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posted by
LaminatorX
on Saturday October 25 2014, @02:41PM
from the whining-is-not-efficacious dept.
from the whining-is-not-efficacious dept.
A grave bug has been introduced into the "wine" package of Debian Jessie, just days before the November 5th freeze deadline. The /usr/bin/wine launch script fails with an "error: unable to find wine executable. this shouldn't happen." message.
Debian has already suffered much unrest lately over the inclusion of systemd, with threats of a fork being issued, along with the possible cancellation of the GNU/kFreeBSD port and the possible dropping of support for the SPARC architecture. After so much strife and disruption, can Debian afford to have such a serious bug affect such a critical package so soon before such a major freeze?
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Wine Fails to Launch under Debian Jessie, Just Days before the Freeze Deadline
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The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand.
-- Fred Allen
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @03:18PM
I've been using Debian for many years now. I generally like it. It tends to work, it's easy to install packages, and it's easy to get updates. But my faith in it has been shaken lately. Like the summary says, it has been one act of idiocy after another from the Debian project.
But what's my alternative?
I refuse to use an RPM-based Linux distro, because they're always total shit. Any project that chooses a shitty package manager will obviously do everything else wrong, too.
Slackware has some potential, but it feels like an ancient relic. It hasn't just missed out on all of the bad developments within the Linux world since the 1990s, it as missed out on all of the good ones, too!
Gentoo has always come of as very amateurish to me. And I don't want to run up my electricity bill just to install packages from source.
FreeBSD is looking like the best alternative to Debian. If Debian doesn't get its act together, then I'm afraid I'm going to have to move away from Linux altogether.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday October 25 2014, @03:24PM
That's where you are wrong. Give it a try. It's a wonderful system and virtually anything you used on another OS that is not included in the base install is available as a slackbuild.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @03:38PM
How easy is it to keep a Slackware system up to date? It's very easy under Debian: "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade". Is it that simple under Slackware? Are the Slackware packages kept as up to date as the Debian ones are?
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Saturday October 25 2014, @04:39PM
Install slackware-current, install slapt-get and configure it for slackware-current, and you have a rolling-release OS with up to date, bleeding edge packages. It's like Arch without the sado-masochistic, user hating project leaders (and no systemd! ).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @04:50PM
I like the no systemd part, but how much effort does the rest of it actually take? Like "configure it for slackware-current", is that as simple as editing /etc/apt/sources.list is under Debian?
How frequently are the packages updated? Let's say a new version of bash or Firefox is released today. How long will it be until I can install it using the Slackware package management tools?
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Saturday October 25 2014, @05:12PM
Like "configure it for slackware-current", is that as simple as editing /etc/apt/sources.list is under Debian?
Pretty much, yeah. See http://software.jaos.org/git/slapt-get/plain/README [jaos.org] for details.
How frequently are the packages updated? Let's say a new version of bash or Firefox is released today. How long will it be until I can install it using the Slackware package management tools?
Even though it's fairly bleeding edge, Pat and the Slackware team still test each package before releasing it to the -current tree. So, there is some delay from source release to an official Slackware package release, even on -current. For example, take gimp-2.8.14. It was released in source format by the GIMP authors on August 26th, and the slackware-current package was released on October 25th (today), two months later. Of course, you're always free to build your own package using a Slackbuild and the most recent source, but any testing is your own responsibility in that scenario.
In my mind, that kind of thing is what makes Slackware the most versatile OS out there. Stick with the stable branch for optimum stability at the cost of current features, use the -current branch for fairly up to date packages that have been vetted by the Slackware team, or roll your own packages as the source is released for the absolute bleeding edge, warts and all.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday October 25 2014, @06:55PM
Is there a stable tree?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Sunday October 26 2014, @08:42PM
Yes, and you can configure slapt-get to work with stable package releases just as easily. Here are the changelogs for stable 32-bit and 64-bit respectively:
ftp://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/slackware-14.1/ChangeLog.txt [osuosl.org]
ftp://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/slackware64-14.1/ChangeLog.txt [osuosl.org]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday October 27 2014, @05:45PM
Nice. This is going back on my list.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Saturday October 25 2014, @04:24PM
So I have to stare at compiler output for hours before I can run lots of popular Linux software on my computer, as opposed to just installing a conveniently packaged deb/rpm like on any other system? No thanks. I do like Slackware for certain niches, but the Slackbuild system makes it a pain for conventional desktop installations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @05:13PM
Building from source isn't a problem for C code, since C code compiles really fast. But it's fucking unbearable for anything written in C++. Like if you want Firefox and KDE installed on Gentoo, be prepared to wait a week, even on expensive, fast modern workstations.
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Saturday October 25 2014, @06:09PM
If you don't want to wait for the source to compile to use a slackbuild, you can always use the pre-built packages available from some of the core Slackware team, like AlienBOB's packages at http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/ [slackware.com] or Robby Workman's at http://rlworkman.net/pkgs/ [rlworkman.net] . If you don't trust those sources (and for the record, I do but I've been using Slackware more or less since 1999, so I feel safe with them), you can always build your packages from source when you sleep. Recently I built Chromium from the slackbuild and the latest source to test a bug in the notification area (specifically, to see if it really had been fixed in the latest source release); I started it around 6pm, watched some TV and ate dinner, went to bed, and the next day it was ready.
Generally, when using slackbuilds via sbopkg, I've noticed that most simple packages compile in a matter of seconds or minutes, with some GUI apps taking about half an hour to an hour, and very few complicated packages (the aforementioned Chromium, Firefox, GIMP, etc.) taking several hours. This is on an old Core 2 Duo machine, which is my Slackware workhorse and not my main workstation, so I can afford to have it churning away at slackbuilds while I get things done on my main rig.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday October 25 2014, @11:29PM
What kind of idiot stares at compiler output? Seriously, wtf?
First off, just about anything you could possibly want is already available as a binary, so if you're the type that would rather have a whopper than a filet mignon, go for it.
But if you do want to (or, much less likely, need to) compile something, you act like that's some sort of chore, so clearly you've never done it. It's no chore at all. On modern hardware it's usually something that can be done in seconds, after all. Sure, compiling something huge (like say you decide to recompile your entire KDE installation just for fun) can take some time, but it's not like you would be forced to do that (binaries for big compiles like KDE and GNOME are easily obtained) and even if you want to do it, you dont sit and stare at compiler output. You press enter and then go to sleep/lunch/the park whatever while it works. When you come back it's done.
The computer is supposed to be your servant, not your taskmaster.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 26 2014, @01:08AM
What else is he supposed to do, use Chrome during the 8 hours it takes to compile it? Or should he use KDE during the week it takes to compile it instead, maybe? Oh, wait, none of that is possible. You can't use the software until it's done compiling!
(Score: 1) by Pino P on Monday November 24 2014, @12:48AM
Then download the binary for the generic architecture and use that in a chroot while compiling a fully optimized build.
(Score: 3, Informative) by melikamp on Saturday October 25 2014, @03:43PM
In some respects, Slackware release is more modern than Debian stable, and has been for a while. The kernel, for example, is newer. So calling Slackware 14.1 an "ancient relic" requires some explaining, at the very least.
However, Slackware won't appeal to many users, and it is not intended to. Aficionados praise it for very simple design (nearly all configuration residing in text files), very simple and flexible package management (no dependency checking), and the general tendency to stay out of the user's way. It is perfect for learning how to administer a modern GNU+Linux OS, and it is much loved by admins who desire complete control over the OS behavior. An average user, however, will be completely put off by the sheer amount of reading required to do basic things like enabling server daemons and installing additional software.
If you are not afraid to pop the hood and get your hands dirty, definitely give it a try.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @03:47PM
If I were to install the most recent version of Slackware Linux available today, how much effort and configuration would it take before I got a fully working system, including at least one of the major desktop environments?
It takes just a few minutes and almost no effort when using Debian or Ubuntu. It's just a few mouse clicks and the system is usable.
I know it wasn't that simple the last time I tried Slackware, but that was many years ago. I remember having to edit config files, having to start X manually, and all sorts of unfriendliness like that.
What's the current situation?
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Saturday October 25 2014, @04:11PM
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Sunday October 26 2014, @02:33AM
+1 to FreeBSD, just because I've also been considering it as an alternative (I've installed it on one of my systems and enjoy all of it except for LLVM). For the modern Linux user, the most striking thing is how customizable it is. It won't do anything until you tell it to, then do it well.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Sunday October 26 2014, @11:40AM
Nice troll. If you'd bothered trying anything other than Debian, you'd realize that your comments are full of either gross ignorance or flaming BS — on par with the people that buy into the "omg all distros excpect 'buntu force you to use the terminal for liek everything and are liek for expert super-geeks only!" crap. I'd certainly say it's foolish to the extreme to abandon Linux because the distro you're used to isn't up to par anymore; I'm considering PC-BSD, but it's as a last resort.
One option is Void Linux, which is another foundation distro (not based on any others). It reportedly allows users to stick with binary repos if they wish, usual choice of desktop environments, choice of inits, and I don't know much else. Looks pretty standard, but I haven't tried it yet (just downloaded it).
I jumped from Debian to OpenSUSE after a brief battle with Jessie. If it wasn't for the mild differences between YaST/zypper and Synaptic/apt, and a slight difference in how dependencies are handled, I wouldn't actually know which was which. Otherwise, it's easier in OpenSUSE: it hosts repos for users that want to build packages & has a master search to cover all of them (so I'm not stuck choosing only between official repos & well-publicized alternates), and when a package is installed from an alternate repo, YaST/zypper asks if I want to add it to my list of places to grab updates.
I gave Slackware a try for the first time recently. The only thing that seemed even remotely outdated was that it uses a text installer that lets the user make major decisions rather than forcing everything on us. It lets users rely entirely on binary repos if they choose, and offers the same desktop environments but they run faster & more reliably than I'd seen in Debian lately.
I haven't tried Gentoo, but it comes across as professional, just not overly commercial. I'm not interested in building from source, but I doubt I'd run my electricity bill up given my laptop's on and *if* it's active enough to give off much heat, that would just mean not having to use a space heater as often. No biggie.
As I've said to many Ubuntu users that haven't dared try anything else in recent years (if at all): give current releases of the other distros a try with an open mind rather than assuming that what you're used to is automatically 'better,' and you might be very surprised at what you find. I'm hoping that Debian will find its way back to the proverbial light, because so many great distros (like SimplyMEPIS and MX-14) have been based on it, but I'm sure as hell not giving up on Linux purely because some (or even most) Debian devs have rectal-cranial inversion disorder at the moment...
(Score: 2) by fnj on Sunday October 26 2014, @01:01PM
Good thing you're a coward with no identity, because you just made a ass of yourself. All the professional users of RHEL and SUSE Enterprise are laughing their asses off at what a fool you are.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday November 24 2014, @03:49PM
"I refuse to use an RPM-based Linux distro, because they're always total shit."
Why is RPM shit?