Slackware 12.1 is out!!

[Patrick]

Get your files here:
http://www.slackware.com/torrents/slack ... vd.torrent

http://www.slackware.com/getslack/torrents.php

[allix]

hehe ,its like the never ending distro

[Wally Balljacker]

Let me guess, still no real package manager, still no 64-bit support, still no GNOME, and still a tiny software repository? Oh well, at least it has a 2.6 kernel. Only took 4 years...

And would it kill them to update their website? It's not 1995.

[allix]

I think it has a place because if you want a package manager with a varied selection of packages, 64 bit support ,GNOME, up to the minute kernels slackware is not for you. I can imagine for servers , slackware being ideal , does one really need GNOME , 64 bit support just to serve a webserver for instance?

[Tsuroerusu]

I think it has a place because if you want a package manager with a varied selection of packages, 64 bit support ,GNOME, up to the minute kernels slackware is not for you. I can imagine for servers , slackware being ideal , does one really need GNOME , 64 bit support just to serve a webserver for instance?

If you're gonna run a really big web server, 64-bit is a big big advantage as you can use more than 4 GBs of RAM.

[allix]

I think it has a place because if you want a package manager with a varied selection of packages, 64 bit support ,GNOME, up to the minute kernels slackware is not for you. I can imagine for servers , slackware being ideal , does one really need GNOME , 64 bit support just to serve a webserver for instance?

If you're gonna run a really big web server, 64-bit is a big big advantage as you can use more than 4 GBs of RAM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Its a hack around the 4GB ram limit on 32 bit.

[Tsuroerusu]

I think it has a place because if you want a package manager with a varied selection of packages, 64 bit support ,GNOME, up to the minute kernels slackware is not for you. I can imagine for servers , slackware being ideal , does one really need GNOME , 64 bit support just to serve a webserver for instance?

If you're gonna run a really big web server, 64-bit is a big big advantage as you can use more than 4 GBs of RAM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Its a hack around the 4GB ram limit on 32 bit.

Dude you're the one who is the critics of hacks, that is just a silly waste of time, and Slackware does not support it either, so there!
Sure I could compile my own kernel, but at that point what's the point?

[Wally Balljacker]

Critiques of Slackware aside, it's a very solid distro. I recently did an install of 12.1 to see if anything has changed since the previous release, and while it's largely still the same old Slackware, I can't help but express how good my experiences were.

First of all, something has to be said about the simplicity and strait-forwardness of the Slackware installer. It hasn't really changed in years, but it's still fairly easy to use, even for new users, and is remarkably stable. I don't think I've ever had a Slackware installation crash on me in the 4 years I've been using Linux.

My test machine was a ThinkPad R52 with fairly standard hardware that is well-supported under Linux. This is probably the first time I've done a Slack install on this laptop that all of my hardware was automatically detected. Sound worked out the box, Ethernet worked out of the box, X11 and KDE came up simply by typing "startx". Even ACPI and suspend to RAM worked out of the box. That is a first for Slackware. After loading some extra modules I had CPU frequency scaling working, and installing the proprietary ATI driver for full 3D acceleration was painless.

The only hiccup I had was Slackware incorrectly detected my hard drive as an IDE drive, which caused poor disk performance. This is a known issue and the fix was documented in the CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT file and was remedied by simply appending "hda=noprobe" to the boot loader.

All in all, I'm very pleased.

[Chess]

There is a certain simplicity and solidity to Slackware that, to me, seems harder and harder to come by these days.

[Wally Balljacker]

There is a certain simplicity and solidity to Slackware that, to me, seems harder and harder to come by these days.

I'll agree with that. I've been using Slackware off and on for a few years now, and it's always been reliable and simple to use. If Slackware ever officially supports AMD64 I would seriously consider running it as a main desktop system again.

[mowestusa]

There is a certain simplicity and solidity to Slackware that, to me, seems harder and harder to come by these days.

I have to admit that when I ran Slackware a year ago on my main work computer it was a joy, and I learned a lot too. However, since running Fedora and Foresight, I have grown to like Gnome, and I know Gnome can run just fine on Slackware, but I was wondering if any Slackware users have a preference of which method to use for running Gnome, because I know there are a couple of routes that can be taken.