For almost a week now, I’ve been using Slackware 9.1 (RC-1 released today), and I am having a blast. Slackware doesn’t have more than 6-8% of the Linux market these days, but it used to be one of the most-used distros back in the day. Today, many think of Slackware as a true classic, a thought that is often accompanied by a feeling that Slackware is not a user-friendly or an uber-modern Linux distribution. There is some truth in that statement, but there is always the big “But”. Read on for our very positive experience with Slackware 9.1-pre. Update: In less than 24 hours since the RC-1, Slackware 9.1 RC-2 is out.Installation
Slackware 9.1 comes in two CDs and it’s Installation is text-based. People who have used Debian or FreeBSD before they would find themselves accustomed to the theme. The only snag might be that the user will need to use the command line and not extremely user-friendly fdisk application to create partitions for Slackware. A tip: to avoid problems later, select the “full installation,” it will save you some headaches along the way. Slackware successfully found most of my hardware – 2 sound cards, network card, 2 CD/CDRWs, USB, and my PCI Firewire card. However, XFree86 requires manual tweaking by editing its configuration file and adding your monitor specs and graphics card driver to load. Using a mouse with a wheel would also require you to add the ZAxis and IMPS/2 (for PS/2 mice) options on that file.
The great
Gnome 2.4 is included, XFree86 4.3.0, kernel 2.4.22, KDE 3.1.4, Apache, Bind and a whole lot of other software too. Soon you are presented with a nice and modern desktop to work with. Configuring the system is also pretty easy to learn, as Slackware is all about simplicity: its /etc/* setup is pretty easy to learn and understand, while its INIT system is BSD-like.
The packaging system is minimalistic. It does not support dependency resolving, but so far I did not felt that I need any. All packages are coming pre-compiled with some i686 optimizations (Slackware runs minimum on a 486) and usually, all depended .tgz packages are to be found at the same place. Just do an “installpkg *” on the directory you downloaded them, and then you will be ready to fire them up. Getting Java runtime support was extremely easy for example.
For dependency checking and automatic FTP update there is a handy third party utility named Swaret. If you are using Slackware and need to stay current, this is a must have.
The three main strengths of Slackware I see are these:
1. Simplicity. Init scripts, configuration, package installation are all minimalistic and simple.
2. Speed. Together with Gentoo, I think we are looking into the two fastest consumer distros on the planet. Slackware boots in less than 16 seconds on this AthlonXP 1600+.
3. Stability. I think this is the first Linux distribution that I haven’t managed to crash it completely or just its X within 2-3 days of using it.
The not so great
No matter what driver or front end combination I use (alsa, oss and artsd/esd), I can seem to have only a single application that can use the PCM or /dev/DSP at a time (card is a VIA 8233 on board, chipset is an Avance_Logic_ALC200/200P_rev_0). For example, if XMMS is playing something and I load Totem to play something else, I will get errors like:
audio_alsa_out: snd_pcm_open() failed: Device or resource busy
audio_alsa_out: >>> check if another program don’t already use PCM<<<
or
ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:597:(snd_pcm_hw_open) open /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p failed: Device or resource busy.
It is somewhat discouraging to see Alsa to still not have iron out these mixer issues at this time and age. When I changed my sound card into a Hoontech/Yamaha Digital-XG YMF-754, the problems went away. I believe that the via82xx Alsa driver does not support advanced mixer capabilities and this is something that needs fixing in my opinion as these onboard VIA sound cards are very wildly used.
Additionally, I would like to see more graphical administration tools to be included on Slackware, e.g. the Gnome System Tools, Gnome-DB, Bluetooth and Wireless utils, phpMyAdmin and PostgreSQL in addition to the existing mySQL package.
Conclusion
Slackware is my new favorite operating system along with FreeBSD, Windows Server 2003 and Mac OS X. It works great as a workstation and a desktop system and I have no doubt that it would do a great server as well.
I have tried more than 10+ different Linux distributions in the past 4 years but I never stuck with any. Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE are too bloated and slow with complex internal structures (however Red Hat evolves faster of the three). Gentoo is way too involved and got bored easily of its long compilation times while Debian is way out of date in many ways (not just packages) for my taste. The ironic part is that my husband, who used to use Slackware when he was studying at the Ecole Polytechnique in France in the ’90s, was always prompting me to try Slackware out, but being so absorbed with the mass’ direction, I was mostly ending up using the well known distros mentioned above when I had this urge to use Linux (I get that from time to time :).
If you are an intermediate/advanced user, you really need to have a look at Slackware’s simple way of doing things. Simplicity and speed is all I am after and while a Unix can never be too simple (as in let’s say, BeOS or Syllable-OS), with Slackware I found a solid Linux OS that just works the way I want it. It could be even more painless though, if the Slackware maintainers realize that times change fast and that the “minimalistic OS nature of 1997” is not the same kind of the “minimalistic OS nature of 2003” and pay more attention in adding hot-plug/automatic support into less mainstream hardware (e.g. firewire/usb drives, bluetooth) and add more admin tools and automation, without of course losing the simplicity and speed that currently Slackware users enjoy.
Installation: 6/10
Hardware Support: 7.5/10
Ease of use: 7/10
Features: 8/10
Credibility: 10/10 (stability, bugs, security)
Speed: 8.5/10 (throughput, UI responsiveness, latency)
Overall: 7.83
I don’t think I know distro that forced its users to upgrade only once or twice a year? Name it please?
Any distro that makes you upgrade only and only from a CD only every few weeks, months, or years should be avioded. There, I think I phrased it better now. I’m not hear to mention names, I might offend others in the process.
And about claim about good distro, please explain what kind of :
– easy init system, and
– great package management system
you think is good.
There are several flavour of distros, because there are several kind of taste about “good” and “bad”. And we can pick one the most fitted with us.
Very good inquisition. A good init system is one in which services are easy to start, stop, add permanently or temporarily, remove permanently or temporarily at different runlevels (i.e. boot default, nonetwork, etc).
A good package management system will be one that those the following;
1). provides you with tools to look up information about a package or search for it.
2). provide one with tools to list the dependencies of a package.
3). provide one with tools to determine or manipulate which dependencies should be installed based on how critical the dependency is.
4). provide one with tools to list or search for packages installed on your system, where the the packages’ files are installed and other relevant information about the packages.
5). provide one with tools to easily uninstall the packages and it’s dependencies if necessary.
6). provide tools that will seamlessly and automatically download, search and install packages and their dependencies without error at your biding.
7). provide one with a repository or ports of all packages known to man.
8). enables a user update their system anytime, most especially during security updates to important packages openssh comes to mind. (e.g. I update my system daily, not when gentoo releases it’s next CD)
9). provides update to official stable packages in a timely manner. When KDe-3.2 pops out, I’ll probably be using it the next day on gentoo.
10). Provide stable, testing, and unstable branches for their packages. This is particularly important for user who intend to run servers.
11). It’s so easy to use, my grandma uses it while eating dorritos.
12). Has a logical file system layout.
My criteria sounds quite stringent, but a distro with a package management system that scores 5/5 on each point I’ve listed above will earn my usage and respect. So far, only debian, for binary, and gentoo, for source, have even come close. They’ll easily achieve 3/5 on each characteristic I listed above.
I hope I answered your queries satisfactorily
> Also Debian doesn’t have rc scripts…end of argument.
Can you elaborate by what you mean “Debian doesn’t have rc scripts”? I’m sorry for going on a tangent. I installed Debian last night via Morphix liveCD and I used “update-rc.d <script-name> remove” to remove services/daemons from the default run level, <script-name> is any one of the scripts found in /etc/init.d
Is that not the same as the rc scripts you’re talking about?
Gent, Gent,
Thanks for your more in depth explanation of the whole “literally” thing. I guess that literally has developed an alternative application of the same definition. “Literaly”, is now commonly used to mean “actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy” as per Anon’s post. Which I guess was where my confusion stemmed from. You are correct in that “literally” has traditionally meant “not figuratively, as written or stated” As in “When he heard the news he literally dropped dead.” To mean that he actually did die, that the speaker wasn’t using a figure of speach. Today it is also used to mean without exageration, to emphasize that the speaker wasn’t kidding when he applied that figure of speech. i.e. “It literally was the best time I’ve every had” or as the original poster has stated, “I literally had a blast.” (previously explained in my previous post
American English is a rather fluid language. idioms, and popular, if not proper, usage tends to quickly “become” proper usage. I guess that can be confusing for more traditionalistic (aka non American) English speakers.
Enough of that though, on to Slackware. I realize that there are several ways to install Slackware. My question was should I;
1) Install Slackware 9.0 and then upgrade when 9.1 final is out.
2) Install Slackware 9.1 rc (something)
3) Wait until Slackware 9.1 final is out and install that
Thanks again for any help that anyone can provide.
someone247356
Just my $0.02(Canadian, before taxes)
TLy wrote:
I installed Debian last night via Morphix liveCD and I used “update-rc.d <script-name> remove” to remove services/daemons from the default run level, <script-name> is any one of the scripts found in /etc/init.d
I just discovered rcconf which is even easier.
Also, Gent, thanks for answering the installation question.
Also also — misuse of the word literally is almost as annoying as folks consistently mispelling separate, and also folks using “begs the question” when they mean “suggests the question”.
Now, lessee, where’s my copy of Strunk & White…
… that are not included? Evolution, Totem etc… I know OpenOffice is fine to install. But the other Programs?
Yes, I compiled the rest (about 20 more apps that I wanted)
As for Evolution, I just downloaded the 4-5 packages needed for it from Dropline Gnome’s sourceforge page (I didn’t install dropline gnome, I just got a few packages from them and installed them manually)
Then you can get past the slack installer. Really, that simple. In fact, one of the first Linux distro’s I tried was Slack, and I didn’t see any major issues.
When the installer prompts you to configure xfree, you do it. No biggie. Okay, yes, it would be nice to have xfree automatically configured, with graphics accelereated, but hey-what do you want Patrick to focus on: creating a new installer, or keeping Slack up to date and stable? Seems like an easy decision to me.
You want a hard install, try FreeBSD, Debian, or Plan9. That’s difficult.
Agreed.
And
Why RPM Distro’s aren’t any good:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-Building-HOWTO-4.html
Here’s an excerpt from the page:
“4.2 Problems with rpms: an example
Jan Hubicka wrote a very nice fractal package called xaos. At his home page, both .tar.gz and rpm packages are available. For the sake of convenience, let us try the rpm version, rather than the “tarball”.
Unfortunately, the rpm of xaos fails to install. Two separate rpm versions misbehave.
rpm -i –test XaoS-3.0-1.i386.rpm
error: failed dependencies:
libslang.so.0 is needed by XaoS-3.0-1
libpng.so.0 is needed by XaoS-3.0-1
libaa.so.1 is needed by XaoS-3.0-1
rpm -i –test xaos-3.0-8.i386.rpm
error: failed dependencies:
libaa.so.1 is needed by xaos-3.0-8
The strange thing is that libslang.so.0, libpng.so.0, and libaa.so.1 are all present in /usr/lib on the system tested. The rpms of xaos must have been built with slightly different versions of those libraries, even if the release numbers are identical.
As a test, let us try installing xaos-3.0-8.i386.rpm with the –nodeps option to force the install. A trial run of xaos crashes.
xaos: error in loading shared libraries: xaos: undefined symbol: __fabsl
Let us stubbornly try to get to the bottom of this. Running ldd on the xaos binary to find its library dependencies shows all the necessary shared libraries present. Running nm on the /usr/lib/libaa.so.1 library to list its symbolic references shows that it is indeed missing __fabsl. Of course, the absent reference could be missing from one of the other libraries… There is nothing to be done about that, short of replacing one or more libraries.
Enough! Download the “tarball”, XaoS-3.0.tar.gz, available from the ftp site, as well as from the home page. Try building it. Running ./configure, make, and finally (as root) make install, works flawlessly.
This is one of an number of examples of prepackaged binaries being more trouble than they are worth. “
“Gentoo isn’t much better. Portage is also good in theory. The problem is, first off to get a working system it takes at least two days. (NO I WON’T USE STAGE 3 W/ GRP!!! THE ATHLON XP VERSION CHOKES EVERYTIME I TRY TO INSTALL GNOME). So I decided I was going to give it one more shot starting from stage 1. Two days later I had gnome and everything up. However, I go to try install XMMS, and it tells me it needs to uninstall gnome panel 2.2 and install 1.4. I’m just like whatever, and I booted into XP because I didn’t want to deal with it.”
First of all, gentoo is a source based distro, therefore I don’t see why you complain about how long it might take to have a full desktop system built. Source distros compile everything FROM source. If you don’t like waiting for it to finish, then don’t use it, go for a binary based one. And what does Portage has to do with compile times?
Second, I don’t see how in hell it took you two days to get a working system. On my XP 1900, starting from stage 1, I had mine built WITH GNOME in less than a day. Unless you’re installing countless apps I don’t see how you hit the 2 day mark.
Third, as far as your statement of XMMS wanting to uninstall the 2.2 version of Gnome panel in favor of the 1.4, again you’re wrong. Portage features a slot feature, therefore Gnome panel 1.4 and 2.2 can both be installed and coexist. So yes, it would install gnome panel 1.4, but it WONT uninstall the 2.2 version. Perhaps you should have investigated more or check the forums at gentoo.org, but you said it yourself, “I’m just like whatever, and I booted into XP because I didn’t want to deal with it.” This is why you fail. Gentoo is not a newbie distro.
That said, I do plan on giving slack a try.
Ok ,now I’m a newbie I guess. Well think what you want, but I’m pretty sure I have a pretty good handle on linux/unix. Basically the boot to xp thing was my girlfriend was bugging me to check her email and to go on aim, and I needed to step away from the computer for a little bit because I was about to pull my hair out, so went and watched the rest of the giants / skins game. The only reason I have xp on my computer is becuase I have to work from home sometimes, and we are M$ office.
Honestly though, slack just works. Its nice and elegant and seems like it will be on my computer for a long time to come. I keep learning new things and that’s why I use linux, I like to learn about computers.
That being said I had been checking out the gentoo forums for a solution to the xmms/gnome panel issue. Basically, they said take out the gnome use flag when emerging xmms. By that point I just didn’t want to deal with it. Slack came in and I’m very happy now. Give it a try. I think you will like it better than gentoo. I just feel like I’m more in control, and I’m not spending half my time learning how to use a package manager. If that makes me a newbie, than I’m a newbie.
that was supposed to be re: jhboricua
I’m on windows at work, and I just highlighted the text to copy like i would on xwindows….whoops
I was going to comment on this earlier, but I figured it would be moderated down, so I didn’t. Since it wasn’t moderated, I will reply (question for OSNews: Why is it that hyperbolic remarks regarding Linux are usually moderated down, but more often than not, ignorant, trollish remarks like those by NONE are left up as “alternative points of view”? Personally, I would appreciate a less-biased standard of moderation.)
Now, on to None’s remarks:
Linux is slower and less stable than windows.
That’s interesting. The longest I have gone without having Windows either die, or its performance degrade to that of frozen treacle, is about one month. The longest I have gone without a reboot on Linux was 2.5 years; and I only shut the system down then because I was leaving that job. I’m sorry, but my personal experience and a lot of other real-world evidence refutes your claims.
My windows box uses about 40 megs of ram to boot, Linux uses about 175 (and Linux is a monolithic kernel)
What version of Windows? XP certainly doesn’t boot into 40M of RAM. What version of Linux? Mine doesn’t boot into 175M of memory.
Linux crashes much more often than windows, way more
The few Apache/MySQL vs IIS/MS SQL tests I have seen have been won (sometimes dominated) by Windows
That cracks me up. Part of my job is to run both Windows/IIS/Exchange and Linux/Apache/Postfix servers. Guess which ones I NEVER get emergency calls for? Windows/IIS/Exchange suck, plain and simple. Anybody skilled person who has to administer them will tell you that.
I’m going to skip a bunch of the other nonsense because I really don’t care.
Ease of use for the newbie is not as important as ergonomics for powerusers, but Linux has yet to bring an environment to the table that I can efficiently get work done it.
So now we see the real point of your post. You personally don’t know how to make Linux work for you, therefore, it must be a stupid OS.
WinXP Pro comes with a 480 meg CD, Mandrake is 3 CD’s and SuSE is 7
And WinXP Pro comes with almost no useful applications. The distributions you mentioned, on the other hand, come with development languages, debuggers, IDEs, and other tools, office programs, drawing programs, multimedia utilities, games, etc.
NTFS is much more stable than any Linux file system, hard shut down in Linux and watch it fsck your box
Or, hard shut down your Windows machine and watch it CHKDSK /F your box. Duh! Are you saying you want a filesystem that doesn’t keep anything in memory and doesn’t self-repair when it detects a problem? Interesting.
Installing software on a Linux system is badly broken, often you end up fixing make files, chasing dependencies, or in situations where you can’t update a library with out breaking other apps
Or, you can install apps in Windows with the fancy InstallShield interfaces and take comfort as tons of junk gets inserted into your registry, bogging down your system. Have you ever tried to get all that crap out of there when you want to upgrade or uninstall something? Now THAT is a design that is badly broken.
, many libraries are not very backwards compatible and someone still has yet to write an installer for Linux.
apt, urpmi, portage, etc.
Developers will often use GPL just so they can avoid having to create and test separate packages for the last 3 versions of every major distro, GPL lets someone else do it.
Oh come on! The GPL has nothing to do with testing!
You know nothing about Windows development do you? I have worked for Microsoft itself and many other Windows-centric development companies and ALL of them beta test their stuff on their users, AND, as a user, you get the privilage of paying for it. Geez!
Say what you will of LSB but I can think of no reason to have all 15 or so text editors in seperate directories, where is /apps/texteditors when you need it?
They aren’t in separate directories. They are usually in /usr/bin, Just like all of Microsoft’s editors are in C:Windows
None, basically it appears to come down to the fact that you don’t know how to use Linux. Fine. Why can’t you be a big man/woman and say that you don’t like Linux because you don’t know how to use it and are therefore more comfortable with Windows? The truth is a lot better for everyone involved, rather than shoveling a bunch of inaccurate embellishments regarding both operating systems onto the OSNews forums.
I for one would wait until 9.1 is out. It shouldn’t take too long now and if there are some small bugs, they’ll be ironed out by then.
someone247356 :
1) Install Slackware 9.0 and then upgrade when 9.1 final is out.
2) Install Slackware 9.1 rc (something)
3) Wait until Slackware 9.1 final is out and install that
===========
you better don’t use the iso from distro but make your own iso
To Make iso Read
http://..where_is_your_mirror../slackware-*****/isolinux/README.TXT
if you want to try slackware-9.0 just try and patche with packages from ..bla-bla-bla/slackware-9.0/patches/
and if you want upgrade your box just add swaret from /slackware-current/extra/ and upgrade or just download all packages with swaret or else and do
# /var/swaret/upgradepkg –install-new *tgz
WARNING” after upgradding lilo update your lilo by type /sbin/lilo or your boxs wont running and blamed slackware or linux for that
and explore the gnome n kde find the crash if you can find
but if you don’t like, you can remove GNOME or KDE packages from your slack, “the eazy way and clean ways”…. just do
put your right finger on your nose and put the iso slackware on the cdrom drive than do
# mount /dev/cdrom
# removepkg /mnt/cdrom/slackware/GNOME/*tgz (or KDE)
than download dropline-gnome than you know what to do next to ordering the pizza
———
my strory:
upgrade 8.1 to 9.0 current that 9.0-final with this way, as fresh as slack-final from the oven (bonus+++ my enlightenment-slackpack just run fast than ever and more) (no enlighment at slack-9*
hick
but…. if i install fresh from 9.0-final my wireless-device got error (bug on slackware-9.0-kernel) because there no error i use kernel from 8.1 or compile kernel by my self
———
problem with slackware …. hemmmm there’s no suport or reserved firewall, advance routing, QOS or HTB,CBQ on the slackware kernel and no problem at wireless-tool or wireless device, not in 8.1 but 9.0 and 9.1 current with 2.4.22 kernel the problem is hemmm :’-( hick-hick
my point
x-desktop-default : 3.75/5
as server-default : 4/5
as router-default : 1.75/5
(no zebra,djbdns,cbq/htb,rc.firewall,snmp,qmail,no pam(is good :-))
Any distro that makes you upgrade only and only from a CD only every few weeks, months, or years should be avioded. There, I think I phrased it better now. I’m not hear to mention names, I might offend others in the process.
Still, I don’t know any major distro that doesn’t provide update / upgrade freely from their website. RH, Mdrk, Suse, Debian, Slackware, etc they are all provide this kind of upgrade. So I don’t know what point you want to show with that statement.
7). provide one with a repository or ports of all packages known to man.
I don’t want my distro maker put ALL text editor found in sourceforge. all media player found in internet, etc.
Sorry I really want my distro maker to concentrate on few good and selected choice, not all apps known to man.
9). provides update to official stable packages in a timely manner. When KDe-3.2 pops out, I’ll probably be using it the next day on gentoo.
There is a reason why not all stable release needs to be packed in time they are released. Wise guy will wait for a couple of time (days, weeks, months) to make sure no bug sliped. Remember kernel 2.4.0?
That is not my kind of good package management system too.
11). It’s so easy to use, my grandma uses it while eating dorritos.
Heh, that won’t happen. I work at software development division and have experience guiding people from almost 40 institutions, and I KNOW how hard people understand about installing software.
My question is merely that how can the lack of such features make it the best distro on the face of the earth? …. If you know exactly what you want to do, and you want to do it by hand, then slack is maybe the best distro, but for most other things, mandrake and debian are legues ahead of slack.
As you already said by yourself.
Slack may be the best distro … for Eugenia (who are willing to do it by hand may be?), and Mandrake or Debian are the best distros for you.
So why you need to ask Eugenia about it?
She wrote about the best distro for her, right?
As for the need of administrators:
Yes, they are needed, but to what extent they should be needed is another issue. Should one need a certified admin just to install a piece of software? Sure it is fun to say that you have done it the hard way, and that you’ve mastered linux, but is it really necessary? By the same logic it would be a good thing to write the whole system by yourself.
As I already said. The purpose of Slackware is not to become next generation of desktop system.
So yes, everyone using slackware need to know how a system works or willing to know how a system works.
Exactly how difficult is it to *not* do the “full installation”? I don’t want Gnome/KDE, just icewm. Will the installer provide that smoothly?
What you need to install are apps under directory A for base install, N for network apps.
Then you can choose which packages to install to your need.
Install apps under directory X for X server.
Install apps undex directory XAP for window manager such as fluxbox, xfce, etc., and apps that run under X server like mozilla, xmms, etc.
Now about method of installation :
I suggest you choose “Menu” when asked how you want to install. By this kind of installation, all required apps (marked with “required”) at every directories you choose above will be installed automatically, And you will be provided with a menu to choose which “optional” packages you want to install for that directory.
hey Eugenia,
gotta let us know what that icon theme is that you are using in screenshot6.png.
looks monkey/jungle -ish …
very cool
skaeight:
About that “why rpm sucks” post, it is just silly. It has nothing to do with rpms but with packaging of binary packages (which slack also does), it also totaly sidesteps the dependancy handling by using no-deps. If I was to force in a package in slack that depended on libraries that were different from the ones present, but was named the same I would have the same problem.
And no, I have never tried slack, but I’m always on the hunt for reasons to try new distros. Slack however, fails completely to impress me. It has up to date software, sure, but it is archaic in it’s setup and configuration.
If you feel that an apt-get managed system gets out of your hands, then fine. Why didn’t you just say so? Just keep in mind that apt-get is an OPTION, and that you can handle debian in the same way as you seem to manage slack, downloading tar.gz source files and then compiling them on your own. To me, the availability of graphical configuration and dependancy-resolving software, when I want them (noone is forcing them upon you, even when using mandrake you can still do it the hard way) is added value, which brings other distros lightyears ahead of slack.
Ali, I have no problem that Eugenia favours this distro, it’s her choise, however the review seems to state that this is a suiting distro for the desktop workstation and server, generally and not only for her. We seem to be on the same page about this, slackware is for people who know what they want to do and know exactly how to do it, but that is not what the review states. This, I have a problem with.
… than I ever thought at Slack 7.0 times
I’m *VERY* happy with Slackware all the time. At work, I use Suse and hate it. At home, I tested RH&Mandrake to see anything could be better.
Nothing. Forget it. Every other distro a bit overloaded and overpatched.
Slackware rule the Linux world. 9.1 is a big step what I want, what everyone needs to use, to administrate, to work with an easy Unix/Linux System!
Get it, I’m very happy :-))
QNX icon theme, get it from art.gnome.org
“However, I go to try install XMMS, and it tells me it needs to uninstall gnome panel 2.2 and install 1.4. I’m just like whatever, and I booted into XP because I didn’t want to deal with it.”
God, look. I know this is wrong, but RTFM. The Gentoo docs are awesome, try reading them.
USE=”-gnome” emerge xmms
Euginia: How are the default fonts in 9.1? in 8.1 and 9.0 the default fonts in X were not that great.
Additionally, I would like to see more graphical administration tools to be included on Slackware, e.g. the Gnome System Tools, Gnome-DB, Bluetooth and Wireless utils, phpMyAdmin and PostgreSQL in addition to the existing mySQL package.
I agree with you there though only in the extras folder (which has a number of gems). It is sort of a devil’s bargain though. How much can a one man operation keep up with?
On your tip to do a full install. I also agree here for a desktop, though be sure to go through your /etc/rc.d directory and /etc/inetd.conf and shutdown any sevices you don’t need. Ironically I only recently came to his conclusion, I used to always use menu config, but then I inevitably had to edit my X config by hand to get it right. With a full it works without any intervention. It is more a convenience at the cost of hd space and possible security issues. For a desktop it is an acceptable compromise for me. For a server I would usualy recommend the opposite, install only the absolute essentials for the servers intended purpose and install other packages as you need them.
Someone was asking about dropline and swaret at the same time. I had them both installed on one of my boxes for a while without problems, but I was not really doing much on that system (browsing, email, ssh).
Also for a new install, I would wait for 9.1 final. If you were to install 9.0 you would need to apply all the security patches and would be on an older version of Gnome, KDE, kernel, etc. You could go with an RC but I suppose I am fairly conservative with my production systems. I have one scrap box I have RC1 and a 2.6 test 4 kernel and it is fast but I would not trust anything important to be on it.
Slack is my mainstay and has been for quite a while now. I have issues periodically with a configuration or an app, but Slackware never seems to get in my way like other distros do while troubleshooting. Once it is installed I have always found slack easier to administer as well.
Meph
Maybe its just me, but I would have deleted the porn out of my inbox before posting a screencap on OSnews…
> I would have deleted the porn out of my inbox before posting a screencap on OSnews…
There was no porn shown, just goold ol’ spam headers that _everyone_ gets. Besides, that email account _only_ gets spam…
>How are the default fonts in 9.1?
Just the same as in Red Hat or Mandrake. In the shots I use the free Vera fonts.
Just the same as in Red Hat or Mandrake. In the shots I use the free Vera fonts.
Thanks, if the screenshots are an indication they are a big improvement.
And another note for those who don’t like swaret or want to resolve dependencies on non-standard packages… ldd is your friend. ldd is not as friendly as package managed depependency checking perhaps, but it is fairly easy to resolve the dependencies once you get a hang of using it plus grep against the slack CD/tree. As near as I can tell swaret basically uses the same procedure for it’s dependency checking btw.
>just goold ol’ spam headers that _everyone_ gets. Besides, that email account _only_ gets spam…
Yah, we all get those spams, but we dont all read them then keep them for a period of nearly a year.
I don’t read them either. I just created that account on Evolution just to fetch the email from there (I knew that it was full of spam, as I don’t get anything more on that account anymore), so I can get the screenshot. These 133 messages you read there, is the product of only 10 hours of having setuped Evolution with that account!!
The fact that some emails are showing as “read”, is because I was trying to find an email that is less offending, so I can get the screenshot.
I was thinking about the review of Slack (8.1?) you did a while back. One of your main issues was the inability for the system to work at a fairly high resolution (1600×1920 at 75 Hz if memory serves). What resolution did you use for the review? Do you know if the issue issue has been resolved?
Also do you feel that the new release is a large improvement over the previous version, or is it your use or reviewing habits that have changed? Please don’t take this as a flame, I always have respected your opinion, though did not necessarily agree with it. This is the most positive review I have seen from you on a Linux OS. Generally you are critical (rightly for a “average joe”) on usability or difficulties in the install…
>I was thinking about the review of Slack (8.1?) you did a while back
I have never done a Slackware review before, that was my first.
>One of your main issues was the inability for the system to work at a fairly high resolution
That was for my Red Hat review, last year.
>What resolution did you use for the review?
1280×1024
>Do you know if the issue issue has been resolved?
I don’t have that monitor anymore you are reffering to.
>This is the most positive review I have seen from you on a Linux OS.
This is because it deserved it. I review an OS with an eye of what is meant for. For example, Slackware is not a desktop OS, not even close to the market Red Hat or Mandrake is. Had I reviewed it with that point of view, I would be as critisizing it more as well.
>Generally you are critical (rightly for a “average joe”) on usability or difficulties in the install…
Yes, I remain as such.
However, Slackware is not for everyone, it was not meant to be for everyone. Therefore, it is reviewed from a different angle.
That was for my Red Hat review, last year.
Ah, my mistake, should know better than to trust my memory. Thanks.
I’m a happy Slack 9.0 user, been with slackware since I was a noob, many years ago.
Remember kernel 2.0.28? What slack was it then? We’ve been together ever since, it never failed me, never crashed on me, never betrayed me.
In the beginning it took some time learning into it, and having some more experienced friends around really did help, I must admit.
As for now, I have over 20 boxen installed by my hand (mostly ranging now from 8.0 to 9.0) currently up and running, smoothly.
(LAN bridges, brouters and routers — a good many of them are Pentium I / 32MB ram, but still, they barely use any swap — huh, what was your memory usage, again?)
Web servers with out of the box Apache + PHP + Mysql worked great for me as well. (only one glitch! you have to manually chown -R mysql.mysql /var/lib/mysql after running mysql_installdb. Or maybe I do something wrong repeatedly ;P)
IMHO it’s a small but important !FIXME! for 9.1
And as a reply to a previous post, advanced routing and traffic control works GREAT. (iptables, fwmark, htb with u32 hash tables, iproute2 & tc, and my own compiled kernel) And it simply works by installing the iproute2 package found in the Slack 9.0 extras, no extra hassle.
(well maybe besides writing your own first HTB script ;P)
I haven’t used the graphic interface too much all these years, had a try on X here and there (last time on Slack 7.x maybe?) — managed to make it work fine eventually, with an acceptable dose of effort.
Still, I’ve never thought of the desktop environment as the strong side of Slackware. For me, the strongest and the most important side were the simple yet powerful little servers I could set up and toy along with.
With Slackware 9.0 I’ve once again installed a fresh desktop box, just to see what XF86, KDE and Gnome have become lately. To my great surprise, it was a RADICAL CHANGE in both look and feel. it just worked, from all points of view. Easy to install, out-of-the-box (go figure, and it’s the Slackware you’ve all feared of
). Not too heavy on resources either, even though the box was just a PII@400 with 128MB.
To paraphrase some controversed phrase, it literally blew me away ;^)
During these years I’ve set up lots of sound cards, ISA network adapters, be they Plug’n Pray or not. Even helped many newbies “makin’ that damn sound work”, and after some pilfering, they worked like a charm. I can’t recall any case to have failed this except for problems with faulty hardware.
Had two different on-board AC97 chips this far, (one on SiS, one on VIA) they both worked flawlessly. (Well as good as that on-board thing could sound ;>) Anyway, AFAIK there’s a vast variety of some over 40 chips out there, all dubbed AC97 under one hat, so there may be a few causing problems here and there, and maybe I’m a lucky guy after all. (Hell, why not?)
I really do appreciate Patrick’s work, Slackware is getting _visibly_ better with each release. THANK YOU.
I’ve never posted a thank you note, nor did I write about my Slackware experience until today. So here it is. Thanks Patrick
(as a sidenote: noone paid me for this ;P)
As a question raised from a statement in a previous post, I’ve always wondered: Is this Patrick Volkerding guy rolling out all this thing on his own, or does he have a small team there helping out?
Either way, it looks like he’s doing a great job!
I won’t rush for a Release Candidate for now, as I figure that a final version is just a matter of couple of weeks now, hopefully. So I will just wait that out, although I just can’t wait to see my new toy installed.
Hope it won’t be long
Sorry for the long note. Too much caffeine tonight, maybe. And thank you, stranger, for reading this far.
Try it out. It’s well worth it.
EUGENIA. It’s not a limitation of ALSA or the sound driver. It’s the sound chip. Those crappy VIA chips do real-time mixing through DirectX under Windows. It mixes in SOFTWARE, as do most cheapo-crap sound chips these days. A Yamaha, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, SB Live, or Envy 24 (not the HT) can do mixing in harware. Other chips can as well. If you must have R/T mixing on a crappy chip like the VIA, then buy 4-Front’s drivers from http://www.opensound.com. They have a real-time software mixer that works pretty well with all cards.
someone mentionned that “CFDISK is also available (at least in 9.0)”.
I just wanted to mention that cfdisk was here in the 4.0 days, maybe even in 3.x (not sure)
Gotta admit, that post about linux having such heavy memory usage is way out of line. I have 3 boxen here networked. 2) P-3’s, and 1) Pentium 120. I installed KDE 3.1.1 and Gnome 2.2 under Slack 9. Ill use KDE as the example this time. Kde, Openoffice 1.0.3, Mozilla 1.2.1, and sylpheed mail opened I was usin the whole 96 megs ram And swapping about 20 some megs if I remeber correctly. Thats a far cry from booting with 200 used and spiking to 400… Now ill admit that setup did not last too long on that machine. I wound up using Fluxbox instead of KDE
That way opening those same programs resulted in only about 93 megs ram utilized. Not too shabby really. Win2k uses more than that: as i type this in Win2k im using 160megs ram with Mozilla-Firebird open (not freshly booted).
As for package management Regsitry in Windows = Evil (but very cool), Linux *hell* = No Registry Nightmares… Any of you sys Admins had XP registry Freeze up on you?….yeah you know you have. Now how about Linux *registry freeze*…im talking about was working a minute ago..now BSOD!!! Look Im not bashing MS, nor am i raving about Linux Superiority. Different Os’s for different jobs. HOWEVER: Linux Can be a viable option on The Desktop. Not to say optimal, but very workable. Linux really is not for the faint of heart, nor the very very impatient. For those folks perhaps Windows XP is best. I ran XP on an extracted promise for 365 days, on the 366th day i installed Slackware on that system again
Im a confirmed Slackware / Windows 2000 Os type of person. Minimalist usable by nature. As i said…different OS for different jobs when “it just needs to get done”. Some days Linux other days Win2k… maybe one day I will honestly be able to boot only linux.
Cheers
I have been using slack since I got into linux. I had Caldera installed for a week then moved on. Actually the install went eaiser with slack then caldera. I have never had a problem with sound, wireless or anything like that, well that is if the project itself doesn’t support it. In the case of the Avance Logic Drivers I know that ALSA is the only one that supports it as of now. My sb live works out the box and so does anything with the crystal audio. The only thing I had beef with with Slack is its package system which….IMHO, you should compile that form source anyho and it should much better. I agree that Gentoo ran a bit faster but 2 days of compiling a system is a bit much for me. I figure this way, if you got the space…do the newbie install and you shoudl be set. If not you shoudl know enough about linux to sift through the packages and find what you need then install them. Why people don’t use Slack is beyond me cause I can’t ask much more from a 1 cd distro. (at least 9.0 was :-D)
Hello 2 all…
Just a bit comment…”Slackware is a very good distro. I think all people use Slackware in your brain…”
just for fun!!!
Sounds like a hyped up punk?
well … i know i didnt read everything … but dont blame Slackware for you sound card
i have a onboard sound card ( Epox 8k5a2+ ) and together with alsa i play multiple sounds running Slackware 9.0 …
thats the only thing i dont agree there … not a slack fault
Ive used maybe 40 distros, from little unknowns to the big 3(Redhat, Mandrake, Suse). I hated them all, sometimes i would find a distro that had a nice and refreshing feature, like gentoo’s portage, SoL’s default install of no services running. But they always fell short in one way or another. I finally tried slackware and now its on my desktop, laptop, theatre box, all servers. I run linux exclusively, and i will never use another distro.
As for the package management system, i havent found one better, there arent tons of pkg’s for every program, but the core ones are always there and always up to date, i have kde 3.1.4 installed with pkg’s. I have no problem compiling things. I almost prefer it. But slackware’s rpm2tgz utility is great for turning rpm’s into slack packages if I want to.
… I wish that Pat would opt for a full-blown BSD userland like Mastodon does. Crux is also nice in this respect, with an makefile based ports system. Maybe I’m just a *BSD guy, but I would really like an complete BSD userland (that means no GNU tar!) with a Linux kernel for better hardware compatability. I used Slack for a year, and I was impressed, but also like many of the previous users, I found its hardware suppport a little difficult, and its over-simplified tarballs to be insufficient compared to FreeBSD tgz packages. I also wish that it had an official ports system. Nonetheless, it is a very clean OS with an excellent feel. Definitely better than say, Redhat.
I think Slackware is the distro out there, overall. Adding Dropline Gnome helps alot too. Now with automatic dependency checks.. I can use this time to take up more constructive things.. like making novelty tux pluffs.
Eugenia, you really like gray don’t you? Every review I’ve read from you has gray as the primary color (ugh). No wonder you like GNOME where everything is gray.
I also don’t know what to think about someone’s judgment who listens to Christina Augulera. :-]
Well, nice thread everybody, looks like the war has just begun…
Me, has used quite few OS out there, feels like there are something for anything. e.g. you wouldn’t use a limo to carry lawn, you will use a pick-up.
My feeling abt OS is, it is good, if it fits your purpose.
Gaming, I would say Windows has far more commercial games available.
Server-ing: no doubt Linux/BSD r more popular, but Windows r catching up.
Scientific calculation: Solaris with multi-cpus r the one to use.
final words: I had never bought any books or read any manuals for daily usage of windows. While I bought my first slackware book when I was 12 in 1992.
After I submitted the post, I immidiately realised that for gaming, PS2, XBOX, GameCube and DreamCast r much better choices… LOL
Hi!
I’m installed my slack 9.0 cd and currently doing a ‘swaret –upgrade -‘ to get the newest (hope it’ll work, it’s my first attempt to use slack:). I’d like to ask if anybody knows a working solution for getting Bluecurve things (everything if possible, from gtk/gtk2/qt engines+themes to icons) work under slack? Either slack tgz’s or pure tarballs would be nice. Unfortunatelly i couldn’t get them from redhat’s packages, that was complicated for me. Seems now it’s the only thing i miss from here
thx, hirisov
Just wanna make a point to debian users here: xfree86 is way old!!! the rest is ok about the distro- but what I can`t understand is why not do a “new beta” distro like redhat/suse/mandrake/slack do and have a stable- well debian trie, but pakages uses like weeeeeeks to go into testing/unstable..
Fix that and fix the package selection, use the slack installer maby? This is why I use slack on my home computer/laptop and debian on my servers.
I can see your point about wanting a more automated system with gui’s etc., but I don’t think that’s the direction Slackware really wants’ to go. At least that’s not the direction many Slackers want to go. Most of us like to get our hands dirty and in the process learn some things that you don’t get the chance to learn by having some auto tool do it for you. Even if I just ignore the autoconfig stuff, I wouldn’t want the automation put in to avoid starting down the bloat road. There are plenty of other distros that do many things for you. I think in the long haul doing it yourself pays off.
I agree with A Slacker above, while for the “user” it seems like a good idea. Slackware users are not your typical users. I started linux with the strong belief that terminal configuration is always better then gui conf. Kind of like math, sure you can use a calculator easily, but if you dont know what the tool is doing how does it help you? I use terminal for all my configuration. If you added redhat style configuration utilities what makes slackware different from redhat then? Sure you make things easier for some people, but as the philosopy of slackware says, “aimed at producing the most “UNIX-like” Linux distribution”. Part of slackware is the experience of learning about your OS.
You say, “well not everyone wants to learn about their OS.”. Thats fine they dont have to, there are plenty of alternatives. Slackware isnt for you. You can choose redhat, mandrake, suse, debian, or windows for all i care. But slackware is good because it sticks to what its users have come to like for so long, simplicity. Sure adding options to a config file in a terminal doesnt sound simple to you, but thats why slackware isnt for you. I like slackware cause it doesnt change radically. I dont like massive changes in direction from a distribution. Look at RedHat.
So i think Slackware is just fine. Change is overrated. Slackware doesnt have to be the #1 distro or catch up to user demands. It meets mine and many other peoples demands efficiently and effectively. Who else do we need to please? It does what it does, and it does it exceptionally well.