+1 on that.

Over confident ?

@ivandi
Making a distro is a simple task of assembling pieces of software.

Please tell us where is your beautifully functional distribution. We need an alternative to Slackware

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I'm afraid there is no alternative to Slackware. At least I'm not aware of a distribution that is as stable and simple as Slackware, especially in its package management and "system tools". However, there is a relatively new distribution called Void Linux. It's not similar to Slackware, it's more like Arch. Its package manager is xbps, a binary package manager (x for xtraeme I guess, the pseudonym of Juan RP, creator of Void Linux). It recently switched its init from systemd to runit and is therefore a nice alternative, and an addition to those distributions that don't use systemd by default. It's a rolling release distribution, so not as stable as Slackware. Though (as a Slackware fan) I have to admit that using xbps is quite fun.

I ran a 2.6 kernel on a Slackware-10.2 box for years. 10.2 was, and still is, my favourite release of Slackware to date. Slackware 12.0 was released in 2007, and that version ran a 2.6 kernel straight out of the box. It came complete with HAL and DBUS and everything worked without any tweaking.

With respect to USB hotplugging, back in the day (before kids... lol) I hacked a set of scripts which I "borrowed" from the Debian USB hotplug package. It was a pretty simple setup. If you inserted a USB stick, these scripts mounted it and created an icon for it on the desktop. Right-clicking on the icon would allow you to unmount it which would remove the icon as well. If you're interested, I've uploaded the package here: http://members.optusnet.com.au/rkels...2-noarch-1.tgz. I'm only posting this for posterity. Please keep in mind that I only ever used it on versions 10.2 and 11.0 of Slackware, and only ever on a single-user desktop...

... But there were other options for accessing and using USB sticks without even needing to resort to stuff like that. Since most USB sticks run a FAT filesystem, you could use mtools to read from/write to them without any special tricks. The mtools package is still included in a default installation of Slackware, hidden in an ancient and mysterious package called "floppy". One of my favourite add-ons is a package called mtoolsfm, which is essentially a GUI front-end for mtools. I used this to copy to/from USB sticks for many years.

Another option was AutoFS, which you could use to mount USB sticks with only a small amount of tweaking.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the lack of a 2.6 kernel & HAL didn't have to be a showstopper for you. If I ever run into 2007 kikinovak, I'll be sure to tell him. Shall I ask him where your hair went?

[/sidetrack]

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Yeah, I vaguely remember all that, but it's a bit like PAM-ifying Slackware. All more or less feasible, except you have to jump through burning loops to achieve something that works out of the box in another distribution. At the time, I had much help from fellow Slackware user Daniel de Kok (the author of the Slackbasics book). He already had some experience in administrating production networks, so I took his advice and moved to CentOS, which was a great discovery at the time. Daniel was an ex-Libranet developer, and back in 2006, we started working on "Slick", a project that became MLED some eight years later.

Thamks for that post - it reflects a lot my thoughts.
I never ran hald and continued very well without it.
I mount and unmount all exterior devices using simple scripts.

All my problems have been with automating daemons. I had to change xorg.conf on 14.0 to stop udev (?) from automatically generating devices. I have a custom keyboard and due to interference on the connection when moving the keyboard the system would automatically generate a new keyboard.

Automatic is not good - lack of control. People drive better with a shift stick than with an automatic gearbox.

Anyway - I didn't activate hald because I didn't need it.

The trick of marketing is to make you think you need something when you really don't.

Let's not be suckers.

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NO we do NOT.

Actually around year 2000 I was fascinated by the mosix kernel extension. None of the existing distros was suitable for playing with it. So I had to roll my own. I used Slackware as a starting point but everything was built mostly from scratch around the encap package manager. I was able to turn any existing network into mosix cluster by simply booting the computers from my cd. The mosix was forked to openmosix but became irrelevant with the availability of cheap multicore cpus and abandoned.

Anyway, I liked the freedom and flexibility of compiling the stuff as I like it and continued to do this for some time basically having my own LFS. The life changed and I had less and less time to keep up with the development in the Linux world and when xorg became modular I had to give up. I tried several of the hot distros of the day but in around 2009 I was back to Slackware.

So yes making a distro is simple(relatively) task of assembling pieces of software. It is not science.
Maintaining it is a full time job.

And when I say that Slackware needs some new functionality I put my money where my mouth is by proposing slackbuilds and configs:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ng-4175517619/

Cheers

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Try to explain that to the average user of a public library. Age somewhere between 7 and 77.

I know, our ancestors hunted bears with their bare hands and mounted their USB devices manually or using scripts. If you're the only user of your machine, then this is probably true. If you have dozens or hundreds of them, I'd like to watch you explaining to them (every single user) that they can't access their removable devices like they do with Windows, but that they have to run a series of scripts.

I also switched from Red Hat 9 to Slackware in 2004. Slackware 10.0 was a great distro. The 2.4x kernel was rock-steady. Looking forward to 14.2. Are we there yet?

"Making a distro is a simple task of assembling pieces of software." This is one of the biggest fallacies of our time -as born out by the profusion of would-be distros which are 'based on' some other distro, or even 'real' distros which are simply an (poorly-thought-out) 'assembly' of packages.

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I still use it for cd/dvd and usb flash media. Biggest drawback is that you need to pre-register them in a map file, but if you only ever use the same set of media that's no big hassle.

I totally agree. When I bought a turntable for my father I asked him: maximum control, least automation? He answered: exactly.

I deactivated udev in 14.0 and everything went well in the linux consoles but X hanged the system. How did you stop it, would you mind telling us?

Exactly.

It's a POV. We're talking about a general purpose OS.

We are not forced to run Apache, Cups, etc. That's good design. Let's keep it like that.