Slackware 7.0 (Stable) Released

Anonymous Coward writes "The ChangeLog as well as a readme for Slackware 7 are out and ready. Proceed with caution, ftp.cdrom.com's server has a new limit on the number of simultaneous user's (5000)... " It's out apparently - I cannot get on the servers though. Have fun!

Not A Hack !

I just talk'ed one of the three developers of Slackware (we're both students at Georgia Tech, he lives within walking distance. ;-)

The website WAS NOT hacked, they went thru various pages as a hoax to keep people from bugging them while they put the finishing touches on Slack 7.0. It is being moved over as we speak.

Out to dinner!

Check out the www.slackware.com home page (as of 16:18 PDT):

"The site is currently down while we eat dinner. If anyone wants to join 50% of the Slackware team and you are in Atlanta,
come to:

El Torero Mexican Restaurant
2484 Briarcliff Rd NE
Atlanta, GA 30329 "

How Do I Upgrade?

I've consistently used Slackware for the last few years, and have grown comfortable with it. It runs on both my desktop and laptop. However, one of Slackware's biggest shortcomings is the difficulty in upgrading system components. The only "sure-fire" way I've found to do this is with a complete re-install, then copy back my stuff.

Since the rest of the world is moving away from libc5 and toward glibc, I'm going to have to upgrade at some point. It's for these reasons that I've been flirting with Debian and RetHat, which appear to be a bit friendlier with their package management. Nevertheless, since I'm most familiar with Slackware, I'd prefer to upgrade what I already have.

So. Can anyone offer any hints/suggestions as to how to make this process as painless as possible? (Yes, I read the Slackware upgrade HOWTO, and it's depressing. Isn't there a better way? If moving to Debian/RedHat turns out to be the best way, then so be it...)

Schwab

Seems to me mirroring should be First Priority...

There's a need, on this sort of thing, to forbid public access for a few hours, denying to all other than those that are formally mirroring the site.

At this point, you've probably got:

• A thousand people doing non-Slackware-related stuff,
• 400 guys with cable modems doing online installs,
• 3600 guys doing installs at 53K, and
• 15 annoyed sysadmins that are trying to set up mirrors but that can't because ftp.cdrom.com is out of connections.

There otta be a protocol...

Slackware was hacked today

go here [attrition.org] to see the mirror at attrition.org

version increase justified?

I see lots of people now despising Slackware just because Patrick increase the version big time from 4 to 7. But hey everything has to have a reason. So I quote this post by Patrick himself from the slackware.com forum:

=====
Author: Patrick J. Volkerding
Date: 10-10-1999 21:43

I've stayed out of this for now, but I do think I should lend a little justification to the version number thing.

First off, I think I forgot to count some time ago. If I'd started on 6.0 and made every release a major version (I think that's how Linux releases are made these days, right? ;), we would be on Slackware 47 by now. (it would actually be in the 20s somewhere if we'd gone 1, 2, 3...)

I think it's clear that some other distributions inflated their version numbers for marketing purposes, and I've had to field (way too many times) the question "why isn't yours 6.x" or worse "when will you upgrade to Linux 6.0" which really drives home the effectiveness of this simple trick. With the move to glibc and nearly everyone else using 6.x now, it made sense to go to at least 6.0, just to make it clear to people who don't know anything about Linux that Slackware's libraries, compilers, and other stuff are not 3 major versions behind. I thought they'd all be using 7.0 by now, but no matter. We're at least "one better", right? :)

Sorry if I haven't been enough of a purist about this. I promise I won't inflate the version number again (unless everyone else does again ;)

Pat
====

Meaning? We are seeing more sad people who have been dumb down by other brain dead over commercialised distributions. Not that they should not commercialise, but they are overdoing it.

Re:ftp.cdrom.com

Bandwith actually. They were doing fine on the Pentium Pro, but they were filling the pipe. When they upgraded the pipe, they also upgraded the machine to make sure it could handle it (I remember it was origionally going to scale to 10,000 users). The first day they broke the record, which they had set, for the most bandwith in 24 hours. They're well over 1 terrabyte a day. It would have been nice ti have 10,000 users, but its already to slow at times with 5,000.

Re:3.5 -> 7.0 ??

Actually, it was 4.0 to 7.0, and Patrick has said it's because everyone else is doing it and he's tired of fielding questions about when he's "going to upgrade Slackware to -insert latest RH version here-"

Look at Slackware's versioning though...

3.0
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5 -- I started here.
3.6
3.9
4.0
7.0

Then look at RedHat's...

4.0
4.1
4.2
5.0
5.1
5.2
6.0
6.1

If Patrick were to version like RH, we'd already be 7.0+ anyway. He's just catching up.

Re:Why egcs-1.1.2?

If you spend a little time reading the kernel mialing list archive you'll see that most of the kernel developers consider it bad form to compile your kernel with 2.95. Some talk that there is some strange intereactions between binutils and gcc-2.95 that create kernels that don't run right. There are also a few kernel folk that think gcc-2.95. is just plain buggy. Who knows but in almost every instance that someone built a kernel with 2.95 and it fell over, once they built one with an older compiler it would work. I don't know that this is the full reason for egcs but I imagine Patrick took it into account when he was putting things togeather. gcc-2.95.1 and gcc-2.7.2.3 are in the contrib directory.

comment about philosophys..

I have to say something about the philosophys that distributions follow. Slackware's philosophy is driven from the 'do it yourself, no bull shit' ideology. That's why I love it so much.

I saw another poster saying that 'while he doesn't have a dozen people under him to update kernels, blah blah it's still a good distribution.' This is quite true, it is a good distribution, but he doesn't need tons of people to help him out. This comes from the philosophy that people out there should not depend on him or the distribution to get them through their entire existance while using linux. You're supposed to compile new kernels yourself, etc. Why do you think you don't see slackware 'tgz' packages floating around rabidly every where like rpms ( well you do see them sometimes like on kde's site i think ) ? Because slack users know how to get by on their own knowledge. This might also be why there isn't a good way to upgrade through the install process.. because most people only need to install slack once and they can then maintain their own box. hell, my box is a slack 3.4 install and it has been glibc 2.1 since that version of the GNU C library came out. Ok well it took a bit of time to recompile everything gradually.

A word for the newbies.

the philosophy that a distribution uses is very significant to those that are picking out a distribution for the first time. It should probably be one of the most significant things actually. How do you wish to live your life in the world of linux ? you should be picky as it is your environment that you will be playing/working in for a while. Second to that should be the packages it comes with. Weigh everything out before investing your time ( notice i didn't say money ) into a distribution.

Catatonic .. irc.aye.net:6667