Patrick Volkerding, Slackware’s maintainer, announced that Slackware 10.2 is going into beta: “I think it’s time to consider this to be mostly frozen and concentrate on beta testing in preparation for the Slackware 10.2 release, so there won’t be too many more upgrades and additions.”
I will try it for sure. 🙂 I hope that means that Pat’s health problems are thing of the history.
I was hoping 10.x was dead and they were working on the 11 tree and merging into the 2.6 kernel as stock. shucks. or will 10.2 run 2.6 as default?
Slackware 10.2 will ship with 2.4 as default. I asked Pat this a couple of days ago when I was asking him about the -current kernel and ACPI. His reply was, in part:
“It will install with 2.4.31, but there will also be 2.6.12.3 (or better)
in the /testing directory.”
Yes, it’s a shame, as 2.6 would really be useful for my laptop, but I respect his decision.
You know, Slackware is all about you. Slackware stock kernel never lasted 5 minutes after I had my Slackware installation done. Grab the source, apply your fav. patchset, compile, add & run.
Yeah thats true – but I have to say, despite being a slacker, i’ve never compiled my own kernel. Slackware as it is already requires some TLC to get it to meet my requirements following install.
To be honest, I don’t have the time to learn how to compile the kernel properly. I did try once, but there are so many different howto’s on the topic it’s unbelievable. If I did have the time, I would like to do it though – especially for my laptop.
But Slackware is a great distro – very powerful, fast and secure, and I can’t wait for 10.2
You don’t need to compile the 2.6 kernel on your own if you don’t want to, the included 2.6 kernel in /extra is good and not difficult too install.
I agree with Patrick that the 2.4.31 kernel should be the default, since the 2.6 series are still not thoroughly tested and have given me unpleasant surprises. Apart from ACPI and udev support, the 2.4 series still perform well and are rock solid. It would be nice if you could choose for a 2.6 kernel in the installer, though.
What me saddens more is the removal of gnome. I can see why patrick doesn’t want to do the effort of building gnome on his own, but I don’t understand why he doesn’t include freerock gnome (built using GSB) or something. Dropline is out of the question because it replaces too much slackware packages, but freerock seems OK to me.
Apart from that, slack 10.2 is looking nice.
The 2.6 series kernels are “not thoroughly tested”? Did you just wake up from a hibernation?
As for Gnome, why would PV include Freerock when a user can just download the ISO and install it themselves? I use FRG and love it.
(note: I am the anonymous poster you were replying to)
The 2.6 series kernels are “not thoroughly tested”? Did you just wake up from a hibernation?
I’m not saying 2.6 is bad, but there were various non-trivial changes made to the kernel since 2.6.0 was released, which should have been tested better (in a forked tree) before they went into 2.6.x. Especially 2.6.8 and 2.6.9 had their issues because of that.
Maybe this situation has changed with the new versioning scheme. In any case, the 2.4 kernels have been tested and debugged for a much longer time.
Also, I remember that 2.4.13 was the first 2.4 kernel that was the default kernel of a slackware release. It’s not uncommon that patrick waits until a new kernel has proven to be really stable over time.
As for Gnome, why would PV include Freerock when a user can just download the ISO and install it themselves? I use FRG and love it.
Without a gnome distribution included in slackware, no one can create package of gnome-dependent programs for slackware. Say I want to build and distribute a package of program X, should I build it under freerock gnome, dropline gnome or gware?
Also, if a gnome build would be included in slackware, more people would use it and bugs would be reported faster.
Without a gnome distribution included in slackware, no one can create package of gnome-dependent programs for slackware. Say I want to build and distribute a package of program X, should I build it under freerock gnome, dropline gnome or gware?
Good point, but aren’t gtk libs etc. still included in /l? Pat still includes gtk apps like gaim and gftp. Maybe what’s included isn’t enough, though. I’ve never built packages like what you are suggesting. Just wondering.
I’m talking about applications like gnucash and evolution. They depend on gnome-libs, bonobo and lots of other libs. Evolution is included in dropline and freerock gnome so that isn’t really an issue, but gnucash isn’t.
Evolution is one thing but gnucash is quite another. Compiling and building gnucash is a non-trivial matter to say the least seeing as how it is still based on GTK1 and not GTK2. Even if you had a full Gnome installation on Slack, I think you would be in as big of a fight to get gnucash on your system.
They aren’t. They’re still changing a lot in 2.6. Every kernel is apt to add features. It’s simply not stable. It may be rock solid, but it’s not stable.
Too many people depend on Slackware being a rock.
I recently compiled the latest 2.4.x kernel on my Slackware 10.1 server. I found it a lot easier than it looked. You can see how I did it step-by-step here (it should apply to the 2.6.x series as well):
http://outerheaven.c-reality.com/archives/4-Compiling-the-2.4.31-Li…
It’s worth the learning experience!
but,what the difference, just install with the default 2.4.31 kernel then upgrade to the 2.6 and you have a full working 2.6 kernel with acpi support (just modprobe the acpi module)
I just love Slackware and I wish other distros would follow it’s standards, i’ll look forward to 10.2. Slackware puts you in control of a super stable linux how it should be.
I also thought it’s 11’s turn .
I believe I’ve read that 11 will be the next release after 10.2
that’s going to be great.
I’m pretty sure both 10.0 and 10.1 have both linuxthreads and NPTL depending on if you use a 2.6 kernel or a 2.4 patched kernel it uses NPTL and if you use a vanilla 2.4 kernel it wil use linuxthreads
I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. From the changelog:
Fri May 13 12:51:03 PDT 2005
Here’s the (I’m sure) long awaited upgrade to Slackware’s glibc to include support for NPTL (the Native POSIX Thread Library). NPTL works with newer kernels (meaning 2.6.x, or a 2.4 kernel that is patched to support NPTL, but not an unmodified “vanilla” 2.4 kernel such as Slackware uses) to provide improved performance for threads.
It is NPTL (Native POSIX Threads Library).
I love stability. Especially the Slackware servers I’ve got running in production.
GNOME is no big loss. A true Slacker knows how to add it if need be 😉
It’s been pretty clear ever since the -current changelog entry of July 14 that PV was going with 10.2:
bootdisks/*: Regenerated bootdisks with “Slackware 10.2” label.
Having 2.4.31 as the default kernel is really no big deal. I had no idea how to compile a kernel until about 6-8 months ago when I switched to Slackware after using other distros since 2001. There are several excellent slackware-specific guides out there, plus these great free books:
http://slackbook.org/
http://www.slackbasics.org/
http://slackersbible.org/
I never grasped the concept of Slackware’s ease of use and simplicity until I really gave it a go. Now, I love it. Everything works, all apps you could ever need are either included, found at linuxpackages.net, or compile perfectly without problems. While Slackware’s package management tool “pkgtool” does not check dependencies, it really does not need to. I’ve only run into dependencies twice — once when compiling cpufreq utilities and once when compiling gphoto2 and both times the sites for those apps clearly stated what also needed to be built, so it was a piece of cake.
I use GNOME and yes, it’s not included, but I’ve used both GWare and Freerock GNOME and they are both easy to install and clean in that they don’t replace major packages like dropline does, although I know many slackers that use dropline without any issues whatsoever.
If you’ve never tried Slackware, I suggest that you give it a shot after 10.2 is released.
Thanks, PV, for your continued excellent work!!
I forgot to mention one more great Slackware resource: the official support forums at linuxquestions.org:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/forumdisplay.php?forumid=14
The people that post in that forum are very, very nice and extremely helpful. It’s a fantastic community.
I dislike these 4+ CD distros. I don’t want most of the stuff that comes on such distros, so why should I download it?
That’s one thing I like Debian. Debian has a 100MB base system, then I can download what I want.
I guess there’s Vector, or Mini-Slack. Although I’ve read that mini-slack isn’t quite ready for prime-time yet.
I dislike these 4+ CD distros.
Where did “4 CDs” come from in discussion of Slackware?
2 CDs:
1 – Base (including base X, servers, etc.)
2 – GUI sets (Used to be KDE and Gnome, not sure about gnome now…)
I think you’ll need both cds – I’ve downloaded current iso from slackware.no recently and found that xap/ has been moved to 2nd cd.
I dislike these 4+ CD distros. I don’t want most of the stuff that comes on such distros, so why should I download it?
SlackNET – netinstall for Slackware current/stable
http://slacknet.slackforge.net
For a base install, all you need is disk 1. KDE is on disk2. Disks 3 and 4 are source code. If you don’t plan to use KDE or don’t need the source, disk 1 is all you need.
I burnt the SLAX iso a few days ago, and boy, was I positively surprised! It worked immediately on both my x86 machines – perfectly! And get this: sound worked, too!
That’s a first for any Linux distro, ever, for my computers.
What SLAX is missing, is an easy to use, foolproof installer, that would install SLAX from the CD to the HD. Something like exists in BeOS in semplicity of use.
Anyway, I will definitely keep an eye on SLAX from now on. I will try to instal it onto a CF card and boot it as an IDE drive.
If you liked, SLAX, you’ll probably like Klax too. Just a heads-up. 🙂
http://ktown.kde.org/~binner/klax/
Now back to the discussion. Like some people said before me, the 2.6.x series is still not stable enough for massive server use (heavy computations like distributed computing might also be a problem when running 24/7) – until everything, and I do mean everything is tested and verified to be absolutely stable.
Slackware 11 is going to be the big one, assuming the ongoing projects will complete in time. That’s when OpenOffice 2.0 final, Firefox 1.5, GCC 4.x, KDE 4.x, etc. etc. etc. will be released. Kernel 2.6.x should be stable by then (assuming they’ve branched to 2.7.x), so it’ll be a big upgrade for everyone. All in all great news for the Open Source community. 🙂
I’m running dropline on 10.1 as we speak. I didn’t even know freerock existed before I installed dropline. I was somewhat alarmed as I watched the installer replace my X server and a whole lot more (ugh, pam.)
Thankfully, I can say that my X experience with dropline has been trouble-free, save for the sometimes buggy nvidia binary driver (I need my TV out!). I’m running Xinerama with the onboard and an old geforce, and it’s still really solid.
I’m not too concerned with dropline replacing stuff anymore. They’ve proven themselves to me. This is my desktop machine, and I’m willing to risk a glitch here and there for the desktop environment dropline provides. Seriously, I’m impressed by them. Timely updates to packages, a great environment, great installation and update utility — dropline is nice.
LinuxPackages.net seems to put their bets on DropLine…
(FYI LinuxPackages.net – Slackware software packages “central”.)
A cool idea. Will try it.
I always compile gnome anyway, same goes for HAL. I always compile 2.6.x kernels as well since they are much more suited to my system and faster, thanks preemption model in RC 2.6.13 releases.
Other distros are a pain because of there own system setup, slackware is just simple and standard. By the way, 2.6.x kernel is in no way not tested properly, why people say this i’ll never know.
Pat is really going to hit a wall soon, more and more software is depending on pam. I’ve heard that future versions modular versions of X will require it to handle the permissions issues that will arise from running parts of X as the user.
Maybe. If it’s time to adopt it, he will probably do so. I thought that the various security issues with PAM were his main complaint, but I think/hope that PAM has become more mature and secure by now.
Besides, he has also waited a long time before including NPTL support.
I expect more changes for slackware 11, like the switch to kernel 2.6 as default, and probably the inclusion of HAL and DBUS.
Yeah, Slackware is great and it would be nice if indeed other distros would follow Slackware’s model. To me personally i think the rest of the linux distros programmers likes Microsoft alot that they want their distro to look alot like windows: kinda unstable and many system configuration wizards.