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ftp://swtsrv.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/pub/linux/distributions/sl...

Thanks, right now downloading from there.

Oldest one still going, I believe.

Slackware itself is a fork of the Softlanding Linux System, founded by Peter MacDonald in mid-1992.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softlanding_Linux_System

"SLS was the first release to offer a comprehensive Linux distribution containing more than the Linux kernel and basic utilities"

"Patrick Volkerding decided to modify SLS by tweaking and cleaning it up. He called his finished work Slackware."

"Similarly Ian Murdock's frustration with SLS led him to create the Debian project."

So SLS was the progenitor of both Slackware and Debian.

Following a reference link in that Wikipedia page reveals that Debian wasn't just a fork of SLS. Ian Murdock writes:
"This is a release that I have put together basically from scratch; in other words, I didn't simply make some changes to SLS and call it a new release. I was inspired to put together this release after running SLS and generally being dissatisfied with much of it, and after much altering of SLS I decided that it would be easier to start from scratch."
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.development/msg/a32d4e...

Yup, that's what my mom always says.

<cliche>
If you're single and have no friends...
</cliche>

Nerd and married and I'm not twenty anymore.

I used to be a Slack guy when I had a really old laptop that I wanted to breathe life into. Now that I have a more modern laptop, I've switched to Ubuntu for simplicity. I recently took an old Pentium 2 laptop I had sitting in the closet and turned it into a CLI only fileserver in about an hour with Zenwalk. To me, Zenwalk is Slackware with more user friendliness. They even have Gnome in the main repositories.

With Slack 12.1....this may be the version that gets me back to using Slack on my main machine. Kudos!!!

For me Zenwalk is a light version of Slackware and still very powerful. I did not want to do a full Slackware install because it takes 3 cds. I really liked the Zenwalk philosophy which is 1 app per task + xfce. It just works beautiful and when I work on it I think that I am using Slackware.

P.Volkerding is the master.

-2501

Could not agree more. Zenwalk is a superb distro - an excellent member of the Slack stable.

Congratulations to Pat on another release!

I'm not getting the arch reference.

"Slackware 7 was my first experience with Linux and I'm still thankful it was."

Same here. I started with Slackware. I've since moved into Debian since I find it to my liking. Slackware, as is Debian, a rock-solid and understandable Linux distro. Keep rocking on Patrick and all Slackware users!

You can, as is my method, start from a basic Debian install, read that as CLI, and then install anything else you want.

You are not making any sense. What matters not what percentage of the packages one uses, but how many are *not* available in the standard repos, and thus require a lot of manual attention to obtain and maintain. Between the main repo, Universe, and Multiverse, pretty much anything that is available anywhere is available there. I use CentOS, Fedora, and Ubuntu regularly. And there is really no comparison regarding completeness of the repos. (I'm sure Debian package availability is at least as good.) I'm not sure what the availability status of Slack is these days, since I left it in 1997 due to its... lack of proper package management. But I have seen nothing to indicate that the situation has changed much.

[flame]
No doubt those who don't like Slackware's package management also drive automatic transmission cars.

Real men drive stick shift and work out their own dependencies :-)
[/flame]

Strange... Slack does not need to be defended, she definitely speaks for herself. Dependencies - I've always put dependencies for the programs that I use on a flash drive and when there is a new or updated package I simply replace it so I'm always current. If dependencies are soley the reason for people walking away from Slack... then let them walk.

If you know what programs you need for day to day tasks, it just makes sense to keep up with what dependencies are need.

Opensource... For the people, by the people.

Peace.

Yeah, who needs that stuff? My car doesn't have an automatic choke. But there is a knob on the dashboard I can push and pull. I just pull it out before I start the car and remember to push it back in after it's warmed up. The ignition timing does not adjust automatically, but I have a lever for that. I just have to be careful to remember to push it all the way up before I turn the crank, or I get a nasty back-kick. The fuel pump is out, but I just run a hose and a squeeze bulb into the passenger compartment and give it a sqeeze a few times a minute. (More when I'm at speed. Less at idle. Just when it seems like it needs it.) If you know what you need to get around town every day, it just makes sense to keep up with that stuff.

I don't understand why people feel like they need all the new-fangled stuff. It's just needless bloat.

Edited 2008-05-04 16:08 UTC

Nice try at polemics but I made perfect sense. My point was and is the fact that unless you are installing massive amounts of apps, resolving dependencies is not that big of a deal.

When you have source code ANY application is available.



This further proves my point. You're looking for something easy. It's not a matter of whether apps are available or not. It's whether you can get them onto your system in a perceived "easy" fashion.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it underscores the crux of the issue.

Also, it appears your idea of a "proper" package manager is one that resolves dependencies or, in other words, is easy...

I still say the cleanliness of the system and the relative ease with which dependencies are resolved in Slackware are well worth the minimal extra effort to get a great system that performs well with no bloat.

I would agree that for very simple systems with well defined requirements, Slackware's lack of package management might not make much difference. Ditto for embedded use.

For my own personal and professional needs, I require something which handles software installation and dependencies more efficiently than does Slackware. I support some 60 or so machines in various configurations, and that "small amount of effort" you refer to adds up fast. What you somewhat disparagingly refer to as wanting something "easy", I refer to as wanting something scalable, managable, and face it, modern.

Edited 2008-05-04 17:13 UTC

I did not mean to disparage your user needs by the word "easy"; I meant to point out that those who want dependency resolution want that convenience and that is not necessarily a bad thing as I stated.

But the extra effort a Slackware system requires yields far greater benefits than having pre-compiled packages.

Any automatic dependency resolution will almost always create bloat. Convenience? Yes. But also bloat.

There are other systems like Gentoo which are used as build servers to custom build packages and then roll them out to the other systems when ready.

Your needs will vary from others to be sure. But the amount of time you want to spend on your configuration efforts and the resulting system will determine your choice of distribution and your choice of package manager.

As to your comment about wanting a "modern" package manager, it's not really worth commenting much on.

Convenient != modern. It's simply a choice of package manager made by the administrator of a system.

Since others have used the car metaphor I'll do the same.

A manual transmission does not make a car a "classic" or outdated. It is usually a sign of sportiness and class. More work? Maybe. More fun? You betcha. Shift when you want, how you want.

You have made the classic mistake of equating dependency resolution with package management. Your statement that Slackware lacks a package manager is just not true. It has one. It's name is pkgtool.

pkgtool performs flawlessly with the installation, upgrading and removal of Slackware packages. The one thing it does not do that you seem to always emphasize is "dependency resolution".

Please do not confuse "ease of use" with package management. Or, in other words, if it isn't easy, if it doesn't resolve dependencies, or if it doesn't "scale", then it doesn't have a package manager.

This is flawed thinking.

But that's OK. Those who use Slackware are the only ones who need to know.

Most of these so-called 25.000 packages are the userland itself. And if I use something like pkgsrc with Slack I will find lot _additional_ of software. So what? It's about quality not quantity.