Slackware 11.0 contains the 2.4.33.3 Linux kernel (default), 2.6.17.13 in /extra and 2.6.18 in the /testing directory. This Slackware version is by far the most cutting edge ever released, it includes KDE version 3.5.4 (including the Amarok media player), XFCE 4.2.3.2, the latest versions of Firefox and Thunderbird, plus SeaMonkey 1.0.5 (replacing the Mozilla suite). It also includes glibc-2.3.6, gcc-3.4.6, X11R6.9.0 from X.Org, and more.
Slackware 11.0 Released
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Greaat job Pat! Been looking forward to this release.
Greaat job Pat! Been looking forward to this release.
That’s this year’s understatement, finally! Can’t wait to testrun this.
Good job.
Greaat job Pat! Been looking forward to this release.
That’s this year’s understatement, finally!
What have you been doing whilst you’ve been waiting for Slackware 11 and this year’s understatement?!
2.6.* kernel in extra
it just gets no love from Pat.
Btw, this time do you need 3 cds to install it? (not including extras)
How’s that 3 CDs not including extras? I know only about 2 CDs and the second one is not even needed unless you plan to install KDE or 2.6 kernel. At least that was in 10.2 . Maybe Pat added more CDs but I believe only one is needed for a fully functional system.So far I didn’t checked for mirors offering iso’s. I’ll do that in the evening.Most probably I will buy it as I did with 9 and 10.2. So far 10.2 is doing the jos,there’s no need for me to re-install.Maybe later.It is extremely simple to install 2.6 kernel (basic). 1 CD is more than enough for my server machine.
Edited 2006-10-03 07:15
The 2.6 series is a lot less stable (not so much in the sense of crashing, but in the sense of new features and changes that break other stuff) than the 2.4 series. This was done by Linus on purpose. In the old days, the uneven series were for experimental features and changes, but they got a lot less testing as result. A while back, the kernel devs basically said they would use the 2.6 series for testing new stuff, rather than 2.7.x, and leave compatibility testing and patching to make other stuff work to the distro vendors.
Now this is fine for the likes of SUSE, Debian, Fedora, etc, but Slackware has far less developers than all other major distros. It’s basically just Patrick and a number of prolific bug reporters, and the long standing policy has been to leave sources as much as possible unpatched from upstream. That’s why it’s still on the proven 2.4 by default. Still, Slackware 11.0 is probably the last 2.4 release, as more new packages (and new hardware) will require 2.6, most notably the latest gcc/glibc.
Thanks for that info; for years I’ve been happily chugging along with 2.6, not understanding why anyone would complain about how “unstable” it is.
I’ll take 3 cds over 50 floppy disks any day like I used to do with slack 3.1. Downloading the A, D, N, X sets and copying to floppy just to install it one disk at a time was pretty time consuming.
I’ll take 3 cds over 50 floppy disks any day like I used to do with slack 3.1.
No kidding. These kids today.
I’ve been thinking about trying a 2.4 distro for my machine at home. All the recent 2.6-based distributions crash on it (Fedora 5, Ubuntu 6.04). Machine runs fine under WinXP and FreeBSD 6.1 though.
(older MSI board with a 1.2GHz Athlon)
Debian Etch amd64 – tho still testing – is rock solid with 2.6 kernel.
ftp://slackware.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/slackware-11.0/RELEASE_NO…
“As you can see, Slackware 11.0 is still using a 2.4 kernel (2.4.33.3) for the default system kernel. The 2.4.33.3 kernel has been rock-solid here, and it seemed best to put out one more release of Slackware with support for 2.4 before heading full-force into 2.6 territory because a lot of people will want to run the 2.4 kernel on production machines for a long time to come, and some of the changes to the system that will be needed to fully embrace all of 2.6’s features aren’t necessarily 2.4 kernel-friendly. The next version of Slackware may drop support for 2.4.x unless inuxThreads support can be maintained in glibc.
The 2.6 kernel series shows a great deal of improvment since the last release (I’m running it on my gateway machine), but it’s still undergoing heavy evelopment and the stability of any given release can
be hit-or-miss. Things are improving rapidly in that regard though”
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I would post something witty here but I’m heading for the torrents.
I had been waiting for this one for a while right now to install in some new machines. This is my first GNU/Linux distro, and the one I prefer above all other ones. After all, my 10.2’s are updated up to the point that it is almost irrelevant trying to upgrade to 11 (in fact it might be a downgrade for some packages), but it is nice to see Slack progressing. More (yeah, sorry for you) comments when tested. Thanks Pat.
Here I am, a fan of Linux & Slackware for over a decade; unfortunately a fan of the Gnome project as well…
Kde looks great, and has some excellent apps, and very well done to those developers, but call it personal preference, I find myself using gtk/gnome apps more than the Kde ones (I like the kde solitaire tho
As a desktop, Gnome itself is an absolute dog. Here, xfce is really cool; lightweight, snappy, and has all the bells and whistles that matter- anitialiased fonts, lots of themes, good printing support. I personally use nautilus together with xfce, because that’s where xfce really sucks- it’s file manager is good, but I like one that’s in your face all the time, rather than a bare background. Also, the gnome panel completes the picture.
Mix & match is what Linux is really good at on the desktop. Why, seriously, would anyone have to choose all-kde or all-gnome? Interoperability between those efforts is quite good, really.
As Patrick says in his release notes, the gsb (free-rock gnome) and gware package sets are incredible. I can really recommend them, and I have tried both.
At first I thought that Patrick was losing his marbles by excluding Gnome from the general slack release, but believe me, it is just way better this way.
If you happen to like Slack as much as I do, why not join me in ordering the dvd instead of downloading?
Thank you, Pat
Edited 2006-10-03 09:46
Would’ve liked to have XFCE 4.4 and Xorg 7.1 in there, but I guess I’m just going to have to compile them myself.
It’s simply not acceptable that GNOME isn’t included – sorry. All other distributions have no problem with it.
I really don’t see what you are complaining about, there are many distros that are desktop specific and don’t ship with anything else. If you don’t like KDE, then look for a gnome only or gnome centric distro. Better still you can install gnome on Slackware from third party developers e.g. Dropline, FreeRock etc.
given that dropline gnome was far better than slackware’s implementation of gnome, not including gnome is OK – anyone who wants it will get dropline.
Pat made a wise move by opting for a last 2.4 release, but I guess this will the last release based on the kernel series as I suspect supporting it in the future will take away too mach valuable time.
that said, hope Pat will be able to continue putting out new release every six months like before
xfce definitely deserves more recognition and 4.4 release may be good enough to make me ditch gnome on my office desktop, KDE still stays on my home machine tough,
I just saw a little rant on Distrowatch wondering if Slackware 11 will ever be released!
It’s been a while since I last used Xfce but I seem to recall having to hack text files in order to add new menu items alot. Is this still the case?
Not the case at all. Picks up both Kde as well as the Gnome menus directly. If that’s not to your liking, you can always use menumaker- it seems to support just about any app you care to mention.
XFCE also makes menu editing incredibly easy with drag & drop from yet another really cool app that lists everything with an xml freedesktop.org header/registration entry.
Seriously cool window manager.
What menu? If you’re talking about the desk menu, well, actually XFCE 4.2 hasn’t got a real one, and you’ll have to install something that manage it for you (for instance “deskmenu”), and yes, you’ll have to edit the .deskmenurc by end.
However XFCE 4.4 will provide a real desktop menu, with a new enhanced file manager (thunar) and lots of goodies.
IMHO XFCE 4.2 isn’t very good, it’s a sort of intermediary release to 4.4; I can’t remember any outstanding feature compared to 4.0, but it’s way slower to start (actually on my slackware system it’s even slower than Gnome…)
Not the case any more.
But would it be so bad?
Having configuration in simple text files is a good feature, not a bad one.
Instead of having to rely on some configuration app or having to read xml files, it’s as easy as “vi foo.conf”.
And that my friend can be done simply and easily.
Even from a cell phone over ssh while walking in a park one can configure a remote machine.
Was is Dostojevski that said “Simplicity is the mother of a genius” ?
From the beginning, Slackware has offered a stable and secure Linux distribution for UNIX veterans
I dare to differ. PHP is still not fixed [1], no features like Stack Smashing Protection, ASLR, PIE enabled network servers, etc. What is more, security updates are released really late [2]. If you want secure system, there are better choices…
Anyway, have a nice day
[1] http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=14361&comment_id=115883
[2] http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14…
PHP is broken by design, so why bother?
More seriously, if text relocations are that bad, why are they used in PHP default builds?
About the release of security updates, the article you link to states that “Trustix Secure Linux” scores very low too. The way the scores are computed isn’t explained, what does a score of “76” or “32” means? This looks like bad journalism, not security auditing.
In a perfect world the OS would not need any security patches and would be maintenance free and etc etc
But in this real world Slackware’s features and functionality make it is a good choice and a very reasonable compromise that fullfills 99% of functionality and security features for both servers and workstations.
That last %1 I’ll gladly leave for the bortherline psychotic geeks that use their keyboard as a pillow.
This Slackware version is by far the most cutting edge ever released
Not really saying much there.
You are very obviously trolling, but there is a kernel of truth in your jab. Slackware has always been a bit behind the cutting edge, and with good reason. By not having the latest CVS/SVN nightly build of $random_app, it achieves a level of stability pretty much unmatched in the GNU/Linux world, save maybe for Debian Stable. There’s something to be said for being dependable vs. being current, especially when you are using Slackware for what it’s designed for (workstation, light server use) and not as an eye-candy-filled all-GUI desktop OS.
Anybody know when dropline will be released for 11? I can’t wait to get my box up and running with this, since I need gcc 3.4 to get llvm running. Right now I’ve got it installed on the distro I’m working on, so I have to chroot into it whenever I want to test my compiler…
Congrat’s Pat keeping the most “pure” linux up =]