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Slackware 11 is Coming

Posted by CowboyNeal on Fri Jun 16, 2006 01:32 AM
from the tarballs-and-more-tarballs dept.
Operating Systems Software Linux
ejd3 writes "In the slackware-current changelog Pat has stated that 'Although there's still quite a bit in the TODO queue here I'm making my steps carefully as -current is very stable, and I think it should ship as a stable 11.0 soon so that we can get back to the business of breaking things in -current. :-)' How much longer will the slackers have to wait?"
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[+] Linux: Slackware 11.0 Almost Done 190 comments
linuxbeta writes "DistroWatch reports that the development process for Slackware Linux 11.0 is almost over. OSDir has some sweet shots of Slackware 11.0 RC1 in the Slackware 11.0 RC1 Screenshot Tour." From the article: "'There are still a few changes yet to happen, but let's call this Slackware 11.0 release candidate 1.' Other recent changes include upgrade to stable kernel 2.4.33; upgrade to udev 097, and rebuild of glibc 2.3.6 for both 2.4.33 and 2.6.16.27 kernels. The new release will ship with X.Org 6.9.0 and KDE 3.5.4, and will provide SeaMonkey instead of Mozilla."
[+] Linux: Slackware 11 Has Been Released 220 comments
CCFreak2K writes "Slackware 11 has been officially released, just over a year after Slackware 10.2 became available. Software available with Slackware 11 includes KDE 3.5, Mozilla Seamonkey 1.0.5 and X11R6 6.9. As usual, ISOs are available through BitTorrent and FTPs, packages can be synced through FTPs, and you can always buy a copy."
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Slackware 11 is Coming 50 Comments More /

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  • No need to wait (Score:3, Insightful)

    by iiiiiiii (652593) on Friday June 16 2006, @01:40AM (#15546869)
    Slackers just run what's in -current

    • Re:No need to wait (Score:5, Informative)

      by ejd3 (963550) on Friday June 16 2006, @01:56AM (#15546915) Homepage Journal
      Slackers just run what's in -current
      Quite right, its certainly it is stable enough. There even many many unofficial ISOs of the current tree you can grab at various sites including slackware.no [slackware.no]
      • Or just install 10.2, then install slapt-get and add your favorite slackware mirror's -current as a source.
        • that's a bad idea
          swaret and slapt-get can bork your install very easily
          unless you know exactly what slapt-get does

          it's much wiser to rsync the current tree
          then following the instruction in UPGRADE.TXT
          which is basicly go to init 1
          upgrade glibc shared libs, sed and pkgtools
          then the rest: for i in a ap ...; do cd "$i"; upgradepkg --install-new *.tgz; cd ..; done; updatedb && ldconfig; init 3
      • One of my problems with Slackware is that -current isn't really what I want in many cases. I recently updated my laptop to Slackware 10.2, then searched for all of the security updates to install. I did those, but things broke, like apache (well, php, actually) because I didn't have the new-since-10.2 Cyrus-imap library, updated libpng library, etc. installed. Those weren't updated as a result of a security problem; they were updated for other reasons. I know this because I searched the changelog for "s
      • And a lot of third-party developers using Slack as a base for their own distribution also use the -current tree. I've been doing my own distribution lately (yes, you know, I never shut up about it...) and I just base everything on -current, making a few tweaks and changes as I deem necessary – it really is rather nice and stable, and since it's significantly more up-to-date, I see no reason not to use it. As far as I care, the releases are mostly milestones between updates.

        Quick tip to any fellow wo

    • Re:No need to wait (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tsa (15680) on Friday June 16 2006, @04:26AM (#15547297) Homepage
      I usually run the distribution I installed for years and years until I can't run new programs on it anymore, because of library issues and such. Then it's time to upgrade.
      • Heh, this reminds me of the web server I managed at my last job. When we finally went on line locally, I demanded that we not use Windows, but Linux, and specifically Slackware. I installed version 8.0 and ran it with literally no changes (expect for occasional security patches and application updates to Apache, PHP and MySQL) until this past January. I shifted to a new box due to some hardware issues and installed 10.1. That site has now closed. I often wonder how long I could have run that Slack 8 box if
        • I always backup all my data and format the SW partition. Aesy, but some work to get all the settings right. Then again, I only have to do that once every 4 years or so.
        • Thing is, those of us who do stick to our distributions don't want to upgrade as we go along. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Updating regularly isn't what I want, it keeps changing things. Even if the change is for the better, it can still interrupt your workflow...

          With Gentoo or Debian/Sid or the like, you have to continuously maintain your computer (as packages change) to keep it up-to-date with security (or even to able to upgrade easily in a few years time). With Slackware or Debian/Stable, you just s
    • Or you can pre-order 11 here http://store.slackware.com/cgi-bin/store/slack11.0 ?id=7qg7pUeb:mv_pc=27 [slackware.com] support the project, and look forward to 12.
  • Are we gonna see an official 64-bit release this go round? I had to switch to gentoo then ubuntu just to use my AMD64...

    • Re:64-bit official? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I doubt that... Never tried Slamd64, but maybe Patrick could make it some sort of "official port" or something like that... I've heard Slamd64 was rock solid and very "conservative" (maybe that's not the right word to use, but what I want to say is that it follows Slackware's path/philosophy).

      - English is not my native language, so please excuse me if I mess things up -

    • Re:64-bit official? (Score:4, Funny)

      by troll -1 (956834) on Friday June 16 2006, @03:50AM (#15547195)
      I had to switch to gentoo then ubuntu just to use my AMD64...

      All you need to do is rebuild your kernel. A Linux distro is just a bunch of programs and config files, its not 64-bit specific.

    • Re:64-bit official? (Score:4, Informative)

      by badfish99 (826052) on Friday June 16 2006, @03:59AM (#15547217)
      You could use Slamd64. But regular Slackware will work fine on an AMD64: I believe that Pat is using one as his development machine. He wrote somewhere that he tried compiling 64-bit versions of various things, but he didn't see any performance improvement from it, so he abandoned the experiment. Of course it would be a different matter on a high-end server with lots of memory, but that's not Slackware's target market.

    • Re:64-bit official? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I *have* been using slamd64 (from the beta versions onward) on a bunch of dual opteron (pizza ;-) ) boxen as number crunchers,
      and it is indeed rocksolid. *All* of the slamd64 versions up to now.

      I wish Pat would bless it as the official slack for AMD64.

      Also, yes, stock slack runs on these well as well, only you lack 64bit stuff. Which comes in handy once in a while, if you develop your own machine learning algorithms, and test them on huge datasets. There are probably other applications where you don't miss

    • Re:64-bit official? (Score:5, Informative)

      by 1369IC (935113) on Friday June 16 2006, @05:46AM (#15547457) Homepage

      There are a couple of slack-based AMD64 systems besides SLAMD64. I liked SLAMD64, but haven't found it as trouble-free as some others apparently have. Frugalware claims to be pretty much Slackware with Pacman bolted on, and I liked it a lot. I also just downloaded something called Bluewhite 64 Linux, another unofficial port. That goes on my testing partition this weekend (replacing STX Linux, another Slackware derivative I was testing for installation on a friend/potential convert's older laptop).

      So if Slackware is a niche player now (which I don't believe), then one part of that niche is as a base for new distros -- the excellent Zenwalk (which I run on my laptop), STX, Frugalware, Voltalinux (Slackware with pkgsrc?), Slax and Vector, just off the top of my head. Not as many derivatives as Debian, perhaps, but certainly a healthy number and probably indicative of a healthy distro.

      I think Slackware's biggest "problem" is that it has little to no "community," at least as far as vocal fanboys (you know, the kind who visit Distrowatch to click through and drive up its numbers). I think it tends to attract and keep a self-sufficient, quieter crowd, and therefore its presence isn't as great as its numbers, if that makes any sense.

      And text, of course. As soon as I boot up and people see text instead of a pretty splash screen I see that sphincter-tightening look come over some of their faces.

      But beyond the entertainment value it's probably a bad thing.

      • Re:64-bit official? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2006, @08:00AM (#15547950)
        I think Slackware's biggest "problem" is that it has little to no "community," at least as far as vocal fanboys (you know, the kind who visit Distrowatch to click through and drive up its numbers). I think it tends to attract and keep a self-sufficient, quieter crowd, and therefore its presence isn't as great as its numbers, if that makes any sense.


        It makes perfect sense, as I'm one of those of whom you speak. I'm a UNIX professional who works with Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and Redhat AS. I run Slack on my workstation and on a couple of smaller servers because it is about as unobfuscated (at least from my perspective) as you can get. No glittery anything, just a very solid Linux.

        I need to send Pat money this time around as well as I think I purchased 10.1 but not 10.2. Anybody who seriously uses Slack should do the same if they can afford it. He puts out solid distro, and he's a nice guy.

      • Re:64-bit official? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Lumpy (12016) on Friday June 16 2006, @08:26AM (#15548121) Homepage
        I think Slackware's biggest "problem" is that it has little to no "community,"

        there is a huge slackware community, it's just very much like the BSD community. WEare simply too busy using it in embedded systems, and other places to take the time to run around posting to all forums "S1ac4war3 0wnz joo!" messages.

        Slackware is the absolute best distro for doing really advanced things like stuffing it in an embedded device or making a super stripped down machine that makes an old useless 486 scream like a monster for a single important task... makes the best OS for a homebrew firewall that fits on a 8meg CF card.

        I use it for developing apps for the gumstix embedded platform. installing the cross compilers for alpha processors is painless compared to a rpm or deb based distro.

  • Marketshare? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Noodlenose (537591) on Friday June 16 2006, @01:51AM (#15546897) Homepage Journal
    Having huge respect and sympathy for Patrick Volkerding I nevertheless wonder whether Slackware is (after being one of the groundbreakers for Linux) is becoming a niche - distro. Shame, really.

    • Re:Marketshare? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jason1729 (561790) on Friday June 16 2006, @01:57AM (#15546918)
      IMO Slackware is still the best Distro. I've been using it since 2.3 back in the 1.0 kernel days. I love its simplicity; it's designed so you can edit the config files yourself, none of the GUI tools so many distros like now with the actual config files hidden all over the place.

      • I love its simplicity; it's designed so you can edit the config files yourself, none of the GUI tools so many distros like now with the actual config files hidden all over the place.

        Well, I use Debian at servers, Arch Linux at my private desktop, Kubuntu at my laptop and Ubuntu at work. Please tell me I can't manually edit my config files and that the "GUI tools [...] with the actual config files hidden all over the place"...

        I call BS

        • Re:Marketshare? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Poppler (822173) on Friday June 16 2006, @04:04AM (#15547234) Journal
          It's true that you don't need a GUI to configure Ubuntu. However, in my experience, if you're used to Slackware, the location of some config files in Debian-based distros can seem counterintuitive. Slackware is very simple once you understand it; I especially like the BSD style init system, it just makes sense.
          Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is great too (I'm using it right now), and I haven't had much trouble configuring it the way I want. But after using Slackware regularly for a while, I can understand why he feels the way he does.
            • You are obviously just trolling and have no idea how the BSD system actually works. It's just as simple as in SysV to restart a daemon. For example:

              /etc/rc.d/rc.httpd restart

              • You are obviously just trolling and have no idea how the BSD system actually works. It's just as simple as in SysV to restart a daemon. For example:
                 
                /etc/rc.d/rc.httpd restart

                That's not traditional BSD style though. Only OpenBSD still uses that as far as I'm aware. Most OSes which use "BSD style init" use a BSD/SysV hybrid. In FreeBSD and NetBSD it's called rcNG.
            • On my system...

              Hmmm, does lpr launch from rc.net1, rc.net2, or something else?
              Something else. rc.M

              When does nfs start relative to ssh?
              After. Both in rc.inet2, lines 101 and 82 respectively.

              grep is your friend - Learn it. Use it. Love it.

              BSD-style scripts really aren't hard to figure out. For Slackware, check out - http://www.slackware.org/config/init.php [slackware.org]

              Read through /etc/rc.d/rc.M. That will pretty much give you an exact idea of what order the scripts are called in.

    • It's been a niche distro for many years now. The only reason slack is mentioned on /. at all is because of its important place in Linux history.

      Slack is for hobbyists. It's rarely used in production environments because where money counts, slack is almost always out of the question for being way too labour intensive. Even in the hobby market it's filling a niche. Only a few die hard nerds like to be exposed to the inner workings of their system as slack does. Most others will just use a more automated dis

      • It's about as bare a distro as can be

        and THAT is the beauty of slackware

        no bloat, no extra crap that one doesn't need
        just the pure loveliness that one needs :]
      • >It's about as bare a distro as can be, and as such it's nice learning material when you like to explore the innards of a linux distro.

        I think you have slackware confused with Linux From Scratch.

      • Re:Marketshare? (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I hate to disagree with you, but you must be both misinformed *AND* smoking pretty powerfull shit ...

        Slackware is _THE_ most rocksolid stable distro there is. Which is why slack fanboys can give mac fanboys a run for their money on sheer loyalty.
        And also why a *large* proportion of slackware installs are servers. It is most definitively *not* just a hobby system, although you can learn a lot using Slackware.

        If you really insist, you can automate Slackware just as well as any other distro (slapt-get?).

        Someho
      • well i can only say that we use Slackware at our company...and guess what we, are in the train control business and yes we handle ppl safety. Train control itself is done with propriatary solutions but sopport servers run slackware. regards SD
      • I don't think you've ever used slackware, it's not as scary as you think. Everything is much easier to configure if you're willing to read the documentation.
      • Bollocks. I use Slackware ina very production environment (Telecomms) where money counts and have never had a single failure or any issues whatsoever accountable to Slackware. Our RedHat servers often break and to fix them you either compile yourself and RedHat usually breaks or you call RedHat and get their official patches (for which you need to pay support). I know what I'd rather be using.

  • RSN? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by User0x45 (530857) on Friday June 16 2006, @02:27AM (#15546982) Homepage
    I love Slackware. Other then a brief gentoo thing, I've used nothing
    but Slack since putting it on my 486. But shouldn't this topic have
    come out next week/month/year when Slack 11 is *actually* released?

    It'll be ready Real Soon Now. Let's really discuss it then.

    Think it'll have 2.6 as its default? Huh, huh, huh?

    --User0x45
    • I guess it's even exciting to wait. Slackware is THAT exciting... yes I am looking forward as well :)

    • Think it'll have 2.6 as its default?


      Or what about a highmem enabled kernel? At this point, I think it's reasonable for the kernel to support > 1GB RAM out of the box.
    • But shouldn't this topic have come out next week/month/year when Slack 11 is *actually* released?

      Duke Nukem Forever [slashdot.org] has made it to the front page twice [slashdot.org] in the past week. I think slackware deserves at least as much attention.

  • Health Issues (Score:3, Interesting)

    by maelstrom (638) on Friday June 16 2006, @03:44AM (#15547183) Homepage Journal
    Was there ever a follow up about Pat's health issues? Is he ok now?

  • Slackware makes sense. (Score:5, Informative)

    by inflex (123318) on Friday June 16 2006, @04:51AM (#15547364)
    I've seen a few comments above from people saying that Slackware makes poor economic sense. I say it can make economic sense in many cases.

    Slackware is a distro, like any other - and just like any other distro you tend to have to be familiar with it in order to get things done efficiently. However, what Slackware does let you get away with is to update packages direct from the developers without having to worry about exploding the "package database" or maintainance system. If you want "fancy" package handling systems you can use the likes of slapt-get or similar. Slackware won't tear you apart or breakdown into a locked up mess if you install something from a "non-slackware-approved" source package.

    The default relative daemon sparseness of Slackware makes it quite easy to keep an eye on, especially if you're trying to keep an eye out for malicious things. The whole start up script system is rather simple enough too (will we get a soft-linked /etc/init.d though?).

    That said, there's a few things which I wish were included by default in slackware (and perhaps will be in the future) but no single distro is perfect. Nearly all distros require some degree of tweaking.

    Best of all though, Slackware is quick to download, quite often you only need the first ISO and you've got yourself a fairly comprehensive system ready to go, for someone who knows what they're doing.

    • Why do you want a "soft-linked /etc/init.d"? Or better yet, why not just build one for yourself (and package it for others)? Slackware doesn't get in your way. I know because I actually rewrote the whole rc script system from scratch several years ago, and it's been working fine in several Slackware versions since then. My rc designs isn't based on symlinks, though.

  • ...it doesn't have a PR machine (even a volunteer one) behind it cranking out a steady stream of news. Look at Distrowatch Weekly's upcoming releases and announcements, and you see release roadmaps, schedules, plans, estimates and pre-order information going all the way out to December. Slackware is nowhere on there.

    Even on userlocal.com, supposedly the Slackware community site, and the top items are from February and April (and the latter's about Zenwalk). Other distros start work on their next release before the current one is final, and we hear about it from one release right to the next. Hell, we heard about the Suse and Ubuntu delays for what would seem like forever if we didn't have all that "when is Debian going to release" and "Vista delayed again" coverage to compare it to. So Slack gets a RSN item on Slashdot. Seems small in comparison to all the coverage of alpha flights, umpteen betas, RCs and golden masters some distros get all over the web.

    Personally, I'm happy to be using a distro done by a guy more interested in getting a solid product out the door than getting a good press release out the door.

  • Slackware: It just works (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spaceyhackerlady (462530) on Friday June 16 2006, @10:07AM (#15548883)

    I too am a fan of Slackware, and am typing this on a Slackware 10.2 system with a 2.6.16.9 SMP kernel (built from the kernel source [kernel.org]), to support one of those new dual-core Pentium 4 gizmos. In other words, it goes like stink...

    Even though I can download the CD images, I always buy a copy of each new release.

    It's not a crime for a Linux system to look like Unix, and if your hardware barfs over a text-based install, you really do have a problem. I like being able to download source (including kernels), build it and it just works. I still have nightmares about the time I tried to help somebody upgrade a kernel on a Fedora Core box. Shudder.

    Slackware isn't a pre-packaged Linux system in a can: open the can and pour it out, ready to go. It's a construction set for building any kind of Linux system you want. And it's all the better for it.

    Thanks, Patrick.

    ...laura

  • My first real distro was Slackware several years ago. It was a great learning tool for me. It forced me to learn Linux from the command line. No GUIs of any sort to setup devices.

    It was stable, it was simple, it was perfect for a beginner who wanted to really learn Linux.

    Since last year I've switched to FreeBSD. I do love FreeBSD but I didn'at switch because I got tired of Slackware. Right now I have a Windows machine and a FreeBSD machine. Probably next year I'll get a third computer as a dedicated mail se
    • That brings to mind one of the things that I think makes linux nice. As I want to keep my laptop happy, and as I am lazy, I just run windows. I do miss linux, though, mainly because with windows, you can't see the bones, so to speak. *nixes are more like gloves you can move your fingers about in, while windows seems more like... a hunk of wood. It is the control that makes it fun to use linux. An ease of use distro can reduce this fun and sense of control/accomplishment slack sounds like it can bring.

      I tri
    • Personally I don't think it really matters if Slack includes 2.4.x or 2.6.x in stable branch because most Slackers tend to recompile kernel anyway. But when it comes down to it, it has a lot to do with initial boot and installation on legacy hardwares. My experience is that Linux kernel 2.4 just works on every hardware so far while I can't speak same for Linux kernel 2.6 due to quiet a few drops in legacy hardware support.

      I agree on Pat's great work, and he's such a drama queen. :P

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