Slackware 12.1 released [Archive]

Zmyrgel

05-09-2008, 11:30 AM

Happy times to see Slackware released at the same time as OpenBSD.

I still gotta search the Linux distro for me. I think I'll give Dracolinux a spin as it's base is same as Slackware's but it's configured to use pkgsrc for additional packages.
The one thing that bothers me in Slackware is lack of the setting it up manually. I like the tools to fetch my packages :)

Oliver_H

05-09-2008, 12:05 PM

Slack is imho one of the best Linux distro, really UNIX-like and without massive <em>foo</em> ;-)

unicyclist

05-09-2008, 07:32 PM

Been a busy week around here getting OpenBSD and Slackware upgraded on all the machines. I got my 4.3 cd's a few days before Slackware was released, so I didn't have to do them both at the same time.
Now just to sit back and enjoy them :)

FloridaBSD

05-10-2008, 06:38 AM

I'd rather take Fedora or Ubuntu seeing as to the fact that both these distributions are backed by well known venders and i can get commercial support for them.

cajunman4life

05-10-2008, 07:09 AM

I'd rather take Fedora or Ubuntu seeing as to the fact that both these distributions are backed by well known venders and i can get commercial support for them.

To each his own, I guess.

Can one consider Google as "commercial support" for FreeBSD? lol...

Google is a sysadmin's best friend ;)

PS - Good to see Slack still chugging along. I'm far removed from my "Ohh lookie, Linux!" days, but back in the day Slack was a favorite of mine (still couldn't fall out of love with Debian either, but that's another story all together)

18Googol2

05-10-2008, 07:30 AM

I'd rather take Fedora or Ubuntu seeing as to the fact that both these distributions are backed by well known venders and i can get commercial support for them.

What kind of situation are you talking about here? Home user, company, desktop or server edition? And you think it is free?

http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid

Thanks but no thanks. $250 yearly fee for desktop support. Most of the ubuntu troubles can be googled and solved within a couple of minutes, and it doesnt cost you a penny

FloridaBSD

05-10-2008, 08:31 AM

Oliver_H

05-10-2008, 03:22 PM

>I am only referring to the fact that both Fedora (Redhat) and Ubuntu Conical are founded by well known commercial promoters of open source.

And Patrick Volkerding (Slackware) is known for his quality work since the beginning of Linux. Ubuntu is founded by a millionaire and space tourist. It's experience that counts not money.

>and not to mention the fact that ninety percent of the fortune five hundred companies that use Linux on their servers prefer Red Hat.

That's not a fact for anything, it's just a number. Most of the time some decision maker in a company makes his glorious decision and some administrators can cope with the disaster.

Big companies like Juniper Networks, Yahoo, Nokia, Cisco etc. are using FreeBSD too, some of them even OpenBSD for special task. So what?

18Googol2

05-10-2008, 03:34 PM

Big companies like Juniper Networks, Yahoo, Nokia, Cisco etc. are using FreeBSD too, some of them even OpenBSD for special task. So what?

It gonna be off topic a bit but Im wondering why Google uses Linux distro instead of BSD? Surely google techie guys know how good BSD is, so it must be a good reason behind the scene.

My educated guess would be they started with Linux and if they wanna switch to BSD, its time comsuming, costly and huge load of work, or simply BSD is not good for cluster?

cajunman4life

05-10-2008, 03:51 PM

It gonna be off topic a bit but Im wondering why Google uses Linux distro instead of BSD? Surely google techie guys know how good BSD is, so it must be a good reason behind the scene.

Google has a "specially crafted" distro (extremely slimmed down, only the bare essentials) on their cluster.

If it ain't broke... well you know.

ephemera

05-10-2008, 03:58 PM

so it must be a good reason behind the scene.
they are probably using linux for the same reason that they are using commodity OTS hardware for their servers. probably they have their own software layer running on top of it that takes care of RAS so it doesn't matter what's running beneath it. ;)
anyway, they have some of the smartest CS/IT guys so you can bet they know what they are doing. ;)

18Googol2

05-10-2008, 04:11 PM

They also run their own web server application, gws, short for Google Web Server :D

They probably prefer to keep the distro name low profile but by any change do you guys know its name? Google is a damn good case study and Im always curious about the technology they implement :D

ephemera

05-10-2008, 04:20 PM

They probably prefer to keep the distro name low profile but by any change do you guys know its name?if you are asking about the linux distro google is using then i think your missed the point. :)

cajunman4life

05-10-2008, 04:40 PM

I don't know that they are running any particular "distro". They may have at one time, but the way it is now everything is extremely custom. I, of course, can not say how I know this ;)

Oliver_H

05-10-2008, 04:50 PM

It gonna be off topic a bit but Im wondering why Google uses Linux distro instead of BSD? Surely google techie guys know how good BSD is, so it must be a good reason behind the scene.

My educated guess would be they started with Linux and if they wanna switch to BSD, its time comsuming, costly and huge load of work, or simply BSD is not good for cluster?

Google uses $BSD too, e.g. for their Android they are using the libc of NetBSD etc. And even Firefox 3 uses FreeBSD jemalloc because it's the best of the best. So well, there is hype and on the other hand there is reality without hype :) Do you need some more examples? There are lots of it. $BSD is the calm giant :D

18Googol2

05-10-2008, 05:51 PM

if you are asking about the linux distro google is using then i think your missed the point. :)

Ah you mean it shoudnt be a distro because it is pure Linux kernel with some google application on top?

Google uses $BSD too, e.g. for their Android they are using the libc of NetBSD etc. And even Firefox 3 uses FreeBSD jemalloc because it's the best of the best. So well, there is hype and on the other hand there is reality without hype :) Do you need some more examples? There are lots of it. $BSD is the calm giant :D

I'd love to. More stories about the calm giant pls :p

TerryP

05-10-2008, 06:27 PM

I'll need to download it and give it a test some time :-)

Slackware is one of my favorite GNU/Linux distros and one of the few I respect. But unfortunaley its last couple major version #'s didn't like my current hardware, and every thing else is too full of BSD ;-)

The only machine I have that has room for a Linxu distro, is pissed on by most distros... Only Knoppix, Ubuntu, and FreeBSD (since 6.0-Release) have actually liked that machine.

lvlamb

05-10-2008, 06:35 PM

Switch to latest OpenSolaris.
As they say, what Ubuntu tries to be.

Am a hard advocate of Slackware, only Linux distro to use Linus' Linux kernel.

osman

05-11-2008, 06:01 PM

I started with Slackware 8 then used 8.1 then 9, and then 9.1 and I found no change in any of them except for new packages and expanding on 2 cds, and a few new startup scripts to detect hardware and load modules.

Is it same or any changes ?

Oliver_H

05-11-2008, 08:49 PM

>Is it same or any changes ?

There are minor changes only.

TerryP

05-11-2008, 11:44 PM

If it's not broke, don't fix it.

schrodinger

05-12-2008, 10:10 AM

I am only referring to the fact that both Fedora (Redhat) and Ubuntu Conical are founded by well known commercial promoters of open source. In the case of Fedora especially sense the RedHat developers have sparked their own little subset of distributions, and not to mention the fact that ninety percent of the fortune five hundred companies that use Linux on their servers prefer Red Hat.

How many of them actually know what they are doing though? I find that most of the time RedHat is attractive to most companies because they can navigate it thanks to all the RedHat GUI bells and whistles. If they didn't have something to click I doubt they would use it.

ninjatux

06-10-2008, 12:05 AM

I really like Slackware, but the package management really doesn't do much for me. Slackware as a whole aims for simplicity, and while the design does reflect this, the developers could easily implement a package management system similar to BSD Ports by using Slackbuilds. After all, Slackbuilds are used by developers to create packages and test them before including them in a release. I particularly like Slackbuilds, since you can specify optimizations in the actual script. Also, syncing isn't necessary either because you can just specify version and reexectue the script, which will result in a package of the newer version. I think it'd be the perfect system. I also think Slackware should move the base of the system to a rolling release system, much like FreeBSD, and allow users to sync and update their systems.

JMJ_coder

06-10-2008, 01:27 AM

Hello,

I really like Slackware, but the package management really doesn't do much for me. Slackware as a whole aims for simplicity, and while the design does reflect this, the developers could easily implement a package management system similar to BSD Ports by using Slackbuilds. After all, Slackbuilds are used by developers to create packages and test them before including them in a release. I particularly like Slackbuilds, since you can specify optimizations in the actual script. Also, syncing isn't necessary either because you can just specify version and reexectue the script, which will result in a package of the newer version. I think it'd be the perfect system. I also think Slackware should move the base of the system to a rolling release system, much like FreeBSD, and allow users to sync and update their systems.

Why not voice your suggestions to Patrick?

ninjatux

06-10-2008, 01:29 AM

I don't know how effective that would be. I mean Slackware started in 1993, and it's used the same development model for years. I suppose it's worth a shot.

JMJ_coder

06-10-2008, 01:31 AM

Hello,

I don't know how effective that would be. I mean Slackware started in 1993, and it's used the same development model for years. I suppose it's worth a shot.

The worst he can say is no, and you'll be no worse off than you are now. ;)

ninjatux

06-10-2008, 05:17 AM

That's definitely true. I'll send him an e-mail tomorrow.

Oliver_H

06-10-2008, 04:26 PM

>That's definitely true. I'll send him an e-mail tomorrow.

If you're using Slack since the early beginning you should already now Pats point of view. A rolling release isn't anything he considers stable and 99.9% of the Slack-Users are quiet happy with the package management. And if you want to show some respect then you shouldn't ask the question some people did ask him again and again. By the way, he has got the famous last word, but he works with a team since years! So if you don't like it, don't use it. I'm using it since the nineties because of this system.

ninjatux

06-13-2008, 10:07 PM

You misunderstood what I said. Slackware doesn't have to change it's development ideology or anything. On the SlackBuilds and Slackware websites, it's noted that the developers use SlackBuilds to build packages and test them before inclusion in a stable release. With that in mind, I think there are two things that could be done.

1. A Ports-style directory containing all the Slackbuilds for a stable release and the patches and whatnot. You install the base system and use SlackBuilds to generate packages and install them. It works better for those of us who don't want to download six CDs or an entire DVD.

2. Have the standard installation available, but include the SlackBuilds directory as an optional item during installaion for those who want to use it.

Note, I'm not asking for automatic dependency resolution. SlackBuilds come with dependency information, and the way Slackware and SlackBuilds are developed, you generally don't encounter problems with dependencies. I only need the dependency information so I know what packages to install. I can do everything else manually.

Also, if you have a SlackBuilds directory, then everytime a new release is made available, I guess you'd be able to sync your SlackBuilds directory and upgrade all your packages that way.