Forgot to mention: Package management and keeping the system up-to-date has become a lot easier with slackpkg and several 3rd party tools, such as src2pkg, sbopkd and slackyd. Personally, I see some good things even in slapt-get --- a tool with useful features, when used with care.

gargamel



sorry, but the news made me so enthusiastic, that I got off-topic a bit...
What I was going to say: a 64bit release was the only thing I was missing, and now the wait is over. GREAT!

This is precisely why I hesitated to install Slamd64 on this system. I was hoping instead that Slackware would go 64-bit by time the release went to 13. My hunches were correct, based on the increasing number of signs, like x86_64 appearing in the SlackBuilds. I wanted especially to make sure that Slacky.eu would have a reason to release their packages in 64-bit, since the overwhelming number of packages I have installed, is from Slacky.eu.

Hopefully with this move, and the upcoming switch to KDE4, there will be no applications on my system that won't be available in 64-bit, and KDE4.

Shingoshi

Should anyone really expect anything other than this kind of attitude coming from the OFFICIAL party line?

Get real! You shouldn't expect anything else.
Shingoshi

I'll wait for the stable version coming out.

Awesome work guys, been waiting with anticipation for an official slackware 64 release.

I'm now running slackware64-current, switched over from slamd64-current today.
Works great, as expected.

I've been playing with it for an hour now - so far so good Slackbuilds work perfectly after changing i486 to x86_64.

Now who is being arrogant here?

I think this comment is out of line here.
We're all celebrating this next phase in the evolution of a wonderful distro here, with loads of work done by people without any financial compensation, usually in their spare time.

If you made it your point to include the quote of gargamel's post, there would be no reason to question why I said this. So since you chose to omit the quote, let me restate it here.

The point was the implied insult against the heroic efforts that others have had to engage in to provide what Slackware had so long neglected to do. Please don't misquote me again.

Shingoshi

@Shingoshi:

I have reached the age where I know when it is useless to enter a discussion.

Feel free to think what you want.
Heck, you can even call me arrogant if you wish.

niels.horn,
I wasn't calling you arrogant. I was merely stating that gargamel's observation was NOT without merit. I have often had to deal with the constant drone of "Slackware isn't 64-bit", any time an issue came up relating to the implementation of 64-bit kernels/builds/packages and the tools to run them. It really got to be pathetic. The general (fundamentalist) Slackware community looked down on anyone using using one of the unofficial distributions originally based on Slackware.

So now we have Slackware in 64-bit. Tada. Slackware64. And by the way, I was criticized for suggesting that Slackware-13 would be available shortly. With the introduction of Slackware64 (thinking both versions would be released simultaneously), it's no longer a question, but a soon coming reality.

Shingoshi

Depends on how you interpret it doesn't it.

That was intended to read as "We wanted to be sure we had everything working correctly before we released it to the public".

Slackware64(tm) was built from the ground up and required a *lot* of testing. Care was taken to give attribution where it was due and the usual Slackware(tm) standards were followed.

The non-official ports were thanked for their respective contributions and I know at least one of these maintainers is in no way offended by the announcement.

Quoting the actual text from the announcement.
I fail to see how you came to your interpretation.

Here it seems to be more clear that there was no slander intended. Rather, the comment is an unqualified statement of gratitude for the work of others. Albeit by the allowance of Slackware to take it's time to do things in a manner more consistent with the original philosophy. I can still see though how this might have been misread to mean something else. Because there still remains the implication that the Slackware philosophy is the only valid philosophy.

But a larger question remains. If these other distributions were doing such a great job, why didn't Slackware proper (meaning the primary developers) accept their work to begin with, and simply provide guidance and build upon it. I'm guessing to some extent, philosophy motivated by ego is to account for this. The very fact that Slackware64 is not multilib, suggests there would have been significant disagreement about it's implementation. That's sad. Because by not providing multilib by default to the Slackware community, a significant portion of that community is left out from a direct upgrade path.

It was because of Slamd64's implementation of multilib that I was able to install Slamd64 directly from a running Slackware system using slapt-get. And while there were some issues resulting from the upgrade, they were mostly due to packages I had built myself. I would have liked a more complete solution from Slackware64. And without multilib, it's not complete.

Shingoshi

@ samac
There are also some places that are hardcoded for slack32. e.g. the directories when making CD iso's. All you have to do is add a 64 to the end. Example:

Need more seeders on the torrent link