Future of Slackware
 

I've been a Slackware user for awhile - since ver. 9.0 till now - ver. 10.1. My admiration for this great distro is fading, stepping aside room for disappointment, loyality dissipating. Hardware is evolving with an enourmous pace. I see other distroes accomodate quickly to the new hardware system variations and optimize their distroes by use of various kernel configurations. I want to ask, where are the Slackware opimized kernels - AMD & Intel, various SMPs, 64 bit support? I see even other Slackware clones implement features I've been waiting for - 2.6.x kernel as a primary choice - Slax, 64 bit support - Slamd64. And I ask myself why Slackware does not offer support for the latest technologies and what Slackware is waiting for. Or maybe I've waited too long?
So, do you think Slackware has a future?

Slackware users prefer to do most everything themselves typically. That's one of the core concepts behind Slack IMO... No hand holding, Keep it Simple Stupid, and as Vanilla as possible leaving the customization up to the user. If you want 5,000 different bastardized kernel flavors, then switch to Fedora.... ;)

The reasons why you are disheartened with Slack is the exact reason why I love it so much...

Neverending Slackware
 

Yea, jong357!
Tweaking, tweaking and once more tweaking. That keeps our brain occupied and give us intellectual challenge. Slackware is one testing-your-ability magical distro. Love it!!!!!!!

Slackware waits for and serves nobody. Most Slackware users can and usually do compile their own kernels with whatever patches they feel suitable for their setup. SMP support is again, something kernel level. As for 64-bit support, you have answered your own question by mentioning Slamd64.

By the way, nobody forced anyone to stay with Slackware. If it doesn't work for you, then hey... perhaps it's time to move on.

Does Slackware have a future... well, I'm not a fortuneteller, so I won't make any predictions. What I do know is that Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distro, so it does have a heritage.

slackware has its loyal base, but how long can this band of slackers last??? lol. Hmmm i wouldn't mind starting a poll to find out the average age of a slacker, and if its something you warm to when you want a simple life or slackware is something that will die when its base is gone.

Not trying to start a flame war or anything, but take a look at another distribution that's "slow", Debian. Compare the official releases, Debian's even "further behind," yet they also have a massive fan base. Like others have already mentioned, you can add support to everything you say is missing yourself, or choose another distro that has already done what you want for you. Your choice. :)

First thing I do for any distro is compile my own kernel, I find it much easier to configure the OS once you have your own kernel in place.

For those who aren't comfortable compiling their own kernels, I would get out an old box, and experiment, and try. It isn't that difficult and I only had one incident where I tottally killed the system. It was Easily rescued however, (just booted from the old kernel).

I do wish there was official 64 bit release of slackware.

The reason why I still love slackware is the control that I don't feel or get from other distros. You don't have to wait for slackware to port anything, Just DIY!

Blasphemer ingvildr!

And the verdict is...
Slackware Linux is the oldest Linux distribution on the planet that's still in development and there's a reason for that (well, actually there are many). It's stable, fast, and has a reputation for the most excellent quality control in the business. Patrick Volkerding is no slouch when it comes to ensuring that no matter how new or old a package may be, it needs to be proven solid or it's just not going to be part of Slackware Linux. Period. With this kind of leadership, you simply can't go wrong.

Would I recommend it to a new Linux user? Probably not, but I can tell you I recommend it to everyone else. It has a reputation for being difficult to work with but let me assure you that this is definitely not the case. If you're not afraid to work at a console prompt you will have no worries at all with Slackware. For some reason the word "console" tends to go hand in hand with "difficult" for many people and for that I blame Microsoft. They've pushed the notion that typing is bad. The mouse is your friend. Well, folks, the bottom line is that in some cases the mouse is actually a hindrance to real productivity. That is a fact. Once you understand some of the basics, the console becomes less intimidating... and even starts to resemble a friendly face you're happy to see once you get home from your day job where they prefer to incessantly shove Windows down your throat.

If you've never tried Slackware Linux, consider this my invitation to give it a shot. Whether it's on a spare computer/partition/drive makes no difference. I think you'll be glad you did. The biggest reason that it's the worlds oldest living distro is that everyone who uses it sticks with it. Period. If you do decide to give it a shot, there's plenty of reference material on the Internet for you to make use of, as well as some great places to get help from real people. LinuxPackages.net Forums are a great place to start. The Slackware Handbook Project is another place to get some pointers, as is Alan Hicks' Slackware Book. I've included some useful links for you below. That's all for now. Until next time...

Keep Slacking!

Hey! I'm 15 and love slackware. I love it cause I can do anything without much complaint. Compiling your own kernel is not that hard, and its extremely fun to make the stuff that gives the most problems like sound and scanners. It won't be going away. It even has more heritage as a distro if you think of it as the modern version of the grandfather distro, SLS. I was talking to somebody who used and is still using (in an extremely hacked way) that distro at home and he said that all the distro specific stuff like aaa_base and elvis were in SLS.

Here are some reviews as well:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9752
http://www.geektimelinux.com/index.php?q=node/view/208

Here is also overall estimation by madpenguin

"
OVERALL RATING
Target Audience: Almost Everyone
Features: Excellent
Performance: Excellent
Hardware Support: Good
Usability: Excellent
Management: Excellent
Documentation: Excellent (99% online documentation)
Worth The Asking Price: Yes
Stars 9 out of 10

one thing about slack i do really like is its installer. A nice mix of text and ncurses it never seems hard just simple and modest unlike something like suse's yast which looks like a screen covered in rainbow sick.

I would have to say Slack is one of my favorate distros, I use it for learning and with rdesktop I'm using it to admin my windows network at work, my desktop has better uptime then my servers (no surprise). Slack I suggest to anyone that wants to really learn how Linux works.

slacks documentation is ok, but when you look at gentoo, freebsd or openbsd's docs its clear which needs a little work.

One of the pros for Slackware is that it is so vanilla, that most of the documentation provided will apply to it. So there isn't as much need for specialized instructions like the gentoo people go through to install a system.

well... This is all that I think about using slack or even using linux... the challenge, the twiking and etc. You couldnt said better. :cool:

I knew about Slackware when I was getting pissed off with the damn Mandrake installer. Nothing was working. I wanted something more.

Someone just told me:
"When you know Slackware, you know Linux... when you know Red Hat, all you know is Red Hat." (or any distro that applies)

Then I gave it the try. I just loved it.

Check this out!


Peace :cool:

I use Slackware Linux for years on my workstation, and X is the first thing I configure when I install Slackware Linux. Even "worst", X is the first thing I start when I boot Slackware Linux (sure, it is quite different on a server). Do not get me wrong : I am not afraid to use the console as I am enough skilled in shell programming to work in console.

But honestly, for editing documents, surfing the Web and such daily, office work most people have to do with a workstation, a text console is quite inadequate : X put you in far more comfortable conditions than a text console. By the way, even if many people argue that "the mouse is bad", with well-designed X programs such as IceWM, ROX and Firefox, one can work with the keyboard only : that is how I work with X most of the time ... except when I'm drinking a coffee :)

Slackware Linux is good for people who really wish to learn and understand how a Linux system works, be it with a console or with X. This is because of an important feature of Slackware Linux : it has the least "administrative" customisations, which ones always put a Grand Canyon between a final user and the Knowledge.

--
LiNuCe

I use Slackware Linux for +10 years and, believe it or not, I have never read the Slackware book. Everything I know was learned from HOWTOs, documentation provided with softwares and Web documentations, but nothing from the official documentation. Slackware Linux has so much specificities/customizations that the only documentation it should really need is about the installation :)

--
LiNuCe

It is always good to be specific with the problem you are facing. I did not at all want to use Slackware, at one time. I was a FreeBSD guy. But then, FreeBSD has simply not been able to keep up with Linux.

I tried to install RedHat recently. (I wanted to install Sybase 11.9.2). Somehow it had a complaint with the hardware and didn't boot. (It installed ok). Then Downloaded 7 CDs of Debian (I have no broadband). Debian wouldn't give me sound - but it detected the ESS card ok, (the other ISA PNP creative Vibra 16 was not detected). I am new to Debian I admit, but why would I want to learn debian-specific hacks to get sound to work (my username was added to audio group).

I finally installed slackware. I admit, I myself feel frustrated at Slackware's lack of availability of packages and use of old software like sendmail (when we could have postfix). I have never been able to install mplayer successfully.

still, this is one distro that just works. No bad surprises here.
(yes, it got my ISA PNP card alright).

A better thing to question is about the future of "Future of Slackware" threads that continue to surface here.

I'm not a Slackware expert; I've been using Slack since 10.0. But, I really love Slack. It forces me to learn; the other distros have GUIs for everything. Using Slack makes me more competent on the command line; I'm finally using vim at run level three.
I've used Fedora, BSD, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Red Hat 9, Caldera OpenLinux 2.3, but Slack is my favorite distro.
I recently received a beat up old Pll 266 with 128 MB RAM, 4 GB HD. It had XP Pro on it and tons of spyware. It now happily runs Slackware 10.1 I am very much looking forward to downloading 10.2.
I am a huge fan of Pat's creations! I'm sticking with Slackware!

I'm just reeeeealy waiting to 10.2 release. By anticipations of Slackware addicts this forthcoming distro must be a breakthrough. Can't wait!

Sorry, but telling about sendmail as about "old" software is the same nonsense like telling about Slackware or Debian in the same manner. Sendmail is improving and has matured for years and is still the most used *nix SMTP server in these days. Yes, it would be better to have an option of alternate MTAs like Postfix or qmail, but it would require more maintenance of Slackware team (of Pat, acually).

Well if you never could compile it probably you couldn't do it in other distributions. And if you wanted a precompiled package (like I guess you'll be getting in other distributions), there's one at http://linuxpackages.net that has always worked fine for me.

It will be an effort to do that for the first time. But for subsequent releases, he'd have the build scripts to compile newer versions of Exim or PostFix. Same goes for Firefox vs mozilla/netscape, firebirdSQL/Postgre vs mySQL etc. And haven't most of the people here been saying compiling applications is easiest on a Slack? Who can do it better than the Slack team itself.

It's true, creating SlackBuild scripts is not so hard and compiling newer versions with it is even simpler, but it's not enough. It requires to track security reports, adapt distribution or build script to changes in software development (it may require another library or other version, it may conflict with files from other official package, etc.) and do at least basic functionality checks before release.
I personaly miss much more squid(proxy), openldap(LDAP implementation) and heimdal(network authentication) - there is no alternative in Slackware distribution or is extremly insecure and so unusable(NIS in comparsion to Heimdal).

What? Slackware is left behind? You must be kidding!

Am using 2.6.12.4 (latest at the point of writing-you know how fast those numbers change these days) kernel, gcc4.0, and whatever I like to install.

:)

Slackware is what Linux is all about.

My first Linux distribution was Slackware 2.4. Over the years, generally for professional reasons, I've tried many other distributions. My Centos machine exists because we have some Redhat Enterprise at work. I have Windows XP running on a Suse 9.1 machine using Vmware. My Debian Sarge box exists because I moved my wife to Xandros.

Though Slackware marches to its own drum, it is reliable and works well. Though I might have some quibbles with the lack of sys v initialization routines, the headaches are generally minor. My slackware machines seem to need the least maintenance in order to continue to function flawlessly.

VIVAT apolinski
 

Couldn't have said any better!
You know that some people here on forums calls us, Slack users, the "Slackware Religion"? People think that addiction to Slackware is pure idealistic

The connection with the Church of the SubGenius does not really help with that religion thing.