gargamel: It is pretty much Slackware, since it has always been Slackware Inc. and Pat's policy. Some people like it, some don't. Of course, some people try to fill up the gap voluntarily. Without coordination this results in a dozen (or more) repositories of a highly varying quality. While it is one of Slackware's goals to be small and simple, I think it wouldn't hurt to have an official contrib repository with quality control. And Pat doesn't have to do that, there are some highly experienced packagers in the community who could do the quality control for such an effort. People who want to compile things by hand could just not use such repository.

This is one of the reasons I personally stopped using Slackware. I got tired of maintaining different package sets for different machines running different Slackware versions (e.g. I don't just update production servers because there is a new version, as long as there are security updates for the version that server is running). It is fun for one or two machines with a small package set. But if you have to maintain packages for two dozens of Perl packages (Mason plus additions, yay), and an equal number of Java class libraries and applications, it is not a lot of fun anymore. Oh, and track security updates for that :).

Nowadays I use NetBSD, FreeBSD, and CentOS (actually, I have been using BSD since '96). The BSDs have port and package collections that are of a high quality, and considerably ease up maintainance of large sets of software. For me, it's virtually no effort, e.g. NetBSD's pkgsrc provides package auditing tools that one can run as a cron script, and sends an e-mail if some application is vulnerable. The collections are just a bunch of Makefiles that can easily be adjusted (and your local customizations can easily be merged with port updates, because the pkgsrc tree can be fetched through CVS).

Of course, pkgsrc is portable, so one could also run it on Slackware (though, I heard it is not as useful for X11 apps, since it is mostly tested on NetBSD). In fact, the only Slackware machine that I still maintain (a server) mostly uses software installed through pkgsrc. Though, I'll probably migrate it to NetBSD or FreeBSD on the first occasion that allows it (probably when the Slackware version it is running is not supported anymore, or if the server hardware is replaced).

Of course, YMMV, and this is just my personal opinion and taste. Slackware works well for many others.

danieldk: I agree with most of what you say, just that I intend to stick with Slackware for the foreseeable future... ;-)

I have to say that I really like Slackware and the basic philosophy behind it: A lean basic, yet complete system, suitable for servers and desktops alike, and certainly my preferred system to develop software on, because Slackware is
- secure
- stable
- robust
- flexibly adaptable for just about any purpose
- thoroughly maintained for many years helping to keep the system secure with high-quality, well-tested patches
and avoids vendor patches.

So I never intended to question Slackware and the philosophy behind it. But would having more pre-packaged 3rd party software binaries spoil that in any way?

I am really curious to know, how representative the posts here are for the Slackware community.
- Does the majority of Slackers actually avoid repositories and prefer compiling stuff by themselves?
- If so: Why do you stick with Slackware instead of using a source based system like NetBSD or Gentoo or ROCK Linux?
- How many of you, on the other hand, gratefully pick the packages from sites like LinuxPackages.net?
- Do you have the same reasons already mentioned here, or are there other arguments?


gargamel

Just found one more repository, which looks good to me, although I don't speak Italian. ;-)

http://www.slacky.it/

gargamel

This is a very interesting thread... I've been a long time Slackware user - since 1993 back in the kernel 1.x days. I've watched the distro mature over the years. Slackware gets more and more packages added to it every release. Out of the box, it has basically just about everything a Linux user could want.

For a long time, I used to compile stuff I need. But linuxpackages.net has a lot of great binary packages built to the Slackware .tgz format.

I've considered switching to the likes of SuSE and Fedora because they come with a HUGE amount of pre-built packages and a lot of things looks nice, but after reading the user documentation, it just seem so complicated to maintain, compared to Slackware. Slack might be scary to those new to Linux, but I'm so comfortable with Slackware, it's hard to go to another more fancy distro. The thing that bothers me the most with FC or SuSE is the bloated GUI interface they use for everything. It's sometimes hard to figure out what exactly the GUI is doing when doing administrative tasks.

For me, Slackware is exactly what Linux should be.

I agree that having a repository of binaries would be nice, but I currently don't use the ones that exist. For some reason I don't really like installing third party tgz's. I do however use SlackBuilds.org. For everything else (which isn't much) I either manually create the package or do the traditional ./configure, make, make install. I've also been keeping a local changelog which helps me keep track of things. If there were to be an official binary repository (i.e. with the Pat V. stamp of approval), I would most likely use it along with SlackBuilds.org.

For a lot of reasons listed in this thread, I have a hard time recommending Slackware to someone who wants to use Linux only as a tool, not a part-time hobby(which by the way is a perfectly acceptable way to use a computer, in my opinion). I had a friend who came to me with computer problems on her laptop, and I couldn't really figure out the problem and I muttered "you should just install Linux." To my surprise she said yes so we ended up putting Freespire on it. She really likes it, and whenever I mention a random game or other program I come across, the first thing she says is "Is it on CNR?" Most of the time it is, so everything works just fine.

To my point here, a large binary repository allows users to manage all of their software the same way, which is extremely easy to learn. Slackware offers a usable system that works on it's own, but if want to install extra software there are several different ways to go about it, and if you don't know what you're doing, you're lost. As has been said many times before, Linux is about choice; use what's best for you. Of course I think Slackware is the best (for me, anyway), but I do recognize not everyone can use it effectively.

Of course, if all software came with installers (like they do with Windows), this would be a moot point. This reminds me of autopackage, but that's for another thread...

Well the advantage of SlackBuilds scripts is at least you can see how the other person intends to build the package.

redit: And there is of course slackbuilds.org. Where all scripts are thoroughly tested on clean systems before actually being uploaded into the main repository.

gargamel: yeah, I must say that I miss the simplicity of Slackware Linux. The distributions that come closest are probably Crux and Debian. But Crux is too source-oriented (I don't care about recompiling everything everywhere, it is just a waste of CPU time) and Debian has too much dependency handling and background infrastructure that automatically tries to do stuff. Though, I can live with Debian and not be to annoyed by it :).

Ideally I'd like to see Slackware providing to package sets:

- Core: what it is now, and available as a CD set.
- Contrib: a package repository involving community members with a high level of QA. No dependency checking, but dependency cues would be fine (so that you could do a dependency-based install if you prefer).

Though, I am pretty sure it will never happen. Maybe some day SlackBuilds.org will be recognized as an semi-official source for SlackBuilds. But for me, that is not good enough.

I don't agree here. Other distributions and systems are much more proactive when it comes to security. E.g. by adding stack checking, enforcing W^R mappings, having mandatory access control frameworks or capability based access control. They offer many more lines of defence if an application is compromised.

BTW. NetBSD is not a sourcebased system! Yeah, you can compile the system from source (even for all supported architectures, from one source, and one machine, with just one command), as well as the packages. But there are binary distributions sets, and binary packages.

What about binary updates like FreeBSD provides ? Last time I've checked NetBSD support, they were not able to offer binary builds because of their limited computational resources.
I have to admit NetBSD is one of the greatest opensource *nix-like systems I've ever met concernig its concepts and coding/features adding philosophy and pkgsrc is a good demonstration of a simple, fast and clean system of software repository maintenance system in comparison with bloated, unnecessarily complicated and slow(indexing) FreeBSD ports. Not mentioning portupgrade additional layer of bloat. Without it, updating of ports is a PITA. Why the heck they implemented it in Ruby, the lowest performance known scripting language in the world ?
Unfortunately more limited hardware and also SMP support (compared to Linux) prevented me to deploy it on most of machines.

As you have probably noticed there is now an opinion poll accompanying this thread. Goal is to get some insight how typical Slackers are minded, regarding 3rd party software.

I am really curious to know, how representative the posts here are for the Slackware community.
- Does the majority of Slackers actually avoid repositories and prefer compiling stuff by themselves?
- If so: Why do you stick with Slackware instead of using a source based system like some *BSD or Gentoo or ROCK Linux?
- How many of you, on the other hand, gratefully pick the packages from sites like LinuxPackages.net?
- Do you have the same reasons already mentioned here, or are there other arguments?

Your vote will hopefully shed some light onto this, and I am pretty sure that the result is of great interest to the folks running repos like LinuxPackages.net and the authors of tools like slapt-get and swaret.

And, of course, I'd appreciate further contributions to this thread.

So, happy voting!

gargamel

i still use Slack-10.2 as i am not completely satisfied with #11, i do a bare bones install & compile the latest 2.4 kernel (2.4.34) then i get the latest packages from the author's website (alsa, firefox, kde, mplayer, openoffice, & etc) if i can not find a top quality binary package i will compile from source...

I compile everything from source using SlackBuilds. Being able to look at the build script and see the process while it creates the package is very interesting (to me anyways). Also knowing that the resulting package contains nothing but the program itself is a bit more comforting than not knowing (feels more secure).

However, I did use linuxpackages.net (even used a few from slacky.it) for most everything when I first started using Slack. I didn't even know what a SlackBuild script was let alone what md5sum was.

As my knowledge grew, I began compiling from source using checkinstall. After awhile, I found myself wanting to learn more so I began building my own SlackBuild scripts. I am amazed at how much there is to learn about creating a good build script and I'm still learning. Eventually, I am told, you earn your PhD in creating SlackBuilds when you can look at Eric's SlackBuilds and understand everything going on (or something like that).

Looking back now it was a good thing to have a 3rd party repo to start out with. Granted, the quality of the packages vary quite a bit but to a new user they really don't know this and it gets them started. As people get more and more comfortable with Slack, IMO, they will eventually start to compile from source themselves using SlackBuilds. It is, after all, the way that Pat V. does it.

MagicMan

My experience began with RedHat (Windoze wannabe bloatware) that
left me looking for a Linux distribution. From there I landed at
Debian, but their borked apt package management software left a
sour taste in my mouth. They had too many people making decisions
who couldn't always get along with each other. By course of natural
selection this led to Slackware.

When I first started, as with most guys, I found LinuxPackages; and
yes, of course, that most of their packages are inferior.

Being the DIY type of guy, building from source is my preference. But
having more than one machine running Slackware, making a package
is the only sane choice.

Today I use SlackBuilds from Pat V., or Eric, and no one else. And
as I study BASH I'm learning to build my own, which is The Goal (TM);
much the same path as MagicMan.

P.S. Eric has the PhD in writing SlackBuilds. :D

Bruce, my feelings are hurt... ;-)

I won't argue that point, however :)

--Robby Workman

There are up to date build in the NetBSD-daily directory on FTP. The builds were slowed down a bit recently, but they should catch up again in the future.

A binary update system like FreeBSD for the base system is being discussed, see this thread:

http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-us...1/17/0005.html

It will probably happen, but the bar is set quite high, because it has be supported for a couple of dozen ports. Besides that, many developers/users want some sophisticated patch rollback support.

Yeah, the project tries to implement things correctly, rather than as soon as possible. I'd say it is one of the projects closest to the (original) UNIX and BSD development philosophy, and as such carrying on the torch.

Yeah, I am baised ;).

I must say I really like their tools, but the package indexing is slow indeed.

True, that's an issue. Though, contributions are always accepted ;). Though scheduling and threading are being improved, so hopefully things will be better in the near future. (Of course, finer grained locking would also be nice for some subsystems.)

Old thread, i know.

I noticed while installing Slackware that, indeed, i spent half the time compiling stuff i wanted. So, recent Slackware-user question: if you build most of your stuff from source, why prefer Slackware over Gentoo (not trying to cause a flamewar)?