I remember a few years ago I had a dying harddrive with a lot of bad errors on an old pc and THE ONLY operating system I could install on that hard drive was slackware... Slackware just didn't seem to care about the bad sectors errors from my hard drive... :) unlike ANY other operating system. Plus.... You've got to make a lot of effort to crash the system... That's why, I belive that slackware is the best operating system you can use for a server.
Thanks for this informative video! You set a high standard for Linux reviews. A couple of tools for Slackware package management: sbopkg automates the process you went through to install a package; sbotools will do dependency handling for you. The lack of dependency handling by the standard Slackware tools is nowhere near as big a problem as it sounds - typically Debian or RH users baulk at it but then it would be a problem with those distros. A standard Slackware install includes almost all libraries you need, otherwise the Slackbuilds .info files list dependencies. I install a lot of software on my machines (I use Slackware as my daily driver) and doing manual dependency handling is just not an issue. The benefits outweigh the slight increase in difficulty. Another thing about Slackware: the help you get on the forum is brilliant. The gurus there are knowledgeable and friendly to people like me asking newbie questions. Finally a warning: if you use Slackware too long you will not leave!
Thanks man. Hey I hear ya... I can definitely see the benefits of Slackware. Since this video I have made a few others showing sbopkg, sbotools and slackpkgplus. Really good tools. :D
Very true about not being able to leave. In addition, a small script in sbopkg official package, sqg, will create a queue file with all dependencies. In older releases it was in /usr/share/doc/sbopkg/contrib, but the new package copies it to /usr/sbin
Hey very nice vid and I am always excited to see someone talking about Slack. By the by.. there is a new tool called sbopkg. This will let you install any of the packages that you saw on slackbuilds with just a few menu selections. You can go and install by hand from slackbuilds and I still do. But, you can list in all those dependencies by searching and install them with the menus, then install your package. It really speeds things up. But if something does go wrong you can pull the package having an issue by hand tweak it so it works. Check out SBOPKG. It does make life better. Also, Slackpkg is really just mostly for installing the official build. So when you are using it there are those other optionals there but yea it is mostly the new install tool. But, you can (for the first time! Whoo hoo!!) use it to do a live update of your system when new ones come up! This for Slack people was monumental! Point the mirror to the new one, run update, run install-new, run upgrade-all, clean-system and boom! You are now on the new version! Before it was much more scripty. So again thanks for giving Slackware some well deserved press! You rock!
This video made me miss my Slackware days. Haven't used it since 2000 except for a brief test of Salix 5 or 6 years ago. When 14.2 is officially released I might slap that onto my desktop (Xfce version, sorry. I'm not a KDE guy) to replace elementary OS. I've been meaning to do that but I've just been lazy... Which is the same reason I installed eOS in the first place ;)
Yep, I don't like KDE either. Not installing the bloated cow next time. Using Mate as my main desktop and I3wm occasionally. I just hope the newer 4.x kernel works ok on my old Slacker box.
I love Slackware - it's a monster of stability! I used it from version 2.0 I think (back in the '90's). It does take a while to tweak and tune (a day or two) - but then it is ready to rock. I use it for "serious stuff" - for games I rely on Ubuntu Mate 16.04 LTS - which is great for Steam gaming.
For those who may be interested there are some very nice tools which can aid in installing slackbuilds. Sbopkg provides a nice curses interface for downloading and installing so you can avoid all that mucking about grabbing the files from the web and manually moving them around. Also, and even more conveniently, you can use slpkg which syncs with several different online repositories, include slackbuilds.org and the aforementioned Alien Bob, and even automates dependency resolution for you. Using that tool you could merely enter 'slpkg -s sbo kdenlive' and it would grab all those other packages, as well as any they required, and install them all for you. Very convenient.
The best way to install Slackbuilds is sbopkg. It is basically a curses interface which handles searching for, building and installing Slackbuilds. You can even easily set up a build queue. It really is a massive quality of life upgrade, and feels very true to the spirit of Slackware.
+Christopher Gibbs Yeah I'm yet to try sbopkg. I'll reinstall slackware when the final release comes out and play with it more in depth. Had a few good suggestions of tools to use in the comment section :D
+Linux4UnMe I don't use Slackware full-time any more, but having run it, Arch, Gentoo and Funtoo, it remains my favourite "advanced" Linux distro. 13.1 was the first Linux distro I used where KDE4 worked entirely as advertised. Also, between sbopkg and src2pkg I could get anything running beautifully without any issues and no fuss (not sure if src2pkg is still a recommended package tbh). I forgot to mention it before, but sbopkg can also be used straight from the command prompt (a la apt/yum/pacman/emerge not only through a curses interface). I should also note that AlienBob is your new best friend - if you want to update your DE, or are in any way interested in getting the most out of your system, he's your man. Probably the thing I miss the most about Slackware is the fact that I really felt like part of a community, and that on some level I knew the people who made it happen.
I like Slackware because it's so hard to use, having problems with my computer gives me a kind of thrill. When I used Ubuntu it just felt boring because there were no problems to fix
Can't bloody add annotations without flash.... I'm not doing that... but just to mention... I ended up having to use "rpm2tgz" to convert the RPM (forgot the screencast was paused when I did that) It wouldn't install the soundkonverter.tar.gz and asked for another file extension so I used the alternate method which converted it to a soundkonverter.tgz package for installation. ;)
You introduce Slackware 14.2, but download slackbuilds from 14.1 SBo repository. But, it isn't big deal tho. I don't use Slackware (maybe not yet), their Unix-like and KISS principle is rock! Thanks for the video!
I am using slackware. I think it saves a time instead of wasting it. It all depends what you expecting. It is for people which are expecting control, stability, wants to install OS only one time and no more, and save the time after the installation. So, it is like you need spend 1 week or even couple to install everything what you need, and then use it forever. And I was trying to move to other distributions, but I was disappointed which the stability or some silly problems. Only second distribution of my choice is mint (also have spare some others on VM when I want to quick install and check if I really will need some app).
Been hooked on Slackware since v0.96 Not a bad distribution// Try d/l a new kernel from kernel.org with any other Linux Label. Love Slackware.
6 лет назад
David Porowski - I started Unix (IBM's AIX) about 1988/1989. Since then, I've worked with many flavors of commercial UNIX. Even though for personal use I first used BSD Unix. But when I discovered LINUX (1997), I tried several different distros. All were junk, except for Slackware. It was love at install. Best distro, hands down. Closest UNIX clone. Nothing comes closer to actual UNIX, except the BSDs.
I think the most important question regarding the choice of distro is how much time are you willing to pay. If you have lots of it go for LFS,Slackware,Gentoo,Arch (in that order) or let others manage the distro for you (Sabayon,Debian,Fedora,Ubuntu,Opensuse).
+WIM42GNU Getting up and running with Slackware does not take long at all. It comes with so much by default and everything working well. For other tools install via slackbuilds (+sbopkg) is easy to install.
WIM42GNU Yes, correct. I did speak as the slackware experienced user. But slackware is so Linux and UNIX-like standard that since Linux (command line) experience goes a long way for getting in with slackware. I run slackware on servers because of its simplicity and now gentoo on the daily driver laptop
About time Slackware got some well deserved attention. Thanks for the excellent video Check out sbopkg sbopkg.org/ for handling slackbuilds and its queue files for some extra goodness.
All those people horrified that there is no dependency resolution I think are overlooking a common problem. Anyone who has ever wanted to remove some simple package so that a new version can be compiled with different options enabled has surely run into the screen telling them they are about to uninstall the entire Gnome desktop or some such. This is a royal pain. In Slackware you just uninstall the package and recompile and install your own. No problem at all. It all just runs fine, and no attempts by the system to uninstall the entire desktop or X11 or whatever. Very nice indeed.
+Kepa Badiola Slackware is a tiny project. It was getting too difficult to maintain Gnome packaging along with a huge desktop like kde. I think they dropped it because 1) It free's up alot of time to work on the main kde version and 2) There were others in the community that was doing a great job of packaging Gnome so Patrick decided to hand the torch over to them.
I wouldn't say it's bad on laptops either. I had 3 laptops on which I used it the oldest on around 8 years ago had a problem with wifi because of broadcom chipset but actually it run good and I still use it :) I made lot of distrohping but in the end still back on old good slacky ;)
How can you people stand not having automatic dependency resolution? I try to install something in, say, Debian and for even the smallest of programs it pulls about 10-20 different packages. It would take forever to download and install every little thing. And that's not including all the updates. Just... how is it humanly possible without having to dedicate your life to the OS?
+Zachary Jones One thing to point out is that on Debian they split what would have been a single large package in Slackware into about 10-30 separate packages. It makes it hard to have a very tiny Slackware install, but on the other hand it gets around the problem of having to keep track of a million installed packages. Personally I think that the packages management in Debian (and many other distros) is convoluted as heck and far from perfect, which is probably why they have a tendency to break much more easily than Slackware.
I use slackware for monitor-less servers. it is said that slackware is the most unix-like linux distribution. with debian I get sick of the sudo crap way too quick and make a suid /bin/tcsh (or bash if there is no tcsh). sysvinit startup scripts are sweet for getting your hands dirty although lately they tried to fudgarize them. right now im installing slackware on my raspberry pi.
I know. What I really mean is why do people choose to use this over other distros that are just as light and arguably just as stable but easier to use?
I simply uninstalled it. And (for me), there weren't that many things I had to recompile to get audio to work again. Firefox seems to just work without it.
