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Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine)
Linux Magazine interviews Eric
Hameleers about his work with Slackware. "To me, Slackware's
philosophy has a different angle that sets it apart from all the others. To
this day, Slackware has an extremely lean design, intended to make you
experience Linux the way the software authors intended. This is
accomplished by applying patches as little as possible - preferably for
stability or compatibility reasons only. Slackware's package manager (yes,
it has one, pkgtools!) stays out of your way by not forcing dependency
resolution. And the clean, well-documented system scripts (written in bash
instead of ruby) allow for a large degree of control over how your system
functions. Slackware does not try to assume or anticipate."
(Log in to post comments)
Bash instead of Ruby? Posted Sep 3, 2009 17:14 UTC (Thu) by massysett (guest, #52736) [Link]
Is there any distribution out there that is using Ruby for its system scripts? I know Pardus uses Python, but that is the only distribution I have ever heard of that is not using (b|d)?ash for system scripts.
Now that I think about it, some of them might benefit from using ksh. It's faster than bash yet still has features like arrays. d?ash is fast but then you don't have arrays.
Bash instead of Ruby? Posted Sep 3, 2009 19:16 UTC (Thu) by Camarade_Tux (guest, #51944) [Link]
I've tried to make my slackware system boot faster and got it down to <8s without patching anything or using kms (that was a year ago), and was without SSD and with a slow hard drive.
It turned out the boot scripts don't take time by themselves. I tried commenting huge chunks of the boot script and boot time didn't change. Maybe that's because slackware doesn't try to make a lot of things in these scripts anyway but I found interpreting overhead to be very small.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 3, 2009 18:45 UTC (Thu) by realnc (guest, #60393) [Link]
"Slackware's package manager (yes, it has one, pkgtools!) stays out of your way by not forcing dependency resolution."
I think the title should say "Why You Should Not Try Slackware" ;-)
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 3, 2009 19:42 UTC (Thu) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]
Well, not everybody wants dependency resolution.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 3, 2009 19:48 UTC (Thu) by sagrailo (guest, #48054) [Link]
It's highly subjective issue, of course, but in last ~12 years of using Slackware I never encountered a need for a dependency resolution solution. Namely, I just install everything from the install DVD, and then go over to SlackBuilds.org, to grab build scripts for additional stuff I need, and dependency between packages is clearly stated, in plain text in corresponding README files, there. Most of the packages needed for my work (numerical software development, mostly) are available this way, and when I need to install some additional binary package (like Mathematica, or say Atlas libraries, CUDA SDK, or something alike), even if a problem arise, ldd was always enough to locate it.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 9:30 UTC (Fri) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] I just install everything from the install DVDThen it's no surprise that you don't need dependency checking :-) On the other hand I've just checked the output of 'ldd /usr/bin/mplayer' and it was 100+ lines long. I would hate to collect all those packages containing the necessary libraries (with the necessary versions!) individually.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 10:46 UTC (Fri) by sagrailo (guest, #48054) [Link]
Full install of all Slackware packages is ~5GB, I think, and this is really not that much regarding today disk sizes; furthermore, Slackware enables SSH server only by default, so installing everything doesn't mean that machine gets particularly slower, or more vulnerable. So I see no point in selecting packages during the installation, at least not for desktop machine. From that point onwards, it really depends on how much the Slackware selection of packages matches one's needs - as mentioned above, this is highly individual, so I can only state my opinion here, and this is that for Fortran/C/C++ software developer, I think the match is very good. I'm certain that there exist many types of users that have real need for dependency resolution; the multimedia playback/processing, that you mentioned, is certainly one of alike domains - I remember trying from time to time to have Kdenlive installed on my Slackware machine, and I was always overwhelmed by its huge dependencies list. But, this is why is good to have so many Linux distributions around, so (as Arker mentioned below) everyone is free to choose what fits him best. Still, I think stuff like MPlayer or Kdenlive, having tons of dependencies, is not that common (And an additional questions here is: legal issues with codecs aside, isn't it to be expected from today desktop environments to have sound/video playback/processing software installed by default? So I consider these problems of mine with Kdenlive more like fault of KDE, than of Slackware.), so I'd guess that Slackware, even without dependency resolution mechanism, could fit well many other usage types too; but on the other side, I'm definitely not any kind of evangelist - as mentioned above, everyone should be just left to choose what fits him the best, and I'm perfectly happy with the kind of Slackware community (small, but vibrant) as it is now.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 1:15 UTC (Fri) by kjamc1982 (guest, #59655) [Link]
I used Slackware back when the 2.6 kernel was still in development and it
taught me how the system ran. I had no problems just compiling stuff on my own. I currently do not use Slackware anymore might go back since stability was always great with it. I now am an Arch Linux user now just got lazy with old age that is all.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 3:57 UTC (Fri) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
Then use one of the many other distributions that agree with you on that, ok? And let Slackware continue to cater to people who just want a sensible system that works and does what it's told. That way everyone is happy, right?
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 18:13 UTC (Fri) by zonker (subscriber, #7867) [Link]
Exactly. I'm no longer a Slack user, but it makes me happy to know that it's
still moving forward. If one size fit all, then we wouldn't need code to be open source...
Eric Hameleers Posted Sep 18, 2009 13:20 UTC (Fri) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]
to cater to != to deceive
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 8:42 UTC (Fri) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] Well there is alwaysrpm --nodeps if you want it...
Why You Should NOT Try Slackware Posted Sep 18, 2009 13:25 UTC (Fri) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]
Indeed, your title proposal fits much better.
First the interviewee makes misleading comments: why call the thing a "manager" if it doesn't have an *authority* on its objects? It's "advisor" at best then, and as is widely known in less clueless circles, slackware's package manager sits *outside* the system.
What follows is perfectly illustrated by some of the comments: incompetent package management results in popular but also incompetent administration practice, namely "full install". The same one that plagued redhat yard before wide acceptance of yum.
Folks, just think of it: binaries lying around aren't neccessarily harmless. These can be SUID/SGID for the very sake of providing their intended functionality. Even without extra privileges, these can make intruder's life easier by providing more comfortable environment than bare chroot.
Another side... I recall an onslaught of red-eyed slackwarists after a book on slackware (Russian translation or original one, don't remember exactly) came out -- those were a heavy burden in a newsgroup with all the unneeded answers for unneeded problems, and those weren't warned by the author that the problems were unneeded indeed in other contemporary distros. It was like ten years ago.
All in all, "everyone is free to choose what fits him best" -- indeed, but still let's try and tell the truth to others, especially newbies. And be ready to answer their questions, not refer them elsewhere.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 3, 2009 21:36 UTC (Thu) by IvyMike (guest, #60570) [Link]
I wish it was still available on floppy disk images. "Please insert the disk labelled xap209"
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 3, 2009 21:53 UTC (Thu) by Camarade_Tux (guest, #51944) [Link]
If you feel nostalgic, slackware.no has slackware down to 1.1.2. ;-)
ftp://ftp.slackware.no/linux/slackware/
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 16, 2009 3:06 UTC (Wed) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link] If you feel nostalgic, slackware.no has slackware down to 1.1.2. ;-)Cool! That's pretty close to the version I started with. (I didn't keep track of it, but based on some of my dated config files, it must have been something like 1.2.0.2, which the changelog claims came out on 15 April 1994. 1.1.2 came out just two months earlier.) Greg
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 7:34 UTC (Fri) by frankie (subscriber, #13593) [Link]
If one needs to have control on anything, just use Linux From Scratch. It is much more sensed and really useful to learn how to create a complete system starting from "ground zero". Of course, if you need to support twenty different boxes, with different programs and services and also need to support all of them for security, I doubt anyone would use LFS or Slackware.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 8:09 UTC (Fri) by cgorac (guest, #35767) [Link]
Don't have much experience with LFS, but: what is the exact problem with supporting dozen of machines, with different services, for Slackware (in particular - regarding security)? And also: what is the exact problem in understanding that there exists middle-ground between "enterprise" Linux distributions, and stuff like LFS - do you have any actual arguments to support your derogatory comment above ("If one needs to have control on anything, just use Linux From Scratch."), implying that it is stupid to use Slackware at all?
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 11:27 UTC (Fri) by frankie (subscriber, #13593) [Link]
Security support and proper maintainance/update for dozens of boxes implies tons of time available to follow all related sub-projects and probably patch yourself most of them. The whole approach is very time consuming. It simply does not scale. The same thing can be said for Slack if one follows the approach 'compile most yourself'. People also start from the basic idea that upstream tarballs are stable enough for all uses.
This is simply not the case for many big (and not-so-big) projects. There are tons of projects out there that require much love and dedication and experience to patch for a a decent level of stability, starting from the upstream tarballs. Thinking that each and any one can/want do that him/herself for all of them is unrealistic. Honestly, I think that using Slack in 2009 in non personal/home context is a bit like re-discovering warm water on daily basis. I did that at the beginning of 90s, I could probably still use Slack on one of my laptop today, but that's all. It's difficult for me finding realistic target users today for Slack. Not so good for learning, not so good for business, so what? Old fashion users? Aficionados?
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 11:48 UTC (Fri) by cgorac (guest, #35767) [Link] Honestly, I don't understand what you're talking about... Are you claiming that most of the up-stream stuff is crap, and that it just won't work without the distribution guys doing the heavy patching? Good luck with that kind of thinking - we witnessed say through the Debian OpenSSL fiasco how "good" are package maintainers in messing with up-stream source... I can see that maybe following sentence from Eric interview provoked your comment: "This is accomplished by applying patches as little as possible - preferably for stability or compatibility reasons only." But you should read it within the context (Eric was definitely not stating that Slackware is not patching at all, not even for security patches), and also know more about stuff like Slackware -current tree etc., in order to be able to make meaningful judgment about the Slackware approach.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 12:23 UTC (Fri) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
The fact remains that distributors must patch upstream because upstream tends to lose interest in anything except the very latest release, and that is highly opposed to goals such as long-term support. Not to mention that there could be a hundred distributions all frozen on various versions of upstream author's software.
Really, I do think upstream software is mostly crap. Each time I update to new versions of software, I usually get something breaking that used to work before. But it could be crap by no fault of upstream: everyone's distributions are just too different from one other. I'm sure the shit works on upstream's machines! That's why there has been a push to create a shared core distribution rather than have everyone install different versions of different daemons altogether for basic system building blocks.
Your argument for upstream being good and package maintainers being bad seems to be based on confirmation bias to me.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 13:31 UTC (Fri) by cgorac (guest, #35767) [Link] Your argument for upstream being good and package maintainers being bad seems to be based on confirmation bias to me. I was not claiming anything alike, I was just opposing to the opposite claim (that you agreed with, in your comment: "...upstream software is mostly crap"). My background is mostly in software development, indeed, so there may be some bias in my view, but then again I was/am maintaining dozen of packages (for Slackware) too, and I'd say my experience is that the truth is somewhere in the middle. I guess we all know how the whole stuff should work in an ideal world: package maintainers would have to send patches upstream, upstream developers should work closely with package maintainers, and they should all live happily together. For various reasons, this sometimes doesn't work this way for some projects. But the issues involved are different, and usually rather specific to given project; thus I find claims that upstream is wrong by default to be just plain silly.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 8:11 UTC (Fri) by hidave (subscriber, #18406) [Link]
I admit the most attractive feature for me is no-package-dependency.
Slackware is different from LFS IMHO.It's not designed to control everything yourself. It is designed with the twin goals of ease of use and stability as top priorities. Including the latest popular software while retaining a sense of tradition, providing simplicity and ease of use alongside flexibility and power, Slackware brings the best of all worlds to the table.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 11:37 UTC (Fri) by frankie (subscriber, #13593) [Link]
That's not clear to me. What are the pros of unmanaged dependencies? If I need to build custom programs today I work within /usr/local with upstream tarballs and separate trees, without a package manager.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 11:53 UTC (Fri) by cgorac (guest, #35767) [Link] What are the pros of unmanaged dependencies? Counter-question: what are the pros, exactly, of managed dependencies?
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 12:29 UTC (Fri) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
Having the package actually work once you have it installed?
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 12:55 UTC (Fri) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
See, this is exactly the kind of comment that proves you havent used slack.
I would say this is the advantage of having *unmanaged* dependencies. I have seen dependency managers muck things up in a number of ways. Pkgtool is perfect. You tell it to install, it does what it's told, and at worst if things get mucked an error message refers to the missing library. Which is really quite rare and also easy to deal with compared to dealing with a management system which has made an incorrect assumption at some point or another.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 13:57 UTC (Fri) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
Actually, slackware 3.0.3 was my first linux distribution.
But your talk sounds like you hadn't used a dependency-managing tool to me. The sort of thing you talk about? It just doesn't happen to me. Of course, I rarely mix'n'match distros or their packages. When I have done it in the past, I have also been capable of fixing problems when packages are inconsistent with each other. (Usually just uninstalling the offending packages first gets it working, so it's not much of a rocket science.)
The greatest thing about managed dependencies is that I can, say, decide to try out tomcat to run a webapp with. The simple "apt-get install" command comes up with about 30 packages to install, and has the stuff installed in about a minute. This makes trying out new software painless, and is the primary reason why I like package managers.
Then once you discover what horror tomcat is, you can remove that package and "apt-get autoremove" the stuff that came with it that is no longer needed. Perfect: it really supports the workflow of trying out software. I just don't see the value of doing this work manually.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 14:06 UTC (Fri) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
Hmm. Sorry. 3.0.3 was red hat release. I think the version was 3.4.0, but I can no longer be sure of it because it's probably a decade by now. It came on a CD from a local computing magazine, but I no longer have it.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 7, 2009 1:04 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] But your talk sounds like you hadn't used a dependency-managing tool to me And yet I have many years experience with several of them. I have used Debian and RedHat and derivatives extensively. In fact I still use debian-based systems regularly, I have a box running Xandros sitting beside me at the moment. It will provide a single small example of what I am talking about. Apt-get, synaptic, aptitude are all unusable on it. It's not a *huge* problem and in fact it's the result of a number of small mistakes made at different times by different people, but the fact remains even the best of these systems is simply uneeded complication giving more opportunities for breakage. (There are definitely advantages to, say, apt-get, but the whole brittle architecture on which it was built is not necessary to gain those advantages. Just look at the work-alike programs for slackware, which give you the same practical benefits without perching the entire system precariously on a brittle foundation.)
Why Should You Blame Apt? Posted Sep 18, 2009 13:36 UTC (Fri) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]
Guess broken apt was your personal accomplishment, eh? So you should blame yourself, and keep both pieces *just as with stock slackware*.
WRT Slackware "vs" LFS, I can confirm that yes, naive slackwarists' questions and (mostly) theses on forums and mailing lists that I follow are mostly *lame*. LFS folks are quite the opposite. Which debunked the myth of "wanna know linux, go slack" for me years ago. And if someone tells that again, I tend to correct: "no, go LFS then".
Being primitive is not neccesarily being simple.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 13:27 UTC (Fri) by rjdymond (subscriber, #51625) [Link] Counter-question: what are the pros, exactly, of managed dependencies?For me, the advantage of managed dependencies is that it saves time. I used Slackware for a couple of years, and liked it. But while managing dependencies yourself is not that hard (once you're familiar with package names), it undeniably takes time. At the moment I'm using Debian, and getting a package and its dependencies installed is just quicker than it is in Slackware. And apt has never screwed things up, as far as I can tell.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 15:14 UTC (Fri) by frankie (subscriber, #13593) [Link]
One pro of managed dependencies is avoiding having a crap of tons of randomly collected inter-depending packages that naive user has collected by mixing together the wrong versions of libraries and programs. Another pro is managing major upgrades in the correct way (or having all tools to do that right: if maintainers do not do that it's a problem of maintainers). Another pro is fast installation, because of auto-dep. Still waiting for pros of unmanaged administration, instead :)
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 16:16 UTC (Fri) by cgorac (guest, #35767) [Link] One pro of managed dependencies is avoiding having a crap of tons of randomly collected inter-depending packages that naive user has collected by mixing together the wrong versions of libraries and programs. "Naive user" - now this is something that usually hardly applies to anyone running Slackware... Another pro is managing major upgrades in the correct way (or having all tools to do that right: if maintainers do not do that it's a problem of maintainers). There is a command in Slackware (upgradepkg) that knows how to upgrade package correctly (basically: remove all files from previous version, then install files from new version). There is -current tree in Slackware, that is updated between releases (the new Slackware release is actually just a snapshot of -current), so user could track the changes and upgrade his installation incrementally. When a major, backward-incompatible, change happens, then also there exists some kind of help - for example, when switch from KDE3 to KDE4 occurred in current, there was a bash script to remove all of the KDE3 packages at once (although - there is some groupings of packages in Slackare, so for this particular case, it was equally simple to remove these manually). All in all, I guess it's safe to state that most of us running Slackware were able, without much fuss or need for re-installation, to upgrade our systems this way throughout all these years. Another pro is fast installation, because of auto-dep. I think it takes 5-10 mins., with today hard-disk/DVD drives speeds, to copy everything to the disk during the installation. As it was mentioned above, Slackware installation is very lean in the sense that not much of the servers, beyond SSH, is started by default, and also Slackware selection of packages is rather judicious, so there is really no reason to bother with selecting packages - so why bother, it is easier to just install everything.
But generally - this discussion about the advantages/disadvantages of dependencies tracking solutions is rather pointless. Slackware, as any other Linux distribution, has its own flavor, and that kind of experience obviously appeal to certain type of users. One of the aspects differentiating Slackware from other distributions is this lack of dependencies tracking, and Slackware users learned to live without it (some among us don't even notice that, some others tried it with some other distributions but still came to appreciate, and stick with, Slackware approach). So I think most of us really don't understand you other guys complaining about it, in the same way as for you guys it's unthinkable that someone could bear without it. But we get our work done our way, and you probably get yours the same, and at the end this matters only.
yup, naive, and it's not even offensive :) Posted Sep 18, 2009 14:54 UTC (Fri) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]
> "Naive user" - now this is something that usually hardly applies
> to anyone running Slackware... Believe me or not it does apply to most of them I ever knew :-( The only two non-naive slackwarists of them moved to Debian while growing older and getting wider responsibilities.
The "full install" approach is broken on every level: it's wrong to grab things you don't need, it's impossible to install conflicting packages (e.g. two alternative providers for /usr/sbin/sendmail), and it simply doesn't scale. It's only reasonable for appliance distros in my experience.
PS: still one person was kind enough to point Slackware's single huge benefit: with non-patched software, user is more confident to report bugs upstream and upstream developers are more confident that those are their bugs. So the only technical reason to run Slackware is ...its bugs. :)
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 13:42 UTC (Fri) by Camarade_Tux (guest, #51944) [Link]
I installed cygwin two days ago. I did more than three passes and it took me more than an hour to get the package selection right. I didn't want to install X but the package manager kept on selecting X-related libs. Some packages were also... impossible to find, I couldn't unselect them since I couldn't find them (yes, I know my alphabet).
I prefer a package manager without meta packages, without hidden behaviour.
I only see problems with other package managers. I never had any with pkgtools.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 17:12 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
It's easy to not have problems with a system that does not actually do much of anything... This can be a good thing.
Slackware is one of my favorite distros and it's true that package management tools are used to pound some square pegs into round holes. But the reality of the matter is that everything depends on the quality of packages being managed. Good quality packages will give you good results, bad quality packages will always be a PITA and that is true even for Slackware.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 18:01 UTC (Fri) by Camarade_Tux (guest, #51944) [Link]
Yes, exactly. Something I didn't mention in my comment but I love in slackware too is that even if everything goes wrong, I can still fix it by hand and don't have to reinstall everything.
That's my definition of reliable: that when something goes wrong, I can fix it (by myself).
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 4, 2009 19:26 UTC (Fri) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
a. You describe a problem with the package manager. The information is available to the package manager but not exposed to you.
b. What's wrong with installing X libs?
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 5, 2009 13:29 UTC (Sat) by Camarade_Tux (guest, #51944) [Link]
a. yes, I think this is a problem
b. I didn't want to, any other question? why? because
X libs Posted Sep 18, 2009 13:46 UTC (Fri) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]
Firefox built for X11 *does* use a bunch of X libraries.
If it depends on X *server*, that would be an extra dep.
Cygwin Posted Sep 7, 2009 16:15 UTC (Mon) by markhb (guest, #1003) [Link] I use Cygwin on a couple of Windows machines, and I find their setup.exe to be absolutely heinous once you get beyond their basic config. However, that's not necessarily so much an issue with managed dependencies per se as it is with their setup.exe. I have no trouble with yum on a F11 box I have at home.
Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware (Linux Magazine) Posted Sep 13, 2009 14:36 UTC (Sun) by dmag (subscriber, #17775) [Link]
I'm a Slackware user. I've found programs tend to be in 2 camps: CLI programs with a small handful of dependencies, and GUI programs with a ton of dependencies. (Some GUIs fall into the other category, but not many CLI programs).
Personally, I deal in CLI programs, so 99% of the time I'd rather use the latest version than some old version that someone has packaged and 'tested' (rarely do they actually test the functionality). Not wrestling with a package management system saves me time.
For the large GUI (KDE/Gnome updates, etc) programs, Slackware falls on it's face. But on that front, I'm content to wait for the next Slack update.
wrt wrestling Posted Sep 18, 2009 14:53 UTC (Fri) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]
> Not wrestling with a package management system saves me time.
Not driving along the rules also saves time -- until one meets some real-world traffic.
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