back to article Oldest swinger in town, Slackware, notches up a quarter of a century

Slackware, the oldest Linux distribution still being maintained, has turned 25 this week, making many an enthusiast wonder where all those years went. Mention Slackware, and the odds are that the FOSS fan before you will go a bit misty-eyed and mumble something about dependency resolution as they recall their first entry into …

  1. fandom

    1994

    That was the time I first installed Slackware so I could work on my graduation project at home.

    My computer didn't even have a CD reader, at the time installing one was kind of daunting and, I think, I had to change a jumper in the sound card to solve some interrupt clash.

    Well, I guess I was lucky, a couple years earlier it would have been something like 27 install floppies.

    Whippersnappers! They don't know how easy they have it now.

    1. Rich 11

      Re: 1994

      I can (very vaguely now) remember booting from a floppy disk, inserting two more disks in turn, and then leaving it to fetch everything else it needed via FTP from a mirror run by a university somewhere in Kent.

    2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: 1994

      like 27 install floppies. - that was the whole thing. Just the base was 6.

      The SCO one from the same age was a 100. One floppy screwed up and that's it. In those days it was still an OS and not a bad one either, not a litigation shop.

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: 1994

        like 27 install floppies. - that was the whole thing

        Yup. And being a newbie, that's the option I went for - even though I was going to be using it as a headless server so didn't need most of it..

    3. Paul Kinsler

      Re: 1994

      That's about when I started. I used it because that's what a friend Bruce had used, not that there were so many options back then. I particularly remember the day-long kernel compile times... (depending on weediness of hardware).

    4. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: 1994

      That was the time I first installed Slackware

      For me it was pre version 1 (0.99pl15 to be precise) which (from memory) was only a couple of weeks before v1 (in 1993)

      On a 386sx25 with an 80MB ATA hard drive. With no CD-drive ('how many floppies???!"). All downloaded via my friends work internet connection (we didn't have internet at work[1] or at home). All the floppies were repurposed ex-demo or driver floppies, all of which were the cheapest spec possible.

      Which involved quite a few read errors and handing back to Joe so he could re-download the files. It took more than a week to get installed.

      That install got me online (via Demon Internet) and from then on I could go my own install floppies. My other PC (running OS/2, including a CD-drive attached via a SB16 soundcard) used the linux box as a gateway (dial-on demand actually worked!) and the SMTP email and Usenet access also came from that box. The Acorn Archimedes didn't get Internet access because I couldn't network it..

      Ah, them were the days - when I could stay up until 4am configuring 'stuff' and still go to work for 9am. MInd you, that gave me the impetus to push for an Internet connection at work (via Pipex, a 64K leased line with a Sparc-1 running Checkpoint Firewall hanging off it - it also had a (very, very expensive) token-ring card in it so it could talk to the rest of the network).

      [1] We were an IBM mainframe place - we had access to IBMNET which (sort of) got us internet email but it was pretty cumbersome and labourious. And we sure as hell didn't have FTP access to the Internet.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 1994

      It was 1995 or 6 for me. Also no CD, so at work, I gathered as many Compaq driver disks as I could find, cellotaped over the write-protect slot, and started copying. Back home, I stumbled my way through the installation, and eventually ended up with a big X on the screen. I didn't know you then had to run a window manager on top of X. I also remember running an MS-Windows machine against the Slackware machine, using a X server called mIx, or maybe MiX - can't recall exactly. The thrill of this achievement was wonderful - but as Linux matured and got easier to install, it's hard to be too nostalgic.

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Slackware is great, it doesn't come with systemd crap

      More power and a bigger community for Slackware.

      Slackware is great, and doesn't come with crap like systemd. Like Devuan. But unlike Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, SLES.

    7. anothercynic Silver badge

      Re: 1994

      You have me by two years... Ahhhhh bless it, good old Slut... errr... sorry, Slackware. 'Twas my first exposure to Linux and I fled in the opposite direction (not to Windows... to BSD!)

      *misty-eyed look* *soft sigh*

  2. RegGuy1 Silver badge

    Linux as it should be

    I've still got many tens of floppy disks in the garage -- sets of disks for for each area of installation. I seem to remember X taking a very large pile, then you had to work through xf86config, or whatever it was called, to get the system working.

    Happy days.

  3. jake Silver badge
    Pint

    Not to mention ...

    ... Slackware's systemd free. And, for me at least, 14.2 has been completely trouble-free since I first upgraded from 14.1. I installed it, and it got out of my way and let me use the computer. Can't ask for much more than that in an OS.

    Don't let that 30 June 2016 date scare you. 14.2 is actually up to date and modern, see for yourself at http://www.slackware.com/changelog/stable.php?cpu=x86_64 ... If you think you need a more modern kernel (you probably don't), try slack-current instead of -stable.

    Before anybody says it, if you insist that you have to boot into a GUI, edit the (mostly) self-documenting /etc/inittab to reflect your preference.

    1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: Not to mention ...

      ... Slackware's systemd free.

      As is Devuan - which is what I'm moving to. Especially as most of the stuff that people want me to provide (gitlab et. al.) comes with instructions on how to install on debian-based distributions so I don't have to think too much about it!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not to mention ...

      "Slackware's systemd free"

      And runs nicely and is perfectly stable because of that. Maybe it takes an extra few seconds to boot compared to a systemd distro but who the f*ck cares? I'll take system stability over a quick boot time any day.

      "And, for me at least, 14.2 has been completely trouble-free since I first upgraded from 14.1"

      Same here, been using 14.2 since it came out, everything worked out of the box including media and apart from having to download some printer drivers for cups it didn't need anything for it to be work ready.

  4. Roger Lipscombe

    "A beer, a command line ..."

    I first encountered Slackware in '94-'95, while a student. One morning I woke up after a night in the Union with an incipient hangover, with a plan to install it. So I sat down and turned on the PC. Turns out I'd managed to install it the previous night, successfully, while very very drunk, presumably with the aid of a kebab.

    1. frank ly
      Pint

      What's in a name?

      You can do anything when you're drunk with a kebab in your hand. I can find things on Wikipedia for example:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius#Conspiracy_and_.22Slack.22

      (Note the 'citation needed' at the end of that section.)

  5. Peter Christy

    I've been using Slackware for more years than I can recall, and its always been absolutely stable and a joy to work with.

    As Jake mentions above, although the last stable release was in 2016, continual updates have kept it reasonably up-to-date. However, I've always found the "bleeding edge" (-current) development version to be extremely stable too. Indeed its a lot more stable than the "release" versions of many of its rivals (Stand up whoever called out "Micro$oft!).

    May Slackware continue for many years!

    --

    Pete

  6. Steve Graham
    Linux

    I first installed Slackware from a CD, and I've just checked: that means it can't have been earlier than 1995. Newbie here.

  7. thames

    Well Ahead of Red Hat

    El Reg said: "2017 saw the distribution drop to 31 in page hit ranking, according to Linux watcher DistroWatch.com, from position 7 in 2002. "

    Well, they're 28 on the list right now, and way ahead of Red Hat who are at 45, sandwiched in between Kubuntu and Gentoo. Number 1 on the list is Manjaro, who are so far ahead of the rest of the pack that nobody is even close to them.

    Years ago Distrowatch had to write a complaint about "abuse" (their word) of the counters by fanbois who were gaming the system to try to push their favourite distro higher on the list. Or as DIstrowatch themselves put it "a continuous abuse of the counters by a handful of undisciplined individuals who had confused DistroWatch with a poll station".

    Distrowatch rankings have nothing to do with how "popular" any specific distro is. They're just a count of how often someone clicks on the page that describes that distro. The average Linux user never has any reason to ever visit Distrowatch, which means that the ranking is simply an indicator of what caught the eye of the sort of person who collects Linux distros the same way that some people collect stamps.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cheers, Slack

    Started using Slackware in late 1995 because that's what the server at my school ran, and installed it on my own system for the first time in mid-1996. Stuck with it until late 2006 when I switched to Gentoo due to the fact Slackware did not support amd64 (in 64-bit mode) back then. Those were good 11 years... I really learned a lot then and the distro not getting in my way played a major part in it. In fact, towards the end I used Slack as a a bootstrapping stage for compiling everything myself - complete with some homegrown scripts for generating Slackware package inventories out of source installs so that I could uninstall unneeded packages easily.

    Come to think of it, there should be old Pentium 60-based server in my cellar with Slackware still on its hard drive... I wonder if it still runs. Probably does, it used to feel like it was flipping indestructible - I went through 3 motherboards on my desktop machine while said box happily chugged along 24/7 as a gateway for a building LAN.

    Thank you very much, Patrick. I wouldn't be the same grumpy old-school sysadmin without your baby.

    1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: Cheers, Slack

      Stuck with it until late 2006

      From memory[1], my distro-career is as follows:

      Slackware

      Redhat

      Mandrake

      (a very brief flirt with SuSE)

      Mandriva

      Ubuntu (probably the one I used for the longest)

      FreeBSD

      Devuan

      I may have missed one or two - I'd have to look at my shelf-o'crap at home to see what CD's and/or boxes I have. Although I did go through a phase of buying the multi-distro sets (from Distrowatch? Can't remember) that shipped out all the currently-popular distributions as a multi-CD set so possession of a distro CD isn't a sure indicator of whether I actually installed it..

      1. Lennart Sorensen

        Re: Cheers, Slack

        Yeah I went:

        SLS 1.03 (Wow something better than DOS)

        Slackware 3.0 (Wow shared libraries but same dreadful package system as SLS)

        Redhat 2.0 through 6.0 (Wow useful package management)

        Debian 2.0 through today (Wow package dependencies that actually work, upgrades in place, and packages that aren't full of bugs)

        I haven't seen anything improve on Debian yet, so no need to switch.

        1. MyffyW Silver badge

          Re: Cheers, Slack

          Because the only thing more interesting than anyone's distro history is what they dreamt about last night:

          - 1997 Slackware (from those "a" series floppies, the rest of the disk sets I saved to a hard drive)

          - 2004 RedHat (because our app vendor had a penchant for them)

          - 2008 Slackware (sort of, from adventures with Slax USB-booted thin clients)

          - 2011 Ubuntu (final retirement of Windows from our shared use home PC)

          - 2013 Debian (the dawning realisation that typing the first 4 letters of "analysis" into a search box would give me "interesting" purchasing suggestions from Amazon meant I abandoned Shuttleworth's baby)

          Debian just works for me, so real need to tinker now.

      2. Dave559 Silver badge

        Re: Cheers, Slack

        That might have been the Linux Emporium you were thinking of, who provided a really great service in providing cheap CD sets (SaaS: sneakernet as a service), although I suspect that the eventual coming of broadband would have put quite a dent in their business.

    2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: Cheers, Slack

      should be old Pentium 60-based server in my cellar with Slackware

      Only recently (garage clear out[1]) did I get rid of the old IBM dual-P2 server that I used for many years as my main linux box. However, I know for certain that it didn't have any hard drives left in it since I re-used them in the next server as external backup drives..

      [1] The same one that saw me throw away lots of old Sparc-1 and sparcstation-5 bits that I'd collected over the years. I did offer them to various people that I knew collected old tat but even they turned them down..I did manage to get rid of a load of old SCSI-1 cables and adaptors though.

  9. vtcodger Silver badge

    No GUI Installer

    While it's technically true that the Slackware installer is command line text, it doesn't usually require typing long lines of cryptic text. It uses either query-response or Dialog widgets -- I forget which -- that are no different functionally from GUI message boxes, radiolists, and checklists. What is more daunting perhaps is the lack of an apt-get style automated installer with conflict resolution. Finding Slackbuilds for software not included in the distribution can be a drag. And installing non-mainstream software -- especially stuff that doesn't install with ./configure, make, make install can be tedious

    OTOH, if you need to solve some problem and you search for a generic Unix "How do I ...?" or "How does Unix ...?" solution, Odds are that the solution you find will work cleanly with Slackware

    1. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

      Re: No GUI Installer

      It's nothing compared to OpenBSD, which has one of the most stripped down installers.

      Graphical installers can be useful, particularly when organising a complex disk setup, but frankly that is a minority pursuit.

      Some distributions could probably save a fair bit of effort by staying text only instead of poorly implementing a graphical interface, especially when I think it was Ubuntu failed to support 15 bit colour quite some time ago, meaning the installer wouldn't work in one of the most popular virtualisation products..

  10. Zippy's Sausage Factory
    Pint

    I started with Slackware back in 1994, and like other contributors, I remember downloading Linux from the University of Kent's lovely mirror service (I haven't used it in a while as there are now nearer mirrors to me, but it's still a buzz to go hunting through its archives with my ftp client, just to see what's there).

    I'm not sure it'll tempt me away from Ubuntu 18.04 - maybe I'm getting lazy in my old age - but it's good to know it's still going strong.

    A (virtual) beer for the Slackware maintainers...

  11. Eugene Crosser

    Good(?) old days...

    I installed Slackware some time after SLS ceased to exist, and I got tired of rebuilding gcc and libc from the sources. I vaguely recall being a little grumpy about those fancy colour (cyan?) installation screens.

    Eventually becoming a sucker for fancy cutting edge desktop environments, I jumped ship when Slackware dropped Gnome when it became dependent on dbus (if memory serves), and Patrick refused to succumb. In retrospect, he was probably right: it was dbus that paved the way for systemd. We still used Slackware on the servers in production at least until 2007 when I left that company, and they probably continued to use it for a while after that. Maybe even until now.

    1. vtcodger Silver badge

      Re: Good(?) old days...

      " Slackware dropped Gnome when it became dependent on dbus (if memory serves)"

      My recollection -- which may be faulty -- is that Volkerding wanted to keep his distribution on a single CD and there wasn't enough room for both KDE and Gnome. Volkerding argued at the time that a Slackware compatible Gnome was available for those who wanted/needed it and that it was better that some people could install from a single CD than that everyone needed two.

      BTW -- judging from the number of gratuitous dbus related error messages thrown up on the konsole, KDE also seems to depend on dbus nowadays

  12. PhilipN Silver badge

    Hats off to Slackware

    My Linux baptism was with Ygdrassil but blowed if I can remember whether I tried installing it from 5 inch floppies or those new-fangled 3 inch ones.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Misty eyed

    Ah yes, first installed 0.99, so far back I can't pin down the year.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In 1996 a friend came over to my house with 2 floppies and said you have to try this , loadlin any one ?

  15. WallMeerkat

    Was it Slackware that was on a Computer Shopper cover CD around 95-96? If so, it was my first taste of Linux.

    I was more familiar with DOS that Unix, was chuffed that some commands worked eg. 'cd', but couldn't get anything to run.

    Eventually found documentation (might have been in the magazine itself?) and tried to get X to run. It ran in black and white on a wacky resolution.

    I gave up interest and came back in the early 2000s when Linux had really matured (but still had issues with graphics cards, modems, network cards and wifi adaptors)

    1. Spasticus Autisticus
      Linux

      I looked out my February 1996 PCW Interactive CD that has Slackware Professional Linux on it (v2.0 I think), the CD still runs but I doubt I'll try to make two install floppies to try and install it. This was my introduction to Linux and the start of my move away from Windows, which is at least 99% complete.

  16. Htos1
    Linux

    I broke my unix/linux cherry on Slackware in early '97. I still have the original boot floppy in the old case even. Today it's Suse Leap but it was sure was fun then, I remember it wasn't difficult at all getting the drivers to work.

  17. Netscrape

    Great days in 1995 were spent with my first Slackware install. Finding exactly the right kit to run it, installing over 64K leased line. Giving up and taking computer on a London bus to install on the university network where the mirror was located!

    Don't forget the first LONIX meetings that brought us all together to share tips and beers!

    Congratulations Slackware.

  18. ClosedJar
    Linux

    the years do fly...

    I remember tying up my modem. A slow process but I was pleased at the end. Can someone please hand me my 25 years back? Someone please reboot me...# reboot. (pesky time travel) : -)

  19. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

    Great distro, apart from dependencies

    I started Linux with Slackware, although much more time was spent with OS/2, and BSD Unix. It, or to be more accurate Salix aka Slackware with dependencies and a few extra bits, is my primary Linux OS at home.

    It's generally straightforward, and not difficult to wrangle, instead of systemd/network manager buggering around with the machine and networking.

    initrd is a bit of a pain, though. It's possible to create one, which is essential for Xen, and also useful when running an SAS controller. Really need to work through the steps in getting my main Linux system to boot after transplanting the SSD from an SATA connection to SAS, it gets a few seconds into boot before the SAS driver initialises, the root partition appears at a different location, and the system falls over.. I've built an initrd, but it isn't working, and I'm currently too stubborn just to do a reinstall.

  20. JohnFen

    Yay Slackware!

    I used it man years ago, but then switched to Debian. However, since Debian adopted systemd, I've been increasingly itchy to move to a distro that serves me better. I'd looked long and hard at switching to BSD -- a very strong contender -- but a few months back, I think I decided to return to my old friend Slackware.

  21. sisk

    You know, my Arch install is acting up (due to local problems like lack of drive space, and some idiot who shall remain nameless doing a partial update rather than any problems with Arch itself, but the easiest fix is still a full install) and I've never given Slack a go. Maybe it's time....

    (I might be a masochist.)

  22. joma0711

    atari MiNT anyone?

    ...on a 16MHz STE was my first unix like, then yadgdgradgdgssil or whatever it was called for a while, before settling on red hat (5, i think). wondering if i made the wrong choice in these heady systemd days ;-)

    am going to try slackware for the first time ever this weekend, see what i've been missing :-)

  23. AZump

    Slacker since 1997.

    Gaming under Linux since 1999. Unreal ran better under Wine and Unreal Tournament running natively under Linux was amazing. Actually Glide on Linux was amazing. The desktop effects were out of this world.

    Still running Slackware everywhere.

    To date, Slackware does 2 things no other Linux I've ever tried does. 1.) "Install Everything" doesn't leave you with a cluster-fuck of broken software and unwanted/unneeded services running. 2.) It doesn't swap. Even on my webserver which is still LAMP, heavy on the MP, it boots into less memory (even with KDE running) than any other distro.

    Once, I saw a whole megabyte swapped. A WHOLE MEGABYTE!

    I can swapoff -a, fire up a severely modded Kerbal Space Program, commit 28 of my 32 GB of ram, and play all day.

    ...can't badmouth Win7 though. I have an old ASUS EP-121 tablet used as a DAW and not once had an issue. 7 years on and its still on the original factory install. There is a small Slackware partition on it too so I can fish:// to my webserver and write code from my backyard.

    I love Slackware. ...and Enlightenment. Great window manager Enlightenment. Very light, lots of candy. :)

  24. cs9

    First distro here as well

    I had the Walnut Creek CD-ROM distro of Slackware 3.0 and I remember doing many an install. Ah yes the good old days of needing to edit XF86Config to get X Windows running in larger than 640x480. Nostalgic? No I don't think that's quite the word. Learned an awful lot though, well worth the trouble.

    1. Chloe Cresswell Silver badge

      Re: First distro here as well

      Mine too, in a weird way: I worked in a small computer shop, and a regular came in with the walnut creek 1996 cd set and asked if we could install it for him.

      I took it home with a compaq 485sx25, and I still have that CD set in a rack on the wall in my computer room. Stuck with it for many, many years.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lack of phoning home=frying pan/fire

    "2017 saw the distribution drop to 31 in page hit ranking, according to Linux watcher DistroWatch.com, from position 7 in 2002. Of course, the lack of phoning home by the OS (cited by many as a reason for a move to Linux) makes an accurate user count impossible."

    Slackware gets pushed down in ranking by users wanting an OS that doesn't phone home by downloading a distro with a GUI and SystemD?

    Looks like the NSA's/MI5's plan worked beautifully!

    Most every package listed here is suspect: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/

    (Scroll to the bottom for Zeitgeist and see that it reguires a username and password)

    Looking at system logs of a distro using sysytemd will show everything going smoothly until org.freedesktop appears.

    And who can forget this: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/05/torvalds_sievers_dust_up/

    1. Philip Hands

      Re: Lack of phoning home=frying pan/fire

      >> Looking at system logs of a distro using sysytemd will show everything going smoothly until org.freedesktop appears.

      ... and there was me momentarily believing the thing about systemd ensuring that you'd never see another log message.

      Nice to see that is just so much nonsense, eh?

  26. Orv Silver badge

    I got my first copy of Slackware from a high school friend. He'd downloaded it all and offered to copy it for me if I gave him a box of disks. At the time I had only local BBS dial-in so I had no other way to get it without a long-distance phone call. In hindsight, tinkering with that distro was the entry point to my current career.

  27. keithpeter Silver badge
    Pint

    Slackware live

    Eric Hameleers (aka Alien Bob) provides Slackware Live isos and a set of scripts for customising your own live iso. might be of interest to those who have not yet tried Slackware and who don't want to spend an hour or so installing it onto a spare computer.

    I'm posting this from a slackware --current base installation running Alien Bob's Plasma 5 compile - very slick and stable.

  28. gc23

    Dependency hell

    Hi everyone,

    I've been using Slackware for about 20 years now. Always stable, never any problems, and just to let you know that there's several packaging programs that solve dependency issues if you want them. I use sbopkg with a script called sboinst. I run sboinst and it installs things like SpamAssassin and its dozens of dependencies with a single command line.

    I don't use it that much as I still prefer to build most packages myself. Prebuilt packages are all over but I use pkgs.org personally.

    I run a BBS under Slackware (yes, that kind of a BBS) and it's extremely reliable. No need to switch after all of these years.

    1. JohnFen
      Pint

      Re: Dependency hell

      "I run a BBS under Slackware (yes, that kind of a BBS)"

      Kudos to you! Is it on FidoNet?

      My hat is off and my respect is given to each and every person who continues to run these systems. I think it's extremely important for that old-school infrastructure to continues to exist. Some day, the internet will fail us.

  29. drajen
    Pint

    A short fling

    I love Slackware for what it is and what it stands for. I remember running it for a few years after I got tired of Red Hat Linux in the upper nineties. When Ubuntu came out I never looked back because I'm lazy and dist upgrades where painless. Tinkering with Linux will never be the same how fun it was back then.

  30. DropBear

    Regarding that popularity thingie...

    ...I find it telling that the mini-distro Slax - which I understand used to be called "the live CD of Slackware" at some point or other - is still around except is now based on... Debian.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Regarding that popularity thingie...

      Slax was dead in the water for 5 years. The new version has about as much to do with the old version as today's SCO has to do with the SCO that knew how to code. Frankly, I'm surprised that they reused the name for what is a completely new project.

      Good luck to them ... but if they are still trying to keep it lean, they might want to switch to Devuan lest the bloat of the init system takes over their allocated disk space.

    2. eionmac

      Re: Regarding that popularity thingie...

      I use "SLAX" "9.x" (now based on Debian, as a Live Linux for my elderly grandmothers i tutor to put in computer for their Grandchildren to use without breaking Grandma's computer. I used original SLAX as a Live Distro for many years on old computers or stranger's computers.

  31. rnturn

    Slackware was one of my first Linux experiences

    I installed it from the CD that was included with ``Linux Unleashed'' (V1.2 if memory serves) as a fourth boot partition on a '486 that was already running Windows, Consensys (SVR4.2), and Coherent (using Coherent's boot loader). I was building my own kernels back then (to tweak SCSI card detection order mainly) and still thought of of Linux as a "maybe" option on my computer and it remained in that category until the SMP feature got really close to exiting "experimental" status (I was planning on a dual-socket m'board upgrade). I ran Slackware for a couple of years before tiring of the aforementioned dependency hell and switch to Red Hat. Stayed with them until RH8 then switched to Suse/OpenSUSE. Recently, though, an impending hardware failure in our home network's firewall system caused me to give Slackware a try (after 20+ years) following several failed attempts to get Tumbleweed and CentOS7 to run our firewall scripts under systemd on the replacement hardware. (To be fair, I cannot blame systemd in the case of the failed CentOS attempt; it silently refused to even recognize the disks in the system at install time.) Slackware loaded quickly and in less than 90 minutes--with much of that time was waiting for md0 to initialize--I had it running the firewall scripts. Easy Peasy.

    I'm not averse to building application from sources but, so far, on the couple of Slack builds I've done after that firewall project, I find that there's not much I'd have to build anyway. And, it is (I understand) possible to run Docker images on Slackware so that might turn out to be an interesting way to make new applications available.

  32. Paul Kinsler

    Slackware... yikes!

    Anyone still reading this thread? You might find this interesting....

    https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/donating-to-slackware-4175634729/#post5882751

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Slackware... yikes!

      Pat's posted another comment on this, see the -current change-log (and a kernel upgrade, to 4.14.58).

      Note to those using -stable: The kernel's been updated to 4.4.144 ... and also note that last I heard, Pat's Wife is the person who maintains the various Slackware versions of the kernel. Much thanks to both of them. Hopefully they can relax a trifle this weekend.

  33. tvespasian
    Linux

    Slack's the BEST. The Free-est of the Free. Both as in SPEECH AND BEER! Volkerding showed the greatest wisdom and humility using the BSD license and letting GNU cover the GPL'ed ware he uses in his system.

    NO SYSTEMD! AMEN!

    We of Clan FitzMorris, south Tucson will use Slack, choose Slack until X-Day.

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