Slackware = "most unix-like" distribution ?
 

I keep reading that Slackware strives to be the "most unix-like" distribution. What does that actually mean? I've tried searching, but it's sort of a tough one. Most searches result in the phrase "Slackware strives to be the most UNIX-like", which obviously doesn't get me too far.

Is it about configurations or directory structures? For instance, Arch stores network config in rc.conf (I think) and Debian has /etc/network/interfaces (I think). Obviously I'm a bit new to all this.

Or maybe directory structure? I understand some distributions re-organize things like /usr in both structure and purpose?

Just trying to get my head around the whole "Linux thing" - trying to understand why some distros thrive and some crash, etc.

Thanks!

There have been many, many different implementations of Unix. Mac OS X is UNIX. Solaris is UNIX. AIX is UNIX. Xenix was UNIX.

If one day, eventually, perhaps, maybe, one of these people who claims "most UNIX like" for Slackware or any other distro actually defines which UNIX they refer to then I'll probably fall off my chair.

btw there is not one Linux based OS which complies to the UNIX specification as defined by Single UNIX Specification, so the whole business of asserting UNIXness is doubly bogus.

Best just to leave them to their fantasies and use the one you like the best. If it's Slackware then good for you. If it's something else....good for you too.

I don't know if it is or not, I actually never got my hands on a "pure/true" Unix, but it is my perception that it is a somehow "hardcore" distribution. You can tell just by reviewing some posts you see on this forum, where people coming from other distros would find it very difficult to achieve certain things that seemed easy on theirs. See this for an example of what I mean, posting #10 is the most interesting IMO.

And from my personal experience, I can tell you that I turned to Slackware exactly because of the statement that says that Slackware is the most Unix-like distro. I started with Mandriva back in October of 2006, installed it with a graphical partitioning tool it has (don't remember the name) and then I used it for a couple of months, thinking "wow, I'm using Linux". Then when I first tried to compile something from source, I found out I didn't had any development tools available, so I knew it was time to get a real distro. I spent around month and a half researching, and everywhere I read that Slackware was the most Unix-like, and since that was what I wanted, I went for it, ignoring the warning coming with it, that it was too "difficult".

With Slackware I had to learn to choose a partitioning scheme as well as to partition a disk, to install the whole system, to choose what I want or not, what kernel to use and a lot of other things that have given me understanding of how things work. Some things were not a walk in the park, and you can see my actual postings, I still have a lot of things I don't understand or I'm not able to fix without asking for help, but it has been/is a great constant learning experience. ;)

Slackware has a simliar installer to the BSDs (FreeBSD, NetBSD); it is definitely Unix-like.
I am a Unix user, but, I choose Slackware for my primary OS.
Slackware rules. :)

I am inspired every day with the time and work the Slackware team does. I laugh everyday about slackware being a NOT on the bleeding edge well trust me it runs a vanilla kernel and that means alot. Because I run Slackware I work and trouble shoot every thing new I can find on Slackware it runs KISS O/S
Keep It Simple

From what I have read, the unix-like thing usually refers to the structure of the rc.d directory. See the "sidebar" on the right hand side at the top of this page:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/li...lack.html#side

I come from a Unix background (if you can call it that), working up from GECOS (on Honeywell mainframes -- not strictly "UNIX" but pretty similar and born from early collaborations), to System 3 (running on Cromemco MC68000 boxes in a couple of megabytes of memory on 50M disk drives; go figure), to "pure" System V, Release 4 (I have a source license and a bunch of 9-track tapes), to Solaris (which is pretty much SVR4), to SCO (also SVR4) to Slackware Linux. What I have always liked about Unix is that SVR4 is, for all practical purposes, the same irrespective of platform -- you can walk out of one development shop into another and you're immediately comfortable -- and what I've always like about Slackware is that it is the most un-fooled-around-with version of Linux I've found; Slackware doesn't do things "for" you (or, more accurately, "to" you) like other distributions seem to insist upon. And I can, generally without twiddling, develop software on a Slackware box and port it to a Solaris box without changing anything; i.e., compile and go, and vice-versa.

There are, to be sure, a couple of subtle differences in the way a few standard utilities are invoked (there are GNU extensions in some utilities that make them behave differently) but once burned twice shy and you learn quickly to use what you've got instead of what might be nice (though it usually doesn't matter). I have more trouble going from Slackware to, say, Ubuntu than I have ever had going from Unix to Slackware (bear in mind that I'm primarily a developer, so I'm more interested in building applications than I am in using applications).

Bottom line is that Slackware adheres to M. Douglas McIlroy's Unix Philosophy: A Program or Function Should Do One Thing and Do It Well.

Hi,
UNIX is UNIX! MAC OS X is not UNIX. Solaris is not UNIX, but a single certified UNIX that was released as a propriety OS for SPARC. AIX is Not UNIX but a propriety IBM release. Xenix is not UNIX, M$ attempt to release a UNIX like OS. UNIX is UNIX. A UNIX based OS is not necessarily a UNIX OS.

Each of the indicated OS are the Vendors attempt to be a UNIX like OS or a variant of UNIX. It may be semantics to you but UNIX is the only UNIX. Others are variants of the UNIX OS. Sure there are attempts to be defined by the 'Single UNIX specifications' but a lot of vendors take privileges. So you should already be on the floor from your own statement. :)

Breath in slowly and breathe out slowly! That should stop the laughing. :)

I'm laughing all the way to the bank since I don't have to pay the UNIX license for my GNU/Linux.

Actually Mac OS X is UNIX, as is Solaris. Xenix was UNIX (licensed from At&T). UNIX has a specification, a definition. It's not defined by the act of asserting one's opinion and level of amusement on LQ. Operating systems such as OS X and Solaris are UNIX and can legally describe themselves as such, while GNU/Linux may not. That's why it is described as UNIX-like. UNIX is a trademarked name and those operating systems which decribe themselves as UNIX do so because they meet the Single UNIX Specification and are certified to be UNIX.

You can very easily check these things for yourself, as can anyone else who wants to.

You can visit http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/unix.html and read and so on.

I'm not advocating or using OS X or any other UNIX btw. I use GNU/Linux.

Your assertion that OS X, Solaris etc are not UNIX is plainly and demonstrably erroneous. These are not UNIX-like. They are UNIX, while GNU/Linux is UNIX-like.

GNU's Not UNIX....does that phrase ring any bells?

Isn't it awful when facts get in the way of dearly held religious belief? Keep on laughing :)

Seems I stirred up a hornet's nest; that's good right?

I'm starting to get the point of why so many people who have been using UNIX for so long prefer Slackware. Seems like a good starting point, with a steep learning curve, for someone new to this whole thing. We've been looking over different distributions for various server apps, and it really seems like Slackware and Debian are the main contenders unless you're willing to pay.

We don't develop any apps here, just looking for a few simple things like DHCP, DNS, and then maybe a few desktops migrated from Windows so our team can get used to the idea. Tried Ubuntu, openSuSE, Arch (liked this one the most so far), and Fedora. It's a tough job pulling people away from Windows after 10+ years, though.

Thanks everybody, that was way more informative than any google search.

So I started thinking a little bit more about this, and I realized that a few people mentioned Slackware "only does what you tell it to". How does that relate to the fact that Slack has become full DVD install? Granted, you can select what packages you want installed, but there's so many with such vague descriptions I can't imagine anyone actually sits through that whole process? Doesn't that leave you open to a bit of randomness just having all that stuff float around?

The free community version of RHEL would be another distro to consider for server side software. CentOS 5.3 was just released.

Another of those vague expressions of woolly thinking, apparently conducted in the style of an introvert engaged in deep navel gazing (or maybe someone on tranquilisers or religion). For this to be a unique virtue a person would have to demonstrate that all other distros have mysterious processes that run without being instructed to do so. A few have spiffy update notifiers and whizzy media players with discovery services and so on. But plenty don't. Please remember these GNU/Linux operating systems are entirely open to the user. Nothing is forbidden. Regardless of your choice of distro you can enable or disable or remove any service as you like. You can uninstall the kernel while it's loaded in RAM if you like.

Are there really people out there who deconstruct every action and command into its component parts? Booting would take all day. Can a person (fantastically and bizarrely) simultaneously claim to use and understand a computer and OS while regarding automation with suspicion?

But why not attempt to make the least automated computer operating system? It might be fun. Here's my offering:

http://img.zdnet.com/techDirectory/ABACUS.GIF

It only does exactly what it's told but I'm worried the frame is superfluous.


*so does a good dog.

It doesn't really relate. Most likely they're referring to the fact that Slackware doesn't do things like package dependency tracking, doesn't do much to customize the software that's included, and doesn't enable many things by default. Also the install assumes very little about how you want to configure things like disk partitioning, LVM, etc., at least as compared to many other distributions.
No matter how much software you install off the DVD, your system will still be relatively vanilla to start.

I can't speak for anyone else, but during a new install at the very least I remove the packages I obviously don't need/want. Yes, there are *alot* of things to sift through, and there's no doubt I miss something every time, but I also check installed packages after the fact and remove things I missed. My guess is alot of people do the same.

Even if you don't pick + choose what you're installing, there aren't many things running by default. So while the package selection will be as random as what the maintainer(s) decided to includ on the DVD, what the system is actually doing/running is not much different than if you chose things very carefully.

As to the original question, I think you're going to have a hard time getting a simple answer. Since there are/were so many different "flavors" of Unix, and so much difference between them, even defining "Unix" is hard enough. AIX is a type of Unix. But I really don't think you could say Slackware is like AIX. The same applies to HPUX and any number of other Unixes.

IMHO it doesn't much matter anyway. Slackware is Slackware. Some things are similar to other systems, some things aren't.

I coded C for a few years on a PDP-11/34 running Unix version 7. I don't see any real meaning in the phrase "most Unix-like" -- GNU/Linux offers the functionality of Unix, pretty much, with a huge number of improvements. What more do you want?

As mentioned above, there is a legal meaning to "Unix" but apart from that, I don't see the point in belaboring it. Slack is a nice hands-on distro that's pretty solid as long as you don't have cutting edge or exotic software needs. It's not Unix, just like no other Linux distro is Unix.

I don't have any UNIX or development background. I started around 1993 with DOS5 while in junior high school. After using every version of Windows from 3.11 to XP I decided I wanted to get back to a commandline OS with emphasis on stability and functionality. I wanted to get away from as much "handholding" and gui wizards as possible. My search led me to Slackware. As for the "most UNIX-like" description, I interpreted it as; stable and powerful with emphasis on commandline tools and resource conservation. Maybe because that's what I was looking for, and that's what I got, and I've never looked back.

Don't take "UNIX-like" literally, as if Slackware were trying to mimic UNIX, but figuratively, as what are UNIX's strengths and Slackware strives to achieve those same strengths.

I do, too, for the same reasons I left Windows. I use a gui for Firefox and OpenOffice and occasionally k3b, but everything else I pretty much do in a terminal, even mounting flash drives and activating my wireless connection.

I'm not familiar with that book, but that's a good definition of stability, which Slackware is known for.

Not a book (that would be, uh, too many words to adhere to the philosophy, eh?). Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy.

This is correct, up to a point. However, many other distributions will break if you install things beyond the capability of the package manager. Things may still function correctly, but automated upgrades may break whatever functionality one may be attempting to achieve.

By contrast, nothing is beyond Slackware's package manager. You want to create your own package? The tools are provided for you. There is no other distribution available (apart from Slackware derivatives) that makes it as easy to create and install your own packages. Debian makes this process nightmarishly difficult. Too bad if you want something that's not in the repositories for your current version.

Also, under Slackware, the complete build environment is installed straight out of the box. You don't need to install umpteen-gazillion *-devel packages just to compile things. You can do it immediately.
These sort of snide commentaries and observations are often made by Debian users, without considering the validity of Slackware as an alernative choice.

Believe it or not, there are good reasons for not wanting things like automatic dependancy resolution. What if I need a tool for a specific job that doesn't the require the 43 dependancies that Debian wants to install on my behalf? It doesn't know what I need. I know what I need.
Well said.

Of course


Nah, lets make it more complex insted, I'd say a bit suspicious for me, but hey it works, right.

I wouldn't agree more.

Actually I do consider Slackware one of the few valid choices of distribution, on the grounds that

1. it works

2. it stands alone, it isn't derived

3. it works

My criticisms (OK snide, but I thought funny) are not of Slackware but of the religious sentiment and behaviour around it. For a distribution which supposedly demands some clear and focused thought processes to install and configure, its advocates really produce some surprisingly unfocused, uninformed hocus pocus waffle, which as often as not is accompanied by a jaundiced view and misrepresentation of other similar systems. Here's an example:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...40#post3491540

I don't use Ubuntu, I don't like Ubuntu (for rather different reasons), but I can also recognise this as something unpleasant. It's either deception or self deception. And it went completely unremarked. This kind of narrow, parochial thinking is found expressed every day here. It's called preaching to the choir. I've noticed that when you come across groups routinely indulging in this behaviour that they have long since ceased to value or even engage in rational thought. It's religion. And looking at Slackware and J.R. Dobbs I can't help thinking that this is a truly sad irony.

I think Slackware users might do better to promote their favourite on the basis of facts rather than silly sentiment, bad mouthing everyone else and saying a lot of things which aren't true.

It's OK to say "I use because I like it". That stands alone as a good reason and needs no justification or explanation.

How about: "I measured the performance in terms of X,Y, Z and Slackware was best.

or

"I've run it for years and it's thoroughly reliable and consistent"

"It's easy to administer"

"It upgrades reliably"

"It's always properly supported with a security mailing list"

and so on.

That makes sense to me whereas the constant denigration of everything else combined with unfounded assertions of intangible/notional/fictional qualities-beyond-definition doesn't.

And one problem with claiming that other distro's methods are impossibly complex and "nightmarishly difficult" is that when the users of those other distros read that, their thought process might be something like "Hmmm, that's funny, it didn't seem difficult to me. These guys must be a bit....special..." It doesn't make you seem more credible. Stick to the facts and maybe people will see the virtues of your arguments and of your preferred distribution. Argue on the basis of misinformation, disinformation, unfounded criticism and hysterical groupthink and you will win over people who really can see the emporer's new clothes.

That special tool with 43 needless dependencies....can't find it anyhere. Might it lie just the other side of the looking glass?

Well that is not entirely true. Making packages is easy on all distributions that use tar.gz package managers.
eg. Arch Linux or CRUX.
In fact on both of these its much easier since a large part of the process SlackBuilds use too has been automated.

Package management is what i dislike most about the *BSD's (and all Linux distributions not using tar.gz PMSs). Even though they all offer the convinience of both ports and packages, making your own package for whatever reason is not as convinient as in Slackware, or at least it doesnt seem to be.

Yes, infact, the more you understand computers, the more suspicion you'll have. Computers are dumb machines, they blindly follow instructions. Automation scripts/systems are written by humans. Humans make mistakes and have oversights. Also, unless the humans spend an extreme amount of time coding and testing the automation system for every possible scenario it's ever likely to meet then sooner or later its going to encounter a scenario it wasn't coded to deal with and make a bad decision. I've worked with automation on UNIX servers and as a Systems Programmer on IBM mainframes, I've learnt through experience that treating automation with a healthy amount of suspicion is exactly the right thing to do.

That doesn't mean I'm entirely anti-automation. There are places for it and there are places that are best left to someone with the capacity to reason through a problem, rather than blindly follow a set of predetermined if clauses.

Dude, well-said!
I love Slackware because it does not have dependency checking. From my perspective package managers in other distros work up to a point and then they often break. If I need to make a package in Slackware that requires a dependency I can install the dependency.
The Slackware way works for me. :)

Yes, but is the desktop user or server administrator really going to inspect every script, link and binary in /bin /sbin/ /usr/bin and /usr/sbin /usr/local/bin? Of course not. Whichever distribution is used we already have placed our trust in the upstream contributors and the distributor, and of course all the people who test, feedback and contribute. This leaves us free to focus on the stuff that matters, stuff which makes a difference to us. Slackware, like every other GNU/Linux distro, is packed full of preconfigured and automatically configured scripts and binaries. That's why the thing works without taking a month to build and install like LFS or 3 days like Gentoo!

It isn't a hard, clear line and naturally different circumstances dictate different levels of inspection/audit/attention, but suspicion (or justifiable caution) too often becomes superstition, and intelligent choice, or discrimination, is usurped by received dogma.

I think that people who claim they want this granular auditing and maximum UNIXness (whatver that may be) should eat their own dogfood. Slackware is way too automated for anyone who says these things for real (instead of simply singing from the communal hymnsheet). It's time for those guys to download and build Solaris from source. It can be done and it is apparently the nirvana of which they speak. Any takers?

When you (or anyone, in general) refer to slackware's package manager, are you talking about slapt-get? Or just the classic .tar.gz configure/make/make install?

Does slapt-get stand up/compare to the regular apt-get? It seems strange to me, that if it did, more Debian users wouldn't turn to slackware for the best of both worlds?

Oh, and yes, I do have slackware installed and I am trying to muddle my way through it. Only bringing that up because whenever I do a google search, there's at least 3 guys in a thread that say "just install it and try it out!"

Thanks to everyone who's chiming in on this, it's really a confidence booster in the linux community - a nice counterpoint to anyone that says "well what if ian murdoch/patrick volerding/etc just decides tomorrow they've had enough? Then what happens to my OS?"

I didn't bring up the question of package management but a couple of true blue Slackware guys did so I'll mention it:

I have no issue with a distribution which elects the administrator to be the package manager's dependency handler. It's a valid approach and not nearly as onerous as people believe, especially if the distribution has the good sense to maintain a stable repository.

However this doesn't mean that dependency-checking package management is bad or will necessarily break any more than it means your brain will break doing it for yourself. Fundamentally the requirements are the same as with the Slackware model; a high quality and stable repository. It isn't rocket science to deal with a package's dependencies though with a very broad base of packages it necessarily requires the distribution to have plenty of people contribute.

Those distributions which don't pay enough attention to QA will always have trouble with dependency checking, regardless of which tools they use. But that's an issue with the standards required of their packagers and of the management of their repositories.

Dependency checking is one of those tasks that is entirely mundane. Check, check, fetch, check, fetch, ready, go. If this can't be reliably automated we should all give up and go back to waving incense and wailing at the sky.....oh wait, some of you did :p

I've compiled KDE from source in FreeBSD....that took days. :) Ports is an excellent package manager as is pkg_add. I've done the whole compile from source thing.
I prefer the middle way of Slackware; it allows me to install pre-built binary packages, I can use slackbuild scripts, I can make Slackware packages, and if I so choose I can compile from source.
You like apt-get and aptitude. Each to his own.
I like the logical design of Slackware. I get it.

Now for some "surprisingly unfocused, uninformed hocus pocus waffle" from a Slackware user who still regards himself as a relative newbie. I don't know or care whether Slackware is closer to Unix, closer to God, or even closer to the edge. All I can say is that Slackware gives me more incentive to learn and experiment than some other distros. With Debian, for instance, I feel my hands are tied - only loosely, but still...
A SlackBuild will tell you about dependencies, and if that doesn't, we can always find out by "waving incense and wailing at the sky" for answers from Bob.

That's nice but you can do all of that in numerous different distros. Nothing unique. The only difference from most is that you have to check the depends yourself...unless you use a buildscript and someone did that for you.... :scratch:

What makes some Slackers think that all normal packaging tasks can't be performed in other distros? It's pretty odd.

Install binary packages? Check

Install from distro's source package? Check (guess what, this is just like having the source...with a build script! It respects all your compile flags! Amazing!)

Compile & Install from upstream source? Check

Build own distributable package from upstream? Check


This idea that Slackware is unique in these respects is entirely unsupported by fact, yet it's routinely proposed as a Slackware virtue.

The "logical design"...another ethereal concept to add to the list of hocus pocus and pseudo-rational assertions. Maybe it's like intelligent design but with Bob Dobbs taking the place of the usual psycho?

Actually your reply is one of only a few that make sense to me, because you talk about your reaction and feeling as your reaction and feeling. That makes it an honest and well presented expression imo.

Neither.
slapt-get is a 3rd party add-on meant to add functionality to Slackware's native package management tools and make them behave like their Debian counter parts. You can find info on the Slackware tools here :
http://www.slackware.com/config/packages.php

AFAIK, slapt-get only emulates the basics of apt-get, and doesn't include as much funtionality.
As for Debian users turning or not to Slackware...Maybe they're happy with what they're using.

I can't believe I missed that this whole time. So this is the specific utility people are referring to when they say that Slackware's package manager doesn't do dependency resolution? Certainly have to look into this tonight!

Slackware does come with it's own package manager: pkgtool. You can also use slackpkg, which grabs the files from a mirror and then installs them - neither does dependency checking.

I know this was a statement and not a question but, I have thought about it quite often... Patrick IS Slackware. If he quits or something incapacitates him, you would think that we Slackers would be screwed.

I don't think that would be the case. Slackware seems to have a very loyal fan-base. I'm sure someone/organization would take over OR there would be forks.

Slackware fills a niche very nicely so, there's not 50 flavors waiting to fill it's shoes.

Sort of getting off topic here, but do these guys actually make a living with these distributions? I read recently (which doesn't necessarily mean it was a recent article) that the Debian team doesn't get a dime even with Ubuntu's success?

Back on topic - to get a feel for what's happening under the hood, I'm doing a Gentoo install right now (which is why I have spare time to be on here), and the term "sane" keeps coming up. I've heard this before, in reference to directory structure/installation habits, as well as compiling packages. Can anyone shed some light on this, or point me to some documentation? Every search thus far just turns up someone using the term "sane" in their post/blog/wiki, without actually describing what it is!

Yep, Linux guys think it's more Unix-like because it uses BSD-style init scripts and all the other Linux distros are System V-like.

Slackware isn't the only distro that is used by zealots and elitists. Some of your prior posts in this thread seem to perfectly demonstrate the superiority complex many Debian users seem to have.
Again, is this really unique to Slackware? I bet for every example from a Slacker you can find here, I could find 10 from "superior" Debian users.
OK. Maybe I was exaggerating slightly when I said that it is "nightmarishly difficult" to create a Debian package. In reality it isn't that hard, but the process is a lot more complicated than it needs to be. Emotional opinion it may be, but having used several distros over 10 years of playing with Linux, I can honestly say that I find it much easier to create a tgz package than an rpm or a deb.
You're not looking hard enough. Secondly, "needless" vs. "I don't need them..." There's a difference. My needs are different to yours. Why should I have to install everything you have if I don't need it?
There's that superiority complex again.
Gold! :D

In the interest of accuracy...
There are certainly other distributions besides Slackware that use a BSD style init. Arch and Crux both do, as well as Slackware based distributions. if you want to count them. There are likely others.

Also, there are other/newer styles that are being developed. A quick search turns up a decent, concise page on Wikipedia :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Init

Doesn't anyone else think that's funny?

Slackware is more UNIX like because it's like BSD and other distros are less UNIX like because they are like.....UNIX...ho hum.....

Great post Crito, but I think it's been subjected to a see no evil, hear no evil filter...

Whether someone wants to call it more or less UNIXlike is of no interest to me. Slackware's init approach is nothing like OpenBSD's (though I'm not sure how traditional that is), so calling it more BSDlike may not be entirely accurate either.


Slackware's approach brings all the advantages of modularity that SYSV init provides, while still maintaining most of the simplicity that BSD's scheme has. All the daemons on OpenBSD are started from one big rc file, which is a bit of a bind when you want to manually stop/start an individual subsystem/daemon.


I prefer Slackware's hybrid approach to the pure BSD init, which I feel is too cumbersome, and also to the pure SYSV design, which I find to be over-engineered. I think the debian guys went pretty much for a more or less pure SYSV approach, but then over-engineered and debian do seem to go hand in hand. ;) To be fair, I suspect that they had good reason and that the way the SYSV init-scripts use Snnxxxxx/Knnxxxxx stop/start links in the runlevel directories was a good match for their chosen software delivery system (packaging scheme).


Having said all that, I'd take either of them over Ubuntu's Upstart event driven init replacement, which IMO is just trying to be too clever for its own good and is just asking for trouble!


All the above is of course personal opinion.

I've never understood that argument either. People who make this claim obviously haven't seen true BSD-style init scripts. They're nothing like the scripts you get with Slackware. The fact that SysV-style init scripts fit neatly into Slack's init is testament to that.

This Slackware "hybrid" approach is an ingenious solution to the compatibility issue. I also find it extremely useful for packaging things which require init scripts.

unix like
 

Like back in the day when Slackware and things like SCO Xenix and some others were both installed with lots of 5.25 floppies. That was fun :).