Slackware
From TWUUG
The Current Release is 12.0, released on July 2, 2007
Contents |
DESRIPTION
Created by Patrick Volkerding in 1992, is the oldest surviving Linux distribution. Although it comes with many additional programs (for example: seven separate desktop environment/window managers including KDE[1]), it is very lean as you don't need to install all the duplicate applications. This also makes it more stable and secure as you potentially have less to manage. Besides using it for a desktop, it is superb for server deployment as you can easily disable/not install non-needed services (like X).
The initialization of the system is simple as it uses the BSD style of start-up scripts.
Security updates are issued timely and there are always updated packages available via the "current" branch.
Official package management is done via "The Slackware package maintenance system", pkgtools which leaves it up to the installer to determine library dependencies. There are third party package management systems available in the /extra directory of each distribution (like Slackpkg).
[1] But no longer includes Gnome. Here is an example of how/why Patrick does what he does and why a lot of people still use Slackware Linux as their primary OS:
ChangLog.txt shipped with Slackware 10.2
Sat Mar 26 23:04:41 PST 2005 ... gnome/*: Removed from -current, and turned over to community support and distribution. I'm not going to rehash all the reasons behind this, but it's been under consideration for more than four years. There are already good projects in place to provide Slackware GNOME for those who want it, and these are more complete than what Slackware has shipped in the past. So, if you're looking for GNOME for Slackware -current, I would recommend looking at these two projects for well-built packages that follow a policy of minimal interference with the base Slackware system:
http://gsb.sf.net http://gware.sf.net
There is also Dropline, of course, which is quite popular. However, due to their policy of adding PAM and replacing large system packages (like the entire X11 system) with their own versions, I can't give quite the same sort of nod to Dropline. Nevertheless, it remains another choice, and it's _your_ system, so I will also mention their project:
http://www.dropline.net/gnome/
Please do not incorrectly interpret any of this as a slight against GNOME itself, which (although it does usually need to be fixed and polished beyond the way it ships from upstream more so than, say, KDE or XFce) is a decent desktop choice. So are a lot of others, but Slackware does not need to ship every choice. GNOME is and always has been a moving target (even the "stable" releases usually aren't quite ready yet) that really does demand a team to keep up on all the changes (many of which are not always well documented). I fully expect that this move will improve the quality of both Slackware itself, and the quality (and quantity) of the GNOME options available for it.
Folks, this is how open source is supposed to work. Enjoy. :-)
SLACKWARE BASED DISTRIBUTIONS
ZipSlack is a special edition of Slackware Linux that can be installed onto any FAT (or FAT32) filesystem with about 100 MB of free space. It uses the UMSDOS filesystem and contains most of the programs you will need. This means that you do not need to repartition your hard disk if you already have DOS or Windows installed. ZipSlack installs into a directory on your DOS filesystem. It can also be installed to and booted from a Zip disk.
This distribution is ideal for people who don't have a lot of hard disk space, do not have a fast Internet connection to download the entire distribution, or who want a Linux distribution they can carry around on a Zip disk.
Slack/390 is an official port of Slackware designed to run mainframe systems. Since this release of Slackware is official you can count on the same standards as the original slackware.
SLAX is fast and beautiful Linux operating system which fits on small (3.14") CD-ROM disc. It runs directly from the CD (or USB) without installing. The Live CD described here is based on the Slackware Linux distribution and uses Unification File System (also known as unionfs), allowing read-only filesystem to behave as a writable one, saving all changes to memory.
The Slamd64 Linux Project
Slamd64 is an entirely unofficial port of Slackware® linux to the amd64/x86-64.
There are many other Slackware-based distributions.
RESOURCES
SLACKBOOK - The official Slackware resource book relating to installing and configuring Slackware Linux.
SLACKWARE Installation Help - Official Installation guide from slackware.com.
SUPPLEMENTAL SLACKWARE PACKAGES
GNOME.slackbuild - A project with the goal of keeping an up-to-date version of GNOME in tgz packages and source based slackbuild scripts to allow slackware users into install a current version of GNOME.
