Daily user for over half my life...
‘Nuff said.
Slackware 15.0
81–90 of 182 posts
Re: Slackware 15.0
#82Slackware was my first distro, purchased a diskette set by mail from a company in Computer Shopper magazine and installed it on a 386 my parents gave me after buying an IBM PS/1 with a 486DX2 in 1991 (or 1992?).
I used it to get Internet access via SLIP dial-up to a mainframe at the University of Missouri and from there to play MUDs which ended up becoming an obsession for years and resulted in me learning C to modify DikuMUD.
I’m really glad to see that Slackware is still alive and kicking even though I’m now mostly a FreeBSD and MacOS user.
Re: Slackware 15.0
#83As someone who is from the era of Ubuntu as their first distro, my natural progression towards maintainable OS made me reach Arch. As an OS for your system, it seems like the perfect abstraction layer and does just enough. The next incremental update to my system could be NixOS, Nix package manager in Arch or Nix package manager in FreeBSD.
But I am always happy to see old projects like this kicking.
I see many people mention the fact that they won't be coming back to Slackware. Could that be because they are not changing enough according to the times they are in? Is there something the project can do to attract new users? I definitely wouldn't want Slackware project to stall. It makes me really sad when OSS projects die.
Re: Slackware 15.0
#84I’ve already seen countless comments about Slackware being a lot of folks first Linux distro. For someone like me who didn’t get into programming until the last 5 years or so, can you guys explain what was it about Slackware, that was so appealing or inviting to new users? As a primarily Ubuntu user in my time, was part of it that the Linux landscape was much less mature back then? Was it the principals/ ethos that t…
Initially, back in the early 1990's I think it was the only "distribution" of Linux out there. It was either download Slackware to 3.5" floppies, or else hand-roll your own distribution completely from scratch. I think RedHat came along in the mid to late 90's. I jumped ship and never looked back, because RPM packages were so much more convenient then Slackware's hodgepodge of configure scripts and makefiles. Ubuntu…
There was SLS before it. By the time I could afford to cobble together a machine capable of running Linux, Slackware had superceded SLS and Red Hat and other distros you may have heard of didn't exist yet. Red Hat became the beginner's Linux very quickly after it was released. All this happened in a pretty short time frame from 1993-1996 or so.
Re: Slackware 15.0
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Arch embodied many of the original Slackware principles, once. These days I don't know what they're doing, but Void is basically Arch without the bullshit (and with runit instead of systemd, thank goodness).
I hear good things about Void, but last time I tried to install it, the mirror I was pulling from had the download time estimate at a couple of days, and I didn't have time to muck about that day. Might be time to try it again - or a different mirror
I was enthusiastic about Void, until I learned more about its history.
Re: Slackware 15.0
#86This was a pain to find on mobile, so for the convenience of LAMP developers curious about the included packages: Apache/httpd: 2.4.52 Mysql: 10.5.13 PHP: 7.4.27 Source: ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware64-15.0/PACKAGES.TXT
This page has mirrors to get files over HTTPS, including a link to the package browser: https://mirrors.slackware.com/
Re: Slackware 15.0
#87I’ve already seen countless comments about Slackware being a lot of folks first Linux distro. For someone like me who didn’t get into programming until the last 5 years or so, can you guys explain what was it about Slackware, that was so appealing or inviting to new users? As a primarily Ubuntu user in my time, was part of it that the Linux landscape was much less mature back then? Was it the principals/ ethos that t…
I think my first Linux distro was actually Yggdrasil, but right after that I tried Slackware and found it was much more complete and easy to use. You could also order a 4 CD box from Walnut Creek with tons of packages.
I kept subscriptions from Walnut Creek to both FreeBSD and Slackware for about 10 years. They would automatically send me new versions as soon as they were released.
Re: Slackware 15.0
#88I remember staying up all night downloading Slackware 96 (version 3.0) floppy sets over my 28.8kbps modem. I think I used it for my first 6+ months of home Linux use. In retrospect it was probably a good thing to learn on because Slackware was so simple but did so little for you. I remember having to read a long HOWTO from the Linux Documentation Project about how to get XFree86 working. Hand crafting /etc/X11/XF86Co…
I also started with Slack floppies, but never really thought about how much it taught me. Disk partitions, files systems, permissions, networking, drivers, etc. It really did force learning at least a base level of all aspects of the system.
I have been a generalist for most of my career and that may not have happened without Slackware.
Re: Slackware 15.0
#89Wow, that is a name that brings back memories. Now I'm curious, anyone knows how good is the package management in modern Slackware? I ask because back in the late 90s it was quite far behind Debian.
Same package manager as before, but you can use slpkg for modern features: https://dslackw.gitlab.io/slpkg/
Re: Slackware 15.0
#90I’ve already seen countless comments about Slackware being a lot of folks first Linux distro. For someone like me who didn’t get into programming until the last 5 years or so, can you guys explain what was it about Slackware, that was so appealing or inviting to new users? As a primarily Ubuntu user in my time, was part of it that the Linux landscape was much less mature back then? Was it the principals/ ethos that t…
Initially, back in the early 1990's I think it was the only "distribution" of Linux out there. It was either download Slackware to 3.5" floppies, or else hand-roll your own distribution completely from scratch. I think RedHat came along in the mid to late 90's. I jumped ship and never looked back, because RPM packages were so much more convenient then Slackware's hodgepodge of configure scripts and makefiles. Ubuntu…
Yggdrasil’s first release was a year before Slackware’s.