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[RELEASE] Slackware 12


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Slackware 12 has just been released.

You can read the changelog and download the beast.

Now, let's do some propaganda. :P

You're not sure why you should download Slackware. It has the reputation of being harsh; configuration is text-based. Installer is said to be unfriendly and text based too. It's a distribution for hackers. Its package manager doesn't have dependancy support. It is too spartiate. It only has old packages.

First, it's not harder to install Slackware than any other distribution and in fact, it's probably faster and easier. The only annoying thing is you don't have tools to easily resize an NTFS partition. But then? We all have such tools and for those who don't, just use those from another linux distribution.

Installation is text-based. And what's the problem with that? Move with direction keys, select/unselect with space, validate with Enter. I've used (k)ubuntu, opensuse, gentoo and they all have graphical installers and all of them are laggy and choppy. Ever tried playing an action game with 3frames per second? It feels pretty the same. Slackware doesn't have this problem and you get in the real installation within seconds (opensuse first needs to load 72MB of data).

Installation is quicker: boot, select your keymap, select the root partition, select the swap partition, select other partitions to be automatically mounted, tell which group of software you want, come back 10 minutes later (yes, that fast) and answer three or four questions. In expert mode which is really longer, I'm done with the installation in less than 20 minutes.

Everything is text-based. Wrong. Many things are dialog-based which is text but has a good layout and never involves typing command lines.

But it's true configuration also uses text files. Harder? Just thik about it: what's the difference between opening /etc/foo.conf in a text editor, modify the foobar line and opening kde/gnome control panel, go to foo configuration and modify the foobar box? Nothing except one is much faster to code so the coder can concentrate on other things.

Its package manager does not handle dependancies. True. But do you really care?

Did you know nearly every app has support for spell checkers so they are marked dependant on these spell checkers and that there are half a dozen of different spell checker available? Did you know in opensuse X is marked dependant on Firefox? :blink:

If you install an application which has a dependancy which is not met, you will get an error message telling which program is needed so just install it. That easy, no need for dependancy checking which often lead to installing applications which will never serve.

Packages are all up-to-date. From the kernel (2.6.21.5) to Xorg (7.2) and kde (3.5.7), everything is latest.

And it is fast. 40 seconds to boot kde, on a *laptop*, with a really big kernel. Memory consumption is low. Networking is good. Hardware support is excellent.

Edited by Camarade_Tux
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how new are the included slackware packages? are they the old trusty versions or newish?

i stopped using the ubuntu flavors because they always include old stuff. i hate chasing down 50 dependencies to build an updated component.

Edited by #rootworm
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Newest available!

Xorg7.2, KDE 3.5.7, apache has its new name (httpd), kernel 2.6.21.5 (latest), vim 7.002, udev, hal, xfce 4.4.1, gcc 4.2, pidgin.

All of them are the latest available. :yes:

Edited by Camarade_Tux
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