Slackware 10.1- Good or not?


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Thread: Slackware 10.1- Good or not?

  1. #1
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    Slackware 10.1- Good or not?

    I just want to know if Slackware 10.1 is any good compared to Debian.

    thanks

    Xbaxe

    P.S - Im not trying to start a flame war .

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  2. #2
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    Define "good" first.

    "What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence."

    Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

  3. #3
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    It really depends on what you are looking for in a distro. Personally, I prefer the way Slackware works to Debian, though my current favourite distro is Arch Linux (which is like Slackware in some ways). Slackware's latest stable release is more up to date than Debian's, though that isn't hard with Debian's release cycle . Slackware doesn't have any automated package management by default, but if you want it you could use swaret or slapt-get. Slackware packages tend to be the vanilla packages without any extra patches, unless the patches are essential. Slackware favours editing configuration files by hand and doesn't have any GUI tools of it's own to do this for you, but the files are well commented so it is easy to do this way.

    Those are just a few main points about Slackware, though whether you think it is good or not is a matter of opinion, so if you are interested try it out yourself and make your own mind up.

  4. #4
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    I cancelled my Slackware subscription.....

    because Pat V said he was going to discontinue Gnome and he did not...........CD#2 used to be a bootable rescue disk ......NOW it is not.........

    quite frankly KDE 3.3.x sucks...........and linux is supposed to be about choice....where is our choice when ALSA is forced upon us...........if one were to take out the ALSA driver........the kmix mixer wont work anymore..........I spent a month trying to get kmix to work by editing some source code in KDE and lo and behold KDE has tied the ALSA code in somehow..........So I just said screw it.......I took Slack 10.1 out and went back to using LFS.......

    I sent Pat V an email about why I cancelled and have
    yet to get a reply..........If people want Gnome they can download dropline........Gnome is a waste of disk space....... this extra disk space should be used to make Slackware better...............NOT worse.
    Last edited by janet loves bill; 03-24-2005 at 11:23 AM.

  5. #5
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    I have to agree with retsaw. I prefer slacks methodology of what a distro should be. Simple, clean, secure. Almost every program I have looked for has been available as a Slackpackage(its like a .deb or .rpm for slckware). I have migrated all of my boxes to slackware or slack based distro. I have never got a good stable debian disro(execpt ubuntu) up and running the way I want it.

    That said there are millions of people who think just the opposite. Debian is stable, apt-get make installations or staying up to date easy and there are countless amount of software for debian.

    Try both. see which one YOU like better. You never know you might like fedora best

    soule
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  6. #6
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    If people want Gnome they can download dropline........Gnome is a waste of disk space....... this extra disk space should be used to make Slackware better...............NOT worse.
    Gnome will be discontinued on Slack 11.

    I hate, hate , hate kde. Having Gnome on the CD's gives me a nice window manager until I can spend the 4-6 hours it takes to install and download dropline. I order my CD's and have broadband, but alot of people who order cd's do it cause they dont have a fast internet connection, which makes dropline pracically imposssible(unless you get someone else to download the .ISO)

    1. 2.6.10 is on the disks which is a nice addition
    2. you can download slax
    3. you can boot from cd 1 to you HD( ithink)

    soule
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  7. #7
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    Gnome wan't actually updated for the 10.1 release, Pat just put in the same version as the Slackware 10 release, and it will be dropped altogether from Slackware 11 as soulestream said. I do agree that having the second CD as a livecd was nice, and it was useful to me when I needed something to load quickly and didn't want a GUI. About ALSA, OSS has been deprecated for a long time, ever since the 2.6 kernel was released, so you can't blame the KDE guys for wanting to move with the times and support what is current, and this is an issue with KDE not something that is a problem with Slackware.

  8. #8
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    Debian zealouts are unhappy with Debian right now. Even Bruce Perens thinks the release cycle is getting rediculous....

  9. #9
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    Originally posted by soulestream
    Gnome will be discontinued on Slack 11.


    It does, however, have xfce. So you could choose to not install KDE and run xfce while downloading dropline...

    I actually did my most recent install sans gnome and then ran dropline. I hate, hate, hate gnome and run it only to get Evolution and ximian connector in the hopes of getting it to connect to exchange at work.

    ...until I can spend the 4-6 hours it takes to install and download dropline....


    For Dropline, try changing the content of /etc/dropline/dropline_mirror to http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/dropline-gnome/
    This is a suggestion I got from mmyoung, and my most recent install had sustained downloads of about 250-300K and took about 1/2 hour.

    3. you can boot from cd 1 to you HD( ithink)


    yes, disk one is still usable as a boot disk or rescue disk.

    And back to the original post. I have been using Slack since 8.0 and I currently have 3 Slack boxes: 2 installed as 10.1 and one installed as 10.0 and made 10.1 via swaret. I am very happy with all three and though I can't speak about debian, having never run it,, I can say that slack is a truly great distro.

    And janet loves bill, give Pat a little credit as he is still managing to get work done while he is still extremely ill. And kmix will work with whatever sound driver you are able to get running, but if you do go to alsa, it's kind of a one-way street.
    Remind me again what's wrong with alsa? I've been pretty happy with it on my three machines...
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  10. #10
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    I just switched mirrors this morning for updating.

    I have just been downloading the iso via bittorrent.

    than install still took 2 hours on my old box


    soule
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  11. #11
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    You're going to have to try them both and figure out which distro you like and fits your needs the best. I tried a number of distros before I settled on slackware starting with 8.0. While you will find plenty of help with either distro here on JLC. I think the Slackware people already said it. Simple and stable.

    My current install of slackware is 9.1. I have 10.1 sitting waiting to be installed.

    /off topic
    I sort of need my box to be stable and setup until next month. I should have my wedding invitation completely designed and to the printer by then. Then I can begin the upgrade without a project hanging over my head. I thought it would be interesting to see if I could use OSS to do it all. So far so good, GIMP and Scribus.
    /on topic

    I feel the pain on gnome. I like it, but I guess I will have to join the rest and install drop line later on. I think I read something from Pat that he spent the majority of time fighting with gnome and that was a factor in dropping it from the distro. I didn't think I would like gnome this much, but I do like it better then KDE. My favorite was Enlightement. I like that a lot. Maybe I'll have the time to get it up and going on 10.1 Need to check the site to see where they are at with it. They are on a slower release cycle then Debian.
    Check out my ebay auction for my signature space on JLC.

    Hey if people can sell advertising space on thier bodies, I figure I can make $.02 on my signature space.

  12. #12
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    Thanks

    Ok cool! I just might test out slack.

    /off topic

    Just got a new Linksys wireless G broadband router to split my internet connection between my two boxes. It was a totally painless pulg n play expirience for me! though my ethernet is wired

    /on topic

    will my router still work in slack/debian?

    #98 +(5627)- [X]
    <ikkenai> i don't have hard drives. i just keep 30 chinese teenagers in my basement and force them to memorize numbers
    Courtesy of bash.org

  13. #13
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    Re: Thanks

    Originally posted by XbaxeSysAdmin
    will my router still work in slack/debian?
    It'll work fine as long as you set slack/debian to use dhcp.

  14. #14
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    I'm going to try out Slackware as well; just downloaded 10.1, disc 1 and 2. I did test out Vectorlinux for a bit, and that was really cool; worked great. It's closely based on Slackware. I was impressed by how fast it was at doing some things. The only thing I think debian has that is better may be its package-manager; APT. Maybe I just need to set up slapt-get better, or figure out how swaret works, but I found that the number of installable packeges through these methods were kinda limited compared with Debian. Oh, and installing stuff from source really isn't so bad either.
    The question I have is, how well does Slackware do at hardware detection? I mean, will it set up my nvidia card automatically?
    Linux user #367409

  15. #15
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    Originally posted by infiniphunk
    The question I have is, how well does Slackware do at hardware detection? I mean, will it set up my nvidia card automatically?
    Pretty good, and yes.

    You might have to run xorgconfig as root, say yes when prompted to look at the card database and pick nVidia Generic or GeForce from the list, whichever is appropriate.

    I have a wide-screen laptop so I went ahead and downloaded and installed the Linux driver from nVidia's website in order to get some added functionality. That went OK too.
    Slackware current (Dell Latitude D610)
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