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Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old

theregister.com

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Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old

#51

Post by akoster »

massifist wrote: post #38

Awesome!! Slackware is still my favorite Linux distro. I like to think of it as Linux From Scratch for the lazy.

Likewise! I appreciate how the developers set sensible defaults and a descent package selection for general productivity within the installer defaults but I have often found myself building many packages from scratch from scripts on SlackBuilds.org. It forces me to learn while not loosing too much productivity compiling everything from scratch - though I hope to try to set up LFS one of these days!

Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old

#52

Post by akoster »

rconti wrote: post #48
Corrado wrote: post #31

My first Linux distro was Slackware. I tried downloading it but my modem was too slow and people in the house kept picking up the phone. So, I supported OSS by purchasing a copy from, I want to say, Walnut Creek sometime around 1995. I still had the 7 disks 10 years ago or so. They are probably still around here somewhere. I learned so much from Slackware and basically owe my livelihood to it. Everything from compili…

My favorite Slackware memory was how the version I downloaded disksets of (on a 14.4k modem, yeah) had a broken bootloader. Not sure of the Slackware release, but it was kernel 1.2.8, before the ELF transition. Anyway, every time I reinstalled, the bootloader hung on `LI` because the config was just broken , and I had to remember how to fix it.. every time. So many hours recompiling kernels. My 4MB-equipped 486 took…

Great story and thanks for sharing! $400 is a lot for a RAM upgrade! Did that upgrade double your ram to 8MB or something greater perhaps?

Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old

#53

Post by akoster »

icedchai wrote: post #26
akoster wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! It sounds like you have seen a lot of major changes! But so far, no SysVinit->systemd nor dropping 32-bit i586 package builds for Slackware 15.0 and -current [0][1]. As someone new to Slackware I appreciate the balance of having lots of pre-built packages and just about everything that's not included as a build script on SlackBuilds.org (known as SBo by many) [2]. Are you still using Slackware today? [0] http://…

I've been working with Linux in one form or another for 30 years now! I almost can't believe it's been that long. Though I haven't used Slackware since the late 90's, I might take another look.

> I've been working with Linux in one form or another for 30 years now! I almost can't believe it's been that long.

Congrats on that personal milestone! Quite amazing for something community-developed and supported throughout several generations of hardware and changing technologies!

> Though I haven't used Slackware since the late 90's, I might take another look. I would encourage it! The latest stable 15.0 release has pipewire and many other modern improvements, and I have been using the -current rolling release on my desktop PC without any hiccups since early 2022!

Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old

#54

Post by omgmajk »

akoster wrote: post #46
omgmajk wrote: post #37

Slackware was one of my first Linux distros, installed on a 286 laptop with 2mb of ram. We had to trick the installer that we had 4mb or else it wouldn't install. Good times. That's where I learned Perl. Edit: It was probably a 386, memories of that time are sketchy.

Thanks for sharing! Could you elaborate more? I was unaware there was any Linux distribution that was compatible with anything but 386-class processors?

Well, technically my neighbor who was a CS prof. helped me out and I was 12 years old so I can't really elaborate a lot. He really wanted me to use Linux and gave me that laptop and I started programming in Perl and C - just tiny programs and learned the basics of Linux. I remember him helping me out with the install and it took quite some time but that's all I really can say about it.

Honestly, now that I think about it, it might have been a 386 but I was entirely sure it wasn't. Memories are weird.

Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old

#55

Post by akoster »

omgmajk wrote: post #54
akoster wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing! Could you elaborate more? I was unaware there was any Linux distribution that was compatible with anything but 386-class processors?

Well, technically my neighbor who was a CS prof. helped me out and I was 12 years old so I can't really elaborate a lot. He really wanted me to use Linux and gave me that laptop and I started programming in Perl and C - just tiny programs and learned the basics of Linux. I remember him helping me out with the install and it took quite some time but that's all I really can say about it. Honestly, now that I think abou…

Thanks for sharing! I take it that was a hand-me-down laptop? My first PC I could call my own was a hand-me-down 6-year-old Toshiba Tecra Pentium II laptop with a 5GB IDE HDD and 192 MB of RAM running Windows 98 SE I received when I was maybe 10. I wish I would have installed Linux or had a compiler handy to learn how to write "real" software (as opposed to Logo in a MicroWorlds Pro environment), though eventually I discovered Linux from a friend's dad recommendation to try Fedora Core 6. IIRC it was painful downloading the ISO(s) over a 512kbps DSL connection, which had a copy of GCC!

Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old

#56

Post by akoster »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #30

Second distro I ever used, the first being Lasermoon. Prior to that, I used something that was a Linux 0.9 kernel and a bunch of disk images FTPed from some dude's server in Finland. Back in the olden days it ran just fine on a Compaq Deskpro 386SX but needed a whopping 4MB of RAM.

Thanks for sharing! This is the first I've heard of Lasermoon / Linux-FT but it appears that was a popular option back in the day based on these references [0][1][2][3][4][5][6]. How did it compare with Slackware? Or Yggradsil [7] or SLS [8] if you happened to have used those? Also, 4MB doesn't seem like a huge jump from Windows 3.0's minimum required 1MB of RAM or 2MB with Multimedia Extensions [9], but perhaps 4MB was often what common PCs had back in 1991/1992?

[0] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/03/linux_distro_hopping/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26503724

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36682277

[3] https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/61777/Linux-FT/

[4] https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/139

[5] https://www.linux.co.cr/distributions/review/1995/0416.html

[6] https://techmonitor.ai/technology/lasermoon_touts_inexpensiv...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux/GNU/X

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softlanding_Linux_System

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.0#System_requirement...

Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old

#57

Post by akoster »

eikenberry wrote: post #41
akoster wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! 75 floppies! That sounds like a lot! Was that Slackware 1.x? 2.x? And this sounds like a very interesting story: can you elaborate on any architecture details, equipment, getting other ISPs to peer?

It was Slackware 2.1 and the 3.5 floppy disks came in 3 collections (1 required and 2 optional). If I remember right they were the base OS, X-windows and development files. As for the ISP, that idea ended up flopping (heh) and never made it out of the "fun discussions" phase.

I guess not unlike the software sets [0] Slackware seems to still use these days. Hearing this definitely makes me understand how spoiled we are to have reliable and inexpensive flash media, optical disks and network connections! I imagine just getting the base OS set downloaded, imaged and installed was a chore! And that's too bad to hear about the ISP idea. I've heard of stories of how one could run a small and viable ISP out of a garage or small office with descent wiring and a bank of modems. I'm glad a few providers still exist like Sonic.net, Xmission Internet and Panix.com and hope with the way things are going with funding for wiring and Internet connectivity (at least in the USA) we might be in such an era again in the future (hopefully!)

Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old

#58

Post by akoster »

housemusicfan wrote: post #12
F00Fbug wrote: post #2

That was my first exposure to Linux in 1995. I remember downloading 30-something floppy disks over a painfully slow T1. I deployed our company's sendmail email server a few months later, running on an old PC. In 2006 I switched to Linux as my daily driver and if I need windows these days, it runs as a VM.

Check out Mr. Fancy T1 line over here. I remember downloading Slackware floppy images over 28.8 dialup. Talk about pain. I recently stumbled on a dusty box of them whilst cleaning out the attic.

I'm thankful I never experienced that. My family switched from AOL dial up to an AT&T ADSL connection (either started out as 128, 256 or 512kbps down circa 2006 IIRC). It still didn't make downloading FreeBSD and Fedora Core 6 ISOs easy but it definitely was doable in a reasonable amount of time!

Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old

#59

Post by akoster »

chrsig wrote: post #43

Slackware was my first distribution! One of my sister's friends came over and installed some 7.x release and left me on my own to configure xfree86. Needless to say, for my first time using linux, it didn't work out. But a short time later I was dual booting mandrake & slackware 8.1. Ahhh...the sweet nostalgia of gnome 1.4. Youngin's these days don't have any challenge left. Now where's my cloud to yell at? And why a…

I agree! Although I just had a kernel panic on my first boot after installing Slackware 15.0 on a Ryzen 5700G chip / B550 board. Likely due to LILO + EFI (or defaulting to CSM / legacy BIOS boot?) + an NVMe SSD + MBR partition table. I hope to chroot into it and figure out whats wrong since the installer ISO booted and ran without any hiccups. But I agree that in general, I have only count on one hand the times I couldn't load X11, lost network connectivity, or couldn't boot after an update or installing new hardware. We definitely are in the year of (the relatively compatible) Linux desktop(s) :-P

Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old

#60

Post by ipcress_file »

Back around 2007 or so, I discovered BasicLinux (https://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/), a stripped down version of Slackware for old PCs, compatible with Slackware 4.0 packages. It installed from a couple of floppies onto my ancient ThinkPad 365X.

BasicLinux had a great community and introduced me to mailing lists. I learned a lot about how Linux works, tracking down dependencies with ldd and modifying config and init scripts. After a year or so of playing with BasicLinux, I moved on to Slackware, but continued to use the mailing list for help.

So happy 30th to Slackware and cheers to anyone who provided assistance on the BasicLinux mailing list!

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