“Seldom in life do you find things that are stable. That is especially true in the world of Linux, where software is ever changing (spend a day reading the kernel development lists if you don’t think so). Slackware’s commitment to releasing a stable operating system though, is one that has stayed true. Last week we saw the release of Slackware 9.0 and in true slack fashion, things are good, things are very good.” Full Review.
Review: Slackware 9.0 at TinyMinds.org
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I saw about three glowing reviews of slack 9 on my unix users’ group mailing list. I may have to install it again, somtime, see what’s up. I started on slack, but haven’t used it since about 1996.
Yes, the Slack is awesome. I have been following the 9.0 betas nightly and I have to say that 9.0 is smooth, fast and well worth the one disk .iso download. Extremely cool I have to say.
As a warning, there’s two problems that I’ve heard being reported about Slackware 9 so far (I haven’t installed it yet, so I can’t confirm it). On the forums at http://www.userlocal.com there’s been a couple of people mentioning problems with Audigy II sound cards (I’m not sure if the Audigy and Live! cards were also affected) having very poor sound quality compared to that of 8.1, no solution mentioned yet..as well, a number of people in the same forum (and a couple of IRC channels) mentioned problems with the included version of GCC segfaulting while building certain packages..I think they mentioned fluxbox specifically.
In either case I hope they’re fixed soon, I’d like to upgrade from 8.1 sometime soon :>
I would be interested to know how the author found KDE runs using the XF86_FBDev server, compared to the normal xfree drivers.
I don’t think any other distro offers this as an install option.
Anyone tried it? Is it faster than standard X?
Actually, I was quite suprised at it. It runs rather smooth (even over the desktop sharing). The only down side is the laptops monitor itself, not as clear as I’d like, but you can see the screenshots… came out rather nice.
I do need to play with it a little bit to see if I can get it any better, but otherwise, it is a workable desktop.
I agree with this review fully. It is rock solid and very sraight forword. KDE 3.1 is also great, very clean and fonts look much better. I can actually read the fine print on Slashdot now at 1024×768 using Konqueror. I did run into one problem though, with Lilo. On the first install it didn’t load the Lilo program at all, even though I had selected full install. Also was true of networking, no netconfig. Second install all worked except it didn’t include my WinXP partition in the Lilo config (8.1 did). No problem though, I just edited the lilo.conf file and all is well. All in all, I would recommend it to anybody, not just advaced users. Slackware Rocks!
although I do absolutely love slack, I am having a problem with the install iso, as whenever I install from the downloaded iso for 9.0 final, apache doesn’t start, but when I install from 9.0rc1, it does work. even more annoying is that on my box, ssh stopped accepting connections, on 9.0rc1 after almost a week. I found this quite disturbing. I think today when I get home, I’m going to do a test reinstall, switch my firewall/router over to look to my “test” box (ok, so it’s my win2K desktop with a different hard drive) and then reinstall on my “server” =D man…I’m nuts about this slackware, can’t wait till my CD’s get to me…. =D I think that I just got a broken iso, and all will be healed when I get my real cd’s =D
In response to Eru’s comment that Slackware’s gcc3.2 seg-faulted while compiling fluxbox – well, of course you should know that essentially everything in Slackware is vanilla. This isn’t a problem with Slackware. It’s more than likely not a problem with gcc either, as I find it less error prone that MSVC++ in many circumstances. I assume fluxbox is meant to be installed with a 2.9v of gcc, as I think the code is pretty crusty…though I know next to nothing about that WM. Furthermore, in respect to the kernel having Audigy II problems, as far as I know, Audigy II support was just established; infact, I don’t believe it comes in the vanilla kernel, but rather must be patched (take that with a grain of salt).
I have used Slackware for years, and maintain several personal, and professional sites with it, and it alone. Two of my servers have uptimes in excess of 550 days. Slackware is rock solid. My personal machines run it as well; it’s a great distrobution to use to just get a core system going (compiler, file tree put in place, etc). From there, I just compile all my own software. Tough to learn on, but rewarding; more so than any other distrobution. And yes, I have tried *numerous* other distro’s; I have a hobby box that I just tool around on, to keep tabs on what other distro’s are doing. As any developer or hardcore linux friend will tell you, Slack of course blows Gentoo clear out of the water. I had high expectations for Gentoo, and while quite slick, it’s not really geared for someone who has been compiling their own software for some time. I can only imagine LFS being more pure than Slack.
Cheers (sorry about the ranting aspect of this, I love Slack),
PararoX
Personally I like Slackware quite a bit, Gentoo being my second favourite :> Hopefully my post didn’t come off as being insulting or inflammatory, but I thought it best that I repeat some of the issues that people have been mentioning elsewhere.
That being said, I don’t believe from what I had read earlier that the problem was confined to fluxbox, but unfortunately the site was down at last I checked. I have installed Slackware 9 on a machine with a Soundblaster Live! installed, and sadly the sound quality isn’t quite so good as it was in the previous 8.1..it almost sounds as if the sample rate is lower than it should be, but that’s just my observation. I don’t really know what the problem is :/
I don’t mean any of the above to detract from Slackware in general, I run it myself as well..but every distribution has its bugs :>
I upgraded to 8.1 to a nightly build of slack 9 a few days before release – of course at that time upgrade instructions weren’t available, and hence i spent a whole day checking package version numbers etc. and fixing a couple of other issues, but it was well worth it.
The only thing that doesn’t seem to be working right now is gedit for some reason – don’t know if it worked before though to be honest.
I’ve downloaded the 9.0 release ISO and will install when I next boot linux (having to use windows for my university project
). I’ll buy it as well once the next student loan cheque comes in 
All we need now is SlackBSD too
I used Slackware a while ago, version 8.0 I believe. I switched away from it for some reason I can’t remember now, but I think its time I check it out again. The simplicity of a Slackware system has eluded me since I switched.
I will download the ISO and check it out, then probably buy the boxed-set, because if you don’t contribute to a good cause (Slackware, in this instance), it will go away and we will all lose.
All we need now is SlackBSD too
[darn. hit enter when the wrong window had focus]
MGD wrote:
> All we need now is SlackBSD too
Heh. Well, that and PPC-Slack.
If you look on the propaganda page on the slackware website they mention something called slackintosh which is an unofficial port of slack.
Not sure how up to date it is but a quick search on http://www.google.com/linux seemed to return plenty of mirror sites!
All we need now is SlackBSD too
Heh – I’ve often wondered why nobody does a BSD/Linux distribution – just to spite RMS and the Gnu/Linux religious fanatics 🙂
Heh – I’ve often wondered why nobody does a BSD/Linux distribution – just to spite RMS and the Gnu/Linux religious fanatics 🙂
you mean the one debian is doing right now.
http://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/people.en.html
Well that’s not BSD/Linux, in fact it’s the opposite : using the gnu userland utils and the NetBSD kernel – but it’s cool anyways.
What is this Debian/BSD? I mean, how is it different from FreeBSD?
BTW, if it is what I think it is, it’s nice but FreeBSD’s userland (as well as the kernel itself) is the best documented software ever. I mean, such a nicely structured, comprehensive, well-written documentation such as the one for FreeBSD, man, it’s fantastic. Linux is totally shitty in comparison.
MGD wrote:
> If you look on the propaganda page on the slackware website
> they mention something called slackintosh which is an
> unofficial port of slack.
Thanks MGD. Heh, that slackware propaganda page is a mile long.
I like the cigarette graphic: “MORE APACHE & MySQL”. Hehehe.
The “alpha-powered slack” looks like one nasty penguin. I’d hate to meet him on a dark iceberg.
Why would someone want to switch from Debian to Slackware?
Where can I get the Slackware 9 ISO? All the mirrors I’ve checked only have the Slackware 8.1 install.
Here is the link the mirrors:
http://www.abnormalpenguin.com/slackware-mirrors.php
Thanks
Yes, Slackware I believe is the only distro that has Audigy 2 support compiled in the kernel and on my Audigy 2 it works great. Not even the freshely released Mandrake 9.1 has Audigy 2 support, I’ve just tested it. On the other hand I’ve checked the changelog site at slackware.com, and looked at the current changelog. I think it is some guys fault that slack 9 has the emu10k1 tools in /extra and audigy/audigy 2 support:)
Cheers Marc, good idea!
Slackware is the KING!
gapp wrote:
>Why would someone want to switch from Debian to Slackware?
I don’t know if that was a rhetorical question or not. If it was, my rhetorical response is ‘why would a true slack user switch to debian?’.
If you’re question was serious, I would say that if you’re happy with Debian you likely would not want to switch to Slackware. If you adore package management, you probably wouldn’t want to use Slackware. If you have little or no need for a packaging system and want to be able to have full control over you system, accompanied by an easy install, with no BS, then Slackware is for you. Slackware is just Linux, with no additives or preservatives; and it fills its niche perfectly.
Have you checked this out?
http://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/
I’ve used slack 7 in the past, but then changed to Debian and never tried slack ever since, but due to all the favorable remarks around here i think i will give it another try!
Eugenia, this is not a true review. It would be great to see a kind of review like turning Slackware in a perfect Linux desktop os. Give it a try !
Maybe an idea ?!
Slackware has always served me well. It’s a ‘no BS, just plain Linux’ distribution, and I love it for that.
I’s always been stable as a rock for me (something I value greatly) and its simplicity is a blessing.
This new version has preserved the stability and simplicity of previous releases while providing up-to-date software and greater speed (gcc 3 really produces nice code compared to 2.9x and the fact that some (all?) stuff is now build for 486 instead of 386 helps as well).
This is simply the best Slack release to date. Not much else to say…
Got to go, have machines to upgrade
I downloaded the final release of 9.0 before the ISO’s were out, and I exluded the KDEi package and the GNOME package, so I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same as the official ISO, bu anyways I had Slack running on my desktop PC in less than half an hour and the only thing I had to do was get it to load my soundblaster drivers on boot. I absolutley love it, much better than 8.1
“stuff is now build for 486 instead of 386 helps as well”
Well, actually the whole distribution is compiled with CFLAGS like this: -O2 -march=i386 -mcpu=i686 and some packages with -march=i486, which makes barely a difrence. The thing is that Slackware 9 is i686 optimized, just like 8.1 was, it just remains i386 compatible. I don’t eat that marketing crap with i686 optimizations, which is compiled like this:
-O2 -march=i686 -mcpu=i686 and somethimes with -O3 which is known to generate faulty code. Believe, code can’t get faster than that, it’s just the marketing of other distros. And it is also more stable compiled like this, rock stable.
Cheers.