Slackware 15.0 Takes Another Step Closer To Release

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Slackware 15.0 Takes Another Step Closer To Release

After nearly a decade of Slackware 14, the Slackware 15.0 release is moving closer to debut and now effectively under a hard feature freeze...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Slackware-15.0-RC2

[xhustler]

Given how things are currently trending and the time between these test releases, it's quite likely Slackware 15.0 won't be officially christened until 2022.

And I shall continue to wait patiently.

[cbxbiker61]

I cut my teeth on early versions of Slackware, which is one of the best distros for teaching you the nuts and bolts of a Linux distro. About 10 years ago, maybe longer I grew tired of slow pace of development and started building my own distro. My distro still has some of the "features" of Slackware such as text grep-able/viewable package lists in /var/log/packages which is one of the simplest most effective ways of figuring out which packages have what. I installed Slackware from floppy a couple of time, but as soon as I could get Slackware from Walnut Creek the install process got a whole lot easier.

[linuxgeex]

I cut my teeth on early versions of Slackware

ditto. Slackware 2, from the zipslack set, with X, into a umsdos tree and using a kernel boot floppy to start the machine with Linux.

I installed Slackware from floppy a couple of time, but as soon as I could get Slackware from Walnut Creek the install process got a whole lot easier.

Funny story there... I got the Walnut Creek Simtel CDROMs when they became available in 1994 but I had spectacular headaches trying to install from them... so bad that I installed the zipslack off the CDROM after creating them using DOS. Then I booted into zipslack and searched the discs for help, didn't find much, used archie to find ftp links to help docs, then gopher, finally elm and ircII looking for interactive help. My problems were around my Sony CDU-31A CDROM drive together with my Soundblaster card. I tried all the recommended dip settings and loading the modules with the IRQ and Port numbers as suggested. I tried different cables, I tried every combination of DIP / IRQ / Port... Good God I must have rebooted my 386DX40 system over 100 times. Eventually I figured out that I was loading the wrong Sony CD kernel module. Wow that was a lesson in humility lol.

So long story short... no the CDROM didn't speed up the install process for me!

But... wow installing packages from CD was a lot faster than dialup!

What I miss about Slack today is the freedom to install the packages I want, without installing the "dependencies." Apt is so wrong much of the time, sometimes in system-breaking ways. We learn to accept its less-than-considerate demands and live with whatever it denies, or forces on, us. Or we use an alternative package manager for the problem app. Or install it in a chroot or lxc, or docker. Or install it, delete the related .list files from /var, apt remove it (leaving the installed files in place) and then put back whatever conflicting packages we still want apt to manage.

Slack gives you much finer-grained control, doesn't throw a hissy fit, happily lets you hang yourself, and for that, it has my enduring admiration.

From a distance lol. 13.37 to 14 was too long for my taste. 14-15... 10 years is half a life sentence fer crissakes.

[kpedersen]

Slackware was indeed my first Linux. One thing I always found a bit weird coming from other operating systems (of the time) was that there was no base install. There was no minimal system in which to build from. You either had to go with the recommended "install everything" which I didn't like (or have room for) or during install, piece by piece install the packages you might need.

That said, I never minded the lack of dependency management (actually I quite liked that because it worked well offline) but the lack of a "base" felt a bit messy to me.

[cbxbiker61]

That said, I never minded the lack of dependency management (actually I quite liked that because it worked well offline) but the lack of a "base" felt a bit messy to me.

Yep, In my distro I don't enforce dependencies on "install" of package, but I do enforce it during package build time.

As far as resolving dependencies...a little scripting goes a long way.

for f in $(find /usr/lib64 -name *.so*); do
ldd -r $f | grep found && echo "***************** $f"
done

[GingerDog]

I remember using Slackware for years (up until about v11?) but then switched to Debian.

It's nice to see that it's still releasing updates - but I'd be surprised if there were all that many people using it.

[autopr3z]

I'd be surprised if there were all that many people using it.

There are some folks out there still using it! Klaatu of the GNU World Order Podcast is going through a series where he discusses every single package in Slackware.

[aweiohf]

I'd be surprised if there were all that many people using it.

Still a sizable community over at LinuxQuestions Plus its one of the few distros like Devuan without systemd at all (though it has elogind in lieu of consolekit2 and similar https://nosystemd.org/)

[aweiohf]

Also still proudly building packages and kernels for 32-bit Intel systems both with (hugesmp.s) and without (huge.s) PAE