 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 478, 15 October 2012 |
Welcome to this year's 42nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It has been a relatively slow week for new releases in the open source community. Many of the big projects, including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and FreeBSD, are in the process of fixing critical bugs and getting ready to launch new versions of their respective projects. In the mean time we decided to use this lull to talk about a project known for its calm, steady progression. We refer to, of course, Slackware, the world's oldest surviving Linux distribution. This week Jesse Smith takes the venerable project for a spin and reports on his findings. Read on to find out what the conservative distribution brings to the table. In the news this week we cover a new file system developed by Samsung for the Linux kernel and we talk a bit about something called The Internet Of Things. We also look at the interesting new way Webconverger is handling system updates and cover the latest developments from the Ubuntu distribution. Also in this week's edition we discuss accessing multiple home machines that reside behind a firewall. Additionally we take a look at the releases of the past week and provide easy access to news, reviews and podcasts from Around The Web. We here at DistroWatch wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (16MB) and MP3 (31MB) formats
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Slackware 14.0
It may sound strange, but I always get a little excited when I see a new Slackware release announced. I say "strange" because I don't use Slackware on a regular basis and, for that matter, the distribution is very conservative, meaning there are rarely any shiny new features. However, this plain approach, these largely uneventful releases, are what make Slackware so appealing to its user base. Very little happens in Slackland, or perhaps it might be more accurate to say very little ever goes wrong.
The release announcement for Slackware 14.0 suggests, as usual, a fairly tame release. The new Slackware comes with an up to date version of Firefox, the 3.2 release of the Linux kernel and includes Network Manager as one of the utilities available for getting on-line. Also new to this release is the Clang compiler, which has been gaining followers as an alternative to the GNU Compiler Collection. The two compilers are made available side-by-side allowing the user to select their preferred development tools. Slackware is offered in both 32-bit and 64-bit builds and users can download the distribution as a series of CD images or as one medium sized (2.4GB) DVD. I opted to try the 32-bit build of the DVD.
Booting from the DVD we are asked if we would like to set any specific boot parameters and then we are asked to confirm our keyboard layout. The DVD then brings us to a text mode login prompt with a number of notes advising us on how to partition our hard drive and how to enable swap partitions prior to installing should we find ourselves using a computer with a small amount of RAM. We can login to the text console using the username "root" without a password. We are then advised we can partition the local hard drive using either the fdisk or cfdisk programs and then kick off the installer by running the command "setup". Before getting into the installer, I'd like to say this is something I appreciate about Slackware. The distribution can look primitive, yet the user is lead through the initial stages one step at a time. When in doubt we can usually just take the recommended or default option.
The distribution's installer is a series of text-based menus. While a good deal of options are presented, options we might not find in most other distributions, Slackware's installer does a pretty good job of explaining each step and we can mostly take the defaults as we walk through the process. One of the first things we will be asked to do is select our root partition and format this partition. Supported file systems include ext2/3/4, Btrfs, XFS, JFS and ReiserFS. We are then asked which software packages we would like to install. There is a pretty big list, including everything from the base system, to networking, to the X graphical system to desktop environments, development tools, the kernel's source code and games. Even the Emacs text editor gets its own software category. I opted to install just about everything, minus the kernel source code, the Xfce desktop, games and the aforementioned Emacs. I then waited while the installer copied over the selected items. My selections totaled 6.2GB of data (once packages were uncompressed) and took a little over an hour to install.
Once all of our software has been copied to the hard drive we're then taken through several configuration steps. We are asked if we would like to install a boot loader (LILO in this case). We're asked to confirm our screen's resolution, enter any custom kernel parameters and choose a location for our boot loader. Then we are asked to tell the installer what type of mouse we use (if any) and then we create a hostname for our machine. We are asked which services we would like to run in the background and we can check off our choices from a list. Then we can opt to choose a custom font, set our time zone and select a window manager from those installed. The last step in the process before we reboot the machine is to set a password for the root account.
Slackware 14.0 -- Playing media files.
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The first time we boot into Slackware we are brought to a text login prompt where we can login as root. I took this opportunity to create a regular user account and change the system's default init level so that, in the future, the distribution would boot to a graphical environment. I noticed at this time the root user had e-mail waiting, one message contained a welcome message with information on the Slackware project. The other e-mail suggested users visit the Linux Counter website to let the world know they exist.
After a reboot Slackware brought up a graphical login screen from which I could login to the KDE desktop. Slackware 14.0 comes with KDE 4.8 and the graphical environment is laid out in the traditional style. At the bottom of the screen we find an application menu and task switcher. The desktop is empty, devoid of any widgets or icons. At first I found the graphical interface to be quite sluggish, but after disabling desktop effects and search indexing KDE became much more responsive.
I ran the latest release of Slackware on my laptop (dual-core 2GHz CPU, 4GB of RAM, Intel wireless and Intel video cards) and in a VirtualBox virtual machine. On the laptop Slackware worked well. The newly included Network Manager detected nearby wireless networks, sound was set to a low volume, but worked without any problems. Performance was about on par with other popular distributions. By default my screen wasn't set to its maximum resolution, but this could be fixed through the System Settings panel. While sitting idle at the KDE desktop the operating system used about 275MB of memory. When running the distribution in VirtualBox I ran into a few problems. Slackware in the virtual machine wouldn't allow me to set a high screen resolution and performance was quite slow. In fact, installing Slackware in the virtual machine took approximately three hours and boot times were about double what I would expect from other full sized distributions. Something I found interesting about the 32-bit build of Slackware was that the packages installed from the DVD were compiled for the i486 architecture, which is getting a bit dated. On the other hand, the default Slackware kernel used to install the operating system requires the computer's processor be PAE-enabled, a feature old i486 machines didn't support. It struck me as an odd combination to use as the default configuration.
Slackware 14.0 -- Desktop settings and applications.
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The selection of software which is installed will vary a good deal depending on which categories of packages we select at install time. I opted to install just about all of the end-user software, minus the Xfce desktop components, and it gave me a large collection of applications. Included in the application menu were Firefox, KMail, the KTorrent bittorrent client, the Pidgin instant messenger client, the SeaMonkey browser suite and the Thunderbird e-mail client. XChat was included, as was the gFTP file transfer software. There were a number of multimedia players, including Amarok, Audacious, the Dragon Player and Juk. The menu also featured KPlayer, MPlayer and a disc ripper. The classic XMMS player was included too. These multimedia programs were installed alongside a full array of codecs for playing popular media formats. The Calligra office suite was installed along with a document viewer and the GNU Image Manipulation Program. I didn't find Java nor Flash installed on the system, but we are given two compilers, the GNU Compiler Collection and Clang. For graphical application development we are provided with KDevelop and the Qt4 Designer programs. The application menu also holds a small collection of games and educational apps.
Slackware comes with a number of programs to make KDE more accessible, including a screen magnifier, accessibility options for the mouse pointer and a screen reader. The Kleopatra and KGpg programs are included to help protect our documents and manage security certificates. Of course, the distribution comes with other small programs for editing text files, managing archives and there is a virtual calculator. Behind the scenes, version 3.2 of the Linux kernel keeps things running smoothly.
The way Slackware handles packages is different from the way most other distributions manage their software so I want to spend a little time talking about it. Slackware does, technically, have package management, though on a very basic level and the package manager doesn't resolve dependencies. This tends to lead to some confusion. As the Slackbook states, "Apparently many people in the Linux community think that a packager manager must by definition include dependency checking. Well, that simply isn't the case, as Slackware most certainly does not. This is not to say that Slackware packages don't have dependencies, but rather that its package manager doesn't check for them. Dependency management is left up to the sysadmin, and that's the way we like it."
However, what the book doesn't say is why slackers like it that way. A Linux.com article sums up a few reasons. Personally I find it strange people are still opposed to something so useful (and, on modern distributions, reliable) as dependency checking, especially since it can be turned off in distributions which support the feature. However I'm not here to talk about other distros and how they do things, but rather Slackware and how it works.
Slackware comes with a few tools for package management, the one which will probably feel the most familiar to users of other distributions is slackpkg. The syntax of slackpkg and its actions are quite close to those of APT and YUM, but without the dependency resolution. Assuming we have installed most of the contents of the Slackware DVD dependencies shouldn't be a problem. Before using slackpkg we need to manually edit its configuration file and select one of the many available repository mirrors available. We are warned to only select one mirror to avoid confusing the package manager. At the time of writing there were no updates waiting for me, but I was able to experiment (successfully) with adding and removing software using slackpkg. For people who would like to benefit from dependency resolution there is the third-party tool, slapt-get. This program has a syntax and behaviour closely related to APT's and I found it worked well. I did find the build of slapt-get I installed, which was labeled as being built for Slackware 14, by default would connect to Slackware 13.37 repositories. Editing the slapt-get configuration file allowed me to switch to Slackware 14.0 repositories and everything worked smoothly from there.
Slackware 14.0 -- Package management with slackpkg
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Most of the time I was able to find the software I wanted in the official Slackware repositories, however, there were some items I wanted which were not available. Here is where I ran into a bit of a pickle. A quick search for up to date third-party Slackware repositories didn't yield positive results. There are third-party repositories out there, but the ones I looked at weren't up to speed with the 14.0 release (some hadn't caught up to 13.37 yet). The Slackware release notes suggest visiting Slackbuilds.org, which is home to many build scripts and the site provides links to source code. The first few days I was running Slackware Slackbuilds hadn't caught up with the new release, though by the end of the week they were providing build scripts for Slackware 14.0. Using Slackbuilds requires manually hunting down the proper software, downloading the source code and then building it, making Slackbuilds less attractive than the ports systems offered by Gentoo and FreeBSD and much less convenient than package management on most other Linux distributions.
The hunt for third-party software aside, my time with Slackware went fairly well. The distribution comes with a good deal of useful software, the desktop tended to stay out of the way and performance was normal for a modern Linux distribution. I found some of the default package options a bit strange (the Calligra office suite being installed rather than LibreOffice, for example), but the packages provided got the job done. Setting up Slackware on a new computer took longer than doing an installation of Fedora, openSUSE or Ubuntu, but once it is in place, the user can largely forget about the operating system and just go to work.
As the rest of the Linux ecosystem changes Slackware has a tendency to stay relatively fixed. The distribution's installer, package management, init system, website and file system layout have stayed remarkably consistent over the years. Whether this consistency is good or not will likely vary a great deal depending on the individual. Shortly after the release of Slackware 14.0 there were the usual comments from people on tech forums wondering if Slackware really brings anything worthwhile to the Linux community, if the distribution does anything which sets it above other distributions rather than merely apart. The answer is yes on both accounts, provided one is looking for the specific things Slackware provides. People looking for new technology, convenient features, lots of packages in the main repository, automatic package management (and dependency resolution) and a friendly installer will not find what they want in Slackware. That's not what it's here to do. What Slackware does do is remain consistent and reliable from one release to the next. Slackware today will work the same as the previous release and the next release will likely work the same as this one. It is a vanilla distribution, meaning very little is changed from the upstream sources and administrating a Slackware box will probably feel familiar to people who usually admin BSD or other UNIX-like operating systems. Slackware has a well deserved reputation for being tested and for being reliable. However, in my mind, perhaps the best characteristic of Slackware is this: the distribution does what it says it will do, no more, no less. It is rare a person runs into surprises when running Slackware because the distribution tells you exactly what it is going to do and then, with your command, does that and only that one thing. This approach means there is more manual work to installing and running Slackware compared with other distributions, but it also means things seldom go wrong. Running the Slackware distribution is a boring experience and, as the Slackbook says, that's the way slackers like it.
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| Miscellaneous News |
Samsung releases a new file system, Webconverger unveils a new update system and Ubuntu experiments with donations.
 Last week Samsung unveiled a new file system with an implementation for the Linux kernel. The new file system is named F2FS and is aimed at NAND flash memory-based storage devices. The developers hope to improve performance for SSDs and SD cards. Along with the appropriate kernel patches, userland tools for formating devices with F2FS have been released. At this time the new file system has not been widely tested and does not yet come with integrity checking or recovery tools so it isn't advisable to use it on production systems. However, it is good to see a file system designed specifically with flash storage devices in mind, especially given their increasing popularity.
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The Internet Of Things is a phrase used to describe a world in which many common objects are interconnected via the Internet. It envisions a world in which luggage, packages, airplane seats and cars are linked together, allowing people to access not just web pages about things, but the things themselves. The Contiki operating system is designed with this Internet Of Things in mind. It is a small operating system which can run on low-resource, battery-operated devices. These devices can, through Contiki, be connected to the Internet. Adam Dunkels, Contiki's creator, took some time to talk about the little OS. He discusses the goals behind the Internet Of Things, the balance between optimizing code and making things easier and he brings up the first Internet connected Lego brick. It's an interesting read, especially for people who like the idea of having their household appliances accessible from their personal computer.
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The Webconverger team recently released version 15 of their web kiosk distribution. The distribution, which is based on Debian, is designed to be run on public terminals where only web-based pages and services need to be accessed. With version 15 the developers behind Webconverger have tried something new, system updates using the git version control software. The idea is to have installations of Webconverger connect to a managed git repository and have the operating system seamlessly sync using git protocols. It is an interesting idea and should make it easier to insure system integrity and allow administrators to roll back to previous versions of packages in the event something breaks.
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 It seems as though the developers at Canonical are reconsidering their move to place Amazon search results in the Ubuntu Dash. The decision to feature Amazon results raised a number of complaints, some from people who don't want their operating system to display advertisements and others from people who didn't want their operating system sending keyword searches for local items to third-party servers. While Canonical hasn't removed the offending feature, they have introduced a way to easily turn off the Amazon ads. Work has also gone into filtering out content which some users may find offensive. While this seems like a step in the right direction, it does not appear to have won over wary users, nor addressed their key concerns. As one commenter on the story wrote, "The Amazon results should be opt-in, not opt-out and the products should be placed in their own lens."
Ubuntu unveiled another new idea this week, making it easier for users of the popular desktop distribution to donate money. When visitors to the Ubuntu website choose to download the Ubuntu Desktop edition they will be presented with a screen asking if they would like to make a donation. Contributors can choose where their donation goes (toward hardware support, performance improvements, desktop development, coordination with upstream, etc). People not wishing to donate financially can skip directly to downloading the Ubuntu ISO image. The donations model has worked well for other projects such as Linux Mint and it will be interesting to see the reaction of Ubuntu's user base.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Connecting to multiple machines behind a router
Running multiple servers asks:
Could you expand your tutorial on setting up access to your home PC to include access to a PC on your home LAN?
For example, suppose jesse.is-a-geek.net translated to your router's IP address, and you had a few machines on your home LAN (maybe with 192.168.*.* addresses, maybe using IPv6). How would you access different PCs or servers behind the router from the Internet? I tend to use different ports which the router forwards to the appropriate service (typically ssh and/or http and/or https) and machine, but wonder if there's a better way?
DistroWatch answers:
What you are describing, forwarding different ports on the router to different machines, is certainly the easy way to go and the most likely approach to work across multiple brands of routers. This would allow you to connect to your home IP address and specify a specific port to get access to a machine behind the firewall. For instance I could connect to jesse.is-a-geek.net, port 22 to get secure shell on my main machine (with IP address 192.168.0.100) and I could connect to the same hostname, port 23 to get forwarded to a second machine with IP address 192.168.0.101.
Depending on what kind of home set up you have there could be other solutions. For instance, some people might have multiple web servers (usually in virtual machines) on their home network. Rather than assign each server its own port, you could associate each website a different hostname and set up multiple virtual hosts on one server. Having multiple websites or web services running on one machine is often easier to manage than having one website per server. For a complete overview on virtual hosts and how to configure them I recommend reading Apache's documentation.
One solution, which isn't at all elegant, but which I've found useful in situations where the person connecting to my home network can only use a specific outgoing port, is to leave one home machine on all the time. Have all incoming connection requests go to that one machine. Then allow the user to login and manually connect to other machines on the network. For example, let's say I was at an office where I could only connect to remote networks using port 80. At home I could set my router to forward incoming connections on port 80 to a local machine running secure shell. Once I was logged in via secure shell on that one machine I would have the ability to connect to other resources on my home network. It's a roundabout way to go, but useful if you are contracting in places with strict firewall rules.
Do any of our readers use another method of connecting to multiple machines behind their home router? Let us know your solution in the comments section below.
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| Released Last Week |
Webconverger 15
Kai Hendry has released Webconverger 15, a specialist Debian-based distribution for web kiosks featuring the latest Firefox web browser: "Webconverger 15 realises a design goal to seamlessly upgrade. A feature that no other Linux distribution has. Currently upgrades only works on the writable install version, not the live / read-only version that you will try at first. You might be wondering what 486: and 686-pae: mean. You should be safe with the default 686-pae: live kernel choice, though if it doesn't work on ancient hardware, that is what the 486 kernel is for. In the future we will endeavour to reduce these options and make the kernel choice automatic. What else has changed? Firefox 15.0.1; xinput= touch screen calibration API; log= debug API; restored i486 support for old PC hardware; chrome=debug for browser debugging and testing; fix PDF support which was accidentally broken in 14.1; restore printing support with CUPS." Read the rest of the release notes for more details.
Snowlinux 3.1
Lars Torben Kremer has announced the release of Snowlinux 3.1, a bug-fix update of the project's Debian-based distribution for the desktop available in GNOME 2, Xfce and E17 editions: "The team is proud to announce the release of Snowlinux 3.1 GNOME 2, Xfce 4.8 and E17 released. Snowlinux 3.1 is a bug-fix release for GNOME, Xfce and E17. It solves many bugs and it also brings many features to the users. CTRL+ALT+Backspace restarts the X server if it has hung up. Click on tap was activated and lots of bugs were solved." See the release announcement for a full list of new features and some screenshots.
Parted Magic 2012_10_10
Patrick Verner has announced the release of Parted Magic 2012_10_10, a specialist Linux live CD providing utilities for disk management and data rescue tasks: "Parted Magic 2012_10_10. This version of Parted Magic includes GParted 0.14.0 with LVM support and X.Org Server 1.13.0 with the latest drivers. I noticed some Reiser4 patches for the 3.5 kernel so it was included again. The reiser4progs package was patched to work with GParted and the 3.x kernels. Rdesktop was removed in favor of FreeRDP and its GUI Remmina. Two plugins were added to SpaceFM so you can mount Samba shares and use ClamAV directly from the file manager. Several minor bugs have been addressed. A large number of programs have been updated: Python 2.7.3, Mesa 9.0, Firefox 16.0, Linux kernel 3.5.6...." Visit the project's news page to read the release announcement.
GParted Live 0.14.0-1
Curtis Gedak has announced the release of GParted Live 0.14.0-1, a new stable version of the project's utility live CD containing tools for disk management and data rescue tasks: "The GParted team is proud to announce a new stable release of GParted Live. The big news with this release is the added ability to move, resize, check, create, and delete physical volumes under Logical Volume Management - LVM2 PV. This major addition to GParted 0.14.0 is thanks to work by Mike Fleetwood. Other bugs fixed in this release include: fix crash when ESCape key pressed in dialogs containing number entry spin buttons; fix mounted file system size and usage determination for ext2/3/4; Fix ReiserFS UUID reading issues on Fedora and CentOS. The GParted Live 0.14.0-1 image is based based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2012-10-11." Visit the project's news page to read the full release announcement.
Zenwalk Linux 7.2
Jean-Philippe Guillemin has announced the release of Zenwalk Linux 7.2, a Slackware-based desktop Linux distribution with Xfce as the preferred desktop environment: "We are happy to release Zenwalk Linux 7.2. After several months of rescheduling we think it's time to let this new jet fly. Zenwalk 7.2 is loyal to its design - providing 1 application per task, everything needed to work, play, code and create, in a single 700 MB CD image, through a 10 minutes automatic install process on any recent computer. Zenwalk 7.2 runs on kernel 3.4.8 with BFS scheduler. The Zenwalk desktop is based on the Xfce 4.10, GTK+ 2.24.10 and 3.4.4, with unique look and feel and perfect ergonomic integration of the application set - LibreOffice 3.6.2, Firefox and Thunderbird 15.0.1, GIMP 2.8.2 and much more. The Netpkg package manager has been improved with multiple mirrors support and better performance." Here is the full release announcement.
Slackel 14.0
Dimitris Tzemos has announced the release of Slackel 14.0, a Slackware-based Linux distribution featuring the KDE 4.8.5 desktop and a good collection of KDE-centric software applications: "Slackel KDE 14.0 has been released. A collection of four KDE ISO images are immediately available, including 32-bit and 64-bit installation images as well as 32-bit and 64-bit live images that can be burned to a DVD or used with a USB drive. The software included in live images is exactly the same as that present in the standard Slackel KDE 14.0 installation DVDs. The Slackel live DVD images includes Linux kernel 3.2.29 and were built using SaLT (Salix Live Technology). Slackel KDE 14.0 includes the stable 14.0 tree of Slackware Linux and KDE 4.8.5 accompanied by a very rich collection of KDE-centric software." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Around the Web |
Latest reviews
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Latest podcasts
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Latest newsletters
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- PiBang Linux. A Linux distribution for the Raspberry Pi. It is inspired by Crunchbang Linux and based on Rasbian.
- Safe Internet For Kids. A browser-only operating system with content filtering.
- Core17. A re-spin of the Tiny Core distribution featuring the Enlightenment graphical interface.
- Quá Ãt. A Linux distribution with the latest drivers, but which tries to be stable enough to solve problems in daily work situations with modern computers.
- Turing Linux. Turing Linux is an operating system comprising a minimal base just sufficient to support VirtualBox, providing quick access to other operating systems.
- Rescatux. Rescatux is a GNU/Linux rescue CD. Rescatux comes with Rescapp, a user friendly wizard that will guide users through their rescue tasks.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 22 October 2012. To contact the authors please send email to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, suggestions and corrections: news, donations, distribution submissions, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (feedback and suggestions: podcast edition)
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| Linux Foundation Training |
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • LPS linux (secure bootable CD), website down? (by Jan on 2012-10-15 10:47:28 GMT from Netherlands)
The website of LPS (from the DOD, government of US) is already unreachable for more than a week.
This seems not to be a normal site-hickup.
I considered LPS as the top secure possibility for secure internetting (for simple souls like me).
However this occasion brings the question if something is really wrong.
Does anybody know what's going on.
Jan
2 • No dependency checking (by Omari on 2012-10-15 11:08:47 GMT from United States)
Somewhere I once read a comment regarding the real expense of automatic dependency resolution and why it's a good thing Slackware does not have it. It said that the virtue of Slackware is its simplicity. Because the system is relatively simple, one person (be it the user or the creator, Pat Volkerding) can hold an accurate mental model in his or her head of how the distribution is laid out and how it works. This simplicity arises from the fact that Slackware is maintained by such a small team--if Slackware had a larger team, you would either need to make the distribution more complicated in order to maintain its stability (like Debian, which is huge, but complex and therefore takes forever to release) or you would need to compromise the stability of the distribution.
The problem with automatic dependency resolution is that it takes a lot of manpower to get it right. Debian for example does dependency tracking right. It's an enormous amount of work. Here is the Debian policy manual on shared libraries:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-sharedlibs.html
If you are running a Debian system (as I am) do "ls /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.symbols" and look at some of these files (they are plain text). Of course Debian has automated tools to help generate these things but this is an enormous task.
So to do dependencies right, you would need a huge team and lots of policies. That would make Slackware something fundamentally different than it is today--something that is not simple. Alternatively, you can do dependencies, but not do them right. Arch Linux is an example of this (I'm sure someone will hate me and disagree with me on this.) Arch does not have thorough policies in place for dependencies. When I ran Arch, sometimes installing a package would not pull in the needed dependencies--perhaps the packager already had those dependencies installed. More frequently, you would need to update the entire system just to install a single small new package, in order to ensure that its dependencies were up to date--and if you did not do this, installing a new package would lead to mysterious breakage, without helpful error messages. Debian does not have these issues because of the enormous work they put into getting dependencies right.
So the choice is: do dependencies right and spend a ton of work on it; do dependencies poorly, in which case they might work most of the time; or don't do them at all. Slackware chooses the last route. This does not wind up being a problem as much as you might think it is, because Slackware recommends that its users install the entire base system, which will come with the libraries needed to install most new software.
The point of all this (and I can't take credit for it; I read this somewhere else) is that automatic dependency tracking is not something that comes for free. It comes with a lot of hidden costs. Adding it would change Slackware into something that it currently is not--either something complicated, or something with a feature that is not perfectly reliable. This means Slackware is not for everyone, but there are solid reasons for things to be this way; it's not just a "get off my lawn" kind of thing.
3 • Dependency (by silent on 2012-10-15 11:46:37 GMT from Europe)
There is of course slapt-get (and the gslapt GUI) that resolves dependencies for Slackware and derivatives (like Vector). Slackware is for everyone. It offers the choice. On the other hand, dependency resolution is not an issue with the official Arch repositories (of course this may not be the case with AUR or external repos). Arch is cutting edge on a rolling basis without official support for old package versions so upstream bugs pose more of a threat.
4 • Connecting to multiple machines behind a router (by bogdan on 2012-10-15 12:15:29 GMT from Romania)
why not ssh-tunnel? You can easily install dd-wrt or openwrt on a wide range of routers and just ssh to it... after that you can tunnel to any host behind that router. the advantage here is that the tunnel works both ways...
5 • LPS website (by Jesse on 2012-10-15 12:56:27 GMT from Canada)
>> "I considered LPS as the top secure possibility for secure internetting (for simple souls like me)."
The LPS distribution isn't secure and probably shouldn't be used by anyone concerned about their security and/or privacy.
6 • latest development release makes me happy! (by happysiducer on 2012-10-15 13:02:43 GMT from Germany)
I just learned in IRC, that the siduction team has released the long-awaited flavour without X (noX) in 32 and 64 bit architectures. (a development release)
A great idea for users who don't want to use the flavours available so far, or no DE/WM at all, like me. I've been waiting for such a spin for years, sidux and aptosid wouldn't deliverâ :-(
Big thanks to siduction!
7 • Slackware. (by Graham Hamblin on 2012-10-15 13:08:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
Having run Slackware since the very first version I wholehearted agree with your take on it. In those days it got around the 640k memory limit of DOS. I does exactly what is says it will do. The problem for me, a radio amateur, it doesn't do some of the things I would like it to do!
8 • Connecting to multiple machines behind a router (by Lennart on 2012-10-15 13:10:45 GMT from Sweden)
Hi, I have for many years used a reverse proxy named "pound". It takes some effort to befriend, but after that you can't live without it. Apart from doing the obvious, it also adds to your security! You can find it at:
http://www.apsis.ch/pound
;o) /Lennart
9 • What about Security Updates in Slackware? (by tom on 2012-10-15 14:13:07 GMT from Germany)
When I look into the security update section of the Slackware website with all these update lists, I am asking myself whether e.g. Slackware 12.1 could be considered as a "safe" distro. In my opinion a lot of updates are missing, kernel and glibc updates as well as mozilla browser updates (Firefox, Thunderbird, Seamonkey).
So is this observation right?
Or is there a Slackware update policy in place I am not aware of?
10 • Why Slackware? (by Microlinux on 2012-10-15 14:33:20 GMT from France)
Quote: "Shortly after the release of Slackware 14.0 there were the usual comments from people on tech forums wondering if Slackware really brings anything worthwhile to the Linux community, if the distribution does anything which sets it above other distributions rather than merely apart."
My company (link above) uses Slackware (currently 13.37 and 13.0) as sole base for both server and desktops solutions:
1) It's reliable and stable. You can install a Slackware file server - or a desktop - in a company and pretty much forget about it. Slackware may be a dinosaur, but the main advantage of dinosaurs is it takes at least a meteor strike to take them out. Slackware users can also be pretty sure any half-assed "technology preview" will never find its way into the distribution.
2) It's perennial. Ten-year old releases still get security updates, that's longer than every "Enterprise Class" distro can claim. And Slackware 14.0 pretty much still works like version 7.1 I had more than ten years ago.
3) It's flexible. Everything that's not included can be built from source quite simply using the SlackBuild scripts from SlackBuilds.org.
4) The Slackware community on Linuxquestions.org is extremely friendly, helpful and competent.
As a side note: Jesse, don't look for binary third party packages. When looking for software that's not included in the distro, SlackBuilds.org should be your first address.
Last but not least: Slackware's dependency resolver is `whoami` :o)
Cheers from the sunny South of France.
11 • @1, secure & private distros (by Arkanabar on 2012-10-15 14:47:25 GMT from United States)
click the "search" link at the top of this page. When the form comes up, open the "Distribution Type" popup, and select "Privacy." You'll get 5 results: TAILS (The Amnesiac Incognito Live System, based on Debian), Liberté Linux (based on Gentoo), LPS (site down), Privatix (Debian, encrpted ISO), and Ubuntu Privacy Remix (a live DVD which is deliberately without networking; it's meant to keep your local data secure, not your communications). Of these, I suspect that TAILS is probably the most secure, with Liberté Linux running a close second.
12 • @1, secure & private distros (by Arkanabar on 2012-10-15 14:54:06 GMT from United States)
ps -- LPS is available to me here in the US, so the issue may well be elsewhere, such as your DNS or your ISP. And Jesse, it also looks like the primary use-case for LPS is telecommuting DoD workers. As long as you have nothing to hide from the DoD, no worries, eh?
13 • Slackware (by Jesse on 2012-10-15 15:23:24 GMT from Canada)
>> "2) It's perennial. Ten-year old releases still get security updates, that's longer than every "Enterprise Class" distro can claim. "
Red Hat provides 10 years of support these days, which means its off-shoots like CentOS do too.
>> "As a side note: Jesse, don't look for binary third party packages. When looking for software that's not included in the distro, SlackBuilds.org should be your first address."
If you read the review you'll already know I did use SlackBuilds, once it caught up to the latest Slackware release. However, using SlackBuilds is inconvenient, both compared to regular binary packages and other build/ports systems. It's certainly not something I would want to use on a regular basis.
14 • sbopkg (by Pat on 2012-10-15 15:31:19 GMT from United States)
>> If you read the review you'll already know I did use SlackBuilds, once it caught up to the latest Slackware release. However, using SlackBuilds is inconvenient, both compared to regular binary packages and other build/ports systems. It's certainly not something I would want to use on a regular basis.
You're right, Slackbuilds aren't very convenient if you're using a browser to download the script and source before running the slackbuild script by hand. But that's why we have sbopkg.
If what I'm looking for can't be installed through slackpkg, then I go to sbopkg. If it isn't on sbopkg, I probably didn't need it anyway ;)
15 • @13: Slackware + sbopkg = comfort (by Microlinux on 2012-10-15 15:39:46 GMT from France)
If you're looking for convenience, then I can only recommend sbopkg. I've got my own collection of SlackBuild scripts (modified from SBo or written from scratch) in an SVN repo, but if you're only using it on one or two machines, sbopkg is defnitely the way to go.
Almost as comfortable as the Ubuntu Software Center :oD
16 • Slackware install time (by claudecat on 2012-10-15 15:47:11 GMT from United States)
I'm surprised that it took Jesse over an hour to install Slackware. I haven't actually installed 14 (I run -current, so in a way, I'm already there), but 13.37 (64-bit) took maybe 10-20 minutes on both desktop and laptop if memory serves - and that was the full install. I hope folks don't get the impression that over an hour is the norm on a reasonably modern system.
As far as security updates, Slackware had Firefox 16.01 available almost immediately - before even Arch. A regular slackpkg update and upgrade-all is all you need.
17 • Slackware (by Donnie on 2012-10-15 15:59:00 GMT from United States)
I enjoyed the review on Slackware 14, and can add only a couple of points that you haven't covered.
If you point the Slackware repository configuration file to a "current" repository, you will in effect have made Slackware into a rolling release distro. I've had mine like that since the days when Slackware came with KDE 3.5, and it's worked out quite well for me. In fact, it's worked out much better than what Arch has, even though Arch is an actual rolling release distro.
Also, if you need more applications than what Slackware natively gives you, just add in the Slackbuilds repository, and manage it with "sbopkg". Just pay attention to the dependency issues that the Slackbuilds website spells out for each application, and you'll be fine.
Now, if only Slackware would support my printer, I'd be willing to make it my main distro.
18 • Slackware review & Sbopkg (by Barnabyh on 2012-10-15 16:03:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
Very nice review Jesse, I think you did it justice.
Just one small point. Since 13.37 I installed all additional packages from Slackbuilds.org with sbopkg, and it's almost as convenient as Synaptic. It compiles automatically and installs the package for you.
The only thing one has to do is find out what the dependencies are, usually also on slackbuilds, and get the build queue right. Then hit the button and walk away or browse distrowatch while it compiles in the background.
19 • Install time (by Jesse on 2012-10-15 16:22:57 GMT from Canada)
>> "I'm surprised that it took Jesse over an hour to install Slackware.
I'm not sure why that would be surprising. As I've pointed out in the past, my installs times are generally in the range of ten minutes per GB of installed data. So a distribution which dumps 3GB of data on my drive takes around 30 minutes to install, typically. 4GB takes around 40-45 minutes. Slackware's full install places more than 6GB of data on the hard drive, so over an hour is well within the normals for my equipment.
>> " I hope folks don't get the impression that over an hour is the norm on a reasonably modern system."
Fair enough, as long as you define "modern". People often complain my laptop is too modern by their standards, others complain it's far too out of date. If you're going to post installation times I recommend also posting your system specs as different people view "modern" very differently. Saying you can install Slackware's full release in 10 minutes is only relevant with corresponding system specs.
20 • Zenwalk (by Claus Futtrup on 2012-10-15 17:15:16 GMT from Denmark)
A new Zenwalk release - YEAH!
/Claus
21 • Slackware, dependencies and things.. (by buntunub on 2012-10-15 17:23:40 GMT from United States)
The last of the oldies but goodies. Why no dependency checking? No good reason. They just don't do it!
22 • Seamless Upgrade (by us64 on 2012-10-15 17:29:35 GMT from United States)
"Webconverger 15 realises a design goal to seamlessly upgrade. A feature that no other Linux distribution has."
Webconverger consists of a bare, base OS with an X server running Firefox. Seriously, what could possibly go wrong in an upgrade? If it can't get that right, then maybe there's something wrong... It's no wonder other distros (and OSes in general) often suffer from this; they offer far more than just a web browser. The biggest change is probably updating Firefox itself--and Mozilla has made sure that every major version upgrade is barely more than a point release, so changing from version 4 to 12 is really more like 4 to 4.2.12 or something.
Even then, the next best thing is just keeping your home directory on a separate partition. For most people, nothing else needs to be done; it's been "seamlessly" upgraded. For others, maybe a couple of extra packages need instead--big deal, the package manager makes quick work of this. And at the most extreme, people who run daemons and have them customized to their preferences, they'll have to either back those up to /home and copy them back over to /etc when done or just set them back up.
I don't see why "seamless upgrade" in the sense of never reinstalling matters anyway; you'll eventually run into problems no matter what OS you use. Plus, a nice, fresh, clean system just feels better. Then again, it will usually be much harder to screw up a command-line only system through upgrades, so again, it depends on one thing: complexity. Still, I'll take the clean install without touching /home route.
23 • @17 Slackware vs. printer (by Microlinux on 2012-10-15 17:45:33 GMT from France)
"Now, if only Slackware would support my printer, I'd be willing to make it my main distro."
Just out of curiosity: what model is it? Maybe I can help. Configured quite a few printers on Slackware, even those that make you jump through burning loops.
24 • Slackware and Salix (by Any on 2012-10-15 18:01:53 GMT from Spain)
The last couple of days I've tried Salix and it looks like "Slackware made easy".
Has various flavours - KDE, Mate, Lxde, XFCE, Ratpoison and Fluxbox. With Glsapt I converted in short time the Mate Live edition to LXDE edition. Then installed the pure LXDE edition. Light, fast and configurable. Also there is Sourcery SlackBuild Manager - a graphical frontend.
25 • Zenwalk review (by Roland on 2012-10-15 18:29:57 GMT from United States)
Really nice XFCE system. 2 problems:
1)lilo setup @install will only write the MBR on the first disk. Multi-disk systems are not unusual. This wouldn't be hard to fix.
2)/etc/hardwareclock says 'localtime'. This is nuts. Local Time is Just Weird. We have DST, SummerTime, DblSummerTime, NewfieTime, etc. And then there are travelers with laptops. OSes including Zenwalk have facilities to deal with this stuff. They work great when they are used. Setting the hwclock to localtime bypasses all that. For the love of sanity, keep your hwclock in UTC. Other linuxes do this.
26 • Question - anyone have a favorite distro for running as guest under VirtualBox? (by Andy Prough on 2012-10-15 18:48:13 GMT from United States)
I'm looking for a very fast, easy to install, easy to administer Linux distro for use as a VirtualBox guest on a Windows Vista computer at work. Most of my experience is with OpenSUSE, but the stock version doesn't work well under this situation. I've spun my own XFCE-only version of OpenSUSE through the SUSE studio, and this is pretty zippy on VirtualBox, but its hard for me to keep up-to-date. I would prefer a lightweight distro that plays nicely with VirtualBox and is on a good 6-month release cycle. And I don't like messing around with Enlightenment, Unity, or Gnome 3 - so no Bodhi or stock Ubuntu please. I need to stick with something I know - KDE is best (for me), XFCE is OK. If something is using a snappy version/clone of Gnome 2, I would be willing to give it a spin.
Thanks in advance!
27 • @10: "Perennial" (by tom on 2012-10-15 18:52:34 GMT from Germany)
"It's perennial. Ten-year old releases still get security updates, that's longer than every "Enterprise Class" distro can claim."
Nothing is made for eternity. :-)
Please read e.g. this:
http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/eol-for-old-releases/
28 • @26 (by Fe on 2012-10-15 19:03:56 GMT from Spain)
I would recommend Fedora 17 LXDE edition. Very nice, fast and stable in my VirtualBox. You know zypper so you would not have problems with yum. The release cycle is exactly how you need it.
29 • Slackware Current (by Brian on 2012-10-15 19:06:02 GMT from United States)
Hello everyone,
claudecat, you mentioned Current and rolling release.
How do you run Slackware Current?
Thank you.
30 • Distro hopping (by Shelley Reison on 2012-10-15 19:19:03 GMT from United States)
I loveseeing all these different distributions. A couple that I really really liked last week are OS4 Opendesktop 13, Lubuntu and I tried Fedora LXDE. So far Im mixed between OS4 and Lubuntu, Lubuntu is fast but OS4 is more unique and it just seemed faster than any XFCE distroI have ever seen. I like the Ubuntu type distriutions and Fedora just seemed like a huge learning curve. You cant go wrong with either OS4 or Lubuntu. If you want music and video out of box, go with OS4
31 • greed or am I an idiot? (by Brian on 2012-10-15 19:42:35 GMT from United States)
Just curious on other peoples thoughts on a billionaire creating a free operating system then asking for donations.
Mark Shuttleworth can literally use his worth to shuttle himself to the moon.
Mark Shuttleworth's worth can support Ubuntu for a thousands of years and he'll still have millions of dollars left over. Note* Homo sapiens live only decades.
He created a free OS from Debian. Then, routes your searches through Amazon. And, pricks our ears with, "Erm, we have root." Greedily requesting more money to further an OS where he has root on your box and if he wanted to, could support the thing forever with his billions. I guess, his heart isn't in to it anymore.
Or, am I looking like and idiot and I don't even care?
32 • Re: Greed (by Mike on 2012-10-15 20:21:55 GMT from United States)
The donations don't go to Shuttleworth, in case you didn't notice. That isn't greed. It's inspired brilliance.
33 • @26 (by Sporkman on 2012-10-15 22:15:44 GMT from United States)
I use Xubuntu in Virtualbox on Win7 - works great.
34 • @28, @33 (by Andy Prough on 2012-10-15 23:23:32 GMT from United States)
@28 - I've downloaded Fedora 17 LXDE edition - I'm on my 3rd hour now of installation and updating over 800 packages. Looks like this could easily end up being a 4 hour process, as it's still got 769 RPMs to install. Not sure if this is the best one for my purposes. Doesn't seem terribly responsive on this system either.
@33 - what's the difference between xubuntu and Linux Mint 13 XFCE? Should I expect one to run faster than the other? And what about Linux Mint "Mate" - is that Gnome 2, or is that Gnome 2-looking widgets on top of Gnome 3?
Thanks again.
35 • Slackware Review (by Looking for basics on 2012-10-15 23:36:42 GMT from Canada)
Thank you for the detailed review of Slackware 14.0 It went a long way to answering most of my questions before trying it out. Unanswered were the following points (which hopefully, someone here can answer):
1)Slackware 14.0 now includes btrfs. I seem to recall one of the holdups with this was lack of a recovery tool for this filing system. How is that presently handled? Are there any provisos to be wary of with this filing system? (eg. limitations like maybe not installing on the first partition?)
2)The review mentioned that the distro (when in X), booted up to a lower than maximum resolution. Isn't that a GOOD thing? I absolutely hate it when live distros insist on booting up at maximum resolution. Can anyone (even with a new, hi-res lcd screen) actually read anything on a screen set at such a high resolution? Short of maybe using a CAD program to layout something like a multi-layer circuit board, WHY would you even be working at such a resolution? Guaranteed to bust your eyeballs! Bad enough we have a younger generation going deaf from wearing ipads with in-ear headphones; now we are generating a revenue stream for optometrists dispensing glasses for all the newly "near-sighted" viewers squinting at these ridiculous screen resolutions.
It would be nice if live distros ALL booted up at a sane resolution (maybe 780 x 1024?), with an default icon to change resolutions, so one doesn't have to search through menus to find the the buried tool to access this.
On a related note, when did X behaviour change? You used to be able to use xf86config to set up everything. Now X seems to use XRandr, the use of which is not so clear. What happened to being able to use ctrl-alt+ or - to zoom and change resolutions on-the-fly? And ctrl-alt-backspace is gone! I seem to recall there was info regarding this buried somewhere on the xorg site, but things worked great before. There really didn't seem to be any need to "fix" things Can anyone detail how to handle things now? Maybe this topic is worthy of a review on it's own?
3)Re Slackware now not including Flash: Lately, Adobe products have been a security nightmare of their own. I don't have ANY Adobe stuff on my systems. The odd time it's needed, youtube-dl and movgrab (especially the last movgrab 1.12) work really well.
4)Why do some live distros boot up at a sane resolution (vga=769 or normal), and then partway through bootup, switch to max res so you have to squint and use a magnifying glass to see the bootup text? Defeats the whole purpose of bootup text to troubleshoot things!
Hopefully preparers of live distros will take these factors into account?
36 • Is KDE really sluggish? (by dmatt on 2012-10-16 01:13:29 GMT from Slovakia)
"At first I found the graphical interface to be quite sluggish, but after disabling desktop effects and search indexing KDE became much more responsive."
It seems that KDE always has this problem in your reviews (just gogle word "disable" on distrowatch :) . I would like to suggest different "modus operandi" for your next KDE based distro review. Install your system, apply updates, reboot and leave the system settle without turning off anything. Then reboot again and KDE would be finally in normal working mode.
If the system is still sluggish, investigate the cause. Change QT graphics system backend to different one (XRender/Raster/OpenGL) or suspend desktop effects for fullscreen windows or limit file indexing to certain directories or even turn some feature completely off. But please only one at the time, so we know which one was the culprit of bad performance.
This way KDE gets some reasonable feedback and users are not led to false assumption that KDE is universally slow in default configuration - with desktop effects and file indexing turned on. If there is a problem, make it clear where it is and if it could be fixed. A reader who habitually turns both functions off (cough, cough) might actually try them this time and find them useful based on such review.
I would not write this if there were not lots of performance improvements, important fixes and tuning options introduced during 4.7-4.9 development to both mentioned functionalities. So the results really might differ from ones obtained one year ago.
Problematic performance of KDE in VM is also being addresssed http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2012/10/a-journey-through-virtualization/
(I would recommend this blog for everybody interested in KDE graphics performance).
My own system is 3+ year old notebook pretty similar to your testing system. Mine works fine with default KDE and I would like to read in reviews how it works for other people, given fair chance.
37 • Slackware and Podcast list (by jprzybylski on 2012-10-16 02:24:09 GMT from Canada)
I've been a Slackware user for a few years now, and I can't stop using it. I build lots of software and toy with system scripts now and again, and Slackware makes it extremely easy to do both things. Better yet, it never complains. When I use Slackware, I feel like I'm using MY system - not what somebody thinks it should be.
Looking at the podcast list, I didn't see the Linux Action Show in there. Give a quick look over at http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/tag/linux-action-show/ and check out a couple episodes - they like mentioning Distrowatch now and again.
38 • @19, @29 (by claudecat on 2012-10-16 02:39:34 GMT from United States)
Jesse - I should have specified my gear when I mentioned my surprise at your hour+ install time for Slackware. Desktop is a 2009 Compaq SR5510 (Athlon 64 x2 5000+) with 4GB ram and Nvidia GT240 graphics card - not exactly a screamer. Laptop is an Acer Ferrari One 200 (1.2GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core L310 - 4GB ram - ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200) - again fairly mid- to low- end by today's standards. Not having experience with Intel dual core machines, I assumed that my gear wasn't all that much more powerful than yours, if at all, hence my surprise that my install times (admittedly with the 13.37 64 DVD) were so much faster. I'm no expert on relative speeds of processors, etc. so I'm sure I'm ignorant of something here.
Brian - you can run Slackware current with a simple change to your mirrorlist. DW did a nice (if brief) synopsis of the process a few years back:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090518
39 • IPv6 (by Joel on 2012-10-16 03:21:40 GMT from United States)
IPv6 is a great way to connect to multiple machines behind a home router. You don't even need ISP support for IPv6. You can use a tunnel broker like hurricane electric or just set up 6to4 tunneling. Might make a good howto to talk about IPv6 sometime.
Good Slackware review. I still have it on my home server. Running IPv6 of course.
40 • @35 Looking for basics (by Didier Spaier on 2012-10-16 07:46:38 GMT from France)
Here are some short answers. If you need more accurate or thorough ones, better ask on http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/, please open one thread per question.
1) btrfs has its caveats. It's proposed at time of Slackware 14 installation as well as other file systems but the default still is ext4.
2) On Slackware 14 but in some cases (using proprietary drivers comes to mind) there is no need to use an X config file any more. xrandr is not really meant to replace X configuration tools anyway.
3) Flash has no future in Linux. It's included in Google Chrome though (not part of a standard Slackware installation but can be installed afterwards).
4) At time of Slackware 14 installation you can choose the resolution you prefer.
41 • KDE (by Jesse on 2012-10-16 12:31:37 GMT from Canada)
>> "It seems that KDE always has this problem in your reviews (just gogle word "disable" on distrowatch :) . I would like to suggest different "modus operandi" for your next KDE based distro review. Install your system, apply updates, reboot and leave the system settle without turning off anything. Then reboot again and KDE would be finally in normal working mode."
Two things. First, while KDE is usually sluggish on my machines with the default settings (as you correctly point out), this is not always the case. My recent review of openSUSE, for example, pointed out that the OS was quite snappy, even with all the effects and features turned on. I think this is important as it demonstrates openSUSE is doing something right with KDE that most distribution are not. For that matter, another distro I reviewed recently came with unwanted features disabled which made for a really good out-of-the-box performance. My point being that some distros manage to ship KDE implementations which work great on my hardware and I think it's important to point that out. And when distros ship KDE implementations which work poorly with my system I think it's important to point that out too.
Which brings me to my second point. I'm not going to change my work/review habits in order to cater to one project. The point of the review is to demonstrate how well a distribution works for me, not how well I can make myself conform to the quirks of a distribution. If a distro ships with poor defaults for my environment it should be told that, I shouldn't have to apply updates, reboot, walk away for half an hour while it indexes just so I can get passable performance out of my desktop. The system should work out of the box.
42 • Re: #36 and #41 (by Leo on 2012-10-16 13:10:24 GMT from United States)
I agree with Jesse, and disagree with DMatt on this one. I am an avid KDE User, with Kubuntu in two of my machines (it used to be in all of them). I basically had to spend a lot of time turning stuff off in order to have something that doesn't take too long to boot up, and doesn't slow to a crawl. I had to disable effects, disable search (nepomuk), and uninstall the whole KDEPIM in all my machines so i wouldn't have akonadi fill up my disks or make things slow.
This is just bad design on our part. Plasma should be light and flexible, so you can build on top of that, _modularly_. Then, as a user, in Dolphin, you get an option to turn indexing on, and you get warned that it could slow down your system. And so forth.
But what did we do? We built a rather monolithic piece, we tell people "no, you can't turn akonadi off", and we criticize people pointing out performance issues. This is not helping the most beautiful and functional desktop.
It took me a good long afternoon of work to move my main machine (with an account i maintained for 12+ years) to use Thunderbird instead of KMail, since the move to KMail2 would have my email freeze 2 minutes just indexing the folders. This is crazy stuff, and the only reason it hasn't killed KDE altogether is that it's still the best option in many ways. But we are definitely moving in the wrong direction.
43 • KDE (by dmatt on 2012-10-16 13:43:23 GMT from Slovakia)
Well, you dealt with all Slackware quirks quite well, if you ask me ;).
Nevermind, I like your reviews and this was only small bit which bothered me.
I wanted to get the word out. Hopefully some users would give second thought to KDE and overcome its initial setup quirks.
Btw, OpenSuse might be just plain lucky to be the first one to ship KDE4.9.2 with substantial indexing fixes http://vhanda.in/blog/2012/09/nepomuk-and-kde-4.9.1/ .
I am looking forward to future reviews :) .
44 • @34 - MInt & MATE (by Uncle Slacky on 2012-10-16 15:38:21 GMT from France)
Mint is similar to Xubuntu, but comes with all the "restricted extras" already in place, and Mint's own software centre, menu & updater.
MATE is a GNOME 2 lookalike & workalike - all the libraries and apps have been renamed and forked, so that it can cohabit (if necessary) with GNOME 3. Mint's own "reworking" of GNOME 3 is Cinnamon (which can be installed on other distros if you want to try it, e.g. Xubuntu, Fedora...).
45 • Slackware package management, here's why! (by Slacky the Penguin on 2012-10-16 15:57:08 GMT from Israel)
Slackware package management, and I mean what comes with the OS, not add ons from outside the distro that other people have mentioned in the comments above, is about packaging what *you* decide belongs on *your* system. In theory Slackware is harder to use because it doesn't track the dependencies but it allows you total control over what goes on your system. Most of the package-managed distros and the big 3 BSD (4 if you count DragonFly) offer you dependency management but they quickly get bloated. Why do you need gstreamer and gnome-vfs to run rox-filer? You don't, but the package builders have to target mainstream use and often include everything anybody might want. Personally I think it's a crisis to ./configure --help and then download a few tarballs to build an app I want. It sure beats installing a small app and dragging a dozen non-dependencies with it.
I can install a new Slackware release in about 20 minutes. It always works. It never does anything bad. My systems stay clean and lean, because *I* manage my own packages and I don't use gstreamer or gnome-vfs! Those are just examples but you get the point.
The Slackware community is another great reason we run Slackware. The people are helpful and hardly ever tell you to RTFM and they don't do the GPL idol-worship thing. It's not about religion or boredom or empty philosophies, it's about Linux and getting things done no muss no fuss! If you're a drama queen you probably want a political distro. If you're a Windows victim you probably want Ubuntu. If you just want to get on with it, you want Slackware.
46 • Arggh embarassing typo! (by Slacky the Penguin on 2012-10-16 15:58:37 GMT from Israel)
I wrote "Personally I think it's a crisis to ./configure --help" when I should have written "Personally I DON'T think it's a crisis to ./configure --help" Sorry!
47 • @45,46 (by notsure on 2012-10-16 16:52:58 GMT from United States)
Well Said. It is also trivial to change how a bundled app may behave:
ie... links on slackware does not have the -g option configured at compile time for a nice, fast graphical web browser, something i use, so i just download the source, pat v's slackbuild, change 3 things and ta-da. simple AND fun.
48 • Slackware review (by grindstone on 2012-10-16 17:47:34 GMT from United States)
I ran Slackware for quite some years and there are a couple things that I never really see mentioned. Call it full-disclosure for those who may be considering it.
After the initial setup, keeping-up with patches and upgrades is easy enough. In small bites day-in and day-out, maintaining the system was actually rewarding in the education it necessarily-provided.
It's true, the first version or even 3 of Slackware took me a long time to get installed and configured the way I wanted, but that, too, was a learning process. Many slack-folk have developed their own means (tagfiles, scripts) of more-rapidly configuring a new installation. The honest answer is that, the first time I ran Slack, it took me 6 months before I found I was no longer missing a single thing). At the end, it was 3 weekends (and because I started minimal and built a lot on a slow machine). That brings up my second point.
I never liked a recommendation of "do a full install" (to ensure you have libraries/deps for whatever may arise). The more software, the more bugs, the more exposure, the longer the seeks, blah blah. The selections of software in the installer have been a sore spot. It's true you can have 100% complete control and spend a bleery-eyed day reading each package description and choosing--and that may/not run. In that respect, VL, ZW, and some others have a considerably more convenient (and known working) selection system (while trading choice). In the old days, one could start small with ZipSlack and strip a couple things and add from there. That was a great service that Patrick performed--revising those selections as sizes increased. Starting small and adding always made more sense to me, which brings-up my third point.
Slackware is old/boring/stable/reserved/conservative. Ah, uh-uh. ./configure anyone? Really. I always ran newer application software on Slackware than on other systems because I could always just build it (and I didn't even run -current). Yes of course one can build on almost any system, but--and this is the core of the comment--Slackware, by virtue of what it does not do, _allows_ you to assume responsibility. It's built-in. It's an open-door from the very first docs. The comments in the scripts and docs are extensive, detailed & respectful if not inviting. When you first configure your machine and build whatever other "must have" software you need, well, do that enough times and some stuff sinks-in ;) Then, when you notice a revision or new update, you just do it again and suddenly you have a System and you are Empowered. It takes you from "I use the upgrade-thingy" to "I upgraded this lib because I use X & Y & Z that need it and I need that fix/capability/etc."
If you start small-ish and stay that way, these massive floods of updates such as with some of the larger rpm-based things are just inapplicable. You don't have it so you don't _have_ to patch it--and what's more, you _know_ you don't have it.
One down-side I remember was not wanting to "break" it when I first started. It seemed a completely opposite feel from say the .deb-based things which were like a candy store. In those, I remember just apt-ing up whatever and going nuts just to explore lots of software--I got more applications running in way less time by apting binaries vs. building things of course and it was great fun. Debian helped me learn which applications I liked best fast (and I both respect and love Debian as well). Then, I could go ahead and build the newer versions in Slackware confident I wouldn't have to run parallel sets of libraries and play linking games.
Well, most other things are mentioned so I'll stop there.
After you learn it, it's like your best pair of shoes--except that the shoes never wear-out & they never fail. If they break, you broke them, you instantly know exactly how, and you can unbreak them ;)
The biggest thing is that the feeling of running something for years is different than a year or two (let alone a month or two). By 2012, a lot of us have run a lot of things for quite some time. The longer I run Debian, and the longer I run Slackware, the more I appreciate both. These insights are very tough to delineate in detail.
Heck--the very fact that one _can_ run the same system and just upgrade for Years and Years _is_ a major point.
49 • Re: #45 (by Leo on 2012-10-16 17:47:57 GMT from United States)
I actually used Slack back in 1995-1997 or so. As soon as I discovered package managers I never looked back (RedHat, then Mandriva, then Kubuntu)
My problem was not so much dependencies, but really uninstalling. Of course that was a long time back. But the issue was simple and unresolved last time I checked: you could "./configure; make; make install". But you couldn't "make uninstall", and get rid of the gazillion files in /var , /usr , /etc , and so on. Have they addressed that?
At the end of the day, free software is about this. Some like Fedora, some Arch, some *buntu, some prefer Slack, there is room for everyone. It is ALL about freedom and flexibility. Gotta love it.
50 • Thanks, Jesse (also @4, @8, @39) (by AliasMarlowe on 2012-10-16 17:50:48 GMT from Finland)
Hi, Jesse, the question you answered was from me. It's good to hear that my fast-and-filthy approach is not completely insane. We're not talking high-traffic sites here, so it has been a "good enough" solution so far.
@4: My router is not supported by DD-WRT or Tomato or OpenWRT or any of the other firmware replacements. If only it were...
@8: I'll certainly look into Pound, and appreciate both your recommendation and your caveat regarding effort.
@39: Alas, my router is IPv4 only, although all of the machines behind it support IPv6 (various linux boxes). Routers priced for home use and which support IPv6 are not yet available here. I've looked briefly at 6to4 brokers like Hurricane Electric, but am reluctant to involve a third party unnecessarily in routing each packet.
51 • @48 grindstone (by Didier Spaier on 2012-10-16 20:44:27 GMT from France)
I always do a full installation of Slackware, including applications I am absolutely sure I will never use, with the only exception of the KDEI series (but the *fr* packages). Why?
(1) I doesn't hurt. I have enough room on my laptop's HDD to host all these packages and that doesn't slow down my system ain any way. I simply do not start services or daemons I don't use.
(2) I doesn't take that much time to apply security upgdates. "slackpkg update" then "slackpkg upgrade-all", et voilà if your are lazy. Nevertheless I always read the comments in the Changelog or the security advisories Slackware send me, just in case.
(3) I'm sure I will never miss anything, in particular any library to which some application I would install afterwards could happen to be dynamically linked to.
(4) I am a http://slackbuilds.org user and the README pages only mention dependencies not included in Slackware.
Of course I accept that other Slackware users prefer to install only what they will use. I just wouldn't recommend newbies to do that, unless their learning plan include finding the dependencies through a try and error process ;)
52 • @49 Leo about uninstalling on Slackware (by Didier Spaier on 2012-10-16 20:55:47 GMT from France)
"slackpkg remove" or "removepkg" or "pkgtool" with the "remove" option will cleanly remove any official Slackware package. In addition the two latter commands can remove any package intended for Slackware, be it an official or a third party one.
The "make uninstall" method is not recommended because:
(1) Their is no guarantee that it uninstall cleanly.
(2) Not all Makefiles include an "uninstall" target.
Using exclusively the tools included in Slackware to manage its packages will keep your system in good shape. I believe this is true for other distributions as well.
53 • Slackware 14 review (by Looking for basics on 2012-10-16 21:30:59 GMT from Canada)
40 re 35
Thanks for the reply. I want to revert back to the old xf86config way of being able to specify multiple resolutions in a virtual terminal so I can change resolutions on the fly with ctrl-alt + and ctrl-alt-. What tool (internally)is now being used to configure resolution during install? Was hoping to get an idea of how this now works before doing an actual install. Should have a chance over the next week to get access to a spare computer to try this out on before risking mucking up my main working system. The review did not touch on this aspect of the install, and I like to understand things beofre I "break" them. Oh well, at least on the backup, I can experiment and find out (hopefully) for myself.
Also, thanks for mentioning the linuxquestions site. Didn't find the answer to the above posted there, but DID find a "hack" to boot linux from a btrfs partition.
49) re uninstalling apps - I use checkinstall. This "sandboxes" the installl process, and creates a binary from the source package, which can then be installed and uninstalled with package tools (installpkg, removepkg, etc.)
Be aware there was a problem when a kernel change occured. With version 1.6.1, I have to run checkinstall --fstrans=no to avoid problems. Version 1.6.2 is supposed to fix the need to do that, but I seem to recall some other complication. You could also use version 1.5.3, but it not only creates the binary, it automatically does the install as well. With 1.6.1, it only creates the binary. Then you have to manually install the binary (which I find preferable, because I may only want to create a binary, and maybe install later/elsewhere; not necessarily install now). There are other such tools, but checkinstall is nice, because, in addition to "tarballs", you can also create rpms and debs.
Hope that helps...
54 • Slackware installer (by Nick on 2012-10-17 00:24:23 GMT from Greece)
Calling the Slackware install unfriendly is unethical at the very least.
I will be eagerly waiting about your Fedora 18 review to see what you're going to call the new Anaconda.
55 • @44 (by Andy Prough on 2012-10-17 05:33:17 GMT from United States)
Interesting - what I'm finding after going through quite a few distros is that Mint 10 LXDE is actually about as fast as I can get on VirtualBox on this computer. Anything from Mint 11, 12, or 13 or using KDE or Gnome 3 in any way shows a lot of latency, especially when streaming music. However, running Mint 10 LXDE on VirtualBox, even as a live-cd, is very smooth. Its great that Mint keeps all their older versions easily accessible for download.
What really surprised me was what a dog (pun intended) Puppy Linux was under VirtualBox on this setup. That was a complete disaster - no good way to go about resolving all the serious problems without taking a lot of hours.
56 • Re: 41 and 42 (by Pierre on 2012-10-17 09:41:09 GMT from Germany)
I agree with both, Jesse and Leo, too.
And my suggestion is:
The KDE Team or at least the distributions developers should provide a configurations screen on first boot to the new OS with some first run configurations on KDE, like 'Do you want Desktop Effects to be turned ON?' and 'Do you want File Indexing (Nepomuk) turned ON?' so that everyone could make their choice according to the system they are running the KDE distro on.
This would avoid a sluggish system on the very beginning, or everyone does it like the openSUSE Team. ;) Just release a rock solid distro that is responsive even though desktop effects and file indexing are enabled by default.
In my opinion openSUSE managed with their 12.2 release to deliver the best distro at the moment, especially when you are using KDE as desktop environment. With openSUSE 12.2 I am able to run KDE now even on my laptop without any performance problems what means a lot considering that even the KDE centric distro Chrakra failed to run responsive and stable on my Lenovo IBM ThinkPad R60 which is at least 4 years old already.
57 • Thank you #52 and #53! (by Leo on 2012-10-17 12:47:57 GMT from United States)
Awesome comments, thanks! Things have come long ways in the last ... 15 years, lol. Time flies!
I googled a bit, it seems that dependencies are not take care of, by pkgtool and installpkg, right? That would be the only missing thing? How do I know that uninstalling package A doesn't hurt Package B? (or that B needs C). Some of these can be detected automatically, I think, at compile/link time.
Anyways, it is so nice to see Slackers enjoying around! Cheers!
58 • Some thoughts about "automatic" dependency resolution (by TobiSGD on 2012-10-17 16:53:00 GMT from Germany)
Automatic dependency resolution doesn't exist. Dependency resolution always has to be done by humans. The question is who does it. In the case of distros with "automatic" dependency resolution the information which packages are dependencies for this one package is gathered by the package maintainer. This is in fact convenient for people who don't want to bother with things like that, nothing wrong with that.
The downside of this approach is that it is totally ignoring the fact that a lot of software can be compiled with optional dependencies. many packages on distros with "automatic" dependency resolving are compiled with some of those optional dependencies and this is in fact removing their optional status. They simply aren't optional anymore, since the package manager will complain and often refuse to work if those formerly optional dependencies aren't installed. You have to use what the package maintainer things is the right package for you.
This is different on Slackware. Because there is no such thing like an automatic dependency resolver (in the standard install) you have to take care of that by yourself. but you also have the freedom to decide which optional dependencies you need and which not. So you are not a mere "human dependency resolver", but you are your own personal package maintainer, and luckily this is made so easy by Slackware's straightforward package design, the set of tools that come for this purpose pre-installed and the easily alterable scripts from SlackBuilds.org that it is actually a no-brainer to maintain your packages.
May be this can be better shown by a cooking analogy: Distros with automatic dependency resolvers are like getting a frozen pizza from the supermarket. You don't have much choice what is on the pizza, the manufacturer decided that. You may be able to put some cheese or other things on it (like Firefox plugins or GStreamer codec packages), but that's it. On Slackware you are given a nice kitchen with nice tools, but you have to make the pizza yourself, which of course gives you the freedom to make any pizza you want.
You have to decide which one you prefer.
I choose the kitchen for my main systems and some frozen pizza (Salix) for systems I don't want to bother with.
59 • Dependency (by Jesse on 2012-10-18 00:07:38 GMT from Canada)
>> "Automatic dependency resolution doesn't exist. Dependency resolution always has to be done by humans. "
It's quite often true that humans are involved in the dependency resolution process, but it isn't always the case. There are packaging systems which will automatically track dependencies without human interaction. In fact, a while back DWW featured a tutorial on building packages with fully automated dependency resolution. You might find it interesting. http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20100531&m#qa
60 • Slackware 14.0 review (by Alex on 2012-10-18 00:27:01 GMT from Germany)
Fair review, I'd say. I just want to add, that the well-known slapt-get mentioned in the article is just the oldest, but not the only one 3rd party tool helping with package management.
A very helpful tool is the (n)curses based sbopkg, that makes installing packages, for which there are build scripts available at SlackBuilds.org, a breeze. See here: http://sbopkg.org/.
Another amazing tool is src2pkg, which helps to create Slackware packages from source tar balls and foreign package formats, such as RPM or DPKG. See here: http://www.src2pkg.net/
My final tip is slackyd. It's an alternative to slapt-get, available from the excellent repository of the Italian Slackware community. The tool cannot not only be used to install packages from http://slacky.eu/, but also to check for updates from Slackware.com, unresolved package dependencies, missing files and libraries. While it can resolve package dependencies, when they are maintained, it still complies with the Slackware philosophy, that control as well as responsibility is fully in the hand of the user (administrator). It doesn't resolve any dependencies and install additional software without asking the user, first. Personally, I prefer slackyd over slapt-get, although I must admit, that I haven't tried the latter for several years (since I found slackyd).
Regarding the topic of dependencies and how they should be dealt with, I found that one of the reason why so little ever goes wrong is exactly, that Slackware doesn't try to automize what cannot be automized without making assumptions about the target system and its users. So it's not actually the technical mechanism of resolving dependencies, that causes trouble, it's the fact, that the definition and maintenance of dependencies is based on assumptions made by the respective maintainer, which may be more or less correct for a given target environment, but not for all possible target environments.
The typical package maintainer tends to define all libraries and applications as mandatory dependencies required to use all the functionality of a given program. However, the user might only need a fraction of this. In an RPM or DPKG based distro, the application cannot be installed without all the other stuff. In Slackware, just the stuff wanted can be installed, while unneeded and unwanted stuff can be kept out.
Yes, of course, I know, dependencies can be defined as being optional, but the problem is, that this is a decision to be made by the package maintainer, whose ideas are based on what he wants to do himself and maybe on statistical evaluation of user feedback.
Don't get me wrong: I am not saying, that there is anything wrong with other distros using dependency resolving package management. I have been using (and still use occasionally) OpenSUSE, and the package management works remarkably well, and it has become incredibly fast in recent releases. But I have never managed to upgrade any system with a dependency resolving package management more than twice without doing a fresh install. Last time I ran into trouble with a box that was initially installed with OpenSUSE 11.2. The upgrades for 11.3 and 11.4 went smooth, but after upgrading to 12.1 there were unresolvably conflicts: Akonadi was claimed to need a less recent MySQL client than the one included with 12.1, and my attempts to remove Akonadi, then upgrade MySQL and then to re-install Akonadi, also failed.
I just say, that this is not the only way to do things, and that there are good reasons for the way it's done in Slackware. One of these reasons is, that less assumptions about target environments are required for package management.
But as I said: Overall, a fair review!
Alex
61 • @59, automatic dependency resolver (by TobiSGD on 2012-10-18 10:07:59 GMT from Germany)
In that article it is only mentioned that one can auto-populate the library-folder.
I would like to know how this program handles optional dependencies. Sadly, this program seems to be obsolete and the howto linked from their site gives a 404 error.
62 • Slackware Dependencies (by William Barath on 2012-10-18 15:17:03 GMT from Canada)
Slackware's lack of dependency checking never once bothered me when I was using it. Sure, you install a package, run it, and see it fail due to missing a library, then install the library, then repeat the process until it runs. Or you install a daemon and it fails to start, then do the same process via "/etc/init.d/[daemon] start" or in the very worst case you run an app and it silently fails to fork a process because another package isn't installed, but generally you find that dependency very quickly via the README or via "strace -vf &>wtf.log" by running the app, killing it with xkill immediately after it silently fails to do something, then reading the tail of the log.
But - I have to do those things on OpenSuSE, Fedora, and Debian too. Not often. Usually in conjunction with 3rd party repos. And lets face it - we need those 3rd party repos to do many of the things we want to do.
If I'd never run Slack I would never have learned how to do manual dependency resolution. If I'd learned to drive on a Mercedes with auto-everything I'd be helpless to drive any other car on the road.
Do you want to be helpless? If so, never run an SLS or Slack-based distro. ;-)
Now on the other hand, automatic dependency resolution can be a serious PITA. Much like an automatic transmission can be. I'm in a corner at 80MPH, near the apex, wheels chirping, and worried I'm going to oversteer so I back off the accelerator a bit. With an automatic transmission it's probably going to shift up on me, which is bad for several reasons - 1) it's going to rock the car while I'm close to sliding, by dropping the engine RPM sharply, perhaps making me roll or slip. 2) it's going to cut power to the wheels then suddenly provide a short burst of power as the torque converter engages the higher gear, perhaps causing my drive wheels to spin/slip. 3) it's putting me in the wrong gear to accelerate out of the corner. With the auto you are at the whim of something which has the IQ of ... well... a gearbox.
Apt-get is really great, but like with the automatic transmission you are at the whim of the package maintainers' notions of what a 'dependency' is when you install a package with it. dpkg on the other hand has no such notions. It will warn you but it won't pull in various and sundry. Various and sundry aren't really a problem for a desktop user - most of the time. For a server administrator though every extra package is a possible security problem, or a possible configuration mangler. And the package maintainers are not God. They don't know whether version X of Y library will satisfy the needs of Z app, especially when Z app was released before X library was built. They don't know whether you will use all the features of Z app. Often they assume incorrectly that everyone will, and make something which could have been a 'recommends' into a 'dependency'. gvfs and gstreamer are good examples. I never want them, yet inevitably they get installed on every dependency-tracked OS I've installed.
Where OpenSuSE, Fedora, and Debian (and their ilk) really shine is in auto-configuration of their installed apps. Again, if you don't mind being helpless, in exchange for some Daimler-style hand-holding.
I am the first to admit that after the first 2.5 years using Slackware, I was pleased to find out how productive I could be within an hour of installing a Debian-based distro, whereas with Slackware I was still fiddling with config files a week later. That's changed... now I'm fiddling for a week with the app selection and the desktop environment instead, lol, and the choice of distro... meh... hardly matters.
63 • Dependencies discussion (by Leo on 2012-10-18 15:50:41 GMT from United States)
Thank you all for the contributions, they were pretty informative and a great read. I do wonder how does this approach differ from the "source" distro's like gentoo. Any thoughts, is any of our slacker friends also a Gentooer, and they would perhaps shed some light? Cheers!
64 • Re: #64 • ubuntu 12.10 (colin) (by Leo on 2012-10-18 18:56:15 GMT from United States)
My boot times went down, though I am using razor-qt as the desktop on my atom netbook+ssd, and overall it went from ~18 to ~14 sec for a full desktop login.
Sandybridge doesn't seem to have improved much:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_1210_i5pre&num=1
But I would expect much better support for very recent (ivy bridge) processors/APUs.
HTH!
65 • Xubuntu 12.10 PAE kernel (by Alessandro di Roma on 2012-10-19 07:45:07 GMT from Italy)
Xubuntu 12.10 has a PAE kernel? I'm sorry for Xubuntu 12.10! My Acer non-PAE laptop works very well with Xubuntu 12.04 LTS. At 12.04 end-of-life (april 2015) I'll look around for another distribution...
66 • PAE kernel (by @65 on 2012-10-19 11:42:51 GMT from United States)
You should be able to "sudo do-release-upgrade" to Quantal and still keep using the non-PAE kernel.
67 • ownCloud Article in DWW Issue 475 (2012-09-24) by Jesse Smith (by Pierre on 2012-10-19 15:26:46 GMT from Germany)
I am aware that the article I am referring to is a few weeks old already but I just read it today and the comments section of that older DWW Issue is closed so I just thought that I should post my comment here.
Jesse did well with the article, but I have found one sentence that needs - in my opinion - some correction.
Jesse wrote: "One drawback of using the web interface is that file uploads are limited in size to 2MB."
This is actually false because the 2 MB limit of file size for uploads is not something that the ownCloud developers did implement but is a configuration issue coming from the php.ini where the maximum size of file uploads is defined. So it seems that Ubuntu sets it to 2 MB by default, but you can easily edit the php.ini in /etc/php5/apache2/ and set it to what ever you want and consider right - for me I have a 1 GB limit set, even thought hardly anyone of my friends will be so crazy to upload such a big file with the poor upload most of them have. :)
So, just wanted to see mentioned that it's just about configuration, even an php configuration, and has nothing directly to do with ownCloud itself.
And another thing: Setting up ownCloud is not only straightforward on Ubuntu or if it's installable out of the distributions repository. Apache HTTP Server, MySQL database and PHP installed and configured, ownCloud files downloaded, extracted to the HTTP Server's document root, maybe change the owner to the distribution's webserver user and you can already access it on localhost/ownCloud/. All that's left to be done is setting up it's admin account and the access to the MySQL database and you are done.
If that is not enough there is a short but good enough documentation on how to set up owncloud on the project's websites. :)
Greetings from Germany!
Pierre
68 • @65 Xubuntu 12.10 PAE kernel (by Shelly Reison on 2012-10-21 00:09:47 GMT from United States)
OS4 OpenDesktop 13 which is a derivative of Xubuntu and one of the better ones still uses the non-PAE kernel. The more I play around with this distro the more I like it.
69 • @ 36 KDE (by Blue Knight on 2012-10-21 19:28:11 GMT from France)
> This way KDE gets some reasonable feedback and users are not led to false assumption that KDE is universally slow in default configuration - with desktop effects and file indexing turned on.
Are you kidding? In your post, precisely you give recipes for making KDE less slow and so, this is no longer its default state...
Personally, I confirm KDE has some problem for instance with this stupid thing which is the indexing tool. I always stop this useless crap.
70 • LPS (by Herbert Thornton on 2012-10-21 18:32:11 GMT from Canada)
I've found I can download LPS here, but it's an earlier version -
http://www.ssldirectory.com/downloads/linux/lps
I've also discovered that 2 versions of MacPup - (MacPup 528 and MacPup 529) - will do a very similar job to LPS - i.e. they will work on a computer that has no hard drive.
One of them (MacPup 528) is running on an old computer with no hard drive right now & I'm using it to send this. Both MacPup versions use Firefox, but I like version 528 better because I prefer its earlier version of Firefox.
71 • latest LPS (by james c on 2012-10-21 19:40:41 GMT from United States)
The latest version of LPS (Sept. 14) is available from http://www.spi.dod.mil/docs/LPS-1.3.6_public.iso
72 • LPS now USA only ? (by Jan on 2012-10-21 20:56:54 GMT from Netherlands)
It seems that LPS is now only available within the USA.
Number of Comments: 72
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| • Issue 1027 (2023-07-10): Crystal Linux 2023-03-16, StartOS (embassyOS 0.3.4.2), changing options on a mounted filesystem, Murena launches Fairphone 4 in North America, Fedora debates telemetry for desktop team |
| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
| • Issue 1025 (2023-06-26): KaOS with Plasma 6, information which can leak from desktop environments, Red Hat closes door on sharing RHEL source code, SUSE introduces new security features |
| • Issue 1024 (2023-06-19): Debian 12, a safer way to use dd, Debian releases GNU/Hurd 2023, Ubuntu 22.10 nears its end of life, FreeBSD turns 30 |
| • Issue 1023 (2023-06-12): openSUSE 15.5 Leap, the differences between independent distributions, openSUSE lengthens Leap life, Murena offers new phone for North America |
| • Issue 1022 (2023-06-05): GetFreeOS 2023.05.01, Slint 15.0-3, Liya N4Si, cleaning up crowded directories, Ubuntu plans Snap-based variant, Red Hat dropping LireOffice RPM packages |
| • Issue 1021 (2023-05-29): rlxos GNU/Linux, colours in command line output, an overview of Void's unique features, how to use awk, Microsoft publishes a Linux distro |
| • Issue 1020 (2023-05-22): UBports 20.04, finding another machine's IP address, finding distros with a specific kernel, Debian prepares for Bookworm |
| • Issue 1019 (2023-05-15): Rhino Linux (Beta), checking which applications reply on a package, NethServer reborn, System76 improving application responsiveness |
| • Issue 1018 (2023-05-08): Fedora 38, finding relevant manual pages, merging audio files, Fedora plans new immutable edition, Mint works to fix Secure Boot issues |
| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Full list of all issues |
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View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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