It used to be very popular distro. Nowadays, many people tend to thing that it's more obsolete than stable.

True, but look at the last 10 years


The difference between rolling release and development version is very subtle.

There is an option to install Gentoo from precompiled packages, and you can in turn build Slackware yourself. Gentoo also didn't switch to systemd. As I remember, eudev was created by Gentoo community and is used by them as well.

Now about the difference with Arch ... well, SBo scripts functionality are sometimes 100% copy of Arch PKGBUILDs

So, I believe that both distros are very close to Slackware by nature.

That would be great to introduce some voluntary feedback script for collecting statistics about Slackware versions and packages in use. I guess there are very few <14.0 installations.

I didn't mean that at all

Just because some consider it to be obsolete doesn't make it obsolete. My desktop is running 14.2 and is chugging along perfectly fine. And the very lively forum before you seems to show that there are still a decent number of people who don't think it is obsolete.

No one is saying that this hasn't be a long development cycle. It has been... the longest in Slackware history. But there is still work being done in -current and patches are still being provided for 14.0, 14.1, and 14.2 releases.

This is very false. The not-so-subtle difference is whether the platform is supporting actual releases. Slackware is currently supporting 6 releases, 14.0, 14.1, and 14.2, both in 32bit and 64bit form. If Pat stops supporting those and only has -current and does not intend on releasing another Slackware version, then, and only then, would Slackware be considered a rolling release.

-current is no different than a git snapshot (although, probably a bit more stable compared to some repos out there). It is a development version, nothing more, nothing less. I don't understand why people keep throwing the rolling release label out there, because the only similarity it has to a rolling release is staying relatively stable between updates. But since Slackware has supported versions, that AUTOMATICALLY makes it not fall into the rolling release category.

They can't be a 100% copy because the build systems are VERY different. You have to use a system tool to run PKGBUILDs, where SlackBuilds are simple shell scripts that can be run on any distro (except they'll break due to the lack of makepkg). Much of the PKGBUILD is designed to be used with Arch's built-in tools. You can't "run" a PKGBUILD and get anything even close to building a package. SlackBuilds will do everything on any distro except for the final packaging, but the actual source will be extracted, any patches patched, and the program will be compiled and stored in a folder that could be used for packaging through that distro's tools.

Pretty much every distro has a kernel and glibc. Almost all of them have Xorg. Many have build systems. So you can find similarities with each. But Slackware isn't designed to be built from source (just as gentoo isn't designed to be installed from pre-compiled packages). Arch's AUR is similar to many build systems, but that does not mean that Arch and Slackware are "very close".

You freely admit that there are probably at least 13.x installations in use, but then say that Slackware is obsolete? There is a wide range of people using various versions provided by Slackware. I would imagine the vast majority are on 14.x installs. While -current tends to be pretty popular on the forum, a lot of people I've spoken to outside of the forum are sticking with stable releases.

You stated Slackware's reputation as a stable distro has "stepped back significantly". And that Gentoo and Arch are similar to Slackware -current. There's a large majority of replies in this thread telling you otherwise. Since many don't seem to agree with you, it seems they are just your "personal considerations" and not the hard facts you thought they were.

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@LuckyCyborg! You've changed!

The PDP-11/40 that I worked on in the late 1970s ran MP/M. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP/M

I used Unix V7 on a PDP-11/70 as an undergraduate student in 1982. It was powerful but glacially slow. My Z80 was much more pleasant.

I suspect you meant RSTS. I once encountered it as a teenager. I remember the joke that RSTS stood for "runs slower than snails".
Ed

I'm going to install Opensuse 15.2 for a relative when it comes out this week because the rolling release borked its install. They want to try the stable version. I have no idea what happened to it.

Have you got any hard data that supports this view?
You're welcome to have opinions, but please stop presenting them as fact.

Re: Gentoo - Installing it is TFH and takes far too long. You can't compare it to Slackware for that reason. Slackware installation can be done in 15 min or less and at the end of it you have xorg, networking and a large selection of services right out of the box.

I am always amused by the release date argument. Keeping the name and releasing updates does not seem to hurt the gorilla.
Windows 10 - 29 July 2015
Slackware 14.2 - 30 June 2016

Regarding a next Full Official Release maybe I'm over-reacting at a recent discovery that Intel plans to dump CSM this year and the huge impact that will have, both pluses and minuses, but I wonder if PatV finds himself facing a major decision - "Do I maintain backward compatibility for the many who still use 32 bit OpSys and older (non UEFI compliant) hardware and firmware or just make the next release fully modern but lose a large client base?" If that's so that's no trivial choice and a "wait and see" would likely be prudent.

1 members found this post helpful.

Enorbet, given that the 32 bit version of Slackware-current is still being compiled to run on a 25 year old processor, I think we all know the answer to that question...

Since removing CSM altogether will apparently not run 32bit operating systems, that -Current still offers a 32 bit version could possibly amount to a placeholder. That doesn't require that the next Official Release remain stuck with the mix of UEFI and legacy compliant CSM. In some respects it is much like cities facing the choice to keep and maintain hitching posts (not to mention the clean up crew) after the Model T hit widespread use. Hitching posts weren't a huge problem when everyone used horses for fast transportation. Not having them wasn't a problem when most folks drove cars, but the transition is problematic. Oil? no problem. Water? no problem. Oil AND Water? Problem.

There are still a lot of 32 bit computers around. I don't see why the current model couldn't be followed for the release if CSM is removed at any point in the future... even if only to support 64 bit machines with CSM. It works well enough now. What makes you think it won't in the future?

I don't assume it won't work. I know that it will!.. but there are downsides to "neither fish nor fowl" conglomerates. My point was exactly that there really isn't a huge problem with legacy BIOS, despite some concerns over "security" (I often wonder whose security Intel and others are actually concerned with considering some of the blatantly insecure "improvements" that were introduced with UEFI) and UEFI on it's own is good too, but having both on one system creates numerous problems at the very least in implementation if not security holes nonexistent in either as standalone firmware.

In this vein I'd like to pass on an amusing and interesting video someone else posted recently (please forgive me for not citing credit... it's late and I'm going to bed) but this is pretty damned cool and at least a wee bit appropriate... although apparently it won't be possible soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS9hiSwL1KY

Enjoy!

I don't understand why you'd ever try to use both at the same time anyway... That would seem to indicate a fundamental misunderstanding somewhere.

As amusing as that LGR video was, there are a couple of big problems with running MS-DOS on modern hardware. eg: It doesn't do power management at all so it'll run your CPU at 100% full time. Way to toast it.

Secondly, to even get it to boot, he had to use the Windows 98 boot disk. That's because the version of DOS he installed doesn't recognize FAT32. Furthermore, to get USB support, he had to use FreeDOS.

I admire the attempt, but I've not installed DOS on bare metal in more than 15 years... and with the great capabilities of DOSBox, I don't see why you'd need to anymore.

You would be incorrect in that suspicion. Every command available in CP/M was available on that system (including PIP, which allow us to send compiled object files to a terminal which would cause panic on that particular user when we were all scrambling to complete our projects.). We certainly did not login to a basic prompt.

It may have been the case that since that PDP-11/40 was installed at USMA (United States Military Academy) that the professor who nabbed the equipment managed to get an early copy of MP/M. I don't know either way; I do know that this particular system appeared to be a normal CP/M environment other than multiple users could log into it at the same time.