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Hi Gary, I was just asking to get a quick impression. I'll be reading readmes, changelogs, how-tos, and the SlackBook before I go for it. In the meantime, I'm warming up in Vector, although this distro's very well configured.
Hi,
And I was just giving you some feedback. Yes, in order to learn the system you will read a lot of material. Look in the book section of the referenced links. Also look at some of the Slackware Reference links.
I've seen criticisms of the new release, 12.0, here and there, which is predictable. My question is a simple one: Is 12.0 just as stable, quick, and "Slackware" as, say 11.0?
For me, the experience of installing, configuring and using 12.0 has been as "slackware" as ever.
I tried 12.0 and went back to 11.0. I recorded my reasons in another thread, and yes I read the documentation. Let me add that I did not have to undergo a learning curve to fix stuff that did not work the first time I installed Slackware (ever), and I see no reason anyone should have to now with just a new release.
Most of the problems that I find from posts here on LQ are 'user' related. They fail to read the above documents therefore causing themselves a lot of wasted time.
Other than newbie problems like failing to burn the iso image or not checking the iso .md5 check. Bad burns and then blame the distribution.
I think this is uncalled for. I, for one, read all the documents you mention, including "Changes and Hints" and the release notes. I got my ISOs from BitTorrent, checked the MD5 sums, and verified the burns afterwards; and I am still having stability issues.
However, I think these might not be Pat's fault, but they can be traced to flaky Savage X11 drivers instead. But they are serious; I cannot use runlevel 4 anymore, and therefore my wife will have to learn yet another way how to access her desktop.
I also had serious trouble with my printer (who worked fine in Slack from versions 9 thru 11) despite carefully following the instructions of CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT. They only went away after I ditched my upgrade and did a clean install. Again, not because I did not read the docs, but despite that.
I, for one, do not blame the distro. And you, please, do not blame the users. I will "complain to the upstream maintainers" as Pat said; and you should admit that there are some unfortunate problems that are not Slack's fault.
I, for one, do not blame the distro. And you, please, do not blame the lusers. I will "complain to the upstream maintainers" as Pat said; and you should admit that there are some unfortunate problems that are not Slack's fault.
amen.
a general note: don't be afraid to use an earlier version if it works better for you.
e.g. the latest kde can be run just as good on 11.0 (check out the linuxpackages.net's build)
a general note: don't be afraid to use an earlier version if it works better for you.
e.g. the latest kde can be run just as good on 11.0 (check out the linuxpackages.net's build)
A double Amen!
After reading about Slackware 12 for a while now, I've decided to stick with Slackware 11. A major reason is that the solutions to the problems people are posting here are a little bit above my current level of experience to address. It especially seems that Udev and HAL are more complicated than the Hotplug and Fstab operations I'm used to with the default 2.4 kernel in Slackware 11.
The other major reason I'm sticking with Slackware 11 is that it works very, very well for me on my seven-year-old desktop computer.
That's not to say that I won't try Slackware 12 sometime in the future or on another computer, just that I don't see a compelling reason to upgrade from 11.
I think this is uncalled for. I, for one, read all the documents you mention, including "Changes and Hints" and the release notes. I got my ISOs from BitTorrent, checked the MD5 sums, and verified the burns afterwards; and I am still having stability issues.
However, I think these might not be Pat's fault, but they can be traced to flaky Savage X11 drivers instead. But they are serious; I cannot use runlevel 4 anymore, and therefore my wife will have to learn yet another way how to access her desktop.
I also had serious trouble with my printer (who worked fine in Slack from versions 9 thru 11) despite carefully following the instructions of CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT. They only went away after I ditched my upgrade and did a clean install. Again, not because I did not read the docs, but despite that.
I, for one, do not blame the distro. And you, please, do not blame the users. I will "complain to the upstream maintainers" as Pat said; and you should admit that there are some unfortunate problems that are not Slack's fault.
This is very discouraging. I just burned the DVD after the torrent finished, and have the SlackBook waiting for a weekend of configuring slack and smoking bud...yes, I'm a geeky smoker.
Hearing all of this makes me think that my time will be better spent setting up another distro, simply because my three main reasons for wanting to use Slack are speed, stability, and control. Lose any of those three and I might as well be with another distro. What I mean by that is I would use Arch if I wanted speed and control but could lose the stability. I would use Debian for speed and stability. And I've never heard of a slow, stable, in-control distro before!
I as Cogar am back with 11 for now. I've had several crashes of X apps and X itself, five or so in three days. That's definitely much much more than what I'm used to - since 9.0 which is the first Slackware I used myself. And I'm talking of three work days, so I didn't spend too much time with my home box. I have an nvidia card and I didn't have compiz or anything running.
Which is the next thing that turns me off a little. Everyone knows that by now and knows also that it's not Patricks fault but personally I find >700 packages after a 1-CD install a little hard to maintain. I like to remove packages I don't need, but opening kpackage for the first time was kind of a punch to the nose to me
My 11.0 has 401 packages and here I already have all the software installed that I want.
Additionally my box is an old Duron with nearly 1 GHz and 12.0 feels much less responsive than 11. And I cannot see any direct advantage for me personally to have HAL, dbus and all that modern stuff. My hardware is so awfully static that I just don't need them. My box is already noticably busy when running amarok under 12.0.
The whole thing actually hit me so hard I downloaded an Etch iso yesterday which I'm willing to install now on my testing partition where 12.0 resides currently. I thought I might as well have a look at that again - it will probably install 1500 packages from 1 CD, but now I'm used to stuff like that
So what makes the difference between those who said "smells like Slack to me" and were generally satisfied, and those who have gone back to 11 and/or are dissatisfied with 12? Is it just random? Based on hardware? Based on experience?
What is this I hear about GCC? I really, really don't want to be using Slack for the first time and have half of my sources unable to build. It would be a sad experience. Is the issue that severe? Could someone please explain how Slack users are affected, etc?
The only thing I couldn't get compiled with new gcc so far is tesseract. However, nothing prevents you from installing two versions (3.4.6 and 4.1.2) of gcc/g++ and using them both (as I did with tesseract).
Hearing all of this makes me think that my time will be better spent setting up another distro, simply because my three main reasons for wanting to use Slack are speed, stability, and control. Lose any of those three and I might as well be with another distro.
I would say that you give 12.0 a go and see what happens. Right now, my source of trouble in Slack 12 is the flaky, unstable Savage X11 drivers. The rest of my initial troubles were all worked around. If your video chipset is different, your mileage will certainly vary. Other than that, I find the advancements in 12.0 very good. If you cannot run 12.0, I would suggest using 11.0 until Slack 12.1/13.0 (or some bugfix patch is issued to 12.0 for any showstopping trouble you might have) is out.
So what makes the difference between those who said "smells like Slack to me" and were generally satisfied, and those who have gone back to 11 and/or are dissatisfied with 12? Is it just random? Based on hardware? Based on experience?
IMHO, the difference lies in any of these:
1. Complex, highly customized 11.0 systems that borked during the upgrade (I say this with the full assumption that CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT was carefully followed).
2. Flaky X11 drivers... especially the Savage ones (ouch!).
Hearing all of this makes me think that my time will be better spent setting up another distro, simply because my three main reasons for wanting to use Slack are speed, stability, and control.
Hm...
YMMV, but I've been running Slack 12 with no problem whatsoever (clean install, NVidia video card, P4 @ 3GHz), running as a desktop PC, and with all the Slackiness of Slack 11 (speed, stability and control).
Much fun in trying new things too: HAL, VirtualBox, Compiz(works, documentation iffy).
So what makes the difference between those who said "smells like Slack to me" and were generally satisfied, and those who have gone back to 11 and/or are dissatisfied with 12? Is it just random? Based on hardware? Based on experience?
Apart from using "hal-disable-polling" on my DVD drives and a few additional groups to add my users to, Slackware 12 is as Slack as ever for me.
To the people who are experiencing problems: Are you using one of the default kernels? Or do you compile your own?
My experience with the default 12.0 kernels is that they were slow and buggy. I think they include some drivers which are incompatible with my hardware, but I don't know which ones they are. What I do know is that a custom kernel build (which includes only the support and features necessary for this box) fixed all my problems.
I made a clean installation of 12.0 on my laptop and all looks good & stable. This is with a custom compiled kernel, but I didn't notice anything wrong during short time that I used the default kernel.
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