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Why Slackware is not like Debian: a guide for new slackers

Posted 02-09-2022 at 12:12 PM by hazel
Updated 02-10-2022 at 05:56 AM by hazel

Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distribution and also one of the most distinctive. People who come freshly to it, after perhaps having used another Linux distribution for a couple of years, often experience a degree of culture shock. There are a lot of posts in the Slackware forum on this site which amount to "I did A in my new Slackware system and the result was B when most distros would have given me C. Why does Slackware behave like this?" If they then get the answer, "That...

hazel

LQ Guru

Posted in Slackware

Views 436 Comments 8 hazel is offline

Building software from source

Posted 05-09-2021 at 08:56 AM by hazel
Updated 11-24-2021 at 07:14 AM by hazel

In the early days of Linux, a lot of people found themselves having to build programs from source. Nowadays many users have never done this or wanted to do it. And that can be seen as a great step forwards because it means that Linux is now an operating system for ordinary people and not just for hackers and geeks. And given all the bad things that one can say about Windows -- the instability, the malware, the constant "phoning home", the unfair EULA conditions, the invasions of privacy,...

hazel

LQ Guru

Posted in For newbies

Views 855 Comments 3 hazel is offline

What a Slackware derivative with dependency checking might look like

Posted 04-07-2021 at 05:56 AM by hazel
Updated 02-08-2022 at 12:01 PM by hazel

DISCLAIMER: This is not a serious suggestion. It's more of a jeu d'esprit, a philosophical exploration of how some limited degree of dependency checking might be introduced without damaging the essential structure of Slackware. The thing is certainly possible because Salix does it.

At present, the only newbie-friendly way to install Slackware is to do a full install, in which all dependencies are automatically satisfied. This is the recommended way to install and you will get little...

hazel

LQ Guru

Posted in Slackware

Views 640 Comments 0 hazel is offline

Disks, partitions and filesystems

Posted 10-27-2020 at 10:08 AM by hazel
Updated 01-05-2022 at 12:57 PM by hazel

One thing that Linux newbies often find confusing is the way that Linux deals with disks. Windows does its disk management "under the hood". Partitions are checked to see if they are organised in a way that Windows recognises; if so, they are automatically "mounted", i.e. made available to the system. Each disk or partition is given a letter by which it can be accessed, starting with C: (A: and B: were historically reserved for floppy disks). Unrecognised disks, including Linux...

hazel

LQ Guru

Posted in For newbies

Views 1417 Comments 1 hazel is offline

Everything's a file

Posted 10-09-2020 at 11:31 AM by hazel
Updated 03-28-2021 at 02:57 AM by hazel

In most operating systems, a file is simply and solely a named block of data stored in a particular area or areas of a disk drive, which can be retrieved and optionally modified at will. In Unix systems like Linux, quite a few other things besides stored data masquerade as files. Hence the old joke that in Unix, everything's a file. It's not quite true but there is some truth in it. Things that aren't files but behave as if they were make Unix systems much simpler internally than many other OS's....

hazel

LQ Guru

Posted in Linux kernel

Views 628 Comments 1 hazel is offline

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