Is Slackware community developed?

I just installed Slackware 9.0 on my pc. I love it so far and i love the fact that it doesn't start you off with a gui. I just wanted to know if Slackware was community developed like Debian is or if it is verly likely that it will be another commercial distro like RedHat or SuSe?

It is a commercial distro. It is put together by Patrick Volkerding.

chances of slackware becomming a commercial distribution = NIL, check the outdated
website for info:

http://www.slackware.com/info/

I may be wrong here, but I think that Slackware is the oldest distibution out there, can anyone chime in here?

9

commercial? insofar as you can buy the disks... ?? that would make them all commercial, huh?

Does anyone know when the next official update is to take place? I see on the site that 9.1 was released on 2003-09-26.

Soon. If you've been keeping track of development on -current you'll notice that today pkgtools was upgraded to 10.0. The version of pkgtools is always kept in sync with the version of Slackware, so we can expect 10.0 within the month I'd bet.

Commercial as in Pat sells it and wants to make a profit.

Slackware is the oldest still in existence Linux. The ones that preceded it are out of business.

Slackware is commercial in the sense that Yes, you can purchase its products. As far as when the next release may become available, there is no way to know until it happens. People can speculate all they want but in the end, the only person whose vote actually counts is Patrick's. -- J.W.

hmmm, ok, i see the point and how it is commercial. are there distibutions that are not commercial?

-9

Debian is a nonprofit, community based distro, so it is not a commercial one. Just because it may sell discs does not make it commercial. Commercial usually means there is a company or person seeking to make a profit.
Some of the small hobby distros that are just a one man show, they do not sell anything at all, just provide it for download.

ringwraith is correct, however, after reviewing the thread again, it seems that maybe you might be more concerned with the possibility that a distro turns corporate (ie, Redhat or Suse) rather than a distro whose founders merely wish to be renumerated for their work (ie, any distro whose disks can be purchased)

In any event, due to the GPL you can download just about any Linux distro for no cost; if on the other hand you are concerned that the "suits" may take over, and that a distro's founders may sell out, then you always have the freedom to create your own from scratch, ie, LFS. Check it out www.linuxfromscratch.org --J.W.

Frankly I'm not too concerned about the commercial aspect of slackware, I promised myself I'd pay for the next version of slackware, but that's because I feel the project deserves my support. There is no requirement to do so, anyone can continue to use slackware without paying a penny and that's fine too.

If we get to a point where we _have_ to pay for slackware (a la suse?)...hmmmm.....

Originally posted by Toth The version of pkgtools is always kept in sync with the version of Slackware, so we can expect 10.0 within the month I'd bet.

Cheers, I didn't know that :)

ChangeLog.txt Looks like he changed his mind: Wed Jun 2 11:29:58 PDT 2004 a/pkgtools-9.2.0-i486-2.tgz: Removed sample XF86Config files and xfree86setup script. Fixed root:bin owner on xorgsetup script. to Mon Jun 7 00:56:25 PDT 2004 a/pkgtools-10.0.0-i486-1.tgz: Removed soon-to-be-obsolete "head -1" syntax from pkgtool (thanks to Stuart Winter).

From 9.2 to 10.0 in less than a month :)

Does anyone know if I can use a English Visa Card to pay for a subscription at the slackstore?
Any problems with pounds --> dollars or do Visa sort that out for me?

Steve

I was just concerned about the owner selling out or about the suits taking over (same thing). I wanna support Slackware but I don't wanna feel like I have to pay to get the latest version. I'm pretty sure Linus Torvalds doesn't get paid for everytime the linux kernel comes out with a new version. I want to support Slackware because I feel like sending them some cash and not because their making me buy free software just to get the latest version of Slackware. I don't know it could just be me but I like having that option.

In no way am I dissing Slackware because I love it. Me and my girlfriend had a competition as to see who could have more programs open at the same time. I had around 30 programs opened including all of OpenOffice.org, Glade, Konqueror, Konsole, gedit, gimp, abiword, kword, mozilla, xpdf, xmms, k3b, etc. and she had less than 15 programs open her computer crashed when she opened nero and adobe photoshop.

my computer:
768Mhz Intel Celeron processor
196MB of SDRAM
Slackware 9.0
programs opened: 30+

her computer:
2.4Ghz AMD processor (don't know the exact type)
256MB of DDRRam
Windows XP
programs opened:less than 15

Originally posted by SBing Cheers, I didn't know that

Yeah, I wasn't sure of that either, but when I saw the version bump from 9.1 to 9.2 on pkgtools, I looked back over the past few versions and noticed that he was consistent with that. Version 8.1 shipped with pkgtools-8.1, 9.0 with 9.0, and 9.1 with 9.1. That doesn't mean he couldn't try something different, but I find that unlikely And yeah, it would seem he decided to bump the version to 10.0 instead of 9.2.

Originally posted by SBing Does anyone know if I can use a English Visa Card to pay for a subscription at the slackstore? Any problems with pounds --> dollars or do Visa sort that out for me?

I would assume so, but I don't know for sure.

I don't think that any of us who have used Slackware for a while are worried about Patrick "selling out." So if you like Slackware by all means support it. Tell your friends about it, buy a Cd or help out here on LQ.

As for your UK Visa, it's accepted everywhere that Visa is. Your bank may ask for confirmation from you before accepting for a $1k charge from Nigeria but not the purchase of a CD from the US.

Dennisk