15 ms·

Slackware 15.0

421 points by kdtsh 5y ago

idatum 5y ago
Their website is glorious in a retro kind of way. Installed lynx just to enjoy the text experience.
beermonster 5y ago
This might be a better link http://www.slackware.com/announce/15.0.php http://www.slackware.com/announce/15.0.php Kudos to Patrick!
kissiel 5y ago
The previous release was 14.2 and it happened on 2016-06-30. It was on 4.4 kernel.
- bejelentkezni 5y ago
  And kernel 4.4's upstream EOL was two days ago. Talk about timing.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    I suspect that might have been a driving factor because of course they knew the date was fast approaching. However it isn't that hard to build a new kernel in slackware anyway, it sticks pretty close to Vanilla kernel the way it's built.
pc2g4d 5y ago
ZipSlack took forever to download, but opened my eyes to a whole new world. Glad to see Slackware is still going. Thanks for your pioneering work.
phendrenad2 5y ago
Does Slackware live up to it's goals? I remember that a long time ago Slackware was supposed to simplify the chaos of the early Linux ecosystem, allowing nerds to have a solid stable Linux distro that gets out of the way and lets them do what they need to get done. But the Linux world has gotten a lot more complex in the last few decades. Does it still have a distinct advantage?
ArchieMaclean 5y ago
> in spite of the dire predictions of YouTube pundits This is in reference to DistroTube's Linux 2022 predictions which included "no Slackware release" https://youtube.com/watch?v=YJMm4BXNdX4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=YJMm4BXNdX4
rascul 5y ago
The oldest surviving Linux distro is still kicking.
jmclnx 5y ago
Upgrade weekend for me :) Congratulations to the Slackware team
BaldricksGhost 5y ago
Slackware was one of the first distros I used seriously. Five plus years between releases is an awfully long time. Glad to see it's still alive.
albertopv 5y ago
My very first linux distro :)
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Me too, I keep one installed in a VM for nostalgia. I've moved on to Arch since but that VM still handles my local rsync backup and languagetool install.
- mansilladev 5y ago
  Also my first. Feel like it was included with some book/magazine, but then started buying copies from Walnut Creek software. Can’t tell you how exhilarating it was to build a new kernel by hand, or how horrifying it was to f-up libc or some other mission critical library.
  - albertopv 5y ago
    I spent hours, no, days recompiling the kernel of my slack installation, on a AMD K6-2, 1999 IIRC. I really had a lot of free time those days in high school...
xbar 5y ago
Congratulations Slackware!
trauco 5y ago
Amazing project. My first serious Linux distro. Good for Patrick and the rest of the community.
Carioca 5y ago
I've been using Linux for ~25 and have never tried Slack. I'm now on Slack/Manjaro, should I try it?
- robobro 5y ago
  what do you have to lose? Slack is easy to pick up and easy to maintain. You may want to consider trying sbopkg or similar if you find the package manager lacking, but it's worth noting that Slackware comes with a ton of great software in the base system (libraries and daemons)
fmeyer 5y ago
My first Linux install was a Slackware 3.5 from a cdrom magazine, but I’ve dropped Slackware in 2006 when they ditched gnome in favor of KDE. I still remember the emotion when I managed to get the system to boot and startx
- 300bps 5y ago
  I bought the Slackware CD from a local MicroCenter and used it as the email server for my ISP (running qmail) in 1996.
- wayne 5y ago
  I had the same joy after installing it from a stack of floppy disks in the late '90s. It took so long but it was so satisfying when it worked!
vosper 5y ago
If someone was choosing a Linux distro today, what would be some reasons to choose Slackware rather than another popular distro like Ubuntu, Fedora, or Arch?
- ncmncm 5y ago
  It is very old-school. A more extreme choice in the same vein might be Linux From Scratch.
  - Koshkin 5y ago
    Actually, there’s nothing “extreme” about Slackware, in fact, I find it easier to use, and more reliable than Ubuntu, for example. It is one of those things that you would say about: it’s perfect just the way it is.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      "Extreme" just means farther out on the same radius. I could have said "distal", instead, and not been understood. Running Linux on a desktop already makes you an outlier.
- kdtsh 5y ago
  The biggest one for me is that the mental model for maintaining your system is tiny. As a system it is easy to inspect how it works - you can trace the entire boot process along with a finger, the init system is excruciatingly simple, the package database is a directory with files each containing a brief description the output of a un-tar command, SlackBuild packages are easy to make and modify. The community is also very nice and has a lot of highly experienced users in it. Most software I want is also already installed and ready to go. Some people like to craft their OS from a minimal base, and I absolutely respect that and understand that it gives them a system which is perfectly catered to their needs - but I’m very lazy, and am perfectly happy letting someone with over 30 years experience do all that for me :-) That being said, I use Fedora at work and wouldn’t consider using Slackware. This is because I don’t want to know anything about my underlying system as long as it works and gives me the tools I need to do my work, and because GNOME is a boon to my workflow.
dangrossman 5y ago
Slackware was my first Linux too. I remember making the installation floppy disk set. And then it was my first introduction to running a computer others could remotely control. After learning how to dial up AOL from Linux then join an IRC chat room, I was immediately "pwned" by someone in that chat room who guessed my root password and rm -rf /'d my entire hard drive. I was probably 8 or 9 at the time and cried.
- rfrey 5y ago
  That's horrible. I hope that person is working tech support for Comcast now.
  - reilly3000 5y ago
    A most excellent curse, I must say.
  - beermonster 5y ago
    Or is an Oracle DBA
    - p_l 5y ago
      Why would you curse them with money?
      - lillecarl 5y ago
        Many would argue that money is the curse of the world, I disagree but see their point.
- lnxg33k1 5y ago
  Slack was my second distro with the first one being the original Red Hat, but i discovered them on IRC, through the glorious mIRC Simpson, if any other Italian is around, back then ^^
  - 5y ago
kingcharles 5y ago
I had to go back and check, the first version I installed was 3.0. I'm guessing a lot of us started our Linux journey on early Slackware floppy installs.
npace12 5y ago
first linux. slackware 3.6 for me. felt like such an achievement once it booted ./configure; make; make install everything
logicbombr 5y ago
My first linux distro. I’m almost crying remembering the emotions of gcc a ircd server or eggdrop on it
benlivengood 5y ago
I used Slackware for about 15 years before switching to Debian/Ubuntu; I knew a lot more about day-to-day Linux internals during the Slackware period and kind of miss it, and it may be worth trying 15 out.
wrycoder 5y ago
Poignant remarks. We're not getting any younger: "Erik "alphageek" Jan Tromp passed away in 2020 after a long illness. He was a long-time member of the Slackware core team doing a ton of stuff behind the scenes and a master of lesser-known programming languages like Tcl. :-) For a long time he lived closer to me geographically than anyone else on the core team, but unfortunately with an international border between us we never did meet in person. But he was there in chat every day and was a good friend to everyone on the team. He is greatly missed. Sorry I didn't get 15.0 out in time for you to see it... My old friend Brett Person also passed away in 2020. Without Brett, it's possible that there wouldn't be any Slackware as we know it - he's the one who encouraged me to upload it to FTP back in 1993 and served as Slackware's original beta-tester. He was long considered a co-founder of this project. I knew Brett since the days of the Beggar's Banquet BBS in Fargo back in the 80's. When the Slackware Project moved to Walnut Creek CDROM, Brett was hired as well, and we spent many hours on the road and sitting next to each other representing Slackware at various trade shows. Brett seemed to know all kinds of computer luminaries and was an amazing storyteller, always with his smooth radio voice. Gonna miss you too, pal."
- racl101 5y ago
  When was the last release?
  - BirAdam 5y ago
    15 today. 14.2 was 2016
    - racl101 5y ago
      Ah I see.
- anonymousiam 5y ago
  I'm glad that Patrick is still around to continue this. Slackware was my second Linux distro (SLS being the first). (I also used Yggdrasil, but always ran it from CD and never installed it to a hard drive.)
Koshkin 5y ago
Time to kill another Windows in my household.
altrus 5y ago
Slackware was my first linux distribution, and one that I used continuously before moving to Arch. As it happens, I think Arch embodies many of the original Slackware principles, but its focus on more modern hardware led to it growing a larger community - one that includes great documentation.
- kdtsh 5y ago
  The Arch Wiki is a treasure, I used it when setting up Slackware on a MacBook Pro because it had the most comprehensive description of the caveats and gotchas for the laptop of anywhere on the WWW.
- bitwize 5y ago
  Arch embodied many of the original Slackware principles, once. These days I don't know what they're doing, but Void is basically Arch without the bullshit (and with runit instead of systemd, thank goodness).
  - doubled112 5y ago
    I hear good things about Void, but last time I tried to install it, the mirror I was pulling from had the download time estimate at a couple of days, and I didn't have time to muck about that day. Might be time to try it again - or a different mirror
    - wrycoder 5y ago
      I was enthusiastic about Void, until I learned more about its history.
      - rogers18445 5y ago
        What history is that and why does it matter today?
        doubled112 5y ago
kelp 5y ago
I remember staying up all night downloading Slackware 96 (version 3.0) floppy sets over my 28.8kbps modem. I think I used it for my first 6+ months of home Linux use. In retrospect it was probably a good thing to learn on because Slackware was so simple but did so little for you. I remember having to read a long HOWTO from the Linux Documentation Project about how to get XFree86 working. Hand crafting /etc/X11/XF86Config, including experimenting to find modelines that worked for my CRT monitor. Learning how to get Apache setup, which was kind of pointless but fun since I was on dialup. And setting up auto dial up with a PPP session whenever I used anything that needed to get online. That seemed like magic! Learned a lot there before trying out RedHat (4.x, before Enterprise was a thing) and Debian 1.3 (Bo) and then staying a Debian user for a long time until mostly moving to Ubuntu for server things.
- mirchiseth 5y ago
  Handcrafting XF86Config is how I spent my summer of 95. I was in engineering school in India and we have these 486s in the lab running Win 3.1. I took permission from the lab dude to install Linux/X Windows on it. Monitor I had with the 486 was some noname OEM. So naturally the frequencies or whatever in the XF86Config didn't match. For many many weeks I would randomly change numbers in a line and restart. I think it was Ctrl+Fn7 to get to X screen or terminal. Still remember the joy when I got the login screen to show up.
- skissane 5y ago
  > including experimenting to find modelines that worked for my CRT monitor. I remember having to muck around with modelines in X11 in the 1990s - but not this century; and even last century, Windows (both 3.x/9x and NT lineages) and OS/2 (I only ever ran 2.0) never required any such esoteric configuration (I don’t even know whether either exposed any INI/registry settings for it.) Why was this such a big (and painful) part of the 90s Linux GUI experience but not for its contemporary GUI competitors?
  - shmerl 5y ago
    I recently had to look into modelines because of one issue related to high frequency refresh rate display and amdgpu causing some blinking due to VRAM reclocking. Really didn't expect that ever to come up. In the process I discovered that KWin doesn't yet support setting video modes using modelines in the Wayland session at present.
joe_hills 5y ago
This was a pain to find on mobile, so for the convenience of LAMP developers curious about the included packages: Apache/httpd: 2.4.52 Mysql: 10.5.13 PHP: 7.4.27 Source: ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware64-15.0/PACKAGES.TXT
- 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  This page has mirrors to get files over HTTPS, including a link to the package browser: https://mirrors.slackware.com/ https://mirrors.slackware.com/
tramtrist 5y ago
Daily Slackware user for many years. So excited to see Pat hit another one out of the park. Contrats sir and to all the folks who support Slackware!
throwaway984393 5y ago
I recently reformatted my personal machine from Slack 14.2 to Ubuntu, and did not have a fun time. The second time that Ubuntu randomly bricked my machine with an update, I changed tack. I'm now running Alpine Linux as my desktop, and I have to say it's absolutely a spiritual successor to Slack. Very similar installation process, very simple design, and I've had to re-learn how to set up a desktop, hardware, etc. It's been fun! It's extremely fast too. (and as a bonus: no systemd!)
- scabros 5y ago
  last time i checked Alpine linux I had the idea that the desktop functionality was barely supported (i think the only DE available was XFCE, which is fine to me, but the install documentation seemed incomplete). I think I'll give it a try also.
redm 5y ago
I used Slackware for years in the 90's before moving to FreeBSD. I honestly thought the project was dead and moved to Arch. Sadly, I'm not coming back, but I keep fond memories.
- Koshkin 5y ago
  I have tried Arch and found it more cumbersome to install. (And systemd, eww..)
boomskats 5y ago
I'd played with Linux before, but Slackware 7 was my first full-time laptop linux distro. My laptop when I was at uni used to always overheat when trying to boot into Windows; Slackware would easily boot before it overheated and then just idle. Loved Slack, ran it on other machines until v12 when I got lazy and started running Fedora Core. Might try this out.
mark_l_watson 5y ago
I started with Slackware in the early 1990s, downloaded it over a 2400 baud modem (I skipped downloading X11 stuff at 2400 baud, and just got enough for text terminals and GNU compilers, Emacs, etc. Good times, even with my family almost killing me for tying up our landline telephone for so long while downloading Slackware.
robobro 5y ago
Daily user for over half my life...
- Koshkin 5y ago
  ‘Nuff said.
  - Underphil 5y ago
    Although that could be 3 years or 35 years. We'll never know :)
40four 5y ago
I’ve already seen countless comments about Slackware being a lot of folks first Linux distro. For someone like me who didn’t get into programming until the last 5 years or so, can you guys explain what was it about Slackware, that was so appealing or inviting to new users? As a primarily Ubuntu user in my time, was part of it that the Linux landscape was much less mature back then? Was it the principals/ ethos that the project stood behind? The community? All of the above? Haha, I’m very curious. I’ve always knew of the distro, but never had a good reason to use it these days. It still clearly has a cult like following, and I don’t know the history of it honestly.
- deelowe 5y ago
  Slackware is a no frills distro and arguably the baseline for all linux distros. It’s appealing because of the lack of magic or distro specific customizations. If you want a distro that just lets you do what you need to do without getting in the way, it’s very appealing. If you want a distro that prevents you from shooting yourself in the foot, look elsewhere.
  - nomel 5y ago
    > that prevents you from shooting yourself in the foot, look elsewhere. I remember having to re-run the installation many times, from selecting the wrong options during installation.
    - throwaway984393 5y ago
      There's the best reason to use Slack: it builds character.
  - pietromenna 5y ago
    A bonus point is that Slackware does not rely on systemd. it is still a bunch of bash scripts that you can figure out what is going on.
    - jonstewart 5y ago
kingofpandora 5y ago
Congratulations to Pat! I used and loved Slackware for many years. I moved away because of the slow 15.0 release cycle and the near absence of communication from the BDFL, but I do miss it.
mythrwy 5y ago
Slackware taught me a lot about Linux. Eventually I got lazy and moved on (things were just easier to install on Mint/Ubuntu) but I owe Patrick big time. I think I'm going to give this a whirl for old times sake.
teh_klev 5y ago
Slackware 2.2 was my first encounter with Linux in 1995. I was already fairly comfortable with Unix having to support a bunch of SCO Unix systems for our customer base. I gave up a weekend of beer to get it up and running on some random motherboard and pilfering some known good compatible bits from our spares store such as an actual NE2000 NIC :) Within a few days I was doing kernel rebuilds to get a sound card working properly or some such thing. That was a lot of fun. Due to a career change I ended up running RedHat (then CentOS) mostly, but dipped back into Slackware now and again. It's nice to see what was one of the OG distros still getting releases.
LennyHenrysNuts 5y ago
YESSSS I'll be downloading this when I get home from work! The time I've spent on 14.2 has been too d&mn long.
t3lp3r10n 5y ago
Surprisingly I still use Slackware (current) and actually install it on our physics department computer room using packer to generate virtual golden images and then imaging the computers with clonezilla. Slackware performs well even on those 11 years old machines that we have there (combined with some new ones). Currently students access remotely using x2go and Xfce and it works pretty well. Of course there are some problems sometimes but in general is very stable. My first Linux experience with Slackware forced me to learn how to compile the kennel to get sound... oh I had time on those years. Congratulations and thank you, Patrick!
- nescioquid 5y ago
  Nature bless you for that. I've been thinking about Slackware a lot lately. Slackware manuals and the philosophy of the distro taught me how *nix, networking, and computers in general work. Back in the late '90s, that was a great contrast to the voodoo of RedHat, and frankly a humanitarian boon. In my older enervated state, seeking something that "just works", I keep thinking of Slackware -- the only thing that "just worked" was understanding what was happening from a fairly close approximation to first principles and a software stack that did what it said on the tin. I can't think of a better distro to use in an institution of higher learning. The irony of Slackware's affinity to the Church of the Subgenious didn't hurt either; Bob Dobbs wants to sell you a bill of goods, but once you see through all of that and achieve a state of Slack, true understanding has begun.
SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
Wow, that is a name that brings back memories. Now I'm curious, anyone knows how good is the package management in modern Slackware? I ask because back in the late 90s it was quite far behind Debian.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  Same package manager as before, but you can use slpkg for modern features: https://dslackw.gitlab.io/slpkg/ https://dslackw.gitlab.io/slpkg/
bachmeier 5y ago
I'll be trying this when I get a chance. I coincidentally checked the Slackware website this morning and was disappointed that the last release was 6 years ago. I thought for sure it was dead.
buescher 5y ago
The first distribution I downloaded to floppies at work and installed on a beater 386 at home. I am pretty sure the first one I installed still used a pre-1.0 kernel that I immediately upgraded to 1.0, so it must have been spring or summer 1994 and Slackware 1.1. I turned into a computer bum for the next five years or so, but I got over it.
tristor 5y ago
Slackware was my first distro, purchased a diskette set by mail from a company in Computer Shopper magazine and installed it on a 386 my parents gave me after buying an IBM PS/1 with a 486DX2 in 1991 (or 1992?). I used it to get Internet access via SLIP dial-up to a mainframe at the University of Missouri and from there to play MUDs which ended up becoming an obsession for years and resulted in me learning C to modify DikuMUD. I’m really glad to see that Slackware is still alive and kicking even though I’m now mostly a FreeBSD and MacOS user.
- orbere 5y ago
  Funny, my first computer was an IBM PS/1 that I got for Christmas of 1992. I couldn't figure out how to install linux on it. Googling now I see someone talking about the hard disk controller being on the mobo and unsupported, and someone saying they had to supply hard disk geometry info. That was beyond me as a pre-teen. Didn't get my first box to install slackware on until I traded two BB guns for a tower PC as a teenager.
  - tristor 5y ago
    To be fair, I don't think the IBM PS/1 ever had Linux installed on it. It ran Windows 3.1 and later Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, and we had Trumpet Winsock on it to get Internet connectivity through the local library at some point (originally my parents used Prodigy only, I introduced them to the Internet). The 386 system I put Slackware on was a Tandy of some type (I don't remember the exact model) which had a 20MB hard drive in place of where it typically would have a second 3.5" floppy drive. IIRC, I was never able to get sound working on it, but had no problem getting everything else generally working. A handful of years later my parents bought a Dell running Windows 98 SE and I built my first custom computer which had an AMD K6-2 and also ran Windows so I could play computer games (which at the time were more interesting to me) and it also had the just released Diamond Monster3D based on the Voodoo2 chipset w/ separate 2D accelerator card via VGA passthru. That was my first foray into proper 3D gaming and got me interested in hardware and overclocking, which dominated most of my interest until my later teen years when I started contributing to open source and got back into Linux.
Gentil 5y ago
As someone who is from the era of Ubuntu as their first distro, my natural progression towards maintainable OS made me reach Arch. As an OS for your system, it seems like the perfect abstraction layer and does just enough. The next incremental update to my system could be NixOS, Nix package manager in Arch or Nix package manager in FreeBSD. But I am always happy to see old projects like this kicking. I see many people mention the fact that they won't be coming back to Slackware. Could that be because they are not changing enough according to the times they are in? Is there something the project can do to attract new users? I definitely wouldn't want Slackware project to stall. It makes me really sad when OSS projects die.
- joshbaptiste 5y ago
  Slackware is really a small/bare bones distro, "old schoolers" like it because in it's time (90s era) just having a Unix like system on a PC was amazing and it is considered very stable, now that GNU/Linux is everywhere today's distros are just easier to use.
  - Gentil 5y ago
    > There is no formal issue tracking system and no official procedure to become a code contributor or developer. The project does not maintain a public code repository. Bug reports and contributions, while being essential to the project, are managed in an informal way. All the final decisions about what is going to be included in a Slackware release strictly remain with Slackware's benevolent dictator for life, Patrick Volkerding. This is from Slackware wikipedia page. If this is true, this could be the next logical step to increase some development involvement and noise maybe? Patrick should be also thinking about the future of Slackware right? Am just an outsider since I don't have skin in the game. But Slackware is not a distro that comes in your conversations more often and I am in a lot of Linux communities. And the comments reflect the same as well. Maybe this could improve the scenario. Again, this is with the best intentions. Please ignore if the comments doesn't sit right with you. :) --- Also, I don't think Slackware should be like GNU/Linux distros or alter course radically. But I think a small modernization of the project could help everyone who wants to keep the Slackware way of doing it alive.
mustache_kimono 5y ago
Finally!
YaBomm 5y ago
How is Patrick doing nowadays? Thank you for my favorite distro of all times.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
scabros 5y ago
I read HN regularly since a couple of years, but registered just for this comment. My first GNU/Linux distro, but in early 2000. I have great memories from that time, it was "harder" but very rewarding. The best example of less is more. Today I'm using Devuan to escape from systemd, and I think I'll give Slackware 15 a try <3
- 2b3a51 5y ago
  I've been using Slackware on a laptop since around 2014, the 14.1 release days. The default (i.e full) install contains almost everything I need. I just add LibreOffice and R/RStudio and Octave and a few bits and pieces - nearly all available pre-compiled. As another post has pointed out, if you decide to try Slackware 15.0 your previous knowledge will be mostly reusable (but slackpkg makes updating the base easier).
kdtsh 5y ago
One of the last entries in the -current changelog before the 15.0 release was the following: Wed Feb 2 04:17:39 UTC 2022 fortune -m "I will be finished tomorrow" fortunes2 a/kernel-generic-5.15.19-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. a/kernel-huge-5.15.19-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. [...] This gives the following: %% (fortunes2) A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the program on which he was working. "I will be finished tomorrow," the programmer promptly replied. "I think you are being unrealistic," said the manager. "Truthfully, how long will it take?" The programmer thought for a moment. "I have some features that I wish to add. This will take at least two weeks," he finally said. "Even that is too much to expect," insisted the manager, "I will be satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete." The programmer agreed to this. Several years later, the manager retired. On the way to his retirement lunch, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal. He had been programming all night. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" No matter how practical it is to use Slackware in the current year (works for me!), it makes me very happy that projects like this are still going. Congratulations Patrick on a fantastic release.
dang 5y ago
Past threads: Slackware Linux 15.0 RC3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29928343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29928343 - Jan 2022 (43 comments) Slackware 15.0 release candidate one - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28201197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28201197 - Aug 2021 (56 comments)
user3939382 5y ago
I got into Slackware in high school in the late 90s because it was associated with the l33t crowd that I looked up to at the time. Now there’s a nostalgia associated with it. At a utility level, if I want a simple performant Linux that’s not doing any unpredictable automagic it’s my go-to.
scblock 5y ago
Unreadable on mobile. Unreadable in reader mode on mobile. That takes talent. But not the kind of talent we can celebrate. They wrapped the whole wall of text in a PRE tag, which is user hostile and a poor way to use HTML. We solved this back in the early 1990s.
- hulitu 5y ago
  > We solved this back in the early 1990s. I would not call it "solved". Slackware home page is usable. The modern web is a usability disaster.
akoster 5y ago
The main FTP ISO mirrors are a bit slow - thankfully there are torrents available here https://seedbox.slackware.uk/ https://seedbox.slackware.uk/
trixie_ 5y ago
Ah the good ole days up late dual booting Slackware, hanging out on BitchX, browsing Usenet on Enlightenment while watching Duckman on TV.
igetspam 5y ago
It's amazing to see how many of us had Slackware as our first distro. I remember meeting Patrick when I was in high school, at Linux World Expo. Every just (barely) worked (kinda... except printing...) I mirrored current religiously for over a decade and used to hand out ISOs to friends. All through my Google years, until I just couldn't hammer it into enough shape to keep the auth working on the corp network any more, I ran it as my only distro. Congratulations to the Slackware team for releasing another one. I'm always shocked when it happens but happy to see it.
- nopcode 5y ago
  It was my first distro back in 2009, I was 15. Back then Slack was the most recommended distro "if you really want to learn linux".
alekq 5y ago
Pat always gives it a personal touch: Wed Feb 2 22:22:22 UTC 2022 Slackware 15.0 x86_64 stable is released!
taubek 5y ago
When I was buying my first PC back in mid 90's I had only one requirement: it had to be abele to run Linux. I was picking out the components for which I was sure that they will work with Linux. My first distribution was Slackware. I've moved away from sys admin jobs some 15 years ago but it is nice to see that Slackware is still around.
shrikant 5y ago
Nice to see Slackware still going strong. Like many around these parts, Slackware was my second Linux distribution, after I decided that Red Hat 5.2 was too mainstream for me. One of my favourite things about Slackware was the installer that showed a couple of paragraphs of trivia about what packages were getting installed. I learned so much about the people that made these amazing things possible. (Larry Wall! John Ousterhout! Roland McGrath! Ulrich Drepper!)
stockerta 5y ago
I used slackware while in university for quite a while. Not my first distro, that was Suse (and I still use it today), but there is something about slackware I still love. Maybe if IT would still be only a hobby for me and not my day job I would use it. But when I'm off from work I don't wanna mess much. Tumbleweed is enough for me on my old laptop.
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
I love it when there's a Slackware post on HN... it brings out cool stories about people's first discovery into Linux. <3 Slackware!
mrPurplePinkie 5y ago
I remember ordering the CD Rom from the States and the nights spent configuring /etc/X11/XF86Config for a Matrox Millennium on a 486DX. I may be wrong but if I recall correctly, Slackware, was the "De facto" standard at the time.
nspattak 5y ago
Slackware was the 2nd distro i tried, almost ~22years ago. For 2 weeks I would schedule my dialup modem to connect to the internet for 2-3h every night when everyone was sleeping and the phone was not used to download the cd1 iso with the common packagesets (a/ k/ x/ etc). Thank you Patrick :)
wazoox 5y ago
I recently upgraded my home PC to Slackware-current, 14.2 being decidedly too long in the tooth :)
unixhero 5y ago
A lovely release note. I wish the Slackware team all the best with this release, it looks very solid. The only thing I would wish for would be a bridge to be able to use Arch packages. And maybe also a complete copy of how the arch Linux project managers it's Wiki, which is world class for Arch users and useful for other distros too. Since Slackware require some knowledge in order to get it right, a world class knowledge base wiki would be welcome. Cheers and congrats to Pat and team
enriquto 5y ago
I'm a Slackware user (as a "pet" testing machine) and one of the things that bothers me about this distribution is that I don't know which packages I'm supposed to install. For example, by default it wants me to install both lilo and grub, but only one of them seems to be necessary. Is that alright? Do I need to select my packages manually from the long list? Besides that initial confusion, once it is up and working, it is remarkably minimal, clean, elegant, and with very up-to date packages (if you use "-current"). I love that package management does not install recursive dependencies. It is my smaller testing VM and feels just as fast as the others, and never gives me any trouble.
- kdtsh 5y ago
  Slackware will work when you install everything, and this is the recommended approach - select all package sets during installation. Beyond that, it’s what you make of it. In your case, you could probably make do without lilo/elilo if you use grub - but that assertion comes without warranty :-)
mkovach 5y ago
I still have a Slackware install that runs some really old stuff I have. I remember working at AN ISP in the 90s and slack was are secure distro. All the important stuff (authentication, configs, etc.) were stored and served from our 'slack pool'. Funny part is now I do a very basic Slackware install that setup pkgsrc (https://pkgsrc.org https://pkgsrc.org) on it so I can really experience the best and worst of times!
ydlr 5y ago
I don't remember the first time I used Slackware. I do remember the first time I used a non-slackware distribution. It was Debian. The first thing I tried to do was install a missing piece of software with `make && make install`. I couldn't believe anyone would ship something as useless as an operating system without a compiler. It was a very long time before I gave anything but Slackware another chance.

421 points by kdtsh 5y ago

Their website is glorious in a retro kind of way. Installed lynx just to enjoy the text experience.

This might be a better link http://www.slackware.com/announce/15.0.php http://www.slackware.com/announce/15.0.php Kudos to Patrick!

kissiel 5y ago

The previous release was 14.2 and it happened on 2016-06-30. It was on 4.4 kernel.

bejelentkezni 5y ago
And kernel 4.4's upstream EOL was two days ago. Talk about timing.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I suspect that might have been a driving factor because of course they knew the date was fast approaching. However it isn't that hard to build a new kernel in slackware anyway, it sticks pretty close to Vanilla kernel the way it's built.

pc2g4d 5y ago

ZipSlack took forever to download, but opened my eyes to a whole new world. Glad to see Slackware is still going. Thanks for your pioneering work.

phendrenad2 5y ago

Does Slackware live up to it's goals? I remember that a long time ago Slackware was supposed to simplify the chaos of the early Linux ecosystem, allowing nerds to have a solid stable Linux distro that gets out of the way and lets them do what they need to get done. But the Linux world has gotten a lot more complex in the last few decades. Does it still have a distinct advantage?

ArchieMaclean 5y ago

> in spite of the dire predictions of YouTube pundits This is in reference to DistroTube's Linux 2022 predictions which included "no Slackware release" https://youtube.com/watch?v=YJMm4BXNdX4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=YJMm4BXNdX4

rascul 5y ago

The oldest surviving Linux distro is still kicking.

jmclnx 5y ago

Upgrade weekend for me :) Congratulations to the Slackware team

BaldricksGhost 5y ago

Slackware was one of the first distros I used seriously. Five plus years between releases is an awfully long time. Glad to see it's still alive.

albertopv 5y ago

My very first linux distro :)

stjohnswarts 5y ago
Me too, I keep one installed in a VM for nostalgia. I've moved on to Arch since but that VM still handles my local rsync backup and languagetool install.
mansilladev 5y ago
Also my first. Feel like it was included with some book/magazine, but then started buying copies from Walnut Creek software. Can’t tell you how exhilarating it was to build a new kernel by hand, or how horrifying it was to f-up libc or some other mission critical library.
- albertopv 5y ago
  I spent hours, no, days recompiling the kernel of my slack installation, on a AMD K6-2, 1999 IIRC. I really had a lot of free time those days in high school...

xbar 5y ago

Congratulations Slackware!

trauco 5y ago

Amazing project. My first serious Linux distro. Good for Patrick and the rest of the community.

Carioca 5y ago

I've been using Linux for ~25 and have never tried Slack. I'm now on Slack/Manjaro, should I try it?

robobro 5y ago
what do you have to lose? Slack is easy to pick up and easy to maintain. You may want to consider trying sbopkg or similar if you find the package manager lacking, but it's worth noting that Slackware comes with a ton of great software in the base system (libraries and daemons)

fmeyer 5y ago

My first Linux install was a Slackware 3.5 from a cdrom magazine, but I’ve dropped Slackware in 2006 when they ditched gnome in favor of KDE. I still remember the emotion when I managed to get the system to boot and startx

300bps 5y ago
I bought the Slackware CD from a local MicroCenter and used it as the email server for my ISP (running qmail) in 1996.
wayne 5y ago
I had the same joy after installing it from a stack of floppy disks in the late '90s. It took so long but it was so satisfying when it worked!

vosper 5y ago

If someone was choosing a Linux distro today, what would be some reasons to choose Slackware rather than another popular distro like Ubuntu, Fedora, or Arch?

ncmncm 5y ago
It is very old-school. A more extreme choice in the same vein might be Linux From Scratch.
- Koshkin 5y ago
  Actually, there’s nothing “extreme” about Slackware, in fact, I find it easier to use, and more reliable than Ubuntu, for example. It is one of those things that you would say about: it’s perfect just the way it is.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    "Extreme" just means farther out on the same radius. I could have said "distal", instead, and not been understood. Running Linux on a desktop already makes you an outlier.
kdtsh 5y ago
The biggest one for me is that the mental model for maintaining your system is tiny. As a system it is easy to inspect how it works - you can trace the entire boot process along with a finger, the init system is excruciatingly simple, the package database is a directory with files each containing a brief description the output of a un-tar command, SlackBuild packages are easy to make and modify. The community is also very nice and has a lot of highly experienced users in it. Most software I want is also already installed and ready to go. Some people like to craft their OS from a minimal base, and I absolutely respect that and understand that it gives them a system which is perfectly catered to their needs - but I’m very lazy, and am perfectly happy letting someone with over 30 years experience do all that for me :-) That being said, I use Fedora at work and wouldn’t consider using Slackware. This is because I don’t want to know anything about my underlying system as long as it works and gives me the tools I need to do my work, and because GNOME is a boon to my workflow.

dangrossman 5y ago

Slackware was my first Linux too. I remember making the installation floppy disk set. And then it was my first introduction to running a computer others could remotely control. After learning how to dial up AOL from Linux then join an IRC chat room, I was immediately "pwned" by someone in that chat room who guessed my root password and rm -rf /'d my entire hard drive. I was probably 8 or 9 at the time and cried.

rfrey 5y ago
That's horrible. I hope that person is working tech support for Comcast now.
- reilly3000 5y ago
  A most excellent curse, I must say.
- beermonster 5y ago
  Or is an Oracle DBA
  - p_l 5y ago
    Why would you curse them with money?
    - lillecarl 5y ago
      Many would argue that money is the curse of the world, I disagree but see their point.
lnxg33k1 5y ago
Slack was my second distro with the first one being the original Red Hat, but i discovered them on IRC, through the glorious mIRC Simpson, if any other Italian is around, back then ^^
- 5y ago

kingcharles 5y ago

I had to go back and check, the first version I installed was 3.0. I'm guessing a lot of us started our Linux journey on early Slackware floppy installs.

npace12 5y ago

first linux. slackware 3.6 for me. felt like such an achievement once it booted ./configure; make; make install everything

logicbombr 5y ago

My first linux distro. I’m almost crying remembering the emotions of gcc a ircd server or eggdrop on it

benlivengood 5y ago

I used Slackware for about 15 years before switching to Debian/Ubuntu; I knew a lot more about day-to-day Linux internals during the Slackware period and kind of miss it, and it may be worth trying 15 out.

wrycoder 5y ago

Poignant remarks. We're not getting any younger: "Erik "alphageek" Jan Tromp passed away in 2020 after a long illness. He was a long-time member of the Slackware core team doing a ton of stuff behind the scenes and a master of lesser-known programming languages like Tcl. :-) For a long time he lived closer to me geographically than anyone else on the core team, but unfortunately with an international border between us we never did meet in person. But he was there in chat every day and was a good friend to everyone on the team. He is greatly missed. Sorry I didn't get 15.0 out in time for you to see it... My old friend Brett Person also passed away in 2020. Without Brett, it's possible that there wouldn't be any Slackware as we know it - he's the one who encouraged me to upload it to FTP back in 1993 and served as Slackware's original beta-tester. He was long considered a co-founder of this project. I knew Brett since the days of the Beggar's Banquet BBS in Fargo back in the 80's. When the Slackware Project moved to Walnut Creek CDROM, Brett was hired as well, and we spent many hours on the road and sitting next to each other representing Slackware at various trade shows. Brett seemed to know all kinds of computer luminaries and was an amazing storyteller, always with his smooth radio voice. Gonna miss you too, pal."

racl101 5y ago
When was the last release?
- BirAdam 5y ago
  15 today. 14.2 was 2016
  - racl101 5y ago
    Ah I see.
anonymousiam 5y ago
I'm glad that Patrick is still around to continue this. Slackware was my second Linux distro (SLS being the first). (I also used Yggdrasil, but always ran it from CD and never installed it to a hard drive.)

Koshkin 5y ago

Time to kill another Windows in my household.

altrus 5y ago

Slackware was my first linux distribution, and one that I used continuously before moving to Arch. As it happens, I think Arch embodies many of the original Slackware principles, but its focus on more modern hardware led to it growing a larger community - one that includes great documentation.

kdtsh 5y ago
The Arch Wiki is a treasure, I used it when setting up Slackware on a MacBook Pro because it had the most comprehensive description of the caveats and gotchas for the laptop of anywhere on the WWW.
bitwize 5y ago
Arch embodied many of the original Slackware principles, once. These days I don't know what they're doing, but Void is basically Arch without the bullshit (and with runit instead of systemd, thank goodness).
- doubled112 5y ago
  I hear good things about Void, but last time I tried to install it, the mirror I was pulling from had the download time estimate at a couple of days, and I didn't have time to muck about that day. Might be time to try it again - or a different mirror
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    I was enthusiastic about Void, until I learned more about its history.
    - rogers18445 5y ago
      What history is that and why does it matter today?
      - doubled112 5y ago

kelp 5y ago

I remember staying up all night downloading Slackware 96 (version 3.0) floppy sets over my 28.8kbps modem. I think I used it for my first 6+ months of home Linux use. In retrospect it was probably a good thing to learn on because Slackware was so simple but did so little for you. I remember having to read a long HOWTO from the Linux Documentation Project about how to get XFree86 working. Hand crafting /etc/X11/XF86Config, including experimenting to find modelines that worked for my CRT monitor. Learning how to get Apache setup, which was kind of pointless but fun since I was on dialup. And setting up auto dial up with a PPP session whenever I used anything that needed to get online. That seemed like magic! Learned a lot there before trying out RedHat (4.x, before Enterprise was a thing) and Debian 1.3 (Bo) and then staying a Debian user for a long time until mostly moving to Ubuntu for server things.

mirchiseth 5y ago
Handcrafting XF86Config is how I spent my summer of 95. I was in engineering school in India and we have these 486s in the lab running Win 3.1. I took permission from the lab dude to install Linux/X Windows on it. Monitor I had with the 486 was some noname OEM. So naturally the frequencies or whatever in the XF86Config didn't match. For many many weeks I would randomly change numbers in a line and restart. I think it was Ctrl+Fn7 to get to X screen or terminal. Still remember the joy when I got the login screen to show up.
skissane 5y ago
> including experimenting to find modelines that worked for my CRT monitor. I remember having to muck around with modelines in X11 in the 1990s - but not this century; and even last century, Windows (both 3.x/9x and NT lineages) and OS/2 (I only ever ran 2.0) never required any such esoteric configuration (I don’t even know whether either exposed any INI/registry settings for it.) Why was this such a big (and painful) part of the 90s Linux GUI experience but not for its contemporary GUI competitors?
- shmerl 5y ago
  I recently had to look into modelines because of one issue related to high frequency refresh rate display and amdgpu causing some blinking due to VRAM reclocking. Really didn't expect that ever to come up. In the process I discovered that KWin doesn't yet support setting video modes using modelines in the Wayland session at present.

joe_hills 5y ago

This was a pain to find on mobile, so for the convenience of LAMP developers curious about the included packages: Apache/httpd: 2.4.52 Mysql: 10.5.13 PHP: 7.4.27 Source: ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware64-15.0/PACKAGES.TXT

0xbadcafebee 5y ago
This page has mirrors to get files over HTTPS, including a link to the package browser: https://mirrors.slackware.com/ https://mirrors.slackware.com/

tramtrist 5y ago

Daily Slackware user for many years. So excited to see Pat hit another one out of the park. Contrats sir and to all the folks who support Slackware!

throwaway984393 5y ago

I recently reformatted my personal machine from Slack 14.2 to Ubuntu, and did not have a fun time. The second time that Ubuntu randomly bricked my machine with an update, I changed tack. I'm now running Alpine Linux as my desktop, and I have to say it's absolutely a spiritual successor to Slack. Very similar installation process, very simple design, and I've had to re-learn how to set up a desktop, hardware, etc. It's been fun! It's extremely fast too. (and as a bonus: no systemd!)

scabros 5y ago
last time i checked Alpine linux I had the idea that the desktop functionality was barely supported (i think the only DE available was XFCE, which is fine to me, but the install documentation seemed incomplete). I think I'll give it a try also.

redm 5y ago

I used Slackware for years in the 90's before moving to FreeBSD. I honestly thought the project was dead and moved to Arch. Sadly, I'm not coming back, but I keep fond memories.

Koshkin 5y ago
I have tried Arch and found it more cumbersome to install. (And systemd, eww..)

boomskats 5y ago

I'd played with Linux before, but Slackware 7 was my first full-time laptop linux distro. My laptop when I was at uni used to always overheat when trying to boot into Windows; Slackware would easily boot before it overheated and then just idle. Loved Slack, ran it on other machines until v12 when I got lazy and started running Fedora Core. Might try this out.

mark_l_watson 5y ago

I started with Slackware in the early 1990s, downloaded it over a 2400 baud modem (I skipped downloading X11 stuff at 2400 baud, and just got enough for text terminals and GNU compilers, Emacs, etc. Good times, even with my family almost killing me for tying up our landline telephone for so long while downloading Slackware.

robobro 5y ago

Daily user for over half my life...

Koshkin 5y ago
‘Nuff said.
- Underphil 5y ago
  Although that could be 3 years or 35 years. We'll never know :)

40four 5y ago

I’ve already seen countless comments about Slackware being a lot of folks first Linux distro. For someone like me who didn’t get into programming until the last 5 years or so, can you guys explain what was it about Slackware, that was so appealing or inviting to new users? As a primarily Ubuntu user in my time, was part of it that the Linux landscape was much less mature back then? Was it the principals/ ethos that the project stood behind? The community? All of the above? Haha, I’m very curious. I’ve always knew of the distro, but never had a good reason to use it these days. It still clearly has a cult like following, and I don’t know the history of it honestly.

deelowe 5y ago
Slackware is a no frills distro and arguably the baseline for all linux distros. It’s appealing because of the lack of magic or distro specific customizations. If you want a distro that just lets you do what you need to do without getting in the way, it’s very appealing. If you want a distro that prevents you from shooting yourself in the foot, look elsewhere.
- nomel 5y ago
  > that prevents you from shooting yourself in the foot, look elsewhere. I remember having to re-run the installation many times, from selecting the wrong options during installation.
  - throwaway984393 5y ago
    There's the best reason to use Slack: it builds character.
- pietromenna 5y ago
  A bonus point is that Slackware does not rely on systemd. it is still a bunch of bash scripts that you can figure out what is going on.
  - jonstewart 5y ago

kingofpandora 5y ago

Congratulations to Pat! I used and loved Slackware for many years. I moved away because of the slow 15.0 release cycle and the near absence of communication from the BDFL, but I do miss it.

mythrwy 5y ago

Slackware taught me a lot about Linux. Eventually I got lazy and moved on (things were just easier to install on Mint/Ubuntu) but I owe Patrick big time. I think I'm going to give this a whirl for old times sake.

teh_klev 5y ago

Slackware 2.2 was my first encounter with Linux in 1995. I was already fairly comfortable with Unix having to support a bunch of SCO Unix systems for our customer base. I gave up a weekend of beer to get it up and running on some random motherboard and pilfering some known good compatible bits from our spares store such as an actual NE2000 NIC :) Within a few days I was doing kernel rebuilds to get a sound card working properly or some such thing. That was a lot of fun. Due to a career change I ended up running RedHat (then CentOS) mostly, but dipped back into Slackware now and again. It's nice to see what was one of the OG distros still getting releases.

LennyHenrysNuts 5y ago

YESSSS I'll be downloading this when I get home from work! The time I've spent on 14.2 has been too d&mn long.

t3lp3r10n 5y ago

Surprisingly I still use Slackware (current) and actually install it on our physics department computer room using packer to generate virtual golden images and then imaging the computers with clonezilla. Slackware performs well even on those 11 years old machines that we have there (combined with some new ones). Currently students access remotely using x2go and Xfce and it works pretty well. Of course there are some problems sometimes but in general is very stable. My first Linux experience with Slackware forced me to learn how to compile the kennel to get sound... oh I had time on those years. Congratulations and thank you, Patrick!

nescioquid 5y ago
Nature bless you for that. I've been thinking about Slackware a lot lately. Slackware manuals and the philosophy of the distro taught me how *nix, networking, and computers in general work. Back in the late '90s, that was a great contrast to the voodoo of RedHat, and frankly a humanitarian boon. In my older enervated state, seeking something that "just works", I keep thinking of Slackware -- the only thing that "just worked" was understanding what was happening from a fairly close approximation to first principles and a software stack that did what it said on the tin. I can't think of a better distro to use in an institution of higher learning. The irony of Slackware's affinity to the Church of the Subgenious didn't hurt either; Bob Dobbs wants to sell you a bill of goods, but once you see through all of that and achieve a state of Slack, true understanding has begun.

SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago

Wow, that is a name that brings back memories. Now I'm curious, anyone knows how good is the package management in modern Slackware? I ask because back in the late 90s it was quite far behind Debian.

0xbadcafebee 5y ago
Same package manager as before, but you can use slpkg for modern features: https://dslackw.gitlab.io/slpkg/ https://dslackw.gitlab.io/slpkg/

bachmeier 5y ago

I'll be trying this when I get a chance. I coincidentally checked the Slackware website this morning and was disappointed that the last release was 6 years ago. I thought for sure it was dead.

buescher 5y ago

The first distribution I downloaded to floppies at work and installed on a beater 386 at home. I am pretty sure the first one I installed still used a pre-1.0 kernel that I immediately upgraded to 1.0, so it must have been spring or summer 1994 and Slackware 1.1. I turned into a computer bum for the next five years or so, but I got over it.

tristor 5y ago

Slackware was my first distro, purchased a diskette set by mail from a company in Computer Shopper magazine and installed it on a 386 my parents gave me after buying an IBM PS/1 with a 486DX2 in 1991 (or 1992?). I used it to get Internet access via SLIP dial-up to a mainframe at the University of Missouri and from there to play MUDs which ended up becoming an obsession for years and resulted in me learning C to modify DikuMUD. I’m really glad to see that Slackware is still alive and kicking even though I’m now mostly a FreeBSD and MacOS user.

orbere 5y ago
Funny, my first computer was an IBM PS/1 that I got for Christmas of 1992. I couldn't figure out how to install linux on it. Googling now I see someone talking about the hard disk controller being on the mobo and unsupported, and someone saying they had to supply hard disk geometry info. That was beyond me as a pre-teen. Didn't get my first box to install slackware on until I traded two BB guns for a tower PC as a teenager.
- tristor 5y ago
  To be fair, I don't think the IBM PS/1 ever had Linux installed on it. It ran Windows 3.1 and later Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, and we had Trumpet Winsock on it to get Internet connectivity through the local library at some point (originally my parents used Prodigy only, I introduced them to the Internet). The 386 system I put Slackware on was a Tandy of some type (I don't remember the exact model) which had a 20MB hard drive in place of where it typically would have a second 3.5" floppy drive. IIRC, I was never able to get sound working on it, but had no problem getting everything else generally working. A handful of years later my parents bought a Dell running Windows 98 SE and I built my first custom computer which had an AMD K6-2 and also ran Windows so I could play computer games (which at the time were more interesting to me) and it also had the just released Diamond Monster3D based on the Voodoo2 chipset w/ separate 2D accelerator card via VGA passthru. That was my first foray into proper 3D gaming and got me interested in hardware and overclocking, which dominated most of my interest until my later teen years when I started contributing to open source and got back into Linux.

Gentil 5y ago

As someone who is from the era of Ubuntu as their first distro, my natural progression towards maintainable OS made me reach Arch. As an OS for your system, it seems like the perfect abstraction layer and does just enough. The next incremental update to my system could be NixOS, Nix package manager in Arch or Nix package manager in FreeBSD. But I am always happy to see old projects like this kicking. I see many people mention the fact that they won't be coming back to Slackware. Could that be because they are not changing enough according to the times they are in? Is there something the project can do to attract new users? I definitely wouldn't want Slackware project to stall. It makes me really sad when OSS projects die.

joshbaptiste 5y ago
Slackware is really a small/bare bones distro, "old schoolers" like it because in it's time (90s era) just having a Unix like system on a PC was amazing and it is considered very stable, now that GNU/Linux is everywhere today's distros are just easier to use.
- Gentil 5y ago
  > There is no formal issue tracking system and no official procedure to become a code contributor or developer. The project does not maintain a public code repository. Bug reports and contributions, while being essential to the project, are managed in an informal way. All the final decisions about what is going to be included in a Slackware release strictly remain with Slackware's benevolent dictator for life, Patrick Volkerding. This is from Slackware wikipedia page. If this is true, this could be the next logical step to increase some development involvement and noise maybe? Patrick should be also thinking about the future of Slackware right? Am just an outsider since I don't have skin in the game. But Slackware is not a distro that comes in your conversations more often and I am in a lot of Linux communities. And the comments reflect the same as well. Maybe this could improve the scenario. Again, this is with the best intentions. Please ignore if the comments doesn't sit right with you. :) --- Also, I don't think Slackware should be like GNU/Linux distros or alter course radically. But I think a small modernization of the project could help everyone who wants to keep the Slackware way of doing it alive.

mustache_kimono 5y ago

Finally!

YaBomm 5y ago

How is Patrick doing nowadays? Thank you for my favorite distro of all times.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

scabros 5y ago

I read HN regularly since a couple of years, but registered just for this comment. My first GNU/Linux distro, but in early 2000. I have great memories from that time, it was "harder" but very rewarding. The best example of less is more. Today I'm using Devuan to escape from systemd, and I think I'll give Slackware 15 a try <3

2b3a51 5y ago
I've been using Slackware on a laptop since around 2014, the 14.1 release days. The default (i.e full) install contains almost everything I need. I just add LibreOffice and R/RStudio and Octave and a few bits and pieces - nearly all available pre-compiled. As another post has pointed out, if you decide to try Slackware 15.0 your previous knowledge will be mostly reusable (but slackpkg makes updating the base easier).

kdtsh 5y ago

One of the last entries in the -current changelog before the 15.0 release was the following: Wed Feb 2 04:17:39 UTC 2022 fortune -m "I will be finished tomorrow" fortunes2 a/kernel-generic-5.15.19-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. a/kernel-huge-5.15.19-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. [...] This gives the following: %% (fortunes2) A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the program on which he was working. "I will be finished tomorrow," the programmer promptly replied. "I think you are being unrealistic," said the manager. "Truthfully, how long will it take?" The programmer thought for a moment. "I have some features that I wish to add. This will take at least two weeks," he finally said. "Even that is too much to expect," insisted the manager, "I will be satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete." The programmer agreed to this. Several years later, the manager retired. On the way to his retirement lunch, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal. He had been programming all night. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" No matter how practical it is to use Slackware in the current year (works for me!), it makes me very happy that projects like this are still going. Congratulations Patrick on a fantastic release.

dang 5y ago

Past threads: Slackware Linux 15.0 RC3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29928343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29928343 - Jan 2022 (43 comments) Slackware 15.0 release candidate one - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28201197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28201197 - Aug 2021 (56 comments)

user3939382 5y ago

I got into Slackware in high school in the late 90s because it was associated with the l33t crowd that I looked up to at the time. Now there’s a nostalgia associated with it. At a utility level, if I want a simple performant Linux that’s not doing any unpredictable automagic it’s my go-to.

scblock 5y ago

Unreadable on mobile. Unreadable in reader mode on mobile. That takes talent. But not the kind of talent we can celebrate. They wrapped the whole wall of text in a PRE tag, which is user hostile and a poor way to use HTML. We solved this back in the early 1990s.

hulitu 5y ago
> We solved this back in the early 1990s. I would not call it "solved". Slackware home page is usable. The modern web is a usability disaster.

akoster 5y ago

The main FTP ISO mirrors are a bit slow - thankfully there are torrents available here https://seedbox.slackware.uk/ https://seedbox.slackware.uk/

trixie_ 5y ago

Ah the good ole days up late dual booting Slackware, hanging out on BitchX, browsing Usenet on Enlightenment while watching Duckman on TV.

igetspam 5y ago

It's amazing to see how many of us had Slackware as our first distro. I remember meeting Patrick when I was in high school, at Linux World Expo. Every just (barely) worked (kinda... except printing...) I mirrored current religiously for over a decade and used to hand out ISOs to friends. All through my Google years, until I just couldn't hammer it into enough shape to keep the auth working on the corp network any more, I ran it as my only distro. Congratulations to the Slackware team for releasing another one. I'm always shocked when it happens but happy to see it.

nopcode 5y ago
It was my first distro back in 2009, I was 15. Back then Slack was the most recommended distro "if you really want to learn linux".

alekq 5y ago

Pat always gives it a personal touch: Wed Feb 2 22:22:22 UTC 2022 Slackware 15.0 x86_64 stable is released!

taubek 5y ago

When I was buying my first PC back in mid 90's I had only one requirement: it had to be abele to run Linux. I was picking out the components for which I was sure that they will work with Linux. My first distribution was Slackware. I've moved away from sys admin jobs some 15 years ago but it is nice to see that Slackware is still around.

shrikant 5y ago

Nice to see Slackware still going strong. Like many around these parts, Slackware was my second Linux distribution, after I decided that Red Hat 5.2 was too mainstream for me. One of my favourite things about Slackware was the installer that showed a couple of paragraphs of trivia about what packages were getting installed. I learned so much about the people that made these amazing things possible. (Larry Wall! John Ousterhout! Roland McGrath! Ulrich Drepper!)

stockerta 5y ago

I used slackware while in university for quite a while. Not my first distro, that was Suse (and I still use it today), but there is something about slackware I still love. Maybe if IT would still be only a hobby for me and not my day job I would use it. But when I'm off from work I don't wanna mess much. Tumbleweed is enough for me on my old laptop.

alfiedotwtf 5y ago

I love it when there's a Slackware post on HN... it brings out cool stories about people's first discovery into Linux. <3 Slackware!

mrPurplePinkie 5y ago

I remember ordering the CD Rom from the States and the nights spent configuring /etc/X11/XF86Config for a Matrox Millennium on a 486DX. I may be wrong but if I recall correctly, Slackware, was the "De facto" standard at the time.

nspattak 5y ago

Slackware was the 2nd distro i tried, almost ~22years ago. For 2 weeks I would schedule my dialup modem to connect to the internet for 2-3h every night when everyone was sleeping and the phone was not used to download the cd1 iso with the common packagesets (a/ k/ x/ etc). Thank you Patrick :)

wazoox 5y ago

I recently upgraded my home PC to Slackware-current, 14.2 being decidedly too long in the tooth :)

unixhero 5y ago

A lovely release note. I wish the Slackware team all the best with this release, it looks very solid. The only thing I would wish for would be a bridge to be able to use Arch packages. And maybe also a complete copy of how the arch Linux project managers it's Wiki, which is world class for Arch users and useful for other distros too. Since Slackware require some knowledge in order to get it right, a world class knowledge base wiki would be welcome. Cheers and congrats to Pat and team

enriquto 5y ago

I'm a Slackware user (as a "pet" testing machine) and one of the things that bothers me about this distribution is that I don't know which packages I'm supposed to install. For example, by default it wants me to install both lilo and grub, but only one of them seems to be necessary. Is that alright? Do I need to select my packages manually from the long list? Besides that initial confusion, once it is up and working, it is remarkably minimal, clean, elegant, and with very up-to date packages (if you use "-current"). I love that package management does not install recursive dependencies. It is my smaller testing VM and feels just as fast as the others, and never gives me any trouble.

kdtsh 5y ago
Slackware will work when you install everything, and this is the recommended approach - select all package sets during installation. Beyond that, it’s what you make of it. In your case, you could probably make do without lilo/elilo if you use grub - but that assertion comes without warranty :-)

mkovach 5y ago

I still have a Slackware install that runs some really old stuff I have. I remember working at AN ISP in the 90s and slack was are secure distro. All the important stuff (authentication, configs, etc.) were stored and served from our 'slack pool'. Funny part is now I do a very basic Slackware install that setup pkgsrc (https://pkgsrc.org https://pkgsrc.org) on it so I can really experience the best and worst of times!

ydlr 5y ago

I don't remember the first time I used Slackware. I do remember the first time I used a non-slackware distribution. It was Debian. The first thing I tried to do was install a missing piece of software with `make && make install`. I couldn't believe anyone would ship something as useless as an operating system without a compiler. It was a very long time before I gave anything but Slackware another chance.