What’s in store for Slackware’s next version? Have a look with us as to what Slackware’s -Current tree tells us so far of what to expect.There are a few reasons I have mentioned in the past as to why I prefer Slackware to other Linux solutions:
1. No patches on packages (unless absolutely necessary).
2. No unstable packages used, not even in the -Current tree (generally speaking).
3. No dependancy check package manager (and that’s a good thing ’cause the third party packagers have some common sense regarding their releases).
4. Simplicity of design, configuration and usage.
5. Because of #1 and #2 performance is pretty good (comparatively) and stability is rated great.
I am running Slackware-Current for months now and whenever are updates available, I use the swaret tool to upgrade
the OS to the latest “unstable” version. Funnily, this “unstable” version is much more stable than any other popular distro I test every now and then for OSNews. Fedora is called a “beta” but it is plugged with gazillion bugs (I think I filed about 7-8 bug reports so far for Test2) and it is incredibly slow comparatively, Mandrake Linux 10 Community had its share of bugs as well as I noted recently on my review. The fact that no patching is taking place, in general on Slackware, helps the overall stability and performance, because the developers don’t have to deal with new difficult-to-discover bugs because of it. If a package works out of the box, then it means it is approved to be included on Slackware, otherwise Slackware will either keep an older version around or dismiss the package from their distro. This might seem to some readers that Slackware uses old packages but this is not true at all. Anything that is declared “stable” by its developer and it does compile/run without additional patches is good to be used on -Current for further testing.
So, in the latest -Current tree you will find KDE 3.2.1, Gnome 2.4.2, kernel 2.4.25, Gstreamer 0.6.4, latest ALSA, latest Gaim, XFree86 4.4.0, Qt 3.3.1, Gtk 2.4.0, XMMS 1.2.10, autoconf-2.59, automake-1.8.2, gcc 3.3.3 and
more. Using the swaret tool it makes upgrading a real breeze. You can also download third party binary
packages from LinuxPackages.net.
As you saw above, the distro comes now with XFree86 4.4.0 and as the founder told us “we will be the last people switching to something else”. In other
words, if it ain’t broken don’t fix it.
Slackware offers kernel 2.6.5 as a source download on their servers under the /testing tree, but it doesn’t seem probable that a 2.6.x kernel will be trouble-free enough for Slackware’s standards for the next Slackware release (however it might offered as an optional download on /extra). The real questionmark though is if Slackware will upgrade in time for Gnome 2.6.x. In any case, the Dropline Gnome distribution will have Gnome 2.6 packages out soon. Rumor has it that next official version of Slackware will happen at the end of April.
Remember though, Slackware is not for everyone. If you just want a home system with GUI configuration tools, you better look elsewhere. Slackware does require some initial tinkering and it doesn’t have gui tools for most things. However, its magic is that after you have managed to setup the system the way you need it to, it works wonderfully and without problems.
As with all products though, I do have my own requests. My biggest problem these days seems to be the fact that the Slackware online book hasn’t being updated for ages. There is literally no up-to-date information in one place anymore for Slackware. And the online book is lacking severely on how to configure services (while this is an easy process most of the time, new users do require this information in the book). Other than that, the system seems to be rock
solid, compatible and generally: sane. Please read here for more of my opinions on Slackware and many more screenshots.
Yep,this is true. I use 9.1 + Dropline Gnome for about 6 months. Last restart of my box was 2 months ago. I will have to do another restart since Dropline has some updates.I quit KDE, I quit Redhat , no way I will go back. That’s my distro + DE and I love it/them.
Is in a quite a state of change at the momemnt, at least thats the feeling I get from reading the Linux Kernel Mailing List. So I expect that 2.6 will not be in the next version of Slackware until the kernel stops its current state of flux.
Dropline does have some updates for you Bud, but we’re still anxiously awaiting 2.6. It’s been rumored mid-month so things can get stabilized.
I don’t know any source based distro that applies patches to their packages. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Gentoo does a lot of patches, especially for the kernel, AFAIK. Slackware does not do any for the kernel, they only ship default stuff.
I am working hard with some other people on Slackware documentation, have a look at:
http://www.slackfiles.net/
Of course, help is very welcome!
You are partially right. However, technically, Gentoo doesn’t ship with any kernel by default. The users have to choose which kernel packages they want install. (Vanilla vs the Others)
I will have to verify if Gentoo applies patches to other packages. But to the best of my knowledge, Gentoo provides only vanilla packages, at least, for the major packages like the ones you mentioned. (GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice, Xfree, Mozilla, GCC,etc)
Gentoo does a lot of patches, especially for the kernel, AFAIK. Slackware does not do any for the kernel, they only ship default stuff.
XFS is supplied as an optional patch in Slack 9.1. There have been some very small security/reliability patches in some Slackware versions. But other than that Slack never has large patches or functionality adding patches. Vanilla kernels are a lot more stable, and if you need a patch you can apply it yourself
.
It’s interesting that Slack is shipping Xfree 4.4.0. I guess the slack head-honcho doesn’t have any problems with supposed gpl incompatibilities.
I’m glad swaret is there because I probably wouldn’t have touched Slack without it. Actually, the reason I gave slack a try after using debian, gentoo, etc… is because of Eugenia’s review of it a few months back. I remember her saying it sticks to the basics without trying to do its own thing(as gentoo and debian seem to do). So far, so good. More hardware detection is always a good thing but most people running slack will already know how to get their hardware info from windows or lspci or already know it from a previous distro install.
I have a question about dropline. Now when I first installed slack I installed its default gnome and then went ahead and did dropline. My question is how does dropline interact with default gnome. I guess dropline knows about all of its packages and at startx time knows which ones to choose? Can I just go ahead and use Slack’s package managment tool to uninstall its gnome packages without a big fuss? Last time I did a swaret –upgrade I noticed that something funny was happening. It seemed to be downloading 486 and 686 versions of the same packages and there were also a lot of failures. Does anybody know what’s going on with that.
As Eugenia said, the slack book could use some updating. For those that aren’t aware the forums have basically moved to linuxquestions.org which seems to have a strong community.
Oh, and any links to killer slack sites would be appreciated.
Thanks for the link and your work on slack docs. I’m there.
Actually, Gentoo’s XFree is patched on install. As of 4.3.0r2 it was applying at least three different patches, ranging from enhanced Savage support to various fixes, and more depending on your use flags. Many packages in Gentoo come patched, including XMMS which actually displays a message asking the user that ‘if they like the patches, recommend them upstream’ on the latest stable version.
GCC IIRC comes with stack protection patches (at least did a while ago. Not that I’m complaining
). I believe GNOME, KDE and OO.o are clean, but it’s been a long time since I’ve tried to install them, so I couldn’t say for sure.
>I guess dropline knows about all of its packages and at startx time knows which ones to choose?
No, it completely overwrites both XFree86 and Gnome from Slackware.
> Can I just go ahead and use Slack’s package managment tool to uninstall its gnome packages without a big fuss?
Well, if you know all these package names by heart, yeah. Otherwise, you should be using Dropline’s utilities to *cleanly* remove their packages.
>Last time I did a swaret –upgrade I noticed that something funny was happening. It seemed to be downloading 486 and 686 versions of the same packages and there were also a lot of failures.
Indeed. Swaret gets confused on some Dropline packages and it asks you to overwrite with an older version! For example, I have dropline’s at-spi package which is newer than slackware’s, but each time I run swaret it asks me to “upgrade” to a lesser version. The previous version of Xine between Slackware and Dropline had the same problem with swaret.
IMHO, if you are going to go with Dropline, I suggest you stay with it. If you only want to try it out but keep Slackware’s stock version, I suggest you install a test version of slackware and install dropline there.
I had other problems with dropline behaving different than the stock slackware too, like libgnomeprintui libs, another xine-related lib that I can’t remember its name now, freetype etc.
Personally, I stay with stock slackware and only use some *non-system* dropline packages when I need them (and when they don’t overwrite slackware’s).
More info here:
http://www.gnomedesktop.org/article.php?sid=1616&mode=nested&order=…
I hope the new version of dropline will fix these issues.
And here some more discussion about dropline:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=5859
Dropline is a great desktop, but as Eugenia already indicated, there are some catches:
* Dropline replaces stock slack XFree86 and GNOME packages, but also some other stuff.
* Dropline installs PAM, stock Slackware does not use PAM by default because of its security problems. Besides that, the default Dropline PAM configuration is not really secure.
* There is almost no way back. Swaret et al are confused by Dropline packages, so you should exclude them. Besides that it is hard to uninstall Dropline, because you’ll also have to reinstall e.g. the plain slackware shadow utilities to get rid of PAM.
No, it completely overwrites both XFree86 and Gnome from Slackware.
Ok, then if it is overwriting packages then they’re not there anymore. I shouldn’t have to uninstall anything? I guess I’ll have to do a little bit more thourough investing of what to do about slack gnome and dropline gnome. I wish I would had known about dropline before I installed gnome from slack. Oh well, no problems so far.
Isn’t dropline supposed to have a bit more polish than stock gnome? Besides some inconsistencies in libs between dropline and slack, are there other reasons you stick with stock gnome?
Yes, I think you and Eugenia are right. Some of the packages actually contain patches, like GCC that contains the propolice patch among others, like you mentioned. Glibc also contains several security patches, from redhat and others.
I’m running Debian on my server. I love the package management system, but I really hate the fact that Stable uses 2 year old software. Debian Testing gives some trouble now and then, I don’t want that on my server (runs some important stuff).
I use Gentoo on my laptop and desktop. I love the fact that Gentoo has all the new software and the complete control over the system. But I hate the long compiling time and some of the non-Linux standard or non-BSD standard configure and bootscripts.
I don’t want Red Hat, Mandrake or SuSE (tried, didn’t like). Do you think Slackware is something for me?
(I started my Linux with Slackware, running kernel 1.2.8. I would be funny to finally end up with Slackware again)
I’ve swaret –upgraded to slack current without a hitch. Alas there are currently no gnome 2.6 packages in the repository, although packages are available
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=…
they aren’t exactly supported or known to be reliable.
Slack is a fantastic distro, and my personal favourite. Its fast (a lot faster than the recent FC2 Test2 I tested out). I am still a relative newcomer to linux, but feel I’m actually *learning* with slack as opposed to having my hand held all the way. I recently compiled the 2.6.4 kernel and have to admit it provided much improved responsiveness on a PIII-866 Compaq Deskpro (something I previously thought impossible from an intel i81x!).
While dropline does add some polish to Gnome, I would rather be without it on a slackware install due to its problems. I think the headaches it causes are unneccessary when you can tweak gnome yourself to your liking.
With regards to someones post abiout swaret and multiple packages of the same type but different architectures, I have noticed the same. It tends to be from using more than one main repository and hence swaret finding the most recent package from all, rather than making the choice of what to install.
Now I almost wish that I would’ve stuck with either stock slack gnome or just had installed dropline by itself. I hate having lingering things around when they aren’t need and might cause conflict to boot. Oh well, live and learn. I’m happy with slack and even happier today that I got ndiswrapper to work with the realtek 8180 chipset and kernel 2.6.4. Now on to getting ATI drivers and alsa working on 2.6.4. I don’t think i’ll ever learn all that alias blah char-major-116 blah crap that seems to accompany sound modules, but the alsa instructions seems to have worked well with 2.4.21. It seems that it might be easier to just not even compile alsa drivers from the kernel and just build the drivers from the alsa package itself. I’m hoping the ATI-proprietary drivers aren’t a pain to get running on 2.6.x.
XFree 4.4 is NOT GPL incomplitant – the new license was NOT applied for client side libraries, therefore its not a problem to compile GPL software against it. The server only is under new license.
But unlike other distros, Patrick isn’t that “Stallmannish” to drop packages just because “they are not gpl”. Slackware also includes Sun’s Java out of box, and even Netscape browser
Glad to see some people like Patrick still have some common sence: why the heck *everything* must be GPL? Users need Java and its not GPL – therefore Slack includes it. Simple as that.
And as user I just don’t care if there’s some problems with X being “not-too-free” or incompatable with GPL, all I care is the fact that my Radeon IGP chipset doesn’t work any earlier version than 4.4.
But as said already, New X license was NOT applied for client side libraries, therefore there’s NO problem with GPL software to build against Xfree. Some people just seem to forgot that fact!
And a tip for Swaret + Dropline:
add “gnome” and “xfree” to you swaret’s EXCLUDE conf so swaret won’t upgrade them, it solves the problem.
Does Slackware at least configure the graphics card and monitor? I know hotplug deals with the rest.
BTW what does redhat/fedora use to create XF86Config, or what does Mandrake and SUSE use.
I would be nice if there was a standard simple and reliable program that works 99% of the time, then Slackware could include it.
Thanks for the heads up on excluding gnome and xfree in swaret.conf.
Dropline will replace your stock gnome install or install a fresh gnome if you don’t have it. I use both dropline and swaret and swaret is told by default to stay away from *dl packages which keeps the trouble away.
It provides an easy way to keep an up to date desktop for several different slackware versions and includes a lot of nice software. It never gave me much trouble. I had some trouble with compiling due to it including libiconv, but that has been removed now with the upcoming 2.6 release (and the current test release, which is what I’m running).
I think dropline is a wonderful addition to a great distro.
Hugo, Slackware is definetely the way to go for you (as it is for me
By the way, I’ve put some music software on slackwarepkgs.free.fr …
A good and simple program that always worked without problems for me is “xf86cfg -textmode”. It is a standard XFree86 utility, that provides a nice menu interface for configuring X.
There is also an unofficial slackware book located at:
http://slackbook.yoshiwara.org.uk/
It has not been updated in some time though.
Ive also just uninstalled dropline gnome (thought xfce was better for this 750mhz processor) and apart from uninstalling mozilla,gaim,xchat and buggering my gtk and pango libraries it went pretty well.
I’m not sure how Fedora and Suse does xconfiguration. I hear Suse does “the right thing” and either has permission to distribute the binary Nvidia and ATI drivers or downloads and installs them for you. Someone correct me if I’m wrong there.
I’m pretty new to Slack, but the way I did X was to boot into Knoppix first and use that as a template(setting up the mice and such) and then used ATI’s config tool to produce another XFree86-config and then merged the too. Not ideal, but no big deal. Not for newbies though.
Configuring X is still pretty much a pain for the non-newbie distros. And even for the others, I guess you pretty much have to go ahead and download the Nvidia or ATI drivers and then go into the Xfree86-config file and tell it to use the proprietary driver.
Sound is another one of those things that I can never get on the first try when configuring a new kernel. All of this alias char-major-116 this and that and there seems to be a whole bunch of sound modules that need to be modprobed to get right. The alsa package and its directions are easy enough, but to get it work from the kernel seems to be a pain – or maybe its just me.
Using Slackware’s ‘xfree86setup’ script should give newbies a working X configuration, which can be later fine-tuned with KDE’s X config utility. ‘xfree86setup’ is slightly modified script that basically executes ‘XFree86 -configure’ and places the XF86Config file into the right directory. It saved my day back in Slackware 8.1 when I didn’t know the monitor specs and had trouble getting X up and going.
I just wanted to say that slackfiles.net rocks. Keep up the good work
Thanks!
I’m not sure how Fedora and Suse does xconfiguration. I hear Suse does “the right thing” and either has permission to distribute the binary Nvidia and ATI drivers or downloads and installs them for you. Someone correct me if I’m wrong there.
They both use hardware detection of some type, but with generic drivers (no 3D accel on NVidia). I’m not sure how limited generic ATI drivers are. I haven’t tried, but I heard NV binaries on Fedora2 are causing problems (because of X.org maybe?). SuSE gives an option to update the NV drivers through YAST.
Fedora’s a little more friendly with detecting monitors through plug n play, and just works (albeit with crappy drivers), while Sax2 on SuSE uses a database of sorts, so if your monitor doesn’t match up, it sometimes requires manual input of frequency rates (you can choose Vesa, and tweak it from there).
As long as you know your hardware, xf86config isn’t really that bad IMO.
I must say it’s quite an attractive description of Slackware. I run Debian currently, but I am bit at odds with their understanding of “stable” and a bit unconfortable with the fact that the security team doesn’t look after unstable and testing (or am I wrong ?) and I wonder how it fits with the fact that they package the latest versions of almost everything …..
For anyone that uses swaret and Dropline Gnome, I found this on swaret’s homepage. The new config file skips over any packages that Dropline Gnome installs. This way, you can update your system with swaret and update Dropline Gnome packages (with dropline-installer) and not have to worry about overwriting any packages!
I use slapt-get and it also uses the same technique.
Version: 1.3.3
————–
– Updated: swaret.conf.new! Please use this new Config File, it contains exclude keywords like ‘-*dl’ for Dropline Gnome Packages, kernel, lilo and more.
according to the guy’s livejournal he’s moving to the xorg server. do the ati and nvidia binary drivers even work with xorg? I think I’m going to stick with slack’s xfree86-4.4.0 as long as it doesn’t conflict with dropline. Anybody else know what’s going on here?
Is really Patrick “leaving” for good??????? i hope this is just a rumor.
– 2501
Nvidia drivers work OK. If anyone wants to try out Gnome 2.6 packages, check out
http://www.dropline.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2262&start=150&postd…
Also, XFree comes with a xf86cfg, that uses a SVGA mode to graphically configure X. And let’s not forget about XFree86 -configure, that also creates an empty XF86Config, detecting the video board chipset.
Pat isn’t leaveing, it was april fools
Nvidia & x.org does the nvidia drivers work for playing games and such?
Ok, after reading the dropline forums, Todd the maintainer, has stated that x.org server is running fine with the ATI binary drivers as well.
http://www.linuxtux.org/~juhl/slackwarefaq/
I still think the 2.6 kernel is going to be in the next release. Patrick has the source in testing.
ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/slackware/slackwa…
For those of you who are interested, an ‘unofficial’ updated version of the Slackware book is available at http://slackbook.yoshiwara.org.uk/. I dont know if this project is still active, as the last update to the page seems to be sometime in 2003.
I’ve used slackware for a while now, and things have never been more interesting!
For one, Eugenia has really been praising slackware quite often recently, and the increased coverage and glowing reviews *have* been opening up people to slackware.
Secondly, there are a *lot* of updates to major slackware packages (X, KDE) in the -current tree, and in order to get them, there is a heated competition between the “SwareT” camp and the “Slapt-get” camp.
A lot of the slack people on Linuxpackages and Freenode don’t use Swaret because of some hijinks from the maintainers trying to discredit Slapt-get; I’m sort of indifferent, although I think such things put a bad light on the slackware community as a whole. I think both tools have positives and negatives, but I like them a lot which is why..
I’ve started writing a graphical slackware package manager front-end. Since I’m more familiar with Swaret, I’ve decided to get interfacing with swaret down first, but for those who are interested, here are some screens:
http://jmoiron.net/images/pacman/installed_0.3.png
http://jmoiron.net/images/pacman/search_0.3.png
http://jmoiron.net/images/pacman/removing_0.3.png
some swaret configuration screens
http://jmoiron.net/images/pacman/swaretgeneral_v0.1.png
http://jmoiron.net/images/pacman/swaretpackages_v0.1.png
http://jmoiron.net/images/pacman/swaretnetwork_v0.1.png
I’m no designer, so if anyone has any suggestions for UI improvements, I’m *more* than open to listen.
Looks real nice, good work!
I don’t find any mayor issues with the program’s interface, but I’m not an expert in those things. However I think you should know that an “average user” like me wouldn’t find troubles using it.
I’ve installed Slackware with VMWare’s emulation software and so far it’s been the best _linux_ distro I’ve tried. One of the reasons are the fact that Gnome and KDE are not modified, so I can follow their manuals more easily.
The installation program was also easy to follow, though I don’t know how things would be if I had done a _real_ installation. Simply accepting the defaults in the majority of the steps turned out to be a good decision.
Hey,
Finally a good article about Slackware
Well I started using Slackware about 3 years ago and am still using it to this very day, Slackware-Current with a 2.6.5 kernel makes me very happy. I see many people still have interest in Slackware, for some reason I felt like I was the only one left running it. Guess Not 
Last year I started a site, dedicated to Slackware, and kinda let it fall into oblivion. If people are interested or want to do some collaboration on something shoot me an email. The site is here -> http://www.slacknews.org
Like I said it hasnt been updated in about a year and needs some reworking. Its PHPnuke based, but I had rewrote alot of the code to remove the “Bloat” that was PHPnuke. Let me know if anyone is interested in it.
Very nice-looking frontend. GUIs for package managers are useful mainly because they make browsing the available packages easier. However, notice that the package manager in Arch Linux is also called Pacman. You might like to change the name to avoid confusion.
on using Slackware. Somebody explain to me what the big deal is. You’re talking about a distro that essentially has no features. Now I know Patrick has a small team and works hard but really now, when I look at Slackware, I just see a distro with the bare essentials, just enough to be called Linux and missing advantages that pretty much all other distros have. If you want that basic an OS, if you want to be more “Unix-like” as Slackware is billed, why not just use one of the BSDs?
You are actually correct that slack is basically BSD ala Linux….however you seem to be missing the point of both OSs….they have all the “features” that matter…they don’t have the config tools because the people who use them probably wouldn’t use the config tools anyway. They keep it simple so that they run fast and stay stable.
I am basically a Linux n00b, but did run Redhat when it was version 6.2.
I just recently wanted to start learning more about Linux and now have the time. I started out with Fedora Core 1 and it seemed very buggy to me.
A friend mentioned Slackware, but he is an advanced user, so I was a little scared. I dove in anyway and now I am hooked!! It is very stable and I love that I can learn from it. I am also running Dropline Gnome and it has ran smooth for me so far.
I now check out all the Slackware info I can and am learning more and more each day.
“I quit KDE, I quit Redhat , no way I will go back.”
This kind of mindless statement just goes to show you that some people are lame zealots. “No way” you would go back? Who cares?
“I am working hard with some other people on Slackware documentation, have a look at:
http://www.slackfiles.net/
Of course, help is very welcome!”
Very nice site!
Sorry but its 2004 and Slackware is a reminder of why people find Linux hard to use. I find it amazing that people treat the fact that Slackware is featureless and hard to setup as something to crow about.
Eug goes on about how packages aren’t modified. Packages get modified by distro makers because they want to provide a better experience for the end user. They want their distro to be a cohesive OS, not just a set of packages stuck together. Sure if its done wrong you’ll get bugs, but that can happen right out of the tarball as well. You CANNOT categorically say that the Slackware way of not modifying packages so they work better together is better in all cases. That’s simply not true.
Regarding my first paragraph about how Slackware is outdated I’d like to ask a simple question. What is more important, using your OS to accomplish a task or spending all of your time learning how to actually use the OS? Shouldn’t the goal of OS design for Servers,Desktops,Handhelds etc be to make user interaction moron-proof? There has been progress in this field yet Slackware turns its back on it and insists on sticking to a design phlioshophy which results in a more difficult to use OS. Twenty years from now computers will be Incredibily complex. Will Slackware still make users have to learn about their OS instead just using it?
I have this arguement all the time on Slashdot and the bottom line is in an ideal world all products are easy to use and moron-proof from the getgo. You should be able to forget about security, package installtion, upgrading etc because the software should be smart enough to manage all of that itself. The philosophy of Slackware for some reason seems to be to live in the past though. They don’t want installation to get any easier. They don’t want brand new users to be able to easily setup and admin a server. They are the luddites of the Linux world.
I’m sorry but Slackware does not exist in a vacuum. They should be striving to be easier to use then Fedora, Xandros, Lindows and every other Linux distro combined, but they’re not. If you a fan of Slackware your against progress and outright ease of use. People don’t need to “learn about Linux” through the hazing that is Slackware so that they can fix things when they break. They need a Linux distro that doesn’t break but is always easy to use.
I just know the Slackware fans are going to want to tear me a new one, but frankly I don’t care. Slackware has such a small userbase precisely because of the reasons I listed above. Until they reconize that truly moron-proof ease of use is part of the OS design equation they will continue to be a niche linux distro. Fine with you, you say? Then stop crowing about how Slackware is the best Linux distro “once you learn how to use it.”
Somebody explain to me what the big deal is. You’re talking about a distro that essentially has no features
Ironically, that’s probably it’s biggest feature. The whole KISS strategy. A lot of us have skipped around distros for quite a while and don’t like how other distros essentially hijack linux into their own thing. My last two distros were debian and gentoo. They’re fine, but they both tend to muck around too much – especially debian. Debian always tended to break things for me on upgrades anyway. Now that I have a fast machine if I wasn’t on slack I’d probably go back to gentoo – still might in the future, but I question how much “noticeable” performance gains you get from source compilations and agressive GCC optimizations can break things fast.
I’ve never used Fedora, but have used redhat in the past and invariably I hear that Fedora is slow and broken. People seem to like Slack because it’s fast, stable, and simple. These people tend to not need hand-holding too much and when they do there are irc channels and forums out there for help.
Instead of wasting your time in some futile campaign to get people not ot use it, why don’t you just ignore it and go back to Mandrake or whatever.
Until they reconize that truly moron-proof ease of use is part of the OS design equation they will continue to be a niche linux distro.
While I do largely agree with your points, I believe that the niche they fill is the niche they want to be in. No single solution will please all people, and Slackware fills some people’s needs better than any other Linux distribution.
Were I a Linux user, I am sure that I would really like it, and I wouldn’t spend more than a day or so learning the ins and outs (seeing as I’m already familiar with Linux generally).
Regarding my first paragraph about how Slackware is outdated I’d like to ask a simple question. What is more important, using your OS to accomplish a task or spending all of your time learning how to actually use the OS? Shouldn’t the goal of OS design for Servers,Desktops,Handhelds etc be to make user interaction moron-proof?
No! The goal of most distros is to be useful to their niche of users. This results in a wide variety of distros. There is also a group of users who prefer a more UNIX-like approach, which has its advantages. Slackware is an ultimate distro for that group of users. The learning curve can be steep for people who don’t want to learn command line basics and stuff like that. In my experience based on people I helped getting started with Slack most people who are motivated to learn Slack can learn to work with it and use it in 2 or three weeks. Deep knowledge of GNU/Linux and Slack can be learned in a few months. Many people who learn to use the command line and the workings of GNU/Linux prefer Slack any day.
Personally I advise against using Slackware when a user really has a “windows stance”, e.g. when they expect wizards to take care of the configuration, etc.
There has been progress in this field yet Slackware turns its back on it and insists on sticking to a design phlioshophy which results in a more difficult to use OS.
In the beginning Slack can be a bit hard. But when you get the clue it is really transparent, flexible, etc. And I think that is an important point, people should be able to decide how they computer theirselves, not the distributors.
Twenty years from now computers will be Incredibily complex. Will Slackware still make users have to learn about their OS instead just using it?
If you learnt Unix in the early seventies you can use your skills these days. Unix has a good design that doesn’t have to change much over time.
Sorry but its 2004 and Slackware is a reminder of why people find Linux hard to use. I find it amazing that people treat the fact that Slackware is featureless and hard to setup as something to crow about.
In order to explain this properly, let me draw a parallel to Windows. Back in the days of Win95, when I wanted to set up TCP/IP and networking sharing, I went into Control Panel/Networking and did my thing .. took like 30 seconds.
I remember when Windows 98 came out – they had this new network wizard thingy. The first time I tried it, I either went down the wrong path or did something else wrong, cuz I couldn’t get the wizard thingy to work. Finally, I said ‘screw this’, went to the Control Panel and did things the way I learned it before.
And it seems as the more ‘features’ they add to Windows, it’s just more crap that I have to bypass, disable, or otherwise turn off. The f**king web folder interface is a prime example – why does Control Panel in Windows XP only come with like 5 icons by default? Sure, it’s easier for newbies, but annoying as hell for the rest of us.
So, you could say that Slackware is simply there for people who learned things ‘the old way’ and don’t need all the hand-holding (and subsequently, the bloat) that newer distros provide. I am certainly not a Slackware expert, but I can get around. And the neat thing is that all the shit I learned back in 1996 when I first tried it still works in 2004. That’s the beauty of it – it’s not as easy to learn, but once you learn it, you’re good to go!
In short, the ‘easy-as-pie- distros remind of Windows XP out of the box. Slackware reminds me of Windows XP after I get done tweaking the hell out of it and turn off all the crap
Eug goes on about how packages aren’t modified. Packages get modified by distro makers because they want to provide a better experience for the end user. They want their distro to be a cohesive OS, not just a set of packages stuck together.
Every distro is just a bunch of packages stuck together. The only difference is that some distros modify their packages for that cohesive feel, which pretty much ensures that installing packages outside of their ‘sandbox’ has the potential to fuck up the entire distro (*cough* Xandros *cough*)
If you a fan of Slackware your against progress and outright ease of use.
As far as I’m concerned, other distros can make all the ‘progress’ they want
People don’t need to “learn about Linux” through the hazing that is Slackware so that they can fix things when they break. They need a Linux distro that doesn’t break but is always easy to use.
People don’t have to use Slackware if they don’t want to – not like anyone is pointing a gun to their heads.
>Sorry but its 2004 and Slackware is a reminder of why people find Linux hard to use.
This is not the case for Slackware. Slackawre is NOT one of these wannabe distros that are aiming for the desktop and for better desktop usability. Slackware is mostly used with old 486/586 machines as a small-time servers in schools and small businesses, run by unix heads. That’s their market. And that market does not need to serve as Linux’s hype machine regarding their “coming to the desktop”. It is irrelevant to them.
The fact that Slackware is “Linux-based” does not automatically make it part of the general ideas about “what Linux should be” that fly over to the web the last few years. Think of slackware more like a BSD with a server orientation rather than a “Lycoris”.
Last time I checked, Slackware was for people that wanted stability more than bells and whistles – especially bells & whistles that tend to break other programs that you use. I’ve been using Slackware since ~1994, but I do tend to look at the simplistic installs before I get into customized installs and I have yet to have problems installing a simple Slackware installation except on very specific computers (E-Machines made before this year with windows only drivers, for example).
And since >85% of the computer installations/upgrades are NOT done by the home user (they tend to send it to the shop – even for Windows upgrades), the average user wouldn’t really know the difference anyway.
btw – the 85% is a guestimate, but based upon how many people keep asking me to help them with their computer installations/upgrades/fixes and also polls/articles/reports I’ve seen, this may be a low estimate.
Almost forgot – “Ease of use” is relative. I’ve used both Linux and Windows (my wife’s laptop is XP-based), and I find the Windows approach to dumming-things-down-wizards more of a hindrance to getting things done or finding information on the system than the simplistic Unix style of allowing access to the configurations and tree-structure of where things go that don’t get changed at every fix-pack that comes out.
Thank you for that, it is about time someone defended the
RPMs and other distro’s slackware is a fine product and
stable, But i find linux in general to be fast and stable,
try gnome or kde and on most computers it is no better or faster on slackware, in fact i have seen slack run very slow
on some machines.
I don’t have a problem with Slackware including XFree 4.4.0. I did at first. But then I went to the Xfree.org Website and really read what they were changing. And anyone can correct me if I am wrong. But to my understanding the Xfree code is GPL like, but it isn’t GPL code. So with that understanding I don’t see why they can’t change their own license. If that’s what Xfree wants to do they have every right to do so. Same as anyone has a right to use Xfree 4.4.0 or use something else.
I have to disagree. I have had friends who tried linux and complained that they couldn’t get things to work and went back to Windows. They tried the known user friendly Linux distro’s such as RedHat and Mandrake. I told them to install Slack. Yes Slack does not have GUI driven configuration utilities, but their scripts are easy to understand and modify. The installer is not Graphical, but simple. Yes you don’t have a GUI drive partition application, but CFDISK is as easy, and familure, to use as FDISK. All of my friends that I have reccomended Slack to have become big fans and are enjoying their Linux experiance and are now Slack advocates.
As for constantly configuring your operating system and not being productive, I have to disagree with that statement too. I can configure Slackware to my preferences for a Desktop in 20 minutes and that includes disk partitioning and installing. I use it on my work laptop, my personal laptop, and my desktop. I use KDE (3.2.1) and KDE applications to manage all my personal needs: I do have dropline installed because I like some of the applications that it installs like Rythembox. I watch DVD’s, listen to MP3’s, play some really cool open source and comercial video games, word publishing, and manage digital pictures from my Digital camcorder. Slackware is great for a desktop operating system.
Basically, your post is your view point and I respect that, but I just wanted to express my opinions to some of your points.
Happy Computing!
Jim
“don’t like how other distros essentially hijack linux into their own thing…”
Now that’s ridiculous. Other distros trying to make a more complete OS with better or more advanced packaging systems and graphical configuration tools (what some of you strangely insist on calling bloat) is hijacking?? This “if they can’t figure it, screw’em” attitude amongst a lot of Linux users (especially Slackware) just makes Steve Ballmer’s job that much easier. You know, those of you may have read Linus’ bio, might have noticed that he’s been known to use bloated distros like SUSE and Red Hat. Funny that they’re good enough for him, but not for you.
I’ve been using slackware for a few months now, and i have to agree. It gives me the freedom that other distros don’t give.
Darius: Every distro is just a bunch of packages stuck together. The only difference is that some distros modify their packages for that cohesive feel, which pretty much ensures that installing packages outside of their ‘sandbox’ has the potential to fuck up the entire distro (*cough* Xandros *cough*)
Amen. This is the most important point.
Listen: “Polished” Linux = Lock-in. The problem becomes apparent when you want to customize or upgrade. Until there’s a way to “polish” packages, without hacking them, you’re either
1) stuck with using specific packages and doing things the way a “distro” wants you to do it
2) you don’t do it at all and have what amounts to be a “turnkey”
3) you pay someone like SuSE $60 to upgrade from 9.0 to 9.1
(convenient maybe, but it’s still a lock-in, which is strange, considering the wide use and open-source nature of the packages)
4) the process amounts to something that isn’t any easier than Slackware (sometimes even more of a pain), so what’s the point in saying one is “harder”?
Linux for the “home user” is an illusion. All the niceties are there, as long as you play by a distro’s rules and don’t touch it (if even that).
It’s a hack.
Believe me, I’d love to see true ease of use (I don’t see how anyone could be against that). I’d like to see Linux transformed into a platform in it’s own right, where it becomes something a little different than “Unix” (a la NeXTStep/OS X). I’m still waiting, because it simply isn’t there yet — only the appearance of it is. So for now, as far as I’m concerned, Linux is best when it’s trying to be a Unix clone, and doing things the Unix way (until a truly better solution comes about).
And that is why people usually like Slack, why they feel it is actually more “simple”. It isn’t trying to be anything else than what it _really_ is: A Unix-like OS, and it works just fine in that regard. You may say it’s having low standards, but I’ll say we have the same exact standards, and they are NOT low — I just prefer women without makeup.
You know, those of you may have read Linus’ bio, might have noticed that he’s been known to use bloated distros like SUSE and Red Hat. Funny that they’re good enough for him, but not for you.
Funny that you make this about Linus. Period. Good for him.
Kill yr idols.
what about vector linux? would you recommend slack instead of vector?
As was said before it is a basic desktop
dont get me wrong, basic has it’s place
and i sometimes use a computer that has slack on it,
nothing to get excited about
We like slack. We like the fact that it always works the way we expect it to, and it always works well. We find the customizations in other distro’s annoying, but that’s just us. We are hardly “anti-progress” – just check the /current tree. You’ll find it’s just shy of the bleeding edge. And Slackware installs are hardly involve the kind of first-born-sacricing rituals that some people think. Perhaps Slackers have been guilty of playing it up to look macho. (“Gui? We don’t need no steeenking Gui!”)
I was going to write a bit here about why Slackware has become my distro of choice, but those reasons have been eloquently explained by others on this board. What I really like, though, is that my fellow Slackers don’t seem to get their shorts in a twist when someone criticizes their distro or praises someone elses. I’ll be the first to ditch Slackware when I find something that better suits me. Until then, Slack works for me and I don’t know why that should bother anyone.
>This kind of mindless statement just goes to show you that some people are lame zealots. “No way” you would go back? Who cares?
I love you too !
Too bad Slackware doesn’t come with Pingus http://pingus.seul.org/ . (Also a quick search in linuxpackages.net gave no results for Pingus.) Debian is no less server-oriented distro than Slackware but at least they have lots of games, including Pingus. IMHO, every self-respecting Linux distro should ship with Pingus. I guess Slackware users are just very serious-minded folks who have no time to lose for fun and games. 🙁
But I have pingus on my Slack box and I love it.Well, I do not play that much on my linuxbox,but if I wantt to play something I fire up racer or pingus.
Tuxracer is available in linuxpackages.net. I just wish someone would make a slackpackage for pingus and share it with others. It’s such a cool game. 🙂
A great Slackware-based distro is College Linux. I like Slackware, but Collegelinux is basicly Slackware that comes with only one cd and pretty much everything I’m looking for from a distro. It doesn’t come with Gnome, and it’s xfce is a little outdated, but you just gotta install the xfce slackpack and get dropline gnome and you have a fully functioning linux with pretty much everything you need.
Slackware (and slackware-based distros though I have not tried Vector nor Buffalo) are fast. I compiled the 2.6.4 kernel and it was amazingly fast. The problem was that my ATI drivers didn’t work with 2.6.4 so now I’m stuck with 2.4.25. Which isn’t slow either… Just damn ATI for making such bad drivers
(I’d use any open source driver right away if there were 3d support for my radeon 9800 pro…)
I just recently migrated over to 2.6.4 and have a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro card. Just go in the flgxrc directory in the /lib/modules directory and rebuild the driver for the 2.6.4 kernel. No problem.
Very clever!
Slackware=Outdated
By bogie (IP: —.dyn.optonline.net) – Posted on 2004-04-06 21:39:29
Sorry but its 2004 and Slackware is a reminder of why people find Linux hard to use. I find it amazing that people treat the fact that Slackware is featureless and hard to setup as something to crow about.
Usually what i tell ppl(and when they want to listen), when they came up with that “its hard to setup blala dis and dat”
If you are going to spend 5 years of your life using some Operating System its no hard to figure that if you spend 1% of that time setuping it to suite your needs, isnt wasted time. In 5 years we have 1825 days that gives you 18days and 4 hours to,
1) install and get a basic slackware linux system with X, network, main packages, etc, in 4 hours (the actual installation process time takes less than 30 minutes)
2) 15 days to read some linux entry book or a slackware manual
3) 3 days to setup it for any extravagant gadget that you may need more time researching for info about it
I’ve recently discovered Slackware after using RedHat for four years. No way I’ll ever go back now, I enjoy the simplicity, stability and speed of Slackware. Yes, I’d agree that Slackware requires a level of knowledge about how Linux actually works. Once that knowledge is acquired, however, Slackware must be the easiest distro around to configure and customise.
Anyway, my only gripe is that the Slackware community seems a little disorganised. The main site (slackware.com) is OK for what it is, but not much there in terms of info. The book sites aren’t much help. Slackware mailing lists are almost impossible to find (yes, they exist!). And there are lots of one-man non-official Slackware sites around with 6 articles on them, all asking for help/contributions. Why can’t we all pool our stuff and create just ONE really cool, really useful Slackware site?