Slackware is the tried and true Linux distribution. It’s been here since (near) the beginning. And now it’s hit version 10.1. Come check out LinuxForumsDOTorg’s look at the newest iteration of Slack.
Slackware 10.1: A Quick Review
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
A few paragraphs discussing a cursory install procedure, a switch between virtual console and gui, and a wee bit of history, all in four or five short paragraphs does NOT constiture an “IN-Depth Review” in my book.
I agree. But the news was submitted that way, so I thought I’d keep it as is.
i saw this line on the site…
Or, you can get your Slackware ISOs through BitTorrent using our torrents page.
> If you don’t have a CD Burner, the process of gaining what > you need to install Slackware can be a real chore.
Why not to purchase a Slackware CD set? http://store.slackware.com/ Are you that greedy? 😉
> Even if you do have a CD Burner, however, the official
> Slackware Mirror doesn’t host a pre-made ISO image.
But mirrors do:
http://www.abnormalpenguin.com/slackware-mirrors.php
http://alphageek.dyndns.org/linux/slackware-mirrors.shtml
>My only gripe about Slackware’s package management system
>is the lack of an automatic package retrieval system that
>is the core of systems like Gentoo and Debian. There are
>several third-party utilities (e.g. slapt-get), but I tend
>to trust first-party system administration tools more than
>third-party add-ons.
rsync from a crontab entry and then install/update what you want.
To other extent, a nice but a hardly insightful review.
“I was blessed with a CD Burner, ”
I’m surprised he didn’t feel blessed with a net connection as well.
Not really much of a review, more like a few comment on it.
His description of slack was right on though:
“Slackware 10.1 can be summarized in two words: stable and secure.”
I don’t understand – Slack 10.1 was released on february the 26th. Why is this news? Actually I’m expecting a new version soon, there have been some pretty big changes lately: 2.6 has been around for a while now, NTPL was recently added, new glibc, official removal of gnome ..
first of all, i would like to say that i’m a big fan of slackware. it’s my all time favorite distro. btw. i love debian too.
however, i must admit that i cant wait for slackware 11 (or at least a big improvement over 10.0 and 10.1). since 10.x, slackware isn’t as stable and polished as before. but you can’t blame the author: this guy has been sick for a long time. he’s just getting better now i think.
there are alot of annoying issues in slackware 10.x. installing it on a laptop can be a nightmare, X feels like broken sometimes (not only on my laptop, but on my desktop as well), also i got alot of problem getting my mouse working correctly on my laptop in both console and X (ps2 intellimouse). when i got it working in console, i wasn’t able to keep it working after starting/exiting X. i tried many things but the only way to resurrect gpm was to reboot. maybe /dev/mouse got screwed. and using gpm as a repeater didn’t work either… X didn’t like that.
X feels like broken sometimes (not only on my laptop, but on my desktop as well), also i got alot of problem getting my mouse working correctly on my laptop in both console and X (ps2 intellimouse). when i got it working in console, i wasn’t able to keep it working after starting/exiting X.
Sorry for asking, but is this a problem with Slackware or just a configuration problem? Slackware is mostly vanilla software, and it isn’t meant to provide fancy configuration tools or automatical configuration (though hotplugging makes using many devices pretty automagical
).
I must say that the quality of the 10.x “branch” was very high (in my experience).
Slackware is great but has some issues… So in Vector Linux I found the answer to all of them. It’s fast, stable, polished, easy yet not taking your freedom away… And it’s Slackware based, of course. Any Slackware lover should try it.
Looks very nice but they could add WindowMaker to their short list of DE 😉
… SlackWare 10.1 right now, works PERFECTLY, no problems whatsoever.
Thank you Patrick.
I cann’t stand when somebody with so little knowledge and experience has need and courage to publish such a crappy article.
– He blames installer is not competent to install from another media than CD. Did he even tried to make network installtion from NFS server ? Or harddrive or premounted partition ? I’m sure he didn’t. He spreads FUD.
– He “googled” for Slackware mirrors. Did he even bother to visit distro’s homepage and click on menu item “Get Slack” ? That’s laughable.
– He wasn’t be able to “break” system as administrator. It’s not worth to comment. Such a poor kid …
– It’s correct Slack doesn’t have in the base branch tool for automatical packages retrieval (don’t counting rsync f.E.), but in extra branch, there is slackpg perfectly suited to do this job.
– He speaks about stability and security but I’m affraid there is no background from his personal experience and just repeats flagrantly known rumours like a talkactive parrot.
None review is much better than this lame one.
-the “review” was not even a comment on slackware
-the hole cd burnner blasing thing was nonsense too
as for slackware it is solid distrubution for people who know what there are doing and don’t want to deal with gui tools and user friendly customizations to get the work done. If you want to setup a LINUX server box in short period of time the way you want it i can’t think of a better distribution.
I agree. And he talks about firefox which is not included in Slackware 10.1 . I sent this guy a pm yesterday about it and adviced him to delete the whole thing. He choose to submit to OSNews so he is asking for it I guess.
Slackware rocks my world. 10.1 is just fine on laptops. Works great on my dell 700m. Thanks, Pat, for keeping it real.