Slack v. 10

[Chris]

I am pretty positive it wasn't introduced in either 9 or 9.1, this is a new thing.

Other new things in this Slackware Release is x.org, which for now isn't really that much of a difference since you can use your old XF86Config file and just rename it.

It was definitely in 9.1, can't remember for sure about 9.0.

[skroo]

the setup adds your other partition to lilo and even sets up a line in fstab so for example it will mount ntfs as /fat-c read only of course.

I'll check when I get home, but I believe this was introduced in either 9 or 9.1.

Red Hat linux was for awhile considered the most Windows user friendly distribution because partly it set up Windows in Grub, so people could boot back and forth to ask their questions.

Agreed. However, a large part of the reason why RedHat was also considered the most user-friendly distro was because it hid the actual workings of Linux behind KDE and a mess of scripts. It behaved enough like Windows on the surface that it wasn't scary, but didn't require actually knowing much about how the OS worked in order to be able to use it. Similar obfuscation could also be found in RPM.

I think Patrick has a good idea doing this but at the same time, its going to bring completely stupid people who want answers handed to them on a silver platter. So brace for the newbies migrating to Slackware folks, its going to be one hell of a controversy.

As long as Slackware doesn't try to bias itself too heavily towards the 'I'm running Linux on the Desktop, aren't I clever' crowd, it'll probably remain relatively unmolested. It does still retain the aura of being the 'expert' distro, so this should help to still keep the weenie population away.

[TheCotMan]

My servers are still 2.4.26, and I have no plans to move them beyond that for the foreseeable future.

From my own experience, I generally do not upgrade to the next major release of a Linux kernel on my servers until the sub-version move into the double-digits. This helps to avoid the frenzied pace of new kernel versions in the early stages, and the reboots which are associated with them. No matter how many times I build a new kernel on a remote server, there is a cost in personal stress for each reboot.

However, for laptops, I often consider upgrading sooner, to gain experience with new major releases for later server upgrades, and to use the features of the newer kernels.

[skroo]

Agreed. The 2.5 was a TOTAL bust and I haven't seen much from 2.6 that would lead me to believe it won't eventually be considered the same. I have been playing with OpenBSD at work quite a bit. Not sure how happy I am with it from a Desktop OS perspective though.

I have to admit that I pretty much avoided 2.5 after some unpleasant experiences involving filesystem support around about 2.5.9, IIRC.

The things that made me happier about 2.6:

- prism54 support from 2.6.5 on. The patched 2.4 / 2.6 versions never really worked well for me.

- Better Intel 8xx chipset support. Important, since 2 of the 3 P4-era machines I have are 845/830 (IIRC) based.

- Improvements in display adapter support, specifically for mobile Radeons (read: my laptop).

- ALSA in the kernel, but that's a moot point since udev still doesn't create things like /dev/dsp, /dev/audio, or /dev/mixer despite the module successfully being loaded.

And that's about it, really. My servers are still 2.4.26, and I have no plans to move them beyond that for the foreseeable future.

I was surprised to see 10 released as soon as it was. No major kernel upgrade (as default) and was only rc1 for about a week with no rc2. Almost seems like Patrick decided to release something just because it had been a long time since the last release.

Yep. The one nice thing about 10 was that it summarised a year's worth of essential software updates into two CDs - previously, I'd been doing periodic wgets of slackware-current on the mirrors just to have all-in-one CD updates for recovery, update, and reinstall purposes. Quite frankly, I had been hoping for a 2.6-clean install option, kind of like happened with 8.0 where you had the option to do either a 2.2- or 2.4-based install. It says a lot that the Slack team still considers 2.6.7 only fit to be in testing and not production.

[converge]

You should be able to use the binary nVida drivers.

actually, the driver source can be achieved by suppl ying --extract-only at the command prompt, if for some reason you really want the source. default support is not included with the kernel because of the license that nVidia maintains.

[Chris]

This is so bloody frustrating - udev was a major change to, well, the structure of Linux itself, and the general attitude behind it seemed to be, 'damn the torpedoes, we're doing this anyway because it'll be good for you'. Quite frankly, I've been unhappy with the way the kernel's been going for some time now and am seriously considering moving back over to fBSD as a result.

Agreed. The 2.5 was a TOTAL bust and I haven't seen much from 2.6 that would lead me to believe it won't eventually be considered the same. I have been playing with OpenBSD at work quite a bit. Not sure how happy I am with it from a Desktop OS perspective though.

I was surprised to see 10 released as soon as it was. No major kernel upgrade (as default) and was only rc1 for about a week with no rc2. Almost seems like Patrick decided to release something just because it had been a long time since the last release.

[skroo]

I haven't rolled out any 2.6 kernel boxes yet. I generally start with the bare.i or bareacpi.i stock kernels as a base (assuming IDE drives) and then roll my own from there and haven't had any problems with the 2.4.2x kernels.

This is usually how I pretty much do it, too. 2.4 has been pretty good to me from about 2.4.9 up, but I have some P4-era hardware where it would be advantageous (hardware support, etc.) to be using the 2.6-series kernels.

I haven't met anyone that has had a smooth transition to 2.6 (any distro, not just slack) and am exceedingly hesitant to put a 2.6 on any of my production machines. I may try it on a box at home, but haven't decided for sure yet.

Well, so far I've been running 2.6.3 - 2.6.7 on my workstation, which was a Slack 9.1 base install that I hand-rolled the 2.6-series kernels over. For some reason that box had no udev issues, but the two that I did as packages (from Slack 9.1 and Slack 10) sure do. Granted, I know this isn't a Slack issue, and by no means am I blaming the Slackware team for this - they do an outstanding job, but it seems like they're being handed less and less coherent core software to do it with.

This is so bloody frustrating - udev was a major change to, well, the structure of Linux itself, and the general attitude behind it seemed to be, 'damn the torpedoes, we're doing this anyway because it'll be good for you'. Quite frankly, I've been unhappy with the way the kernel's been going for some time now and am seriously considering moving back over to fBSD as a result.

[Chris]

I'm having problems on every 2.4.26-based machine I haven't hand-rolled a 2.6 kernel on: udev fails to recognise /dev post-upgrade, and I only wind up with basic (read hda, ttys, etc.) devices. So far my workaround has been to roll back to 2.4.26.

No idea why this is only happening when installing from the packages in testing.

I haven't rolled out any 2.6 kernel boxes yet. I generally start with the bare.i or bareacpi.i stock kernels as a base (assuming IDE drives) and then roll my own from there and haven't had any problems with the 2.4.2x kernels.

I haven't met anyone that has had a smooth transition to 2.6 (any distro, not just slack) and am exceedingly hesitant to put a 2.6 on any of my production machines. I may try it on a box at home, but haven't decided for sure yet.

[skroo]

I upgraded three boxes from 9.1 to 10 yesterday. Two of the three went exceedingly smooth. The third (my laptop) ran into one problem.

I'm having problems on every 2.4.26-based machine I haven't hand-rolled a 2.6 kernel on: udev fails to recognise /dev post-upgrade, and I only wind up with basic (read hda, ttys, etc.) devices. So far my workaround has been to roll back to 2.4.26.

No idea why this is only happening when installing from the packages in testing.

[Chris]

I upgraded three boxes from 9.1 to 10 yesterday. Two of the three went exceedingly smooth. The third (my laptop) ran into one problem.

For folks with Intel 810 based sound cards (like many Dell laptops have) the ALSA 1.05 packages will give you problems. It's because the rc.hotplug script attempts to start the modem. To fix it, just add snd-intel8x0m to /etc/hotplug/blacklist and everything should work.

Seems like Gnome 2.6 starts even slower than 2.4 did (and I wasn't sure that was possible).

If you have installed libdvdcss, libdvdnav, and libdvdread to view DVDs, you'll need to reinstall them. I haven't done so yet (using my old versions) so I can't say off the top of my head if you'll need to DL new versions or not. More on that later.

Unless you install the optional 2.6 series kernel, your modules should be good if you have maintained patch level (in other words if you were running the 2.4.26 kernel before upgrading). I did not have to remcompile any modules and still had my support for both my Aironet 352 and my Orinoco cards. Haven't tested a Prism2 card yet but don't anticipate any issues.

Several browser bugs appear to have been fixed with Mozilla 1.7 particularly when viewing 'enhanced' sites.

Gnome 2.6 seems to use less RAM than 2.4.

A few things to note. Xwindows no longer uses the XF86Config file. It is now in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. I moved my XF86Config to xorg.conf and haven't had issues, however that could be the reason Gnome is so slow. I am going to generate a new xorg.conf today and see if that addresses the issue.

Lots of shit is now in rc scripts in /etc/rc.d that didn't use to be there. For instance there is now an rc.wireless.conf that replaces /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts and calls rc.wireless to start your WLAN. It's the same format though and easy to set up.

There are several new groups added to /etc/group (audio, video, cdrom for example). I added my users to the audio group although I am not 100% sure that was necessary. I did it while troubleshooting my ALSA issues. I'll remove myself from the group later and see if sound still works. Also, I will try adding myself to the video and cdrom groups to see if that addresses the problems with playing DVDs. I'll report back on all of that shit later.

There are several differences between 9.1 and 10. I am not 100% sure if I like all of them yet. Mainly because I have only been using 10 for about 8 hours now. I am also going to to a fresh install of 10 on another box later today and see what the differences are between the fresh install and the upgrade. In my experience a clean install has been more stable than an upgrade.

[Chris]

Anyone know if there is video card support for newer nVidia cards with this new release?

You should be able to use the binary nVida drivers.

[Tierra]

Didn't take me long to get a copy and get it installed on my laptop, running very nicely so far.

[emilsinclair]

My gawd, the downloads coming off the ftp sites are horribly slow...In fact, most of the download sites were down when I checked...Obviously the best option is to use Bittorrents...

[converge]

.. they call it FTTH, fibre to the home, but has a marketing term of BFlets, broadband fibre somthing somthing.

NEW Highspeed Internet! from {comcast|adelphia|verizon|etc} now up to 55 times faster than that crappy ppp thing you had 6 years ago! I think this translates well to the other thread on how much US cell technology sucks.

As a sidenote.. I read over the changes to slackware and didn't see anything overly impressive that I'm not already doing... so maybe I'll avoid the hype and wait for the next rev (notoriously the more earth shattering release)

[Dented-Halo]

Is that a special deal or is that standard.

My connection? Nothing standard at all. I pay total combined fees per month of around 55 US for UNLIMITED bandwidth of 52mega bits per second fibre line connection.

they call it FTTH, fibre to the home, but has a marketing term of BFlets, broadband fibre somthing somthing.