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he's been getting/accepting a lot more help from the community lately. that is what has helped more than anything.

slapt-get can make Slackware's minimalist package system usable for people used to apt. I'm a klutz at package management, particularly when it comes to dependencies, but as long as the packages include the extra slapt-get depdency fluff, I'm good to go.

PAM is a generally poor authentication method, since the documents one must use to base their implementation on are not good enough to ensure that all implementations are properly inter-operable. It's also a security risk, because of said badly made spec, Slackware doesn't carry it largely because of the security risks.

OpenBSD has no PAM support, and advises against it, and instead uses BSD authentication, which comes from BSD/OS.

Just because OpenBSD has no PAM, does not prevent one from compiling a PAM implementation (whichever is needed) and using it, the same can be said of Slackware.

There is a little bit of (dated) info on LDAP without PAM here: http://wombat.san-francisco.ca.us/faqomatic/cache/95.html

Edited 2007-07-03 02:31

I use Slackware 11.0 on my laptop and I can connect to any wireless network (not encrypted, WEP or WPA), I just had to compile wpa_supplicant by myself.

But Slackware 12.0 includes everything you need out of the box, so you don't have to compile wpa_supplicant

I don't understand peoples' gripes about the 2.4 kernel. It's never been mandatory in Slackware and there have been 2.6 kernels on the CD for the past few versions. Just cos it's not the default, folks get the idea it's nto supported!

Meanwhile 2.4's been great for keeping my 8 year old PC going on. Choice: it's a good thing!

PS I'm not singling you out, that's "folks" plural

But, IIRC, using a 2.6 kernel up to Slack 11.0 was somewhat and sometimes a little difficult (I recall now some fights with the modules for lm_sensors, for example).
And the use of a 2.6 kernel on current since a few months ago came without a hitch. Once PV makes his mind a change, he makes it thoroughly.

Besides that, on an old K6-2 450 128 MB RAM the 2.6 series felt even a little snappier than the 2.4 series.

That's because it's finally ready. Pat has declared it now ready.

Besides that, on an old K6-2 450 128 MB RAM the 2.6 series felt even a little snappier than the 2.4 series.

Now that's got me interested! Maybe Slack 12's worth a play on my current (ancient) hardware

I always install the latest version of Slackware when reinstalling because stability and performance have always improved, at least in the four years since I first installed version 9.0.

I tend to think that unless there is a very good reason to install a previous release such as better hardware support one should stick to the latest and greatest. There is no reason not to because this is not that other OS :-).

It's also very nice to run Slackware 12.0 x86, MIPS and ARM at the same time. Slackware is fast and stable regardless of the architecture it runs on, which attests to its excellent design.

More precisely I was talking of Slack 10.2, when managed to (sort of) make 2.6 work on it, video playing, for example, was smoother, and Quake 3 run better too.

That venerable and beloved K6-2 is still running 10.2, by the way... and when someone (wife, kids) takes control of the new PC, I surf the web on it (using Opera and IceWM+Rox among other low requirements software).

Ah I see.

I'm on Slack 11: PIII 450, 768MB RAM which is a little sluggish compared to Slack 10.x That's my only PC.

I'm tempted to play with Slack 12 and XFCE though, I've still got the old disks if it's unusable.

Then it becomes an ecuse to _finally_ upgrade! :oD

Use bittorrent and give something back to the community!
http://www.slackware.com/torrents/

I'm using the torrents but nobody is seeding, 99.2% done. Downloading the dvd, can wait to get this up and running.

I tried the DVD torrent, but not with much success or speed.

Perhaps you were just a little hasty. At the time of this writing, there are 1861 peers in the swarm...

Needless to say, download time is quite good.

Believe it or not, there are even 31 peers with 12 downloading on an old Slack-11 dvd image that I am still seeding...

Come to think of it, if you order the DVD with say, 24 hour delivery, the post office will manage a transfer rate of around 45 MBps (or ~360 Mbits/s)

Edited 2007-07-03 19:37

I've been seeding the first 3 discs since late last night. Only on a little DSL connection, though.

There's always a mirror close to your vicinity that hosts dvd images too. I found one after some searching some directories.

And that´s because Slack is getting better every time, release after release. I´ve been on --current since three years ago, and progress can be felt, together with stability and speed.
In the same machine I´ve installed Slamd64 and Gentoo64 and I keep going back to Slack for everyday use.
Go Patrick, go!!!