Slackware Linux 9.0 RC-3 is now available: Changelog, mirror list, direct download dir. Updates include automake 1.7.3, Nautilus 2.2.2 and Mozilla 1.3, but the qt library was kept at 3.1.1: “This [qt-3.1.2] was recommended by several people as an important fix for Opera, but installing it causes all kinds of display problems with KDE (particularly with fixed fonts such as the one used by Konsole). If you care more about Opera than KDE, you might want to install this, otherwise it’s probably a bad idea.” Update: ISO download (nightly builds) can be found here or here or here.
Slackware Linux 9.0 RC-3 Available
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Slackware continues to be one of the most robust and useful linux distrobutions out there. If only it had a package manager like Gentoo!
Slackware. Once a Slackware fan
I was wondering the same thing… I wonder how much work it would be to incorporate something like Gentoo’s “Portage” or Source Mage’s “Sorcery”. To me, Sorcery at least, seems like it’d feel very natural in Slackware – especially the ‘stable’ branch. Running SMGL and running Slack always feel very similar to me. They’re easily my two favorite distro’s.
Has Patrick posted anything in regards to this?
Bill
Always a slacware fan.
I’ve tried Red Hat, Debian and Slackware.
Based in my own experience, Slackware is the most secure (little news about slack fixes), most stable and faster (it only loads all the need stuff nothing else).
Red Hat was easy to install and there was no (almost) things to be setted up. I guess Red Hat is a nice product for people who just noticed that there are more OSes in the world besides Windows 98, Windows NT and Windows XP.
Debian: how in hell do I do something useful with dselect? Pretty hard to install (little logical) and hard to update as well (through apt-get – it says many things about unmet dependencies and blah blah)
n0dez
==
http://www.n0dez.com
I’m currently using slack, I agree I would love to get portage or something like it on slack. I use droplines gnome installer, it does a good job of installing uptodate packages. I would like to see some extra configurability though… They let me choose from what they have, but it is a narrow selection… xfree4.3.0, gnome 2.2, mozilla 1.2.1, etc.. which are all good, and I use but I would prefer to be able to select galeon, and customize for my platform…
I used gentoo before I lost my computer to a flood (didn’t want to relive days of configuration while trying to do school work…). I got very accustomed to the high performance of everything. When I booted up mandrake, i was disgusted (well not really) at how slow it seemed… At least slack *feels* fast. I’ll probably upgrade to 9.0 when it comes out…
A little more on the portage thing: They are a set of python scripts right? It looks like someone just made a strait copy of it from a gentoo install to the appropriat place, and it worked. Heres the link:
http://insights.syroidmanor.com/2002/20020826.html
Look about 1/3 of the page down, and I also found some links, but not in English, and babelfish won’t translate it:
http://messer.homelinux.org/slackin.html
Can anyone figure that out?
I cannot seem to leave slackware. Slackware was my first linux distro. I have used other distros like…well too many. And i always find slackware to be the simplest to configure. Yet, i dont understand why slackware is so fast if its only optimized for i386…runs very well for me.
For some reason when I tried to install 8.1 I couldn’t boot from the cd… I know I can make the five boot disks that will allow me too but I just use vector 3.2 which is based on slack.. Dropline is compatible with it so I can easily update it. But I hope that I can boot to the 9.0 installer when it comes out.
http://www.slackware.com/~david/zuul/
Next time a new release comes out, I’ll buy it to support the good work
n0dez
I too am going to buy slack 9 when it comes out …
I’ve since switched to Gentoo for my desktop since emerge is great… autoslack sounds pretty cool. I notice a huge difference in speed w/ the the i686 compiling on Gentoo. It so much nicer having it all automate with Gentoo.
My dad wants to try Linux. I think with Slack 9.0 final I’ll install it on his system. Its easier for me to setup and fix any problems on Slackware and I’m sure he’s going to mess it up at first.
http://www.bbspot.com/Images/News_Features/2003/01/os_quiz/slackwar…
SO Close! Everyday I keep checking for the Final Release.
Pat even has 9.0 listed in the Slack Store. Let’s all pre-order to show our support for his great work/distro.
And for those looking to add Portage/Similar to Slack, stop. You want the Compile everything from scratch and constant daily updates from source, you need help… And also why change; Gentoo/Sorcerer/Lunar/SM does this already. Slack isn’t in that arena.
I personally used Gentoo as my last Distro. Mind you, Portage certainly slaps the Dependency issue away, but the speed of it is just… horrific at first… To setup a system alone, and install all it’s packages, can literally take a day or more, just to have a setup ready for production.
It would be great if Portage could install binaries also… (Binaries of KDE on Portage tree, instead on compiling from source… which takes around 6 – 10 hours on a decent setup)…
Ah well… Installing the Slack 9.0 Nightly build now… Gonna give it a shot.
It looks ike zipslack and bigslack aren’t being updated. Is this true? I have a Fujitsu Lifebook where they did a bait and switch. Before I bought it they said it worked great with Linus… Once I bought it they said that I could never get hardware repair (in or out of warranty) without original OS on computer, but they won’t provide CD to put it back on. I have the painful situation now of using Knopix from CD as my main OS (better than the installed Win2000.) Floppy not sufficiently supported, no legacy ports (only USB and firewire equivalent.) Nostagic about first install of Slackware in 93. Any solutions?
Debian: how in hell do I do something useful with dselect?
You don’t. Use Synaptic.
Pretty hard to install (little logical) and hard to update as well (through apt-get – it says many things about unmet dependencies and blah blah)
Debian isn’t hard to install if you read the screens. It’s actually quite easy. However, I can see how the text based installer could be daunting. But, having installed both Debian and Slackware numerous times, I’m curious as to why you think Debian is hard and Slackware is easy. They are both about the same.
Also, I have used Debian for more than 4 years. I have never run into dependancy problems with the stable branch, and have only run into one problem with the testing branch (with unstable, you get what you ask for).
Don’t get me wrong, I love Slackware and have purchased as many of their releases as I can to support the effort (I usually buy FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Slackware and Debian distros because I like them and want to support them); and I will buy this next version as well.
I like the concept of Gentoo, and I run it on one machine at work. However, if that machine’s hard drive were to fail, I probably would never install Gentoo again. It takes too long to install and configure everything.
Not that I think they will, but I hope Slackware never moves to a portage type system. It would just be another source based distro that I would be far too impatient to use.
Well, in the past 6 years I’ve run preety much every major distro. My first distro was Red Hat, wich is nice, but not for me. I’ve also run FreeBSD, wich I love, but still has some tiny little inconvenients for me, it makes me feel a little lefty when I use it. Slack was the perfect distro for me, even do the package management system is a little to … oldie… But the again you have total control in slackware and total freedom. I think its the ideal system for every linux-pro, or developer, and it is easy to configure and figure out. And most of all, thanks god for the BSD init scripts. God bless Pat for this new upcomming release wich I will buy of course. By the way, I hate distro-flame wars, I think every Linux distro is better than … you know what I mean…
I bought 8.0, and I just recently signed up for the Slackware subscription. I’ve tried most every other distro available, and nothing matches Slackware.
I still recall everybody was showing off their Slackware Box’s yet this seems pretty obvious, Gentoo is on top now.
Not exactly a package management tool, but have any of you guys used alien?
http://kitenet.net/programs/alien/
It’s a tool for converting between deb’s rpm’s and slackware packages! It’s quick to run, easy to install and use, and means you no longer have trouble searching for tarballs when all you can find is RPM’s. The fact that It converts it to a slackware package and not a tarball also means it couldn’t be easier to install software
I was majorly unimpressed by Debain and Gentoo’s installers, slackware is always going to be my no.1 distro. I even use it to run a media box in my living room – playing divx’s with no troubles on a machine that couldn’t hack em in win98.
Got Slack ?
Well, …
I’ve had lots of problems with Debian 3.0r1. I’ve got an i810 chipset and I couldn’t run the X-windows just because it comes with kernel 2.2. Later I discovered that I could install Debian with the kernel 2.4 (bf24) so re-installed it. Then … surprise! Debian didn’t detect my 3com ethernet card (it was detected with Debian – kernel 2.2.x). Dselect is really confusing… installing and using Slack is really simple -no dependencies- you just select all you want have installed once and don’t have to go through sub-sub-sub menus like Debian’s dselect.
However, I have noticed that Slackware 8.1 is the fastest and more stable. It’s faster than Red Hat Linux 8.0 and Debian GNU/Linux 3.0r1 as well. About stability: how many times do you see something about Slackware’s vulnerabilities at some Linux-news sites such as LinuxToday? You’ll see many of both RedHat and Debian.
The only thing that I miss in Slack is OpenOffice in TGZ format. But that’s no a big problem. I can compile it and voila – problem solved.
Got Slack?
o0O n(0)d|e|z “‘ –=> O0o ||[[]]|||
PD: I love to test new release, so I’m gonna try RHL8.1 and, of course SKW9.0rc3
I was also worried about backups. It took about a day to setup the whole thing. All I did was craft up a shell script and made it make TAR’s of the system. I lumped the smaller directories together and tooker the larger directories and out them in individual Tars. Took about 10 minutes to make the script and maybe another 10 to do all the TARs. I have the whole system backed up on 3 CDs and will take no more than 10-15 minutes to restore.