Yes, it is that time again (finally)! Following a long period of planning, development, and testing, the Slackware Linux Project is proud to announce the latest stable release of the longest running distribution of the Linux operating system, Slackware version 14.2!
[...] Slackware 14.2 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.12.1, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and KDE 4.14.21 (KDE 4.14.3 with kdelibs-4.14.21) a stable release of the 4.14.x series of the award- winning KDE desktop environment. These desktops utilize eudev, udisks, and udisks2, and many of the specifications from freedesktop.org which allow the system administrator to grant use of various hardware devices according to users' group membership so that they will be able to use items such as USB flash sticks, USB cameras that appear like USB storage, portable hard drives, CD and DVD media, MP3 players, and more, all without requiring sudo, the mount or umount command. Just plug and play. Slackware's desktop should be suitable for any level of Linux experience.
- Official announcement
- Oldest living GNU/Linux distribution
- Uses eudev, no systemd
(Score: 3, Informative) by fustakrakich on Monday July 04 2016, @07:11PM
Try before you buy [slackbook.org]
You can't go wrong with Slackware. It's the closest thing to real UNIX® there is.... aside from SCO, of course!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday July 04 2016, @08:41PM
Nice. I like Plasma 5 and only have a couple of issues with it (I think they're actually nvidia driver problems). No systemd holds a lot of value for me. I may have to try this out.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by digitalaudiorock on Monday July 04 2016, @07:34PM
I have to admit, as a dedicated Gentoo-er for about 12 years I've never tried or even looked into Slackware, but reading this I'm more than a little impressed for sure. Several things (including gcc) are in fact newer versions than the current stable Gentoo.
These days any distro that can be that current and still just say no to systemd deserves a round of applause for sure. Very cool!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04 2016, @07:46PM
Does it exist for Slack? [excluding 3rd party 'spins' and the like]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04 2016, @08:38PM
"A couple of months in the laboratory can save you a few hours in the library."
In addition, effective use of a search engine is a 21st Century skill that you should cultivate.
In this case, it would demonstrate that your question has been answered here multiple times. [soylentnews.org]
See also Fristy's comment, posted some 20 minutes before you showed up.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday July 04 2016, @08:59PM
Yes, I agree -- setting up the average Linux distro does take a couple months in a laboratory with all the tweeking, bugging-out, borked installs, and software configuration problems which plague Linux setups.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04 2016, @09:12PM
You aren't fooling anyone, Mr. van Winkle.
Oh, and welcome to the 21st Century; you'll find that a lot of things have changed.
(A big one among that is Windoze users trying to get their OS vendor to NOT burn through multiple gigabytes of their bandwidth on something they didn't request and to NOT overwrite their current OS.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2016, @09:03AM
Don't be an ass.
(Score: 2, Informative) by mrpg on Monday July 04 2016, @08:47PM
http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/slackware-live-edition/ [slackbook.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04 2016, @09:04PM
There's a small bunch of those too. [google.com]
So, which among those [distrowatch.com] is still free of systemd? [without-systemd.org]
...and, of course, it will take a bit until that lot catches up with the 14.2 base.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday July 04 2016, @10:06PM
I've investigated a couple of these slackware-based distros.
Of the three I tried in addition to Slackware itself, I found Salix [salixos.org] the most polished.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by sce7mjm on Tuesday July 05 2016, @03:00PM
Switched to Salix from Debian Wheezy whilst waiting for Devuan.
Not sure if I'm going back to Debian/Devuan.
Using Slapt package management is a doddle.
Using Sourcery I have access to Slackbuilds now without any command line magic (although I can do it via the CLI if I want).
There's something clean about a Slackware based distro. Takes me back to 2004(?) when I was using Slackware 8 or 9 with fluxbox.
Long may it continue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2016, @10:14PM
Is doddle a good thing or a bad thing?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2016, @02:51AM
FUCK SYSTEMD
FUCK SYSTEMD
FUCK SYSTEMD
FUCK SYSTEMD
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2016, @06:25AM
I dunno, that sounds dangerous.
(Score: 4, Funny) by kazzie on Tuesday July 05 2016, @06:37AM
Uses eudev, no systemd
Can we use that in the UK, post Brexit?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2016, @09:07AM
Only if you start using it now while you are still in.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday July 05 2016, @06:43AM
Slackware Linux is also available by subscription. When we release
a new version of Slackware (which is normally once or twice a year) ...
I think that bit of the boilerplate announcement needs to be updated too. Still, I'm glad a new release has been made.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2016, @09:49AM
Slippery slope to systemd?
(Score: 1) by Chromium_One on Tuesday July 05 2016, @01:34PM
Hardly. udev was forked to eudev for the express purpose of having an alternative to systemd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd#Forks_and_alternative_implementations [wikipedia.org]
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2016, @01:36PM
No, the opposite.
Remember, we used to use udev to manage hotpluggy stuff, both creating/destroying special files in /dev, and running random user-space responses to hardware plug/unplug events. (You may also remember before that, when we used to use devfs, and before that, when we used to manage special files ourselves, but those are all ancient history, having happened at least 10 years ago, and it's unreasonable to expect linux developers to remember that far.)
Then systemd somehow absorbed, rather than forking, the udev project, so not only is udev's functionality now provided by a daemon that depends on, and comes with, systemd, but udev itself is no longer developed independently. This leaves non-systemd systems with no new versions of udev -- and of course, you can't just use the old version forever, without eventually being locked to an old kernel version. So people who didn't want systemd dependencies forked the new systemd-integrated udev as "eudev", and removed all the systemd stuff to make it standalone like the pre-systemd versions, while keeping up with non-systemd-related changes, e.g. for newer kernels.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 07 2016, @01:36PM
"and of course, you can't just use the old version forever, without eventually being locked to an old kernel version."
Would not be the case except that GregKH and Kay Sievers somehow has convinced Linus Torvalds that udev is the only consumer of the relevant /sys interfaces, and thus avoid being subject to the "we do not break userspace" rule.
Frankly that Torvalds trust GregKH as much as he does is a massive conundrum when you read what Rob Landley has to say about things.
http://www.landley.net/notes-2015.html#05-07-2015 [landley.net]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2016, @01:39PM
More like an avoidance, as eudev is a fork of the last udev version before it got incorporated into systemd.