How is Patrick doing nowadays? Thank you for my favorite distro of all times.
Slackware 15.0
101–110 of 182 posts
Re: Slackware 15.0
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What history is that and why does it matter today?
Re: Slackware 15.0
#103[deleted]
Re: Slackware 15.0
#104I’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…
Slackware was themed after the Church of the Subgenius, which is a satirical religion and online movement about "slack" as a cosmic force. It came from a time when software projects could be more whimsical and show some character. It's almost impossible to imagine a software project today expressing any kind of off-topic flair, or really be eccentric in that kind of way. There's hardly anything like it today, but the…
Praise Bob
Re: Slackware 15.0
#105I read HN regularly since a couple of years, but registered just for this comment. My first GNU/Linux distro, but in early 2000. I have great memories from that time, it was "harder" but very rewarding. The best example of less is more. Today I'm using Devuan to escape from systemd, and I think I'll give Slackware 15 a try <3
Re: Slackware 15.0
#106One of the last entries in the -current changelog before the 15.0 release was the following:
Wed Feb 2 04:17:39 UTC 2022
fortune -m "I will be finished tomorrow" fortunes2
a/kernel-generic-5.15.19-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded.
a/kernel-huge-5.15.19-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded.
[...]
%% (fortunes2)
A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the
program on which he was working. "I will be finished tomorrow," the
programmer promptly replied.
"I think you are being unrealistic," said the manager. "Truthfully,
how long will it take?"
The programmer thought for a moment. "I have some features that I wish
to add. This will take at least two weeks," he finally said.
"Even that is too much to expect," insisted the manager, "I will be
satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete."
The programmer agreed to this.
Several years later, the manager retired. On the way to his
retirement lunch, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal.
He had been programming all night.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Re: Slackware 15.0
#107Past threads:
Slackware Linux 15.0 RC3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29928343 - Jan 2022 (43 comments)
Slackware 15.0 release candidate one - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28201197 - Aug 2021 (56 comments)
Re: Slackware 15.0
#108I got into Slackware in high school in the late 90s because it was associated with the l33t crowd that I looked up to at the time. Now there’s a nostalgia associated with it.
At a utility level, if I want a simple performant Linux that’s not doing any unpredictable automagic it’s my go-to.
Re: Slackware 15.0
#109As 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 peopl…
I considered Slackware but I'm under the impression it has no analogue to apt or dnf/yum.
How on earth do people running Slackware manage their library dependencies and keep everything up to date?
Re: Slackware 15.0
#110As 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 peopl…
Slackware is really a small/bare bones distro, "old schoolers" like it because in it's time (90s era) just having a Unix like system on a PC was amazing and it is considered very stable, now that GNU/Linux is everywhere today's distros are just easier to use.
> There is no formal issue tracking system and no official procedure to become a code contributor or developer. The project does not maintain a public code repository. Bug reports and contributions, while being essential to the project, are managed in an informal way. All the final decisions about what is going to be included in a Slackware release strictly remain with Slackware's benevolent dictator for life, Patrick Volkerding.
This is from Slackware wikipedia page. If this is true, this could be the next logical step to increase some development involvement and noise maybe? Patrick should be also thinking about the future of Slackware right?
Am just an outsider since I don't have skin in the game. But Slackware is not a distro that comes in your conversations more often and I am in a lot of Linux communities. And the comments reflect the same as well. Maybe this could improve the scenario. Again, this is with the best intentions. Please ignore if the comments doesn't sit right with you. :)
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Also, I don't think Slackware should be like GNU/Linux distros or alter course radically. But I think a small modernization of the project could help everyone who wants to keep the Slackware way of doing it alive.