Slackware

amnesia

Apart from the man hell-bent on distributing the essence of a linux operating system, concerned with the security of any and every package that ships with the OS, the proverbial roots of all things slackware... There's a method to the slackware madness~

To me slackware is simplicty at its finest. No 'goo' of an OS oozing from every orifice screaming exploite-me -- The quintessential of being the finest grade like a top shelf premium purple labled liqueur, Slackware wins 10-fold over every other linux distribution.

Not because it's pretty, because it simply works. I can remember many times I have experimented with random distributions, only to return to the only one I find explicitly worthy of being whatever I want it to be, and do whatever I want it to do.

In the end, it's all about what you want.. I want control over my OS in every aspect, I have that in every way shape and form. There's other decent linux distros gentoo, debian, heh I can't think of any more.

To me simplicity is integrity, integrity is key in the digital world and a team of people more concentrated on that in-lieu of, "How big can we get" means a world of difference.

Just my thoughts :>

mfillpot

I agree with you, I've tried using many other distros for various tasks and most end with frustration and me switching to Slackware. The simplicity of the configurations and options is what makes it the champ in my house.

As a remark to the Ubutnu camp, I do have a partition running Ubuntu, it was setup because installing games for my son is easier in Ubutnu. That partition is only used and administered by my 8 year-old son, nothing serious is run on it because I don't feel it is stable enough to hold my real data.

I am currently setting up a fully updated minimal Slackware-12.2 installation in a headless box to host an ftp server for backups and to use as a PXE server for OS installations (Slackware, Ubuntu, Debian, etc..) and administration utilities for my LUG meetings. I first started by following guides for other distros, but the methods were needlessly complicated so I went to the simple solution.

amnesia

QFT

Just out of general curiosity, what the hell is QFT?

I realize there are multiple definitions for almost every acronym
- Just rather curious on yours

amnesia

mfillpot wrote:

As a remark to the Ubutnu camp, I do have a partition running Ubuntu, it was setup because installing games for my son is easier in Ubutnu. That partition is only used and administered by my 8 year-old son, nothing serious is run on it because I don't feel it is stable enough to hold my real data.

Honestly, I know nothing about Ubuntu other than it's another flavor of a host of flavors of linux all crunched together. I have no real issues with it.. I just hate people defining linux with that junk at the core. God bless the clone-age.


also; Not smashing on it -- it sounds like an excellent distro to get an idea of what linux is -- I'm going to highly emphasize on the word, 'idea'. Have a good one~

Rovanion

I'm qurious about Slackware because I have from the lines of the IRC heard that you have to satisfy the dependencies of the applications you install yourself. I laughed when I heard this thinking that no modern distribution could behave in this way. But then I tried out Slax on my USB memory and was suprised that I actually had to satisfy the dependencies of the modules I installed myself. Slax is derived from Slackware so now I'm aking to ask.

Is it really so that the package mananger doesn't satisfy the dependencies of an application when installed?

mfillpot

Rovanion wrote:

Is it really so that the package mananger doesn't satisfy the dependencies of an application when installed?

You are correct that Slackware does not resolve dependancies, and for your information it also does not have an official repo utility similar to apt or yum.

Package managment is more difficult with slackware because you have to manually install packages in which many applications are not available pre-packaged. However without the web retrieval and dependancy resolution the administrator has more fine grained control over the installed applications because they are familiar with every component on the system and any startup errors that may occur.

I personally detest dependancy auto-resolution for the following reasons:
[ul]
[li]There will always be issues with the version numbers of the dependancies [/li]
[li]Who validates the depency list to guarantee that you are installing only the depencies necessary for your intended use of the applciation.[/li]
[li]It seems unsafe to allow someone to just click ok to agree to install multiple depandacie applications without knowing the basis behind each app and whether or not one of the dependancies is going to break another component.[/li]
[/ul]

There are apps like slapt-get and swaret to allow slackware users to run apt like functions to retrieve from a repo and there is an app called sbopkg that utilizes the slackbuilds.org scripts to allow the users to compile apps very easily in a slackware format, but to my knowledge none of these apps is officially endorsed by Pat and the slackware team.

I do not necessarily frown upon users of the "user friendly" distros, each individual is entitled to their own preferences. My preference is to know exactly what is happening with my system to simplify any modifications and simplify problem resolution that may come. The lack of simplicity and headache that is felt whenever an error occurs on a "User friendly" distro is exactly why I continue to be a user and whenever possible a contributor to the Slackware project.

amnesia

Hehe, package manager -- Ofcourse!

explodepkg
installpkg
makepkg
pkgtool --- package manager
removepkg
upgradepkg

And, I have to say 'automatic resolution for dependencies',
I have noticed with a couple of friends -- That, they install a package - -Great! they removed it -- bam, it 'accidently' deleted dependencies needed for something else.. I liek static dependencies much more..
\

amnesia

hmm, I tried something new for the first time --
an rpm.. And, to be honest, it really sucked bad.
I have to make a note-to-self to never use one of
those again.. First, the 'database' was corrupt? I never used it.
I deleted the database, rpm --rebuilddb, reran it -- installed the program, and when I tried to remove it -- it couldn't be found
with rpm -lq and couldn't be removed with rpm -e.. Oh well..
I loaded the rpm info into a file and and got rid of it with a for loop.
got my APC UPS communicating with slackware.. Had to recompile the kernel with HIDRAW support.. Figured I'd put a script on my website to pull information out of it (apcupsd/apcaccess).. I didn't care for the cgi that came with it, so I wrote my own..
Got MRTG and SNMPD running to provide network traffic graphing.. Wonder what else I can toy with.. I think I'm going to start buying junk (year or so old) computers and start a cluster..
I'd like maybe 48, sounds like a .. challenge. Got a new mother board coming supports 4 opteron processors and 128gb of ram -- that'll be real fun replacing out the board thats already in my server with that one.. Which is why I'd like for them to hurry up and release slackware64 13.0 (production release)..
I cant wait to see how it all goes