Impressions of Slack64?
 

I've been thinking about creating a Slack64 DVD and installing it, but wondering what those who have installed it think about it. I'm already running the 32 bit -current, but am curious about the 64 bit version.

So, what are your thoughts and impressions about it so far? Worth taking the time to create the DVD and install? Any major problems?

I've been watching the threads here and so far haven't seen any posts about major issues, but thought I'd ask anyway.

I first installed Slackware64 -current on my laptop when it was released on May 19 or so. I was so impressed that after maybe one week, I removed Slackware-12.2 and have been running Slackware64 -current since. It's now running on my workstation, also; and the other 64-bit comp on this LAN will get it when Slackware-13.0 comes out.

At first I didn't like KDE 4.x.x, but with 4.2.4 it's okay. Took a bit of getting used to, and on my laptop I still prefer Fluxbox.

Both of these boxen have the default Slackware configurations for KDE, and all have Nvidia cards with the latest Nvidia proprietary driver for each model. None of the cards are late models, or even high end. I've had none of the problems that I've read about in the threads. It is noticeably faster on these boxen than 32-bit Slackware on most apps.

When the new kernel came out this week (2.6.29.6), I did not upgradepkg kernel-*. Instead, I installed kernel generic, firmware, modules, and source alongside the existing kernel.

My laptop has Slackware64 -current with no 32-bit libs or apps, not even the apps in ./extra/kde3-compat/. My workstation has gcc and glibc packages rebuilt for multilib. In it I'm running Wine and some pkgs that were built on that box which had no 32-bit source.

Everything is working fine for me.

My opinion:
- no major problems, and only very few minor ones
- overall very stable
- 64-bit is just nice for working with photos in Krita (or GIMP, if you prefer) with 8GB of RAM and no need to compile a kernel! :)
- In fact, image processing and similar tasks are, where you really get a noticeable benefit from 64 bits

I like it *very* much!

gargamel

I've been using Slack64-C since it came out and love it!
I've only had 1 glitch for maybe 2 days and the update today fixed it.
Everything that I had running on 32 runs on 64.
Most of my kde3 apps I built on Slamd64 12.2
I've got Freds 32 libs and kde-compat installed.
I don't use Gnucash but I went ahead and built it just to see if I could and it works perfect. Wine/Quicken works perfect.(what I use)
I have a media box setup with Slack64 with all the goodies - some of them from Eric.
It detects 7.8 of my 8 gbs of ram.
I don't see myself going back to 32.
If you have 64 equipment, I'd say, go for it.
Slack64-C seems to be solid.

Thanks folks, that's what I wanted to hear. Am downloading the files now so I can create the DVD.

Yesterday I installed current64 on my notebook and all my hardware worked out of the box. As a plus, now I have my suspend working again and with open video driver =]

The only major issue was with wpa_supplicant, as I reused my old script and found the new version does not use the option 'w' anymore.

First impression for me: pretty darned good :) I like it.
Though, coming from Slack 11, there's a lot of different stuff under the hood that I need to get familiar with.

For me, no major issues using 64-current, but I'm keeping a mental list of 'little' things which I haven't decided are bugs, or if they are I'm not sure what they're in yet.
I still have Slack 11 set up as my 100% dependable system for now, and probably won't switch over 100% until 64-stable is out, but I say go for it!

Sasha

GrapefruiTgirl,
Wow, I admire your patience and determination - it was worth waiting, though, wasn't it?

Indeed, I am glad to be trying it out :) but/and will have more questions is time goes on because there are a lot of things different from Slack 11.

It took about a week on and off to download my initial minimal install, and I've added a bit more to it since then.

Here's my excludefile that I'm using with a slightly modified version of Rob Workman's mirror script (modified to not delete stuff necessarily when changes are found):

Since this is a relatively new package, i'd advise you to investigate that you don't actually need seamonkey-solibs further.
It's needed at least by firefox, which you don't seem to exclude.

This is interesting!

Thank you for the hint, though my Firefox is apparently working fine, AKAICT, though I find it a touch slower than 2.0.0.20 which I attributed to not yet having had any fine tuning in about:config.

I will install seamonkey and see if I can detect any difference anywhere.

Thanks,
Sasha

PS - I do notice that mc is very slow to start much of the time, where before (Slack11) it started in a blink, it takes 5 or more seconds to start on 64-current, but I haven't looked into that yet.

Sahko was talking about seamonkey-solibs (a library package in L/) which is not the same as seamonkey (the browser in XAP/).

Eric

Yep, thanks Eric -- they both are coming with seamonkey* removed from the excludes.

Unless this has changed from 12.2, none of the seamonkey packages are needed for either FireFox or Thunderbird.

Cheers.

seamonkey-solibs is a package created after the 12.2 release. In 12.2 you need to install the whole seamonkey suite. It was splitted so people can still get NSS etc without installing seamonkey.
Its needed at least by the 64bit firefox package. I don't run the 32bit version anymore so i can't check but i don't think its different.

as well as flash and other stuff. thunderbird is one of them but i dont use it so i dont know if Slackware links NSS to it (which is the most likely). GrapefruiTgirl excludes it so i excluded it from my post too.
NSS might also be needed for openoffice.org