So, slackware 12 is out and at last comes with a 2.6 kernel. It took a while but it got there eventually. If I was to give a reason as to why this is important, I wouldn't be able to give a clear answer other than trend, in the same way we are tricked into believing that we really need mobile phones. Actually there is a very interesting article in a PHRACK issue that dates back to 1986, with the following paragraph:

Cellular Telephones come in two basic versions, as car phones and portable phones, with a briefcase hybrid. Car phones are by far the most common, because they are much cheaper. But most believe that, ultimately, portables
will be the most popular. Washington Post Company president Richard Simmons, whose company is a partner in several cellular systems, even predicts that by the early 1990's "There will be phones roughly the size of a calculators that you carry around in your pocket. They will cost no more than five hundred dollars. They will emancipate people from the necessity of locating a phone to
make calls. The bad news is, you will never be able to get away from the phone, and we'll call it progress."

I have used 2.6 kernels myself so far but I can't remember why though... Probably for the same reasons or out of curiosity.

After struggling for a decent amount of time lately to setup properly the raid array of an old proliant server of mine, slackware 12 finally made its way on those hard drives. I was in for a shock towards the end of the install when the setup utility prompt me for whether or not I'd like to create a bootdisk... on a USB stick!? Ok so this thing doesn't even have a usb port, and... on a USB stick??
I really had in mind that such a distribution is oriented towards a more traditional way of doing things etc,to create a bootdisk in such a manner certainly isn't.

Are there going to be slackware USB stick appearing at the Slackware store then? It wouldn't be surprising if such a thing happens.
Eventually Richard Stallman might have spotted the right thing after he recommends and supports the use of entirely free GNU operating systems. Are we slowly going to have distributions for hackers and distributions for other people? Or is this going to be a different type of distribution for different type of hacker? Really, where is the old school spirit going to?
I'd like to comment that I have nothing against USB sticks, but I don't have one because I don't need one, I have other things instead that serve me more than a USB stick would.

A couple of other things, the idea of HAL is quite an interesting one, however, it seems that slackware is slowly moving towards being more or less automated. This HAL thing again is a good idea and I have needed something like this previously, but this was really in the case of using my box as a desktop. That in turn brings up the question if slackware is or not getting oriented to desktop users and automation etc.... I have absolutely nothing against this, but then this could perhaps being pushed further by providing with a package managemnent tool that does dependency checking, if we are going to have it eventually then we might as well have it now isn't it?
The other point I'd like to bring up is that I've seen some posts in which there seemed to be a person that is involved in the development of slackware (nice to see them on the forums by the way). This person advised some users to hold on to slackware 11 if they didn't like 12. Good advice but can we expect something different in the future? I mean the next release will obviously not be based on 2.4, so keep in mind that people will want to upgrade at some point...

My point is not to flame slackware or slackware users in any way. Suggestions perhaps? There is no failure, only feedback!!

Pfiou all that because of a damn usb stick

Not all development decisions are based on improving things for users. Indeed, many of the changes and updates are intended to simplify and improve the task of development itself (Linux is still written "for programmers, by programmers"). The 2.6 kernel series has many such changes -- making the task of writing libraries and applications simpler and easier to debug. Amenities such as HAL and UDEV relieve programmers from having to deal with problematic situations and lets them focus on their code.

While desktop users ultimately benefit from such "modernization", the true beneficiaries are the developers themselves.

The boot disk image for Slackware 12.0 will no longer fit on a floppy, hence the need for a USB stick.

Patrick wants to support 11.0 longer than usual.
from the changelogs:

I had a difficult time installing 12.0 myself - having to do with the display driver and a couple other things. Having used 11 for so long, I simply reverted and couldn't be happier (well, a few things still leave me booting into Vista for more than patching security holes and updating AV software).

Good point about distro flavors; I don't know how concerned Patrick is about losing users to the Ubuntu/OpenSUSE/Fedora empire, but I like slackware precisely because of the lack of overhead that those distros incur with all of their SELinux and hal/automated hardware tools, not to mention the package managers. Having used Slackware alongside Ubuntu and OpenSUSE for some time, for development purposes as well as routine web browsing and office use, I really appreciate the stability, predictability, and efficiency of Slackware. It boots in half the time, and runs twice the apps, twice as fast. Not to mention that server configuration is a nightmare on the others, and Ubuntu's desktop of choice is Gnome - even with Fedora, starting with Gnome immediately shows some of the dispositions of the distro - KDE is so much more customizable and comes with so many apps. Gnome is a very nice desktop environment and I think the GTK concept has spread in a wider sense than KDE's equivalent. Maybe I'm just predisposed to KDE because Mandrake ran it (my first distro) and Slackware has come exclusively with KDE.

In short, hackers like Slackware for its hackability, and dislike the "black box" (no pun intended) method of other distros. Having not ventured into Gentoo (but a few steps) , I cannot speak for the other distro that appeals to hackers, and Debian never caught my eye for any period of time.

Finally, Slackware is my distro of choice, even if I will practically have my own slackware distro after all the mods.

Ok I understand. So does it make writing applications easier for you?

Yeah I know but it wouldn't have been that hard to have the choice of several smaller kernel (the way it use to be) rather than two really big ones, IMO.

Well yeah, but I tend to generally loose the mods when I upgrade. And in case you don't format, scripts might end up conflicting with each other. At least that's my experience.



All in all I know things aren't that bad. I have been running 12 for a few days since 1 of my hard drive failed recently and I must admit to be well impressed by the speed of it (not by the speed of the booting process with the default kernel though ). Would I say that I am happy with it? Don't know...

Well, at least in my case, I found that the "generic" kernel won't boot my machine... and that's the SMALL one. I can only imagine a kernel of smaller size would refuse even more dogmatically to boot.

As far as booting from a floppy disk, I would recommend compiling a kernel specifically for the hardware you want to boot from in an emergency, and using that.

I have to say that I wasn't sure about Slack 12. I was used to 11, and I thought that perhaps a few too many changes had been made to 12 to keep it stable... but, I've been proven wrong. Sure, there were a few niggling things to work through (the HAL permissions fiasco comes to mind), but all in all I'm very pleased with it. Not like Kubuntu, which is too stupid to make an install I can access, much less one that boots. In all honesty, I've tried almost a dozen different distros on this laptop, and Slackware's the only one I can honestly say I could deal with.

-Slackware installed fine, no hassle, no rebooting to fix lilo or anything else.
-Puppy and Kubuntu64 Gutsy Gibbon tribe 5 boot, but I'm not pleased. Puppy never would load proper X-windows.
-Ubuntu, DSL, Kubuntu Feisty Fawn, Fedora Core 7, Kanotix... all choked.

Amen to that. I've done a lot of distro hopping over the last 5 years and Slackware is the best version of Linux........period.

About creating a smaller kernel -I think you'll find it quite difficult to produce a 2.6 kernel which will fit on a floppy at all. If it still won't fit after trimming down the hardware support to just your machine, it may help to disable the generic x86 enhancements.