OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/18093/Slackware_Linux_12_0_RC1 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:54:00 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Great http://osnews.com/thread?248240 http://osnews.com/thread?248240 To see 2.6 as default, i'll be looking forward to slamd64 release not long after which I use now, very solid. Fri, 15 Jun 2007 23:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SlackerJack) Comments Wow! This is my first post! http://osnews.com/thread?248266 http://osnews.com/thread?248266 I love Slackware. It is simply the best OS I have ever used (I'm an MCSE, RHCE, and love NetBSD). Keep up the good work Patrick, you are a super star! Sat, 16 Jun 2007 01:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (brooky9999) Comments Respect http://osnews.com/thread?248273 http://osnews.com/thread?248273 Everyones got to give the RESPECT to slack. When you think about the most classic example of a distro slack comes out on top.

I know I can't wait until some reviews come out for 12 RC1. Sat, 16 Jun 2007 02:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Dually) Comments Slackware 12.0 http://osnews.com/thread?248279 http://osnews.com/thread?248279 Congratulations, Patrick! I've been slacking since 10.0 and love your OS.
Stable, secure.............Slackware:-) Sat, 16 Jun 2007 02:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hitest) Comments Lots of changes http://osnews.com/thread?248284 http://osnews.com/thread?248284 There are lots of new things in Slackware -current. Pat has added HAL, KDE is built with HAL support, OpenVPN, gamin, bluez, apache2, and the list goes on and on. You can read about how to update to -current, as well as list of all the new packages, in the "Changes and Hints" text file on the mirrors. Here's a link to one:

ftp://ftp.slackware.no/pub/linux/slackware/slackware-current/CHANG... Sat, 16 Jun 2007 03:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jackson) Comments I've just got it! http://osnews.com/thread?248287 http://osnews.com/thread?248287 I have just installed Slackware 12 on my 1.6 GHz Pentium IV system with 512 Mb SDRAM and legacy PCI nVIDIA Geforce4 440 video card ( legacy driver NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9639-pkg1.run ) and , O,my God, it's blazing fast.
I manage to download and burn DVD iso image from this FTP server and it took little less than 6 hours
(NOTE: it's unofficial DVD built approx. 3.7 GB in size):
ftp://ftp.slackware.no/pub/linux/ISO-images/slackware/Current-ISO-...
This is my Slackware 12 uname -a output:
Linux slack12 2.6.21.3-smp #2 SMP Thu May 24 21:09:15 CDT 2007 i686 pentium4 i386 GNU/Linux
and believe it or not, once KDE is loaded it uses only
75 Mb memory.
I knew this is going to be a great KDE 3.5.7 ( there's also XFCE 4) distro since I'm already running excellent Vector Linux 5.8 and beautifull Zenwalk 4.6.1 both based on "big daddy" Slackware simply because I can enjoy all rich multimedia even on my Pentium II based machines thanks to rock solid and reliable packages.
I'll certainly keep toying with this RC1 release and
also help reporting about(hopefully not to many) bugs in case I came accross one.
Great work Patrick; I'm on your side.

nedvis Sat, 16 Jun 2007 03:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nedvis) Comments That slack magic http://osnews.com/thread?248290 http://osnews.com/thread?248290 I have alwas loved this distro. Most will patch the hell out of the latest binaries to get everything working, creating what often ends up being a house of cards. The slack philosophy is that if it needs to be patched to work right, it isnt ready for use. Using vanilla binaries accross the board, and living by KISS principals, slack offers a fantastically simple, solid distro with a remarkable lack of distro specific bugs.

This is the distro I learned Linux on, and is still the one I reach for any time I need to configure a standalone server. Sat, 16 Jun 2007 03:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (google_ninja) Comments One distro to rule them all. http://osnews.com/thread?248311 http://osnews.com/thread?248311 Slackware is my first Linux distribution. I can't wait to install it to my PC. Now that it has X 7.2, setting up AIGLX and Beryl will be extremely easy.

Thanks to Pat for working on Slackware all those long years. Sat, 16 Jun 2007 05:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Excessive) Comments package manager http://osnews.com/thread?248322 http://osnews.com/thread?248322 no pun intended does slackware have a package manager? Sat, 16 Jun 2007 06:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (netpython) Comments no comment http://osnews.com/thread?248331 http://osnews.com/thread?248331 but i wonder if pidgin made it in.. Sat, 16 Jun 2007 08:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sn0n) Comments RE: package manager http://osnews.com/thread?248333 http://osnews.com/thread?248333 Of course it does! Slackware packages are just tar(-1.13) files compressed with gzip. Whereas RPM obscures the creation of packages through the lack of transparent build scripts, Slackware just uses shell scripts to create packages.

Slackware has pkgtools to manage packages. There is no inherent dependency resolution, which could be seen as both a good and a bad thing. In this respect it adheres very much to the Unix philosophy to keep it simple.

In contrast with RPM and DEB which do dependency resolution in the basic package managers themselves (rpm and dpkg) the basic pkgtools only supply mechanism and no policy.

So you can install, remove and upgrade any package you want without the tools keeping you from hosing the system. This is really the best way to do it, especially for experienced users that don't want to fight the package manager.

The dependency resolution is left to third party tools such as slapt-get, slackpkg and others, which do a lot but not all of what RPM tools such as yum and DEB tools such as apt-get are supposed to do. Sat, 16 Jun 2007 08:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (psychicist) Comments Not happy about kde going into /usr http://osnews.com/thread?248334 http://osnews.com/thread?248334 I prefered kde in /opt. It was easy to upgrade that way.
Now everything gets jammed into /usr like on Windows into system32. Sat, 16 Jun 2007 09:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (shapeshifter) Comments RE: Not happy about kde going into /usr http://osnews.com/thread?248336 http://osnews.com/thread?248336 On Windows, installing libraries system wide is generally discouraged. Well, unless they are to be used system wide. Otherwise, they should get installed next to the exes. Sat, 16 Jun 2007 09:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bending Unit) Comments RE: Not happy about kde going into /usr http://osnews.com/thread?248353 http://osnews.com/thread?248353 I'd prefer KDE in /usr, given that its packages are split up into the usual bin, share, lib subdirs. I prefer /opt for big apps or games that don't fit the usual UNIX mould (particular if they're ports of Windows programs which stick everything into one directory, libs, exes, etc.). Sat, 16 Jun 2007 11:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gavin.mccord) Comments RE: no comment http://osnews.com/thread?248391 http://osnews.com/thread?248391 Check out the changelog in detail; an updated Pidgin is listed in /xap.

Also, the Pidgin folks have further refined their original harsh comments.

Glad to see both sides moving on this one! Sat, 16 Jun 2007 15:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (revjdc) Comments lilo http://osnews.com/thread?248408 http://osnews.com/thread?248408 Is slackware still using lilo? Is there an easy way to install grub if lilo is still used? Sat, 16 Jun 2007 16:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Figs) Comments RE: lilo http://osnews.com/thread?248413 http://osnews.com/thread?248413 Yes, Slackware is still using lilo and there is still the same easy-to-install grub package in the /extras directory, which has been there for a long time. The nice thing about the grub package in /extras is that it includes a "grubconfig" tool just like the "liloconfig" tool that is included by default. So, switching to grub is as easy as uninstalling the lilo package, installing the grub package, and running grubconfig. Piece of cake. Sat, 16 Jun 2007 16:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jackson) Comments RE: package manager http://osnews.com/thread?248416 http://osnews.com/thread?248416 Slackware has had a package manager since its early days; it's called "pkgtool." Run that, and you can manage your packages. Sat, 16 Jun 2007 16:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jackson) Comments Yeah http://osnews.com/thread?248444 http://osnews.com/thread?248444 I've been using slackware for ages.
It really is awesome.

Go Patrick! Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (forrestm) Comments RE: lilo http://osnews.com/thread?248445 http://osnews.com/thread?248445 Last time I checked Grub didn't support a lot of filesystems, like XFS, so if you wanted to use one of those you had to install Lilo.
Debian 4 is same way, it'll install Grub for you by default, but if you choose XFS as your main file system then it'll install Lilo. Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (shapeshifter) Comments Very nice http://osnews.com/thread?248449 http://osnews.com/thread?248449 I downloaded -current last night and installed this morning. Pat has done an awesome job as usual. Now that Slackware has the new XFCE4 and a 2.6 kernel by default, I may just switch some of my non-test machines over to Slack. Sat, 16 Jun 2007 22:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fsckit) Comments RE: That slack magic http://osnews.com/thread?248469 http://osnews.com/thread?248469 "I have alwas loved this distro. [...] This is the distro I learned Linux on, and is still the one I reach for any time I need to configure a standalone server."

Same here, too. Slackware + LaTeX let me enter the world of academia in 1996, more than 10 years ago, with POWER!-CD LINUX in a magazine for 29,95 DM - well invested money that saved much time for me. Furthermore, with the basic stuff that I could do with Slackware without any problem, I could learn very much about how Linux systems work and what you can do if they don't work the way you expected. Using this knowledge, it was no problem to adopt to UNIX systems which I'm using today on a daily basis (BSD, Solaris, IRIX).

In my opinion, Slackware is not for KISS enthusiasts only, it's a great system for educational purposes, too. Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Doc Pain) Comments RE: Not happy about kde going into /usr http://osnews.com/thread?248470 http://osnews.com/thread?248470 "I prefered kde in /opt. It was easy to upgrade that way.
Now everything gets jammed into /usr like on Windows into system32."

In BSD land, there's a strict recommendation where to put which files. While the basic OS resides in the /etc and /usr subdirs, everything that does not belong to the OS itself is located in /usr/local. Today as /usr/X11R6 is to be obsoleted, this subdir is holding everything except the OS, while it supports the basic separation that you know from the directory structures above, such as /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/include or /usr/local/lib. To delete everything except the OS (for example, if you want to reinstall all your additional applications), just delete /usr/local - your OS won't be affected in any concern.

Example: The inetd system service has its control script as /etc/rc.d/inetd { start | stop | status }, its config file as /etc/inetd.conf, and its binary in /usr/sbin/inetd. The additional DHCP server service (that does not belong to the OS) has /usr/local/etc/dhcpd.conf, /usr/local/etc/rc.d/dhcpd.sh and /usr/local/sbin/dhcpd.

Similar do the doc/ or examples/ subdirs work - /usr/share/examples or /usr/local/share/examples.

I may say that the directory structuring of Linux OS is a bit untidy sometimes, while I personally like Slackware because you tend to find everything you're searching for in a relatively obvious position.

As it has been said by someone else before, /opt (or /usr/local/opt) would be a good place to store installed applications that do not match the bin/, lib/, include/ etc. separation, so all of them get a /usr/local/opt/APPNAME dir, and maybe a symlink of the executable to /usr/local/bin because it's contained in $PATH, so you don't need to call the executable by absolute name.

If course, you're free to install apps on a per-user basis, $HOME/bin, $HOME/lib etc. are used if --prefix is set to your ~ dir. Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Doc Pain) Comments RE[2]: Not happy about kde going into /usr http://osnews.com/thread?248477 http://osnews.com/thread?248477 Now the KDEs are in /usr Sun, 17 Jun 2007 01:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sxzzsf) Comments Slack has always been solid... http://osnews.com/thread?248478 http://osnews.com/thread?248478 ...and pretty quick too. It did not have a lot of process fat at startup, don't know if this holds true today. Sun, 17 Jun 2007 01:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tuishimi) Comments RE: lilo http://osnews.com/thread?248488 http://osnews.com/thread?248488 Nice to now. thanks for the responses.

I used to use Slackware. That's how I learned Linux.

Looks like I'm coming back. Sun, 17 Jun 2007 03:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Figs) Comments slackware is love http://osnews.com/thread?248491 http://osnews.com/thread?248491 Slackware is the perfect linux distro. I love not living in dependency hell. Sun, 17 Jun 2007 04:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Matt) Comments Twelve years ago... http://osnews.com/thread?248500 http://osnews.com/thread?248500 I remember when Slackware was more or less the only real "distro". I downloaded it into 40 (forty) 3.5" diskettes at the University's lab. This was year 1995 or so... :-)

But today I think it looks a little dated, or I don't have the time anymore. PCLinuxOS is looking great. Sun, 17 Jun 2007 07:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (barspi) Comments RE[2]: lilo http://osnews.com/thread?248514 http://osnews.com/thread?248514
Last time I checked Grub didn't support a lot of filesystems, like XFS, so if you wanted to use one of those you had to install Lilo. Debian 4 is same way, it'll install Grub for you by default, but if you choose XFS as your main file system then it'll install Lilo.


I have been using both GRUB and XFS for years so it should really not be a problem. The trick is to make a separate (/boot) ext3 partition where GRUB resides. GRUB can't coexist with XFS on the same partition so you shouldn't even try.

As a matter of fact the way I install GRUB on a partition of itself it's a completely separate entity from the installed operating system(s) and it isn't mounted anywhere in any of them by default.
So I never install GRUB or LILO when installing Slackware. I don't even bother with CD/DVD installs anymore, just installing from the hard disk, which is both faster and less error-prone.

Also I hardly ever upgrade the bootloader unless there is a major advantage to doing so and just update menu.lst to point to the newer kernel on the Slackware partition, which is usually just a version number change.

Of course it helps that I have created and installed self-contained rescue images (30-90 MB) that can be run from this separate boot partition in case I misconfigure GRUB. And modern firmwares such as PMON and OpenFirmware, which combine the functionality of the BIOS and GRUB, let you directly boot kernels anyway on non-x86 architectures.Edited 2007-06-17 10:31 UTC Sun, 17 Jun 2007 10:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (psychicist) Comments beh http://osnews.com/thread?248540 http://osnews.com/thread?248540 wish it had gnome. Sun, 17 Jun 2007 15:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (spikeb) Comments RE: Twelve years ago... http://osnews.com/thread?248554 http://osnews.com/thread?248554 PCLinuxOS is looking great.

Yes it does and works for me. Sun, 17 Jun 2007 16:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (netpython) Comments RE: beh http://osnews.com/thread?248560 http://osnews.com/thread?248560 No gnome in slackware. Too dependencies for Volkderding but there are projects that package GNOME for slack. Sun, 17 Jun 2007 17:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (morphalus) Comments RE: Twelve years ago... http://osnews.com/thread?248616 http://osnews.com/thread?248616
I remember when Slackware was more or less the only real "distro". I downloaded it into 40 (forty) 3.5" diskettes at the University's lab. This was year 1995 or so... :-)

But today I think it looks a little dated, or I don't have the time anymore. PCLinuxOS is looking great.


Bullshit!
If you have time to read and post on Osnews then you have time for Slackware!
LOL Sun, 17 Jun 2007 22:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (shapeshifter) Comments Gnome http://osnews.com/thread?248683 http://osnews.com/thread?248683 Or you can just compile your own Gnome. This should be a bit easier on Slackware than on some tightly integrated distro. I remember the time when I compiled Gnome 1.x from source (sources downloaded using dial-up line of course)! But then again, I have returned back to FVWM... Mon, 18 Jun 2007 08:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (daemonologist) Comments RE: Gnome http://osnews.com/thread?248747 http://osnews.com/thread?248747 Heh, taking a day to download, several hours to fail to compile, waiting a week to try the next release. Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gavin.mccord) Comments RE[2]: Gnome http://osnews.com/thread?248833 http://osnews.com/thread?248833 Exactly the reason why I like FVWM + some simple tools (e.g. xmessage, shell scripts, Python + Tkinter) so much! Small, simple to compile from source, compact, simple dependency tree...

There is supposed to be some kind of automatic build system (two, in fact) for Gnome (Gargnome and jhbuild) that should automate the dependency check/download/build process. However, when I tried jhbuild on RHEL4 based Scientific Linux it just didn't work... (as expected) Mon, 18 Jun 2007 22:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (daemonologist) Comments cool http://osnews.com/thread?249238 http://osnews.com/thread?249238 i like slack. it's coolest linux. http://www.prevedgame.ru/in.php?id=20508 Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (twistys) Comments RE: beh http://osnews.com/thread?249241 http://osnews.com/thread?249241 There are a number of GNOME for Slackware projects.

My favorite is dropline GNOME [1], but a friend of mine is using rock [2] and it worked just fine. (AFAIK rock is not longer supported.)

- Gilboa
[1] http://www.droplinegnome.org/
[2] http://gsb.freerock.org/ Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gilboa) Comments Still No PAM Out of the Box http://osnews.com/thread?249352 http://osnews.com/thread?249352 Slackware had always been a rock-solid distribution and I thank the project for making me learn more about Unix/Linux than anything else when I started using it in the mid-90's.

The problem I have now is that some of the projects I'd like to employ (Samba/LDAP, 802.1x for WiFi Authentication) do require, in some funny way, PAM to be available.

I understand Patrick's reasoning behind not including it - but that reasoning is now dated since all major distributions, including Gentoo, are using PAM - as do the BSD's, and the security ramifications are mostly to do with how other projects integrate with PAM, not the PAM implementation itself.

With all due respect to Patrick and the project, I think PAM is long overdue to be part of Slackware so it can begin to make itself more useful again as an extremely robust distribution with easy integration.

I may be wrong with my line of thinking, but the lack of PAM prevents me from deploying my favorite distribution of all-time to be used with all of my servers.

Right now, I have a mixture of FreeBSD, OpenSuSE and Slackware, but the Slack servers are doing menial tasks. ;) Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WarpKat) Comments RE: package manager http://osnews.com/thread?249372 http://osnews.com/thread?249372 Yes, it does, but I've mostly found that installing a BASE system was best, along with the compilers, so one could compile from source whatever else was needed.

That was my preferred method of updating because the base install with compilers was really all you needed. Wed, 20 Jun 2007 20:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WarpKat) Comments RE: Still No PAM Out of the Box http://osnews.com/thread?250131 http://osnews.com/thread?250131 If you want Slack with PAM, I believe the simplest way to get it is to install Dropline Gnome. Patrick has said (I think it was the Linux Link Tech Show podcast where I heard this) that that is enough of a change to make Dropline/Slack a fork in his view; so proceed at your own risk without the blessing of the BDFL I suppose. I use Freerock myself for the Gnome apps, though I still use KDE for the desktop. Of course, I don't need LDAP and all that heavy-lifting server stuff. Sat, 23 Jun 2007 12:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mrad) Comments