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Slackware Live Edition

alien.slackbook.org

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Re: Slackware Live Edition

#3
Eric Hameleers is a awesome. As a Slackware user his blogs and tips have been helping me for years.

"we are well equipped to keep systemd out of our distro for a while" Win!

This certainly isn't the first live Slackware though. Slax is how I first came to really experiment with Linux internals. It was a cool little tiny distro on a live USB. I was able to take stuff apart and build my own kernel etc without borking my real machine. I made several derivatives and even re-wrote the "live scripts" when the author took a hiatus around 2010. I learned so much from Slax.

Re: Slackware Live Edition

#4

Does Slackware have notable practical applications?

it's a nice linux distribution. The packages are usually very stable and well tested. It does the job on the desktop and on the server.

In that sense it is practical, not sure if "notable" as there are many other more popular distributions these days.

Re: Slackware Live Edition

#5

Does Slackware have notable practical applications?

I ran it for many years (and still do on a couple smaller machines). It has been exceptionally stable and thankfully devoid of "surprises" (using the word in its worst possible connotation). Things stay exactly as you leave them, it's exceptionally rare for any package to have been "customized" and nothing happens in the system unless you explicitly asked for it / made it happen. This used to be true for the initial setup too, which made it a bit scary to newbies - but since quite a few years that's become a painless experience.

Its learning potential is very large.

As someone once wrote:

Study RedHat, you will have learned RedHat

Study SuSE, you will have learned SuSE

Study Slackware, you will have learned Unix.

Re: Slackware Live Edition

#6

Does Slackware have notable practical applications?

It's simple so it's somewhat easy to take apart and re-purpose. I was able to use it to build an internet enabled kiosk for instance without a lot of extra weight. It's super stable also so it make a good server. Lack of package management means you won't find it in the standard VM distro line up though.

As for other uses... using it to reply to this comment right now.

Re: Slackware Live Edition

#7
post #5

Does Slackware have notable practical applications?

I ran it for many years (and still do on a couple smaller machines). It has been exceptionally stable and thankfully devoid of "surprises" (using the word in its worst possible connotation). Things stay exactly as you leave them, it's exceptionally rare for any package to have been "customized" and nothing happens in the system unless you explicitly asked for it / made it happen. This used to be true for the initial…

As someone who should learn more Unix, this is great to know. Thanks.

Re: Slackware Live Edition

#8

Does Slackware have notable practical applications?

IMO, Slackware is canon. Other distros do great things, but Slackware is the only distro (again to me), that is pure linux in it's look and feel.

Practically, it's barebones and basic yet functional enough to do whatever is needed. It's extremely easy to make Slackware into whatever kind of system you're looking for from desktop to server.

Re: Slackware Live Edition

#10
post #6

Does Slackware have notable practical applications?

It's simple so it's somewhat easy to take apart and re-purpose. I was able to use it to build an internet enabled kiosk for instance without a lot of extra weight. It's super stable also so it make a good server. Lack of package management means you won't find it in the standard VM distro line up though. As for other uses... using it to reply to this comment right now.

Lack of package management

There is no lack of package management. There is a lack of automatic dependency resolution without third-party additions. This is nowhere near as debilitating as often presented by outside observers who have never tried the distribution.

YMMV, but I've ran into circular dependencies and conflicts in addition to configuration updates rendering systems unbootable multiple times on distros like Debian with their non-transactional resolution heuristics that make your life easier, until they don't. Slackware's spartan package management has not failed me once, it's rock solid no matter how much you thrash your file system hierarchy. In addition, when I want to install SlackBuilds, I have never used a more convenient package manager than sbopkg before. Dependencies can be cleanly recorded and built with queuefiles.

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