Newly Released: Slackware Linux Essentials, 2d Ed.

VincenzoRomano writes to point out that as of a few days ago, "Slackware Linux has its second revision of the Slackware Linux Essentials book. It is a major revision of the the reference book for Slackware users and is now an official Slackware project. Slackware Linux is the oldest and yet pretty active Linux distribution born from an idea by Patrick Volkerding and that turned 12 a few months ago. It follows the KISS(Keep it Simple, Stupid!) philosophy, which seems to be one of the reasons of its long life. The book itself has been created by David Cantrell, Logan Johnson and Chris Lumens and is available both in printed (dead-tree) form and in electronic form (HTML/DocBook/PS/PDF). Whether your are a Slackware aficionado or not, the book deserves a look at least!"

Re:Who uses Slackware anyway?

[Reverend528]

Slackware is much easier to maintain than debian or fedora installations because it lacks package management, so you're not constantly pressured to upgrade the software. It's kind of like running windows used to be, before it harassed the user with monthly "updates" that require "reboots".

Re:Who uses Slackware anyway?

[ComputerSlicer23]

Did you just take 2 sentences, to say you feel more comfortable when the software doesn't bother to alert you when there are security flaws in the software you are running, and it lacks an easy way to upgrade it? From what I remember of slack (back in the 3.X days), it did have package management in some limit sense. The backed database seemed to be nothing more the an unindexed list files mapping to a list of packages. There was a "pkgadd" command (I forget the name of the command to remove packages).

That was back in the day, when you had to read the Makefiles and add and remove the appropriate "-D" options to get all sorts of fun stuff. Slack was lots of fun. I'm really happy I cut my teeth on it, but goodness, I don't have the time to track security flaws any more. I'll happily let RedHat, Fedora Foundation, or Debian tell me when there is a patch I need to be worried about. I still hand hack all my config files. Sometimes, I hand hack the RedHat specific config files, but I still read all the scripts and know all the commands to boot strap a machine from scratch if I really need to.

Kirby

It was perhaps a "joke"?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Did you just take 2 sentences, to say you feel more comfortable when the software doesn't bother to alert you when there are security flaws in the software you are running, and it lacks an easy way to upgrade it?

You know, that was my thought for a small fraction of a second until I realized it was a joke...

Re:Who uses Slackware anyway?

[frank_abacus]

I think it would pay you to take a look at a more recent Slackware distibution. Quite a lot's happened since the 3.X days.

Once on the security mailing list you get advised whenever a new package has been updated to fix some security hole, and then you can just upgradepkg from the new package, if you need to.

Re:Who uses Slackware anyway?

[Zaphod Prefect]

I've been pretty happy with Swaret http://www.swaret.org/ [swaret.org] for package management on Slackware. It takes care of regular security updates for many of my servers, and does not ask for any personal information like up2date did.

Doesn't lack package management

[plasticsquirrel]

Contrary to what many people seem to think, Slackware does have package management. There is a very clear package format that should be followed when making all Slackware packages, and there are official tools for using them that Patrick wrote (installpkg, upgradepkg, removepkg, pkgtool, makepkg, explodepkg).

Perhaps what the author was getting at is the lack of dependency checking that Slackware default package management software does not implement. Swaret is a popular tool that does support dependency c

You have got to be kidding

[ScrappyLaptop]

Or are you just incredibly lazy?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

*cries and cries*

[Generalisimo Zang]

Sorry...

I read through the page, and didn't see the links, and then posted on impulse.

Failure to recognize the links for what they were may be somehow related to my only getting two hours of sleep in the past day and a half.

Happy Birthday to Me!

[qualico]

Thanks Slackware.

Slackware Linux 10.1 & Slackware Essentials, 2nd $60
Got Slack? T-Shirt - Extra Large $16

Support for Linux, excellent educational material and the most efficient way to run a server, $priceless$

Its a bit expensive, compared to http://linuxfromscratch.org/ [linuxfromscratch.org]
but worthy nonetheless.

Homage?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

It's sort of like forgetting to pay homage to GNU/RMS, boarders on sacrilegious, and they take away your "geek card", and ask you to leave. That sort of thing.

Re:Um...

[VincenzoRomano]

Simply because you never stop learning!

Re:Um...

[bizzynut]

If anything I am a Fedora aficionado. I've used Debian back in the day (1998) and Redhat as well with a little SuSE thrown in for good flavor over the years. Why should I look at a book speificially targeting Slackware when I am not an aficionado? Just curious...

Imagine how much cooler your personal distro history would sound if you added "then in 2005 I started using exclusively using Slackware, because doing so allowed me to lengthen my personal distro history."

Packages

[daniel2501]

After dealing with rpms for awhile with Mandrake, I decided to move to Debian. I found Debian's package management system to be so much better than the way rpm is "set up" under most distros. Slackware seems to to be a step in the other direction, but the simplicity of it does seem enticing. I just can't wait through all that compiling!

Hey slackers, read if you compile from source

[Engineer Chris]

I always compile from source in slackware because often it's easier than mucking around with packages whenever dependencies are involved. I also get the most current version, and I can put it in the right place. Using utilities like checkinstall makes this almost painless. However, having recently put gentoo on my laptop, I am having to make excuses for not converting all my other machines to gentoo as well (my current one is laziness). It also compiles everything from source, but finds all the other stuff