Talk:Slackware/Archive 2

Unwarranted advertising
The Third Party heading was clearly intended to include a list of third party sources of packages for Slackware. However, at the end a superfluous mention of Puppy Linux has been slipped in, with the statement that: "Puppy Linux, as of version 3.00, is now compatible with Slackware 12, as it includes almost all the dependencies needed for the installation of Slackware packages."

Aside from the illogicality of the term "compatible" to mean "contains a subset of the required libraries", this is merely unwarranted advertising. If there are no rational objections within a few days, it should be removed. There is no justification for listing all the distributions that can have Slackware packages installed, which, logically, should be nearly all of them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marksouth (talk • contribs) 20:12, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Release information
Can we compile the release history and related information into a table such as this:

Altonbr (talk) 03:25, 25 February 2008 (UTC) no because Slackware doesn't work the same way as ubuntu does. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.58.107.102 (talk) 04:30, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed, but making everything before 8.1 (2002) red and it and everything after yellow could be reasonable. Slackware's next version is not pre-announced and the current one would obviously be the latest, so I see no sense in those, but some versions do get updates and some don't. --74.162.128.211 (talk) 18:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Latest Version Layout
I have been working on a Linux Users Group resource page and need some conformity of all the Wiki Linux versions and distributions. Debian has an excellent template and I have made an RSS reader to pluck version data from the wiki page. Would be nice if I could get all of them to follow this method and my page could keep up to date with all the latest versions. RSS source path http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Latest_stable_software_release/Debian&feed=rss&action=history RSS Template. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Latest_stable_software_release/Debian&action=edit — Preceding unsigned comment added by Icarusfactor (talk • contribs) 02:44, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Support term
A bit of info that should be part of every article about a Linux distro: how long is a major release typically supported?--Exidor (talk) 17:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

They are supported as long as Pat supports it. Slackware 8.1 from 2001 is still getting updates. Just check the changelogs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.201.199.14 (talk) 19:09, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I added a paragraph with Support term. I concur with you, Exidor, that this is a vital point, worthwile or even necessary to be included. I thus made an addition. Maybe we should add some info about technical support as well..

Germanopratin (talk) 09:19, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Pre-1.0 timeline
Donbranson (talk) 20:20, 19 April 2010 (UTC) Does anyone have info on when versions 0.8 and 0.9 were available? I used them, but can't for the life of me come up with release dates for those.

Name
the name es based in Church_of_the_SubGenius my english is bad, so i won't write this.--Vincegeratorix (talk) 14:09, 14 November 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vincegeratorix (talk • contribs) 13:55, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Slackware ports
The article says:

"Slackware for the IBM S/390 architecture is also still actively developed and maintained in both -current and -stable forms."

I'm not sure it is still true. The latest Slack390 release is 11.0 [1] and according to the Changelog there has been no activity in the project since June 2009 [2]. The project doesn't look actively developed to me, it appears to be dead. What do you think?

[1] See http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/slack390/

[2] See http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/slack390/slack390-current/ChangeLog.txt —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.149.251.171 (talk) 19:51, 23 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Slackware 13.37 for x86 and AMD64 was released on 27 April 2011


 * Slackware 13.37 ARM was released on 10 May 2011.


 * From this I conclude that there is a high probability that the concurrent development Patrick described a while back (a single set of build scripts creates the X86 and AMD64 version) also creates the ARM version, which then gets a couple of days of extra testing. Could someone who has the ARM version running please post selected file creation dates for both?


 * Slack390, on the other hand, is clearly not in sync with X86, AMD64 or ARM. The last changelog entry for slack390 stable was on 28 September 2009 (version 10.0) and the last changelog entry for slack390 was on 18 Dec 19 2009 (version 11.0). See ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/slack390/slack390x-11.0/ChangeLog.txt and ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/slack390/slack390-current/ChangeLog.txt. Guy Macon (talk) 19:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Default Interface
Is it really KDE? A fresh install of Slackware dumps the user into console mode. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.111.83.161 (talk) 21:37, 4 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I'd agree with that. The default user interface is the shell (which defaults to bash). KDE is the default GUI, in that it's preselected during installation, though any of the other supplied desktops and window managers can be selected at that point. Regardless, saying 'or XFCE' is nonsensical. --74.162.128.211 (talk) 18:34, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I concur. The entry in the info box is just wrong. Someone should change it to "CLI" or something like that.
 * What does "default UI" mean? Is it the most widely used interface? I don't think so.
 * Is it the interface best supported? How can you judge whether KDE or XFCE or BASH is better supported? this cannot be a criterion
 * So the default must be what slackware puts you into - and when you don't change the config you are dropped into a CLI.
 * Germanopratin (talk) 20:15, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Two 'clarification needed' items
If people are going to mark that things need clarification, they should really add a note to this talk page describing what is unclear to them, as 86.132.138.205 did in the 'Unclear sentence' section.

I'm not going to make these edits as I'm an interested/theoretically-biased party, but here's some input:

1) Swaret and slackpkg were included as extra packages in the Slackware 9.1 CD #2,[11] but were not installed by default. Swaret was removed from the distribution as of Slackware 10.0 but is still available as a community supported package. As of Slackware 12.2, slackpkg has been added as the official remote package manager[clarification needed].

Maybe "As of Slackware 12.2, slackpkg is now installed by default as part of the base system, making it the official package manager capable of working with Slackware mirrors." I'm not sure if "been added as official" or "remote" is what is perceived as unclear. Point is, it was in the "extra" series and so was not official, and is now in the "ap" series and so is. And pkgtools expect to be working with optical media or otherwise local files, while slackpkg expects to be working with network mirrors (though can work with local files, too).

Sidenote: maybe some part of the community somewhere supports swaret but my understanding is that it's pretty much dead (the official project page indicates no release for the past five years) and none of the community I'm involved with supports it.

2) SlackBuilds.org is a community-supported project for acquiring SlackBuild script of extra software not included within Slackware. A SlackBuild build script contains the build instructions and a source download link for building a particular package for your system. This is identical to the way Slackware's official packages are built and is meant to address possible incompatibilities with community created binary packages while sacrificing the portability of typical binary distribution.[clarification needed]

This is not so much unclear as plain wrong in places.

"SlackBuilds.org is a community-supported project for acquiring SlackBuild script s of  to build extra software not included with in Slackware. A SlackBuild script contains the build instructions and a source download link for building a particular package for your system. This is identical to the way Slackware's official packages are built and is meant to address possible incompatibilities with community created binary packages while sacrificing the portability of typical binary distribution.  These scripts are written in a similar style to the scripts which build the official Slackware packages. An additional file, with an .info extension, includes metadata such as the source download link. An advantage of using this method is compatibility with Slackware methodology, a guarantee that the user won't install a binary that won't work on his system due to any peculiarities on the builder's system, configurability, and auditability. A disadvantage is the time and machine usage required to compile the software. "

Note: it is "identical" methodology: Slackware uses shell scripts (the SlackBuild, itself, and the doinst.sh) of a certain structure and style and a "slack-desc" text file to create Slackware packages. SBo does the same and generally tries to make that "structure and style" Slackware-like, partly for ease of migration from SBo into Slackware (and sometimes vice versa). But I'd hesitate to say "this is identical to the way Slackware packages are built" because "identical" is such a strong word and there are trivial deviations (Slackware scripts almost always use a PKGNAM variable, while SBo scripts almost always use PRGNAM; certain code for dealing with manpages and stripping has gone back and forth; arch detection code went from SBo to Slackware, IIRC; Slackware build files don't include .info files; etc.).

HTH.

--74.162.128.211 (talk) 18:29, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree that this text is wrong in places. And it is unclear as well. the phrase "is meant to address possible incompatibilities with community created binary packages while sacrificing the portability of typical binary distribution" is logically peculiar, since "portability" and "incompatibility" are really the same in this context...


 * I fixed some errors according to your suggestions. I hope this is clear and correct now. I also tried to incorporate the statement of the SBo site (missing trust of pre-compiled packages). I am not sure if my version is 100% accurate but it is definitely better/clearer now.

Germanopratin (talk) 07:52, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

History
I deleted these 2 sentences at the beginning of the history section, because they refer to the history of SLS rather than that of Slackware. Furthermore they were misleading as they insinuated that Volkerding created Slackware because of SLS changing to ELF, which simple was not the case. (He did so because the distro stalled and there were no bug fixes. The same reason why Murdoch started Debian)

''SLS dominated the market until the developers made a decision to change the executable format from a.out to Executable and Linkable Format (ELF). This was not a popular decision among SLS's user base at the time.''

On the whole I tried to supply more contents in this section, hopefully delivering more substantial info Germanopratin (talk) 06:50, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I made some additions, closing the timeline. Previously, the history section ended in 2005. I am not sure if the stuff I added makes for a great novel, but I wanted to close the gap, as we should't make a halt in 2005. :-) Germanopratin (talk) 15:20, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Completeness
This article has been rated with a (pretty poor) 2.0 completeness rate. It would be very helpful if people gave hints on why it's deemed incomplete - in order to add further content. I am always willing to help making this article better, but honestly, I have no clue how to substantially improve it.

Anybody got an idea what is still missing? input would be highly appreciated. Thanks Germanopratin (talk) 08:51, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Heinz Wiesinger?
In this edit, User:Vorsety posted the following edit comment: "Development team: - Remove Heinz Wiesinger from the list of core members. That'd be me and I'm not a member of the core team."

Of course we don't want the article to list someone as a core member when they say they aren't, but what is to stop some Wikipedia vandal from pretending to be Heinz Wiesinger and deleting his name?

To resolve this, I did what we always do; I went to the cited sources. A search of the history of Slackware development PDF shows no matches for "Heinz" or "Wiesinger". The release notes list him, but the heading is "Thanks to the rest of the team (and other contributors)", so any of the names on that list could be "other contributors" or members but not core members of the team.

So, even if User:Vorsety is not Heinz Wiesinger, the deletion was justified as being unsourced. I checked, and the rest of the names are listed on the history of Slackware development PDF list. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:51, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Popularity
I deleted the entry in "regional popularity" section. The OR label was absolutely unjustified, as the text makes no assumptions but cites Google's tool - as well as including a perfect reference. Anybody who is unable to check the statements via this reference will be unable to switch on a computer, anyway - so the ref should be perfectly ok. And it is not evident how more referential substance could be added. The only option being to omit the whole section.

Well, yes, maybe the popularity section is off-Wikipedia, taking into account that such a topic HAS to be non-scientific, yet there's some relevance to it. Anybody interested in this popularity thing should check this page: http://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-most-popular-linux-distro/ Germanopratin (talk) 15:10, 1 June 2012 (UTC)


 * In my opinion, you were right to remove the tag. The popularity section says right at the top what the limitations of such research are, and the research cited is nor original research. It is inexact research, but that is perfectly acceptable on Wikipedia as long as it is clearly noted as such, which this clearly is. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:26, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Sequence of sections
I moved the section on community supported software upwards to all the other package related stuff. Before it appeared after the architecture section.

The order of sections is crucial, it renders the text legible or else cluttered. It is by no means a trivial task to decide how to order topics. I ve been thinking about proper sequences a lot, I checked other distro pages, and they all have different arrangements.

I hope that this modification makes sense.

Germanopratin (talk) 15:13, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

---

In a second step I put the section "distribution" after "architecture". This should make some sense, because you want to know first "What does an OS run on" and then "How can I get the distro for the desired platform".

I also made an amendment in the section "architecture", where the original author was referring to "32 bit" or "64 bit" - without specifying the exact platform. It might be obvious - in our INTEL(AMD)-centric environment - what he ment. But the term "32 bit" is not a clear definition for IA-32, as it could mean all platforms that use a 32 bit architecture...

Germanopratin (talk) 15:26, 8 June 2012 (UTC)