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> I'm not trying to cast any blame regarding the situation. Really, I can only blame myself for not trying to build my own ship years ago when things began to not really work out
The binary ffmpeg package for Slackware has the patented code disabled. You need to build it from source to enable the patent codecs.
Probably well over 15 years ago I ran DragonLinux which was advertised as "internet-ready". A distinctly 90s phrase.
Also Zipslack which I used for 2 reasons:
Slackware is great
Getting the most use of my expensive zip drives and disks which were obsolete before I even opened the damn boxes.
The first thing to do is familiarize yourself with SlackBuilds.org and sbopkg. These tools will be invaluable, as you are probably used to having every conceivable, major piece of software you can think of available in Debian's repos. That's just not true of Slackware, which tends to limit itself to as much of the really important stuff as will fit on a DVD. But SlackBuilds.org picks up the erm, slack. A SlackBuild exists for most any commonly used open-source package. And sbopkg is a nice menu-driven or CLI front end to all of that.
The other major issue is multilib. 64-bit Slack does not by default contain library support for 32-bit executables. So if you want to run 32-bit software you need to install AlienBob's multilib.
Happy Slacking!
Holy shit you're right. If the URL didn't give it away, that's from 1999. Looks essentially unchanged today.
I hope he will add a easy noticeable donation link/button on slackware homepage (I assume it will be done after he will finish setting up the patreon account).
> Anyway, the reason I'm leaning towards Patreon is that it might be a more predictable source of income that would allow me to focus on the project rather than having fund drives all the time
I understand the appeal in this, but treating patreon as a "get free internet money button" is problematic. He will probably get much better results if he will invest some time in fundraising/rewards, stuff like blogging your progress on patreon, and maybe even perks like having an "exclusive" forum access or being able to vote on features.
Situations like yours are what makes me cringe any time some "manufacturer" requires Windows on their control computers. A proprietary, closed-source, black-box that someone will have to figure out how to support when the official support ends, usually meaning exorbitant fees for ancient hardware "replacement parts" down the road just to keep it limping along...
Meanwhile, control systems based on open source software can and do continue to have community support, even some semi-major distributions continue supporting very old hardware ( SlackWare, Knoppix ). So, modern security patches, stable and supported platform, plus it is generally upgradeable and replaceable. *nix-based software might require some library chasing hoops be jumped through if you don't have the old sources to recompile from, but it is an accomplish-able task, unlike the current situation with Windows.
If I ever end up building systems for sale and subsequent support, such as 3d printers, laser cutters, cnc mills, one machine that combines them all... you bet I'll avoid the licensing nightmares and planned obsolescence built in to Microsoft's offerings and my stuff will be based on Linux.
sysvinit is still good to know. It is used on older systems.
If you are interested in how init systems work, check out Slackware. It uses a BSD-like set of init scripts. So far, Slackware is the easiest one for me to follow from bootup to login prompt.
<http://www.slackware.com/config/init.php>
Also, openrc shows some promise. Openrc is used in Alpine Linux, which is now becoming common in containerized systems (e.g. Docker).
It's great. Package managment is there but no dependency management but that's how we like it here. Its recent release is 14.2 with kernel 4.4.14. There are loads of packages that come pre-installed with Slackware and if you want more software (like vlc) you can install using slackbuilds.org or a great community member AlienBob provides built packages (chromium, vlc, kde plasma, flash to name a few). A great place to hangout and catch up on all things slackware is linuxQuestions forums.
Edit: spelling
Oh the memories. Too bad they haven't updated the website, probably scares away a few potential adopters. Although, it is a trip down memory lane: http://www.slackware.com/faq/do_faq.php?faq=distro > I can't get the kernel to see a CDROM connected to a Soundblaster 16 IDE!
> I'm using UMSDOS and would like to use the same swapspace under Windows and Linux.
> Why isn't my Sony CDU-31/33a detected by Linux anymore?
I'm getting old..
Since Alpine is already mentioned, I would like to add Slackware, which has quite a big user base and pretty good documentation (although a little bit scattered around the internet). It checks all your requirements and adresses your concern with voids maturity.
Another choice would be crux, but it has the same problems you pointed out for void. It is however the more mature distribution, since it's been around since 2002.
Newer versions of Slackware should boot fine with just dd'ing the iso to a USB stick. From the 14.1 release notes:
> Slackware ISO images (both the ones available online as well as the discs sent out from the Slackware store) have been processed using isohybrid. This allows them to be written to a USB stick, which can then be booted and used as the install source. This works on machines running both regular BIOS as well as UEFI.
> But is Slackware evolving at all?
Yes.
> There's so much potential to really make a kick ass modern distro with Slack, but there's work todo imho (package manager, community work and so on)
What kind of changes would you think might make it worthy to be called a "kick-ass" distro?
It's certainly quite "modern," although I suppose that depends somewhat on what you mean by that. As far as upstream versions, it's a bit conservative, but it's no Debian-stable; Slackware 14.1 is about in line with the newly-released EL7. Slackware-current is pretty bleeding-edge at the moment; It will settle down as the release cycle moves on.
Since we're on /r/slackware, I'll mention that Alien Bob has Slackware packages for steam. They work great on my system (a heavily customized 14.1 system with upgraded xorg, mesa, kernel, etc).
Edit: oops, we're actually on /r/linux, but the rest is still accurate.
Call me crazy but I really like slackwares website , its simple and easy to navigate and hasnt changed in years except to add new content. They dont have any flash or javascript or anything like that just simple text pages.
Slackware includes slackpkg which can be used to update the system with security patches put out by Pat. If you want to keep up with additional releases, it's on you to build and install those programs.
Here's all the security advisories, and subsequent patches, for 2014.
http://www.slackware.com/security/list.php?l=slackware-security&y=2014
The speed at which you download files largely depends on where you are downloading them from. Generally the server just can't support the speed at which you would like to download the file. A good way to test your speed would be to download a popular torrent.Let it go for at least 30 minutes and see what your speed gets to. These are excellent torrents for speed testing:
[http://www.slackware.com/getslack/torrents.php]
You can also try testing out Usenet for speeds, but that is quite a bit more complicated.
Apparently Slackware isn't dead at all—it looks like the development branch was updated as recently as today. But it's been five-ish years since the last official update and nine since the last major version change.
Also: Debian's much more regular with releases, usually about two years
To be honest, Slackware's installation guide specifically the steps it enumerated are still valid especially for New users. New users should really take the time to read and make some sort of a plan (or at least prepare) before installing Linux and not just blindly installing stuff. Here is a link on this: Slackware Installation guide
I know it is difficult but it is what it is. New Users should just tell themselves that it is like learning how to drive or even write. There is always the pain when learning Linux so just need to endure and be patient when using Linux for the first time.
As to Desktop Linux, yes I agree there is a need to improve it when used as a desktop but as it stands it is what it is so just need to read and learn. I am pretty sure things will improve down the road. I know I was there when Gnome's start icon was the big foot and it was scary installing Linux back then compared to how it is now.
> Hey there, how many members the slackware development team is composed of?
Checking the release notes for 14.2 is probably the best way to find out who's working on Slackware.
> How to become a slackware developer?
Gain Patrick's trust, mostly likely by helping Slackware from the outside for a number of years. But Pat is the ultimate decision maker on who qualifies.
14.2 is the last stable release. It gets patches and fixes, but not updates just for the sake of doing updates.
For example, Slackware-current is running kernel 4.14.61. Slackware 14.2 is on 4.4.144.
Look at the changelog for -current and the changelog for 14.2. Pretty much everything in -stable is a security fix. Current gets new versions of packages just because.
I've run linux on machines well beneath these specs. Well beneath. Hell, I first ran linux off 1.4mb 3.5" floppies.
Now, the question is, what are you planning to do with it? If its for a user, the time you spend on this would better be spent on a cheap computer with more modern specs. For instance a $7 P4 desktop with 2gb of ram.
You never know when the knowledge will come in useful. I was on a conference call a couple months ago, and a tech was trying to move/rename some files to get the system working again but clearly wasn't familiar with how to use the command line. I spoke up, took control of his screen, moved the files, TAR'd them, renamed the archive and looked like a superstar to my boss (all this was way outside of my job role).
For a distro, I like Slackware.
Try slackware
From the FAQ
Slackware Linux doesn't require an extremely powerful system to run (though having one is quite nice :). It will run on systems as far back as the 486. Below is a list of minimum system requirements needed to install and run Slackware.
486 processor 64MB RAM (1GB+ suggested) About 5GB+ of hard disk space for a full install CD or DVD drive (if not bootable, then a bootable USB flash stick or PXE server/network card)
Additional hardware may be needed if you want to run the X Window System at a usable speed or if you want network capabilities.
Seed any linux distro besides ubuntu and mint. They already have a shit ton of seeders. Help out some lesser known distros.
My personal recs, which I'm recommending solely because I've used them and I like them, are:
Manjaro - http://manjaro.org/get-manjaro/
Slackware - http://www.slackware.com/getslack/torrents.php
Knoppix - http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html
Basically, rather than seeding something large and with stable development, help out the little guys who need it most.
New releases once or twice a year is normal for Slackware. Their releases are feature-based rather than time-based, so gaps between releases vary (as opposed to Ubuntu's regular 6-monthly releases, for example).
You are correct sir, Patrick said "Sorry if I haven't been enough of a purist about this. I promise I won't inflate the version number again (unless everyone else does again ;)"
I see the utility of version numbers, but I don't think that we need some sort of code to determine that 2.34.56.22 means 2nd major version, 34th revsion, 56th code groom, and 22nd mini patch. All the user wants to know is, do I have the most recent version?
You should ALWAYS upgrade your kernel in Slackware manually. Don't use slackpkg update/upgrade-all to upgrade kernels. It's NOT a good idea. You should blacklist the kernel in slackpkg. Others may blow this off and poo-poo it, but this is experience talking here. Pay attention. :)
​
There have definitely been MANY upgrades to the kernel in 14.2 since 2016, that's for sure. You can see them all here -> http://www.slackware.com/security/. My Slack64-14.2 is currently running 4.4.240.
I relate to this completely having first learned on slackware 9.1. from scratch. 'why isn't there a gui? Oh I have to type 'startx'..why am I getting this error? Oh fix it. Why can't I listen to music? Oh ALSA...how do I go online? Ohh ndis wrapper because eff trying to use a broadcom chipset on Linux in 2003.
Quote from Slack Linux minimal requirements:
- 486 processor
- 64MB RAM (1GB+ suggested)
- About 5GB+ of hard disk space for a full install
- CD or DVD drive (if not bootable, then a bootable USB flash stick or PXE server/network card)
Slackware has a very slow and completely unpredictable release cycle. Three releases since 2012. I've got the 14.0 T-shirt with the Mayan end of the world theme. It also jumped straight from 4.0 to 7.0, back in the day. The last release was 14.2 back in 2016, but -current is still updated, most recently yesterday according to the changelog, and is building towards a 15.0 release, and the older versions back to 14.0 are all still actively maintained.
It's a risk. I download some compiled software from sources I trust. Including the browser I am using right now. This post provides documentation and a download point for some of the machines running slackware that I support, if nothing else. Anyone is free to do their own compile and check it.
The compile required about 2 hours on my machine. Someone may be looking to save some time, but as you say it's a risk. In some ways, the open source movement is to avoid relying on others for binaries. Of course, linux from scratch is an example of bootstrapping from source only.
Missed this! Just spotted in -current's changelog:
+--------------------------+ Tue Jul 17 21:16:10 UTC 2018 Happy 25th anniversary to the Slackware 1.00 release! When the original announcement went out on Usenet, I believe it had a UTC timestamp which has led to some confusion over whether the anniversary falls on the 16th (which was the date when I made the post) or on the 17th (which is when most people first saw it)... but really, what's the difference? We can celebrate on both days as far as I'm concerned. Thanks for sticking with the project all these years. Glad I was able to help. :) Here's a link to the 1.00 announcement: http://www.slackware.com/announce/1.0.php And here's a nice article that was posted on opensource.com: https://opensource.com/article/18/7/stackware-turns-25 a/kernel-firmware-20180717_8d69bab-noarch-1.txz: Upgraded. l/pulseaudio-12.2-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. n/gnutls-3.6.3-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. n/mutt-1.10.1-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. This update fixes bugs and security issues. Upstream strongly recommends that all IMAP and POP users upgrade as soon as possible. (* Security fix *) +--------------------------+
Long live Slackware!
Extra credit: Try http://www.slackware.com/info/ Linux. It's very close to a "roll your own" Linux and a good system to learn on, once you know the basics of building your own Linux from scratch.
I believe it's the closest to a pure "Unix" experience as you can get on a modern distro.
I play games on Steam almost daily. Works perfect. Just install the package from AlienBOB (as mentioned by someone else, also install the multilib packages to get it running.
Works perfectly with any AAA native title along with nvidia drivers for me.
I wouldn't say there was a huge learning curve at all. Updating the base packages typically involves nothing more than:
# slackpkg update # slackpkg upgrade-all # slackpkg install-new # slackpkg clean-system
Then for managing system daemon/services, you only need to run chmod -x on a file in /etc/rc.d/, say to enable ssh, you literally just do;
# chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.sshd # /etc/rc.d/rc.sshd start
Everything else, KDE, XFCE, etc can be used as it would on any other distro. You just boot to a console login instead, type startx and you have your desktop running.
That's really as technical as it needs to be for casual desktop use. However, it can be tricky when you start to install packages not available in the default base packages. As for the lack of dependency resolving, you will have to find out what libraries a certain program requires, and then rebuild those packages in the correct order when updating them separately. Slackbuilds.org can help with that, as dependencies are mentioned in the README's.
If you like Slackware but find the lack of a package manager daunting, then take a look at Salix, it's fully compatible with Slackware, but uses a package manager to help with dependencies.
Keep in mind! Steam uses 32-bit, so if you're on Slack x64 you'll have to install the Slackware multilib.
Not sure if the slackbuild does this for you or not.
It depends how far away Current is from the Stable release. Right now Current is very close to Stable, so you could look at the Current changelog and try to replace those packages with the versions from 14.2. pkgtools doesn't care about software dependencies, so you shouldn't run into any issues where it won't let you delete/install packages (although there could be other issues).
I do a full install of every Stable release (without formatting /home) and then restore my custom configurations (/etc). But my installations always end up as a mix of Stable and Current because I compile+install the Current version of some software on my Stable PC.
> Linux moved over to using systemd. While that's a can of worms, the fact remains it is much faster at bootup than FreeBSD's scripts.
Depends upon what you mean by "Linux" exactly - Slack still runs traditional initscripts, while Gentoo uses OpenRC as the default init, which layers features on top of initscripts (to the best of my understanding - not a Gentoo user).
"Desktop Linux" (the Ubuntu/Mint/Elementary family, as well as OpenSUSE/Fedora) definitely has jumped on the systemd train, though.
> Linux has better support for virtualization tools like Virtualbox and Qemu, although those do run on FBSD as well, without IOMMU/PCI passthrough etc etc.
I wasn't aware that FreeBSD was any less capable than Linux in this area (which is probably more a statement about my ignorance than your post) - I thought it was OpenBSD that suffered in this area since the project leads there thoroughly detested virtualization.
http://www.slackware.com/~msimons/slackware/grfx/shared/bluepiSW.jpg
Hahaa, that is true. Both logo's I think look very beautiful.
Slackware "keep-it-simple" approach allows to customize it to any specific needs. If you are interested in games, here, for example, Eric Hameleers' (AlienBOB) Linux client for the Steam gaming platform or you can also try steam.SlackBuild from SlackBuild.org Performance in 3D games would primarily depend on how well your graphic card is supported by Nvidia/ Linux driver , see e.g., Anyone using a GTX 960? What's it like with Linux? Slackware currently offers recent mesa-11.0.4 and xorg-server-1.17.4 and good modern selection of desktop environments not filled with the bloatware...
If you want the classic logs and commands your used to use slackware . It doesnt have systemd and they really have no plans to add it . You can download it here and /r/slackware and linuxquestions.org is pretty much the official slackware forum . And if you want other packages you can either find them from Alien Bob or in sbopkg
Slackware user, so I personally do it manually (download from Adobe and extract). But I'm sure many Slackware users use Eric Hameleers packages.
There was a lot of version skipping in Linux distros back in the day, too. Slackware, for example, jumped from 4 to 7 to keep up with version inflation.
So if you've already gone through netconfig again and made sure everything pertaining to DHCP was indeed correct (particularly, making sure it's actually enabled), I'd follow the official page on the matter and check the contents of /etc/rc.inet1.conf. Specifically check the various USE_DHCP fields to make sure they're set correctly (I'm betting they aren't).
I would like to point out some work has been done to allow PAM to work with slackware. vbatts@ did a lot of the leg work, and his stuff can be found at the following:
This should help your efforts.
Now's your chance to check out Slackware!
The most Unix-like Linux distro, command-line-based like Arch but a bit stabler and easier to install. The downsides are no automatic dependency resolution in packages, and packages that don't come on the DVD have to be installed from source or via sbopkg.
But -- seriously, Slack is fucking great. I wouldn't have used it for 18 years if it weren't :)
Yep. and it's "legit" too.
>Slackware 13.37 uses the 2.6.37.6 Linux kernel (hence our new $SLACKWARE_VERSION.$KERNEL_VERSION naming system used for this release ;-)
From http://www.slackware.com/releasenotes/15.0.php
> On the 32-bit side, there are both SMP (multiple processor capable) and non-SMP (single processor) kernels. The non-SMP kernel is mostly intended for machines that can't run the SMP kernel, which is anything older than a Pentium III, and some models of the Pentium M that don't support PAE (although it seems that these might support PAE but just lack the CPU flags to advertise it -- try booting with the "forcepae" kernel option).
If those games work with Steam and Proton on another Linux distribution they should work on Slackware. Most 3rd-Party software is done with SlackBuilds build scripts(see slackbuilds.org). There seems to be a SlackBuild available for vscode(of course GCC and Clang are present for your C language endeavors). I haven't used VirtualBox yet on Slackware, but I have used Qemu and virtmanager. There are also 3rd Party repositories for pre-built packages. The Minecraft launcher will certainly work if you install the JDK/JRE. You can use one of the many tools such as sbopkg and slackpkg+ to manage these packages. For Steam you need to use AlienBob's multilib 32bit compatibility packages(see http://www.slackware.com/~alien/multilib/). There is an effort to keep SlackBuilds scripts working on slackware64-current located on GitHub, and you will likely need to use this until the SlackBuilds repository moves to Slackware 15.0. SlackDocs(http://docs.slackware.com) and the text files that cover installation found in the Slackware file tree are a great help. The Slackware forum over at LinuxQuestions.org is a great place to post if you have other questions.
It isn't too bad.
My advice would be to subscribe to the security mailing list and use slackpkg to manage upgrades when they come up.
The docs site has a nice write-up about using slackpkg in the beginner's guide.
Its the oldest distro and is not released on any arbitrary schedule, so releases come when there is a good reason to. More efficient and stable than anything else out there Right now were close to a new release http://www.slackware.com/changelog/
Yeah, back when I bought it the official advice on the getslack page was to buy the version I have:- There isn't an archive version of the page which is as old as my copy but this page from 1999
https://web.archive.org/web/20000815100816/http://www.slackware.com/getslack/
makes it clear that the 4 disk wallnut-creek CD set was the one to buy.
It's not that difficult to use Slackware: installation is quite simple and you easily get a system up and running in about 30 minutes.
Past the initial setup (at this point you already have a DE/WM, kernel and a bunch of useful packages) you need to configure the runlevel, language, networking and basic stuff.
After that, it's basic system management, package installation and such, which isn't that complicated: Slackware's dependencies aren't as fragmented as on Debian-like distros and you have SlackBuilds to help you locate them, as well as build scripts for them. For large programs, you find (unofficially, via AlienBuilds) pre-compiled packages for LibreOffice, VLC and so on.
I highly recommend you give it a go, whether on a VM or dualboot... I stopped distro-hopping ~9 years ago thanks to Slackware =).
The drama with the store is entirely separate from the development team, most if not all of whom are credited towards the end of each release's release notes. Some of the people listed there also have userdirs on the site, e.g. Eric's.
TIL
Slackware came out in 93.
This book is from 98.
The current has Plasma 5.23 and Pipewire 0.3.39, so it must be up-to-date!
For a brief moment there I thought by Slack you meant Slackware, and trying to reconcile their website with the phrase "beautifully designed" made me considerably doubt your judgement!
You have default values I assume?
Hmmm this might be tricky, modelines setups were usually obtained from senior colleagues, often only after many blood sacrifices of exploded monitors. Some would call it arcane dark magic. 😂 Basically there was no auto detect and you had to setup all frequencies and everything manually. They were usually also part of your monitor user manual.
However you might have a look into 86Box documentation, for sure it will support some VGA/SVGA/XVGA emulation with a default 75Hz modeline for like 1024x768 at least?
You'd need to login as root, configuration files should be still somewhere in /etc and 110% it will NOT be xorg.conf ... This is still original XFree86.
But have a look here it explains everything https://tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/XFree86-Video-Timings-HOWTO/
Also slackware to the rescue, try man XFree86Config? There are some defaults that might work for you? http://www.slackware.com/~chris/alpha-devel/att-0235/01-XF86Config
Also where'd you get the ISOs/floppy images? I really want to give it a try myself. 🤩
> We haven’t had any Slackware news since the release of Slackware Linux 14.2
That is just too sensational, if not an utter lie. The slackware.com home page may not have been updated since 2016, but the changelog and the official forums have been alive all the time, and the current branch (which is predestined to become the new stable release) has been a stable and usable system for years (probably all the time). Just picking out the top entry from the changelog and implicitly denying there were entries before it, is something that should be kept contained to tabloids and clickbait sites.
Let's, however, not be too nitpicky about this. I am installing the rebuilt packages right now, excited to switch from the current mirrors to the 15.0 ones as soon as they're there. Slackware 15.0-alpha1 has been released! Cheers!
> leaving sudo off by default
It's so hard to add a new user to wheel (not even necessary, I think) and to make one-line edits to two files in /etc...
> PS in case you live in a rock
The bug has been fixed, says the changelog.
ah that's a pity, somehow I thought the Pentium MMX was based on the Pentium Pro, but that's not the case.
Slackware still claims support for 486 if you want something recent, but I agree that it's also interesting to run time-appropriate software on such a machine :)
>I would also like if it could boot to text mode without modifying any of the files (optional).
This is key. He doesn't want to boot to Ubuntu MATE and drop to a TTY. If the laptop is old then I totally understand this.
What you're looking for is something minimal. Like Arch or Gentoo. But I wouldn't necessarily use prod you to use them unless you know exactly what you're doing and you're using the Arch Install Wiki.
It also depends on what kind of package manager you want. You may want to have the apt package manager, or pacman, or yum. You may just want to compile everything from source yourself.
But past experience tells me as far as compiling stuff from Tarball goes, Slackware is the king of distros. It's been around for almost 30 years. It's always had a simple MS-DOS like installer. And when it's done you're presented with a flashing cursor after your first boot. Very refreshing. Right?
I believe it's still the same way but you'll have to download the minimal installer. You can get an installer that gives you a couple different desktop options but you can definitely install a minimal install still.
Have a look here and see if this is what you want. They just updated it in July so it's still a busy distro after all this time.
Slackware comes with a TeX distribution and Calligra office suite. It does not come with Wine or LibreOffice but Eric Hameleers provides Wine and LibreOffice packages at http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/
>Looks like not in -current (but, more importantly, chrome is not the same as chromium): https://mirrors.kernel.org/slackware/slackware-current/extra/
https://mirrors.kernel.org/slackware/slackware64-current/extra/google-chrome/
http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/chromium/
> Once all of my apps migrated away, my package manager was able to inform me that it could be removed. I appreciate your counter argument, which will be "It's harmless to leave around," but my point is that on slackware, you would have no idea
If every application in Slackware migrated from GTK+2, the gtk+2 package would be removed and this would be noted in the changelog, the reading of which is effectively mandatory. to draw a parallel, l/urwid was removed on August 1st because extra/wicd which was its only consumer was also removed.
>Well, sure, my point was more that slackware doesn't do a great job of pruning cruft from the tree.
If you consider it cruft and you give that much of a shit about freeing some mass storage, remove whatever it is that you consider cruft. The package tools will let you.
>the base slackware install even misses things that many people probably want (libreoffice? vlc? chromium?).
I would point out that Slackware has an office suite, several media players and several web browsers.
If you need Chrome, it's in extra/.
mount /dev/disk/by-label/SlackDVD /mnt && ${PAGER:-less} /mnt/extra/google-chrome/README for instructions.
If you need VLC or LibreOffice (and I don't think you do) you can get them pre-packaged by the Slackware Team from http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/ and if you have a complete install of Slackware, those packages will almost certainly Just Work™. The VLC package there is built against statically linked versions of the huge number of libraries it depends on, for example.
>I can't think of any justification to not have basic dependency tracking in this age. What's the benefit from you being able to remove GTK, when a handful of apps you use depend on it?
I dunno, you tell me? You wouldn't run rpm -e --nodeps gtk2 or dpkg -r --force-depends libgtk2.0-0 without very good reason, so why would you run removepkg gtk+2?
Well, come, that's a little harsh, isn't it?
Slackware is GNU/Linux at its best and purest: all the useful software you need (necessities like GCC, git, tmux, htop, xterm and xorg), without any of the bloat (crappy GUI settings programs hijacking your dotfiles, unnecessary services, systemd, installers suggesting to repartition my disk - which always scares the hell out of me - etc).
When you learn Debian, you learn Debian. Same for Fedora. But when you learn Slackware, you learn Linux!
The only real downside that I know of, is the repository, which is small AF. SBo, AlienBob and SlackOnly cover most of what you need, though. Installing software on Slackware is actually rather reminiscent of installing software on Windows (not from one single place) - just without the viruses, adware and shit.
It also just as easy to install as Arch, if not easier.
Besides: (and I think you missed this main point) given the final line in the post, OP might well have some experience with Slackware. It's not the little brother himself that has to do all the work.
Now that I have completed my rant, I would like to satisfy my curiosity:
- Were you ever suggested Slackware as an inexperienced user?
- What was your experience with Slackware?
Slackware and ZipSlack (running Slack from Zip disks: http://www.slackware.com/zipslack/) + RedHat 5.1 (the old 5.1).
Then after a couple of years with Debian and Ubuntu, I've now been using Arch for the last 9 years.
I did have trouble getting the WiFi working on a 2019 HP Probook 440 G6 under Arch Linux: it worked during install, but after that it only worked some of the time. I used the wifi-menu interface for netctl and wpa_supplicant to connect. The same problem persisted when using an external WiFi card, with very generic, GNU+Linux-supported, hardware, though. Using NetWorkManager under Slackware current, it works flawlessly, however.
It doesn't work at all on Parabola (freed Arch), Hyperbola and Freenix (freed Slackware), because the WiFi hardware obviously requires binary firmware blobs, which are not included in these distros.
Whether the WiFi works, mainly depends on whether drivers (and their associated firmware) are included in the kernel. A newer kernel is more likely to contain the latest drivers than an old or LTS kernel, so the chance of Arch supporting the latest WiFi is greater than the chance of Debian doing so (it should also be noted, that the Debian kernel has been deblobbed, by default). What was causing this weird WiFi issue I was experiencing on Arch, I don't know, but I figure the problem was located between the keyboard and the backrest, as the drivers were working. Perhaps, merely installing NetworkManager would have solved it all?
Once it comes out, yes it should be possible with a few caveats. You can read the -current changelog to see if any package upgrades affect your system.
If you want to get a feel for what it may be like, set up a VM or a spare computer with 14.2, update it with slackpkg, then change the slackpkg mirror list to point at a -current mirror. Do
# slackpkg update # slackpkg install-new
Note any changed or new config files, then
# slackpkg upgrade-all
And again take care of any changed/new configs. Reboot and you should in theory be fine. Any hangups, issues, or gotchas present during this operation will possibly appear when upgrading to 15.0 after its release, so keep that in mind.
I suggest taking the ISO from their website . They have detailed (in fact quite noob friendly) install instructions, you'll have no issues. I also suggest the latest version. (14.2 I believe?)
Also, this. Cheers!
One important think to remember with Slackware is that a good number of the packages you use from day-to-day are probably going to come from slackbuilds.org or AlienBob's repositories. Those are mostly kept very up to date. The 14.2 base system receives vital patches for things and some stuff is updated... but, frankly, a lot of it is stuff you don't need bleeding edge versions for.
The one program in the base system I like a more up-to-date version of is Firefox (as the base system uses ESR)... that's easily managed with ruario's latest-firefox script.
Personally, I'd suggest that, unless you're already quite familiar with Slackware, you should stick with 14.2 at the moment. It's still great. Current seems to be going through quite a few changes at the moment and might be a bit bumpy.
There's a stable release that is definitely meant to be stable (some software is not the newest, but patches are frequent) and then there's a current release that is basically a testing rolling release. Quite a few Slackware users are on the current release, but you do need to read the release notes before upgrading anything in case there are special instructions you need to follow.
>Pentium 4 2.2ghz and 2gb RAM
Ouch. You'll truly test your patience compiling LO on that hardware. How many days can you afford? :-)
If you only want the LO package, there is a slackbuild to convert the upstream RPM to a tgz package.
Another option is to use a pre-built from Alien Bob. You can download the binary package or use his build script.
http://www.slackware.com/changelog/current.php?cpu=x86_64
> kernel-generic-4.19.69-x86_64-1.txz
Which, yes, is a longterm support kernel, not the latest stable or mainline, but compared to the current CentOS 7 kernel: 3.10.0-957.27.2.el7.x86_64 isn't even listed on kernel.org anymore.
They don't put out releases very often, but Slackware is not, erm, slacking at bringing in new versions of software to the -current branch, which would be comparable to Sid in the list you quoted. And anything they don't package, you would compile anyway from source, including the newest kernels.
Any idea what kernel version that is?
From the Slackware 14.2 changelog
> Runs the 4.4.14 version of the Linux kernel from ftp.kernel.org.
Is 4.4.14 good enough?
Oh, woops; interesting, I didn't know that... (it seems to be able to handle System V init scripts too though: http://www.slackware.com/config/init.php ("System V Compatibility"))
I had a look at the FreeBSD documentation for init scripts; if I understood it correctly your script doesn't look temporary at all then :-)
Slackware is the answer. All the old versions back to 1997, are available.
Slackware supports 32bit systems as well.
It runs on really old machines well.
http://www.slackware.com/torrents/slackware-14.2-install-dvd.torrent is there on the torrents page.
The six CD images are from the days when people actually put things on CD. These days you can just use the usbimg2disk.sh script to make a bootable USB drive and copy the Slackware package tree to it.
DUDE SERIOUSLY
I'VE BEEN USING COMPUTERS SINCE I WAS A TODDLER
HOW THE FUCK DO YOU--WHERE IS THE DOWNLOAD
WHERE
NONE OF THESE ARE LINKS THEY'RE JUST LISTING SHIT TO YOU
>Once you have selected a boot disk image file from the list below
HOW DO I SELECT ONE WHAT DO YOU MEAN also, from how many there are, I can already tell that in no fucking universe would I want to continue trying to installing this piece of shit distro, but out of just morbid-ass curiosity, where the fuck are the links?
I'm clicking the sidebar
None of the pages
Where????
Dude holy sh--OH MY FUCKING GOD HERE IT IS
I want all the people affiliated with this project or who use Slackware or who designed this website to die of slow, silent bone cancer -- the kind that elderly people get, which is what they must be for fucking... any of this.
So, I love Slackbuilds.org, but all too often, they either don't have an official slackbuild for something I'm looking for (ex: Darling Project), or, like you, in some cases I have to get my sources from a non-official source (ex: Chromium, or Linux Kernel). In each of these cases, I generally find that the best option for me is to go ahead and configure a brand new SlackBuild script specifically for those software sources. Most of the time, I start with the default SBo script, and modify it as necessary, rather than using an existing script for something like chromium and trying to tweak it. The one piece of advice I'll suggest for you though, is if there isn't something listed on SlackBuilds.org, Go check to see if AlienBOB has a package available first, especially for popular software like Chromium. Chances are, he's already done it and will save you a few hours of work.
slackpkg clean-system
- uncheck all but the vlc that you just installed
Now go to Alien Bob's repos and download/install his vlc .txz file.
http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/vlc/
Luck!
> It may not be easy to use right out of the gate, but it is simple.
Yes, simple. That is what I love so much about it. Unobfuscated, no pretense, everything in very straightforward plain ole text files. Easy to find, understand and modify.
Still even today, it's footprint is tiny compared to other distributions. Get a load of Slackware's system requirements vs Ubuntu's.
AlienBOB's version of Steam works fantastically as well, for those who aren't using sbopkg: AlienBOB's Slackbuilds
For any new folks reading this, however, don't forget to modify your /etc/slackpkg/blacklist after installing Slackbuilds and the multilib by adding the following lines:
[0-9]+_SBo
(For Slackbuilds from Slackbuilds.org)
[0-9]+alien
(For AlienBOB's Slackbuilds)
[0-9]+compat32
(for AlienBOB's multilib... this one's especially important because, if you don't add it, your multilib absolutely WILL get messed up by standard slackpkg updates)
"Lack of binary package updates"? Please expand on this, it is most interesting.
Hmm. All the security updates I've ever received from the Slackware site have been pre-compiled.
Please notice all the pre-compiled security updates, neatly sorted by year.
But perhaps I am missing something? I often do. I'd be happy to learn from your experience.
Slackware official site has no https certificate. Firefox add-on httpseverywhere immediately blocks it.
Slackware is pure. Even if you don't like how hard it is to install software, from a system administration standpoint I don't think it is possible to get more UNIX-like.
Every Linux user should read this: Slackware Linux Essentials.
To answer your question:
> Is Slackware still an active distribution?
Yes, it is - we had a new release this year and new changes are being introduced.
>I've tried multiple distros
Trying a bunch of bastardize ubuntu's, which is a bastardized Debian does not really equate to 'tried multiple distros'.
You are doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Maybe its due to your CPU being Non PAE or being PAE but the kernel can't detect it. > Non PAE is a 32 bit processor that can access a maximum of 4GB RAM.
> PAE (a.k.a. Physical Address Extension) denotes a 32 bit processor that can access up to 64GB of RAM.
From the Slackware 14.2 readme: > The non-SMP kernel >is mostly intended for machines that can't run the SMP kernel, which >is anything older than a Pentium III, and some models of the Pentium M >that don't support PAE (although it seems that these might support PAE >but just lack the CPU flags to advertise it -- try booting with the >"forcepae" kernel option).
>On 32-bit, it is highly recommended to use >the SMP kernel if your machine is able to boot with it (even if you have >only a single core) because the optimization and memory handling >options should yield better performance.
Source: http://www.slackware.com/releasenotes/14.2.php
So try and boot the non SMP kernel.
Support suggestions given because you're using Slackware, brave internet comrade ;)
edit: Like so from LILO on the install DVD/CD - just type one of these in. The first might work. > huge.s
> hugesmp.s
> huge.s forcepae
> hugesmp.s forcepae
So as you can see above, try adding "forcepae" to both these lines. Its difficult to know which combination might work without knowing your CPU. Good luck!
Sorry for the late reply.
I'm probably being lazy/impatient but I don't know where the source is. I'm looking at the build folder and I don't see a source, maybe it was removed. The link is removed too for slackbuilds.org link for 32bit.
I've just been booting up Linux Mint through a flashdrive at the moment, unfortunately I did not set up one of those partition things that allows you to save on a live USB.
This is only a problem when I'm trying to stream movies on this little computer so whatever... YouTube works (HTML5 right?)
Yeah maybe I'm just being weak and giving up. I've looked around for a 32bit source for Chromium, unless it's included in Slackware 14.1? I did a full install.
Thanks for the warning! I use command-line utilities for handling compressed files, anyway :)
curl -O http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/p7zip/pkg64/14.1/p7zip-15.09-x86_64-1alien.tgz sudo installpkg p7zip-15.09-x86_64-1alien.tgz man p7zip
This was just added to Slackware-current. From the changelog:
> ap/sudo-1.8.15-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. > New options: --with-insults --with-all-insults --with-pc-insults. > Sorry about this, I know it's a bit silly. ;-) > Thanks to chytraeus for the suggestion.
You're right, the official Slackware repository is relatively small as it only includes the essentials. However this is in its favor: it means that the maintainers of the distro can get by with less work, which is quite important because Slackware isn't nearly as big as something like Debian. Like they actually removed Gnome from the repositories when Gnome 3 came out just because it caused so many complications for the maintainers. Remember, Slackware is all about KISS. This may be one of the reasons they've made it even longer than Debian with such a relatively small team.
This isn't that big of an issue though for the user because you can get everything you need from elsewhere like Slackbuilds.org, which is basically like the AUR of Slackware. There are also other trusted places you can get packages, like AlienBob's repository, which also offers binary packages. Even Gnome has enough fans that there are repositories where you can get it, despite being excluded from the main repositories. Failing that, it's incredibly easy to convert rpm packages into Slackware packages, so you basically get that whole universe of packages (this is how I installed my printer drivers, simply by converting). The whole reason all of this works is that it's incredibly easy to make your own packages, which is always an option if trust is an issue or you managed to find something that someone else hasn't packaged yet.
With all this taken into account, it probably still isn't even near Debian in package count (which may also be because Slackware doesn't split packages into -dev etc.), and you will need to do a decent amount of compiling by hand, but it basically means that for 99% of cases you will be able to find the software packages you need, and for the remaining 1% you can always do it yourself.
there is a steam package by our very own Alien Bob, who maintains a couple extra packages as well as multilib packages and a few other things
note that these can be rsynced to local storage
there is also slackbuilds.org that has all the software one needs (including steam) but in the form of slackbuilds that build from source
there's a cli client for slackbuilds.org, sbopkg
The big gap in kernel patch versions does mean you could be missing patches. Whether it is bad from a security stand point will depend a lot on whether those patches fixed any remote vulnerabilities or if you have other local users on your server. This is probably a question better directed to the Slackware security mailing list as they can tell you why their kernel is behind and whether they have backported any fixes. http://www.slackware.com/lists/