.x versions were needed because the libc5 -> libc6 transition is not easy ( remeber Redhat 5.0 ?)
    Vlad
  • Just because a distribution doesn't mean your needs doesn't mean it isn't a quality distribution.

    RedHat has different goals than Slackware or Debian. I started using Linux with Debian 1.3 (IIRC, seems like an eternity ago), but I switched to RedHat 5.1 because I got antsy waiting on Debian's glacial release schedule. I wanted all the newest toys and I wanted them NOW! :) These days, I run Mandrake on my desktop (even more bleeding edge and buggier than RedHat, in my experience) but Debian on my servers. Proof positive that there's no single best distribution, the question is meaningless unless you qualify it which "best for what?" Debian and Slackware's conservatism is a bug for some, a feature for others (both for me, depending on which machine I'm using).

    I know someone's going to say: "Why did you switch to RedHat rather than just use Debian unstable?" Before I got DSL, it wasn't really an option. I needed a nice CD-ROM to install from. Now, it's just inertia. I may ultimately switch back to Debian on all my machines, but for now I'm happy with the mixture as is.

    The point I'm getting at is, RedHat is both a much higher and a much lower quality distribution than Slackware. It all depends on what qualities you're looking for in a distribution.

    --

  • Okay, I've stopped allowing new logins. Anybody that's already on can finish, but there will be no new connections for now.

  • ISO's are handy if you're burning a CD and don't care about wasting bandwidth.

    If you're downloading the entire distribution, how is it a waste of bandwidth to grab the ISO image instead? You're still downloading the same amount of data. Actually, downloading the ISO image will use less total bandwidth than downloading the individual files because of all the extra GETs, etc., involved when you're doing the latter.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • ... Look at the new Slackware site. It got a refreshing new look, but I actualy prefer the previous black background. White background gives me a headache with all the glare.

    Turn down the brightness on your monitor. Make it so nothing ever gets any brighter than a dull grey. Improves the look of all your applications across the board. :-)

    I actually rather like the new look...

    --

  • According to the slackware.com, yes.

    Kagenin
  • yeah devel versions are cool. and the neatest thing (to me) is that i've (unknowingly) been using slackware 7.0 for about 3 days now. It just makes me all fuzzy inside.

    matisse:~$ cat .sig
  • What did the limit use to be on ftp.cdrom.com? What did they upgrade?
  • The cdrom.com site states it will be available in November...doesn't give a date though.

  • I just looked at the package script, and it only includes the 1.0.4x beta of October GNOME.

    Pity.

    So it seems the only distro that will ship final OG will be Debian.

    For now at least.

  • Out to dinner! (Score:3)

    by Riktov ( 632 ) on Friday October 29, 1999 @01:34PM (#1576340) Journal
    Check out the www.slackware.com home page (as of 16:18 PDT):

    "The site is currently down while we eat dinner. If anyone wants to join 50% of the Slackware team and you are in Atlanta,
    come to:

    El Torero Mexican Restaurant
    2484 Briarcliff Rd NE
    Atlanta, GA 30329 "
  • Finally, a Glibc based slackware. And it comes with October Gnome! Yeah!

    Windows NT crashed.
    I am the Blue Screen of Death.
  • Seriously, what happens when you get past version 9?

    Whadayamean? You just increment to the next digit: A

    --

  • Almost makes me sorry I got impatient and grabbed the prerelease of it. :/

    (Not like I'd be able to get through anyways. ;))

  • Last I checked (today, actually), the "latest" Debian was running 2.0.36 kernel?

    Hello?

    --

  • the "latest" debian can be running a 2.0.36,
    2.2.10, 2.2.11 or 2.2.12 kernel, depending on what the users wants
  • Way to go patrick and team! Good job! For all of you who thought Slackware was out dated, here comes the cavalry with glibc2.1 and all the cool stuff you come to expect from a professional distro but with all the fun of being slackware!
  • Slackware.com has a mirror of slackware-current's changelog. Unfortunatley, the guys at slackware.com are out to lunch (literally), and for some reason took down the site because of it.

    Blah. Oh, and the changelog is currently blank...
  • Actually, downloading the ISO image will use less total bandwidth than downloading the individual files because of all the extra GETs, etc..

    Uhh, good try, but at least half of a Slackware ISO image is not needed for every kind of install. When I downloaded 4.0, I pulled all the directories in the slakware directory and 2 files that I dd'd onto install floppies. The total amount of disk space was about 300 MB. Clearly not the 650 MB max for a cdrom.

    Thus, if you have experience with Slackware installs, you only have to pull what you really need. For example, the 30 other install kernels that are built for various types of hardware is not needed, but would be included in an iso image. Later

    --

  • Now look at their website. www.slackware.com

    Everybody just chill until we've released 7.0

    Anyone else get the feeling that they're just messing with our minds? :)
  • That's not entirely correct - my first distro was Redhat 2.2.

  • DON'T YOU GET IT ?????? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Could be Attrition.org noticed this weird change and is trying to mirror it, and IIS kinda supply a default page for them first.

    No you idiots! The IIS page IS THE HACK. Don't you see the irony in going to slackware.com and seeing the IIS page?????

  • I guess they got back from dinner, now the site says: 'Everybody just chill until we've released 7.0'

    -----
  • Yeah before that it was a mirror of the microsoft IIS page
  • Walnut Creek owns cdrom.com. They makes their money selling CDs. Checkout www.cdrom.com for more information. As for their system, they run a single server with FreeBSD.
  • It's supported by Walnut Creak CDRom [cdrom.com]. They don't make money off the server directly but most of the stuff on it is available from them on CD-ROM at sane but not dirt cheap prices.


    They run FreeBSD and will happily tell you they couldn't maintain the current performance while switching to anything else without dubbleing the Hardware cost. ( Linux and Open BSD don't count as "something else" :).


    They had 3 T3s at one stage but are at something like 200MBPs now. The server is practically on the Internet Backbone and the ISP doesn't actually charge them for the bandwidth it sucks. ( Somebody estimated $750.000 per year.

  • Let's talk about Redhate Linux. ...[Huge amount of text snipped]...

    Hahaha! Gosh, I'm not sure if this post should be moderated down as flamebait or up as funny! Luckily, I'm out of moderator points, so I don't have to be faced with that decision.

    It's truly impressive, either way. I've never seen a post on /. that went on this long without actually saying anything! I got a huge laugh out of it, whether it was intended as humor or not...

    --

  • Here's what I do:

    I put both /home and /usr/local on their own partitions...that way I can wipe the current version, and upgrade to a new without loosing anything. If I have a package that *NEEDS* to be installed somewhere else, I just add symbolic links to where it wants to be. I guess, in some ways, I am treating /usr/local link the /opt dir in Solaris/SunOS.

    ttyl
    Farrell
  • agreed, a very interesting index...



    oh the irony.
  • Wow, that was intelligent.

    Slackware is the best distro for me because it is compact and doesn't have as much (or any?) fluff like some of the other distros have.

    Care to list at least one rational reason you DON'T like Slackware?

  • I sure hope you don't do that to warez and mp3 servers.. hammering SUCKS.

    Am I supposed to care whether not I inconvenience some little warez kiddie? I think not.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • can be found at attrition.org 's page. [attrition.org] this is the IIS page tht had been put up on slackware's page.

  • Hmm.. (Score:1)

    by morbid ( 4258 )
    Slackware is my favourite distro for many reasons, but it's the one I started on back in '95, however, shouldn't this new release be 4.1 not 7.0?

    I've had a quick shufty at the ChangeLog and it's not much different to my 4.0 distro plus a few downloads.

    If the 7.0 label is for marketing purposes, I hope it works.

    Slackware is very comfortable to work with and easy to administer. I hope there are many more Slackwares in the future.

  • IMHO, Red Hat (NASDAQ:RHAT) is hardly a quality distribution. In my experiences with RHAT, it is buggy and always rushed out the door. 6.1 is a good example.

    Just check out the RHAT 'errata' page on their web site. The Slackware maintainers do not have a fetish for installing the latest (and sometimes buggy) packages. Hence, Slackware is the most stable distribution around.

    While RHAT, SuSE, Caldera, et al rushed out distributions based on the beta version of glibc (2.0.x), Slackware stood firm and waited until glibc was production (the 2.1.x versions). As it turns out, Slackware is the wiser because of the decision of the glibc maintainers to break compatibility between 2.0.x (beta) and 2.1.x (production). This forced RHAT users to quickly upgrade when 2.1 went live.

    This is why I have run Slackware for the past 4 years. It is stable and reliable. Only the best packages make it into the distribution, unlike SuSE or RHAT.

    This is why I think Slackware has the highest quality of any distribution.
    Later.

    --

  • Sounds like a waste of time to me. For those of us with CD-ROM burners, if I'm going to spend the time to download 300MB, I might as well just grab the whole thing so that I can use it on any computer and can make copies for friends, thereby helping the spread of Slackware. Seems pretty short-sighted on Slackware or CDROM.com's part.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Care to explain why one distro is so much better than the other? What the heck to you people have against Slackware, anyways?
  • It's supported by Walnut Creak CDRom [cdrom.com]. They don't make money off the server directly but most of the stuff on it is available from them on CD-ROM at sane but not dirt cheap prices.

    They run FreeBSD and will happily tell you they couldn't maintain the current performance while switching to anything else without dubbleing the Hardware cost. ( Linux and Open BSD don't count as "something else" :).

    They had 3 T3s at one stage but are at something like 200MBPs now. The server is practically on the Internet Backbone and the ISP doesn't actually charge them for the bandwidth it sucks. ( Somebody estimated $750.000 per year.

  • Hell yeah man im in the same boat. I need tcpip2.tgz for the ypserv update before I can burn.
  • Walnut Creek CDROM is www.cdrom.com. They're one of the principal sponsors of FreeBSD (and also support slackware, I don't know how extensively), and make their money selling stuff.

    Check out the webpage (kind of an obvious place to look for your information ;-). The OS is FreeBSD [freebsd.org] and the machine is a single-CPU Xeon, which quite happily maxes out the network bandwidth serving up to 5000 users at once.

    Machine configuration information is here [cdrom.com] (again, you could have found it for yourself in about 2 seconds of looking, but what the hell ;-)

    Transfer stats for the machine are here [emsphone.com] (This one you can probably be excused for not finding yourself..)
  • If it's slow for you it's probably the intermediate hops and not the server. We have a 100Mbs connection to the internet here and an ftp.cdrom.com download can fill a large chunk of that.
    --
  • Speed my good man speed. When I installed the 6.3-beta. It was much faster than 4.0. Plus q3test will work and you don't need hacks for realaudio and stuff of the like.
  • You go to X.
    --
  • Looking for a fast ISO mirror.. Anyone? Rsync. ftp.. whatever
  • I correct myself. The *NEW* FAQ says that they are in the slackware/iso directory...and low! They are.

    Jack Neely
  • I just put my mirror online.
    ftp://thewalrus.gt.ed.net/pub
    I will probably take it down after about 24 hours. Georgia Tech OIT will core me a new asshole if I take up that much bandwidth for long ;-)
    The source iso is not complete yet, just wait for it to become readable and that means it's done. ;-)
  • Hmmm. This could actually be the solution to the inter-distro versioning problem everyone complains about. If all the distros did this then we would always have higher versions chronologically newer than lower numbers regardless of which distro.

    Could be a good thing. We just need to get all the other distros to agree to do the same thing.

  • After working with several distros, I agree fully with you, In my opinion, the whole .rpm thing takes away a *LOT* from the linux experence. Decide to upgrade something? Just get the RPM! It's compiled by somebody you don't know, and with compile time options that you may not even want (and some you do not included). Saddly enough, I am currently on a RH5 machine, but I have kept it upgraded for the most part manualy, only use rpms when I can't find any other way to get the job done, and spend lots of time tweaking the source. With RPMs, you just can't do that. It's the dumbing down of the linux world.

    Feel free to flame...
  • update... i just got the iso images up. took me awhile to get them downloaded from cdrom.com but they are there and available now ftp://cl081.dhcp.ttu.edu
  • Uhhmm. Could you be more specific on that package-system? I rather curious... Website perhaps?

    wayout
  • Better check bugtraq for RH specific bugs...

    You DO know what bugtraq is, don't you ?

    wayout
  • Actually, the latest version of gcc would be 2.95.2 and I've been using it and a binutils beta (2.9.5.0.14) for the last few weeks while carefully trying to rebuild everything in Slackware 7.0 for the target i586-pc-linux-gnu to get some speed and memory tweaks. I have had no problems whatsover (once I figured out why my package creation script was missing some of the files when I rebuilt gcc and tried to make it back into a package). I'm not interested in trying to distribute these as packages (since the point of doing them is to get the optimizations for your particular CPU, and I don't have a 686 anywhere, just a lot of K6-2's) but I will probably put instructions for rebuilding the two online somewhere soon. I would suggest that those that know how go ahead and rebuild gcc-2.95.2 and give it a whirl (just be sure and use the same target platform as your binutils, or rebuild your binutils to the same target platform as the new gcc, or you will severely break things)
  • actually I already installed xmms (downloaded, using the thread aware? libs)

    A better question would probably be _how_ to upgrade, which is covered in another thread...



    _______________________________________________
    There is no statute of limitation on stupidity.
  • Hey as some have mentioned above no hacking was done! Look at the new Slackware site [slackware.com] . It got a refreshing new look, but I actualy prefer the previous black background. White background gives me a headache with all the glare.

    Regarding the IIS pages, did Patrick and friends actually bought NT and fooled around with it for this page? Or they just rip it off a NT hosted site elsewhere? Anyway nice joke.
  • Aye, it does mate. As well as NFS and others.. Get a clue.
  • They just downloaded the stuff from another server here on campus (Georgia Tech) as a joke.
  • Hell, it seems like I just purchased the v3.6 commercial package just a few days ago. I guess that Patrick and his clan have to eat, too, though. Where's my credit card again!?

    -Argentus
    "'Twixt the optimist and the pessimist the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut while the pessimist sees the hole."
    -McLandburgh Wilson
  • You started out late on both Slackware and Redhat.

    I remember using Slackware 2.x. I believe it started it's version numbering quite normally.

    The first Red Hat I heard about (and installed as well) was 3.0. I believe it started around there to catch up with Slackware.

    Patrick is perfectly justified in his jump since he's been around much longer than any other currently popular distribution.

  • How Do I Upgrade? (Score:3)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Friday October 29, 1999 @04:00PM (#1576419) Homepage Journal

    I've consistently used Slackware for the last few years, and have grown comfortable with it. It runs on both my desktop and laptop. However, one of Slackware's biggest shortcomings is the difficulty in upgrading system components. The only "sure-fire" way I've found to do this is with a complete re-install, then copy back my stuff.

    Since the rest of the world is moving away from libc5 and toward glibc, I'm going to have to upgrade at some point. It's for these reasons that I've been flirting with Debian and RetHat, which appear to be a bit friendlier with their package management. Nevertheless, since I'm most familiar with Slackware, I'd prefer to upgrade what I already have.

    So. Can anyone offer any hints/suggestions as to how to make this process as painless as possible? (Yes, I read the Slackware upgrade HOWTO, and it's depressing. Isn't there a better way? If moving to Debian/RedHat turns out to be the best way, then so be it...)

    Schwab

  • word up kids!!!!
    Slackware 7.0 is out!
    Maybe this release will make those glibc2 junkies chill out ;)
    I am happy to see slackware 7 finally stable, I have been working with slack 7 for weeks, and weeks. At least Pat lets everyone in the beeding edge community/wanna be beta testers stay in touch with whats happening... Slackware 7.0 (dont mind the meth induced version number change) is out with a vengence with glibc, the MOST updated, and secured deamons. Pat maynot have a crew of linux heavyweights to make kernel patches every 10 minutes, but it is still one of the best distros ever!

    cheers!!
  • CRL provides the internet connection. They run SunOS boxes, and I assume FreeBSD PCs (many ISPs have that mix, especially ones that aren't startups.. CRL has been around since the early 80s). I never had a problem with CRL... my old ISP which I really aught to get around to stopping the account.
  • Slackware.Net, an unofficial Slackware site (with Slackware Linux news and information, along with other features) is currently running an IRC server at irc.slackware.net. Slackware discussion is in #Slackware. Feel free to come stop by and chat.
  • Actually Slackware is not too hard to upgrade...

    What you do is you get all the current packages on your filesystem ( your older running slackware version ) off the ftp. tar tvfz them to look to see that they're not overwriting anything important. There is one script that 'installpkg' runs after it has uncompressed and unarchived the .tar.gz. I think it's tarred in to an /install directory, I forget exactly. You might want to look at the to make sure it doesn't do anything strange. It is a regular sh shell script. then finally installpkg [name of file].

    I've successfully upgraded a slack 3.1 install to 3.5 over the net from accross the country. Didn't even have to reboot. Gotta love unix. Furthermore after checking each package briefly to see if it installs any files I don't want, I didn't have to skip any packages. Please be aware though that since slack 7 is all based on glibc 2.1, if you use this method to upgrade from a libc 5 based system to a libc 6 based one ( libc is located in the 'a' disk set, see below ) it could possibly bring your box down and you may need to choose your fate with the almighty boot disk

    One note though. You might not want to install the a disk set this way unless you really know what you're doing.. but then if you -really- know what you're doing you'd compile and upgrade the critical libs yourself.

    . Hope this sheds some light

  • Nothing would make me happier then to see a port of slackware to the alpha...

    After being forced to install debian onto my AS200, I tried to port slackware 4 over... with some sucess, but it was just too time-consuming...

    Has anyone else heard of or actually created a port of slackware for the alpha? Or maybe Pat will be looking into something like this for the future...

    Maybe if I ever get time I'll finish the job...:P
  • There's a need, on this sort of thing, to forbid public access for a few hours, denying to all other than those that are formally mirroring the site.

    At this point, you've probably got:

    • A thousand people doing non-Slackware-related stuff,
    • 400 guys with cable modems doing online installs,
    • 3600 guys doing installs at 53K, and
    • 15 annoyed sysadmins that are trying to set up mirrors but that can't because ftp.cdrom.com is out of connections.

    There otta be a protocol...

  • Slackware was hacked today (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 29, 1999 @01:37PM (#1576449)
    go here [attrition.org] to see the mirror at attrition.org
  • ftp.cdrom.com had a 3600 user limit before they upgraded to a Xeon 500 with 4 gigs of RAM, then they went to 5000 users. Then, they went to 6000 for awhile, and they're back at 5000. Don't know why they went back down (speed?)

  • version increase justified? (Score:4)

    by leonids ( 102892 ) on Friday October 29, 1999 @07:45PM (#1576451)
    I see lots of people now despising Slackware just because Patrick increase the version big time from 4 to 7. But hey everything has to have a reason. So I quote this post by Patrick himself from the slackware.com forum:

    =====
    Author: Patrick J. Volkerding
    Date: 10-10-1999 21:43

    I've stayed out of this for now, but I do think I should lend a little justification to the version number thing.

    First off, I think I forgot to count some time ago. If I'd started on 6.0 and made every release a major version (I think that's how Linux releases are made these days, right? ;), we would be on Slackware 47 by now. (it would actually be in the 20s somewhere if we'd gone 1, 2, 3...)

    I think it's clear that some other distributions inflated their version numbers for marketing purposes, and I've had to field (way too many times) the question "why isn't yours 6.x" or worse "when will you upgrade to Linux 6.0" which really drives home the effectiveness of this simple trick. With the move to glibc and nearly everyone else using 6.x now, it made sense to go to at least 6.0, just to make it clear to people who don't know anything about Linux that Slackware's libraries, compilers, and other stuff are not 3 major versions behind. I thought they'd all be using 7.0 by now, but no matter. We're at least "one better", right? :)

    Sorry if I haven't been enough of a purist about this. I promise I won't inflate the version number again (unless everyone else does again ;)

    Pat
    ====

    Meaning? We are seeing more sad people who have been dumb down by other brain dead over commercialised distributions. Not that they should not commercialise, but they are overdoing it.

  • Re:ftp.cdrom.com (Score:3)

    by NovaX ( 37364 ) on Friday October 29, 1999 @01:42PM (#1576460)
    Bandwith actually. They were doing fine on the Pentium Pro, but they were filling the pipe. When they upgraded the pipe, they also upgraded the machine to make sure it could handle it (I remember it was origionally going to scale to 10,000 users). The first day they broke the record, which they had set, for the most bandwith in 24 hours. They're well over 1 terrabyte a day. It would have been nice ti have 10,000 users, but its already to slow at times with 5,000.

  • Re:3.5 -> 7.0 ?? (Score:3)

    by Rendus ( 2430 ) <rendus@g3.1415926mail.com minus pi> on Friday October 29, 1999 @01:43PM (#1576462)
    Actually, it was 4.0 to 7.0, and Patrick has said it's because everyone else is doing it and he's tired of fielding questions about when he's "going to upgrade Slackware to -insert latest RH version here-"

    Look at Slackware's versioning though...

    3.0
    3.1
    3.2
    3.3
    3.4
    3.5 -- I started here.
    3.6
    3.9
    4.0
    7.0

    Then look at RedHat's...

    4.0
    4.1
    4.2
    5.0
    5.1
    5.2
    6.0
    6.1

    If Patrick were to version like RH, we'd already be 7.0+ anyway. He's just catching up.
  • NFS has always been supported. It's my favourite method, too. The entire distribution isn't too large to mirror on my small network.

    As for FTP, I'm not sure...

    Since the distribution is quite small, downloading it and doing it over NFS would be a good bet. If you have a cable modem, leave it on your server and let all of your other cable friends install it from yours. I'm sure they'd appreciate the speed.

    To set it up is simple. You only have to mirror the "slakware" directory and provide the network boot and the appropriate root disks (colour, almost always).

  • Re:Why egcs-1.1.2? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 29, 1999 @03:38PM (#1576471)
    If you spend a little time reading the kernel mialing list archive you'll see that most of the kernel developers consider it bad form to compile your kernel with 2.95. Some talk that there is some strange intereactions between binutils and gcc-2.95 that create kernels that don't run right. There are also a few kernel folk that think gcc-2.95. is just plain buggy. Who knows but in almost every instance that someone built a kernel with 2.95 and it fell over, once they built one with an older compiler it would work. I don't know that this is the full reason for egcs but I imagine Patrick took it into account when he was putting things togeather. gcc-2.95.1 and gcc-2.7.2.3 are in the contrib directory.

  • comment about philosophys.. (Score:3)

    by Catatonic Dismay ( 88112 ) on Friday October 29, 1999 @04:40PM (#1576478)
    I have to say something about the philosophys that distributions follow. Slackware's philosophy is driven from the 'do it yourself, no bull shit' ideology. That's why I love it so much.

    I saw another poster saying that 'while he doesn't have a dozen people under him to update kernels, blah blah it's still a good distribution.' This is quite true, it is a good distribution, but he doesn't need tons of people to help him out. This comes from the philosophy that people out there should not depend on him or the distribution to get them through their entire existance while using linux. You're supposed to compile new kernels yourself, etc. Why do you think you don't see slackware 'tgz' packages floating around rabidly every where like rpms ( well you do see them sometimes like on kde's site i think ) ? Because slack users know how to get by on their own knowledge. This might also be why there isn't a good way to upgrade through the install process.. because most people only need to install slack once and they can then maintain their own box. hell, my box is a slack 3.4 install and it has been glibc 2.1 since that version of the GNU C library came out. Ok well it took a bit of time to recompile everything gradually.

    A word for the newbies.

    the philosophy that a distribution uses is very significant to those that are picking out a distribution for the first time. It should probably be one of the most significant things actually. How do you wish to live your life in the world of linux ? you should be picky as it is your environment that you will be playing/working in for a while. Second to that should be the packages it comes with. Weigh everything out before investing your time ( notice i didn't say money ) into a distribution.

    Catatonic .. irc.aye.net:6667

  • Well I'm sorry to see a nice distribution hacked, but the only time I'll really be worried is if the OpenBSD server get's hacked.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Yeah, but I'm really waiting for OpenBSD version 564.3 - it's supposed to be really good.

    Seriously, what happens when you get past version 9? You could go to 10, but I think versions over 10 sound stupid. Like Emacs 20.blah.blah -- it just looks dumb. I hate to say it, but I think MS had the right idea of dropping the version numbers on Office after 6.0. I don't know how I feel about the years replacing them, but it's better than Office 10.0

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Does the installer support FTP or NFS installs?

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