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Episode: 1660
Title: HPR1660: Trying out Slackware
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1660/hpr1660.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 06:33:00
---
It<EFBFBD>s Friday 12th of December 2014, this is HPR episode 1,660 entitled Trying Out Slackware.
It is hosted by Benny and is about 65 minutes long.
Feedback can be sent to Benny at SDF.org or by leaving a comment on this episode.
The summary is, Slackware newbie Benny is talking too long time Slackware user McNeloo.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that<61>s HPR15.
Better web hosting that<61>s Honest and Fair at AnanasThost.com.
Welcome to HPR, that<61>s Benny for HPR.
I just tried out Slackware a few weeks or months ago and then I thought I<>d like to do an
HPR about Slackware, basically the reason why I tried Slackware was there<72>s an article
in Linux<75>s voice, well there was an article a few days ago, I read this and got interested
partly because I still don<6F>t fully like the idea of System Deezer, I<>m looking
around for alternatives and this article was written by McNeloo or Andrew and so I asked
him to be on the podcast and so welcome McNeloo.
Thanks Benny, it<69>s great to know that at least one person read my article but I spec
more dead and the feedback I got and it was quite positive and I think my brief when
I was writing it from Andrew Gregory was that he was quick keen to have a Slackware article
but he didn<64>t want it to be a sort of evangelical distro loving, this is the best distro
in the world thing so I hope it came across like that but it<69>s a very pragmatic Slackware
has always suited me very well and this is why and if it suits you great if it doesn<73>t
totally respect that.
Yeah I<>m kind of a bit of a distro hopper so I always try our new things, I keep coming
back to Debian but at the moment I'm on Slackware and two machines and I quite like it so could
you tell me how you got into Slackware and how long have you been using it?
Well I first used Slackware, I don<6F>t know the exact date but it was 1993 or 1994, sorry
no it wasn<73>t quite, that<61>s when I first clapped out in Linux, no it would be 1995 that
I first used Slackware, yes 1985 when I first used Slackware and it must have been first
in three points something and rather weirdly it was my dad who introduced me to Slackware
I got one of the new Pentium PCs and I didn<64>t want to put windows on it because I was
using sort of a sun unixy environment and my dad suggested well why don<6F>t you try
this Linux thing and I don<6F>t think I even knew at the time what distro was or what Slackware
was or what free software or even open source software was for maybe open source software
didn<EFBFBD>t as term didn<64>t exist then I don<6F>t recall so that<61>s when I first encountered
it and I was utterly amazed that this free thing could turn a thousand pound PC which
in today<61>s money I don<6F>t know that would be but maybe for several thousand euros
or dollars type machine into hardware that ran as well and as fast as something that
cost ten times that much if you bought it from sun or dig so that was my first experience
of Slackware.
That<EFBFBD>s interesting because my first experience with Linux was in 97 I got a red hat
I think it was a red hat CD from my dad for my birthday so I didn<64>t know it before
so it<69>s basically a bit of the same story.
While we both got introduced to Linux through our parents that<61>s great I think that must
be quite unusual.
Yeah but I think you<6F>re definitely had to better taste when it comes to distros but probably
my dad didn<64>t know anything about Linux he just saw this disk and thought well my
boy<EFBFBD>s interested in computer so let<65>s buy this for him.
So what were your first impressions of Slackware?
I take it the first time you tried it was just recently or did you try it before then?
No it<69>s actually it<69>s one of those distros I never tried.
Sometimes some years back I read that they don<6F>t have, well I think I read they don<6F>t
have a package management system which now turns out this isn<73>t true but that was always
my belief about Slackware so I never tried it because I figured it<69>s too hard for me
to get it to run.
And so I imagine I never had this leap from a dependency management system which is
now normal in Linux just like where I always had no dependency management and I have
tried other distros but I<>ve never had to experience that leap.
Is that something that I guess that would have put you off but is that something that
you feel terribly problematic when you started out using it?
Well not at first because at first you just do a full install and then you get most of
the things you want and most of the libraries you need are there but over the time when
you use it it turns out that some software packages are troublesome because they have
like 10 different dependencies and then you have to install them all manually but usually
it<EFBFBD>s just one or two dependencies so I don<6F>t remember what package I think today
I tried to install Pandock and Pandock is something based in Haskell and you have to
install like a huge amount of Haskell packages so it just didn<64>t install it in the end.
Yes actually if you go back to that Linux voice article that was one of my bug beers
was in it that Haskell uses is the Glasgow compiler which is where I am strangely enough
by an odd coincidence but they break down the packages into lots of little ones and that
means there<72>s a heap of dependencies and yes that put me off Pandock but then I found
the way around it using Q files in the through Slack builds which may be come to later so
I did get around it and automate the process and then it was you know it wasn<73>t so painful
but yeah I totally appreciate that.
Yeah I think maybe Slack and not Slack where Haskell itself has some kind of package management
maybe you could work around I don<6F>t remember a name but I think it<69>s something like
the pipin for Python packages or something like this I<>m not sure what I haven<65>t
tried because I just tried it this morning so I don<6F>t know yet but there is something
else at first the first impression of Slack where that put me off because if you look at
the website and just at the website and don<6F>t spend too much time to look for documentation
it looks quite outdated it tells you something about floppy disk to install like where it<69>s
quite hard to find information how to do the install from USB so at first my first impression
was just a death project and no one uses it nowadays anymore so I think they could improve
something that way.
Yes I think that<61>s true I think I used it for a long while and didn<64>t really think
there was any documentation and I got all information I needed semi-randomly from
a various collection of blogs and websites and forum posts but there<72>s two things that
I learned one was actually Slack where they do actually expect you to read the readmaids
that come on installation, disk or installation download and if you do that I found it was
abundantly clear what I needed to do and I think why did I do this in the first place
and the reason was because I used Windows for so many years and maybe other distros
where it was all automated I just got out of the habit of reading documentation ahead
of doing something I just used to dive straight in but with Slack where it really does pay
to sit down and read the readmaids first and the other thing was that when I first started
using Slack where there was no docs, docs like where.com which there now is which is something
akin to the Archwicky, not as comprehensive as the Archwicky but certainly heading in
that direction and that has simply appeared in the last couple of years so it<69>s a recent
development but I fully agree the website itself although it<69>s very clean in some sense
as large parts of it that don<6F>t get updated frequently.
Yeah I think as soon as I found the readmaid files I was fine but kind of if you don<6F>t
download the CD and you don<6F>t know the readmaid files are there they are just not obviously
around on the web. I mean around the FreeBSD server and FreeBSD is a bit, it<69>s quite
a hassle to install but the documentation is so good it<69>s no problem to install and
everything<EFBFBD>s available online so if you haven<65>t even downloaded anything or even
tried FreeBSD you can still read through the home and it<69>s just there you don<6F>t have
to go look for it and I think that<61>s a bit problem with those readmaid files.
Yes I quite agree actually because when a Slack would disappear I would consider trying
to go over to BSD for a lot of things and one of the things I loved about BSD is the documentation
and it had the PDF file you could download and you could read it and if you wanted you
could print it all you could stick it in your phone and it was nice that way and very
clearly set and methodically set up very professionally done.
Yeah I think definitely. For me BSD is always an upking but the problem is to teach I use
a pen tablet and there is an awaycom driver for FreeBSD so I can<61>t use the pen tablet
that<EFBFBD>s why I always stick to Linux. I had one FreeBSD desktop some while back but if you
use FreeBSD and Linux there are things that just don<6F>t work together,
software packages where they just don<6F>t exist in FreeBSD or the other way around.
Yes and one thing it<69>s worth mentioning is that in some ways Slackware is very much,
if you imagine a spectrum of distros and maybe you<6F>ve got a Ubuntu one end and Slackware at the other
of how easy they are to interact with as a fairly novice user. I would say that actually Slackware
is off at the BSD and of that spectrum of BSD is probably a bit further out than that.
In a number of ways like for example hardware support as you mentioned I mean my first
experience with BSD failed completely because it didn<64>t have the drivers for an up-to-date
motherboard, a recent motherboard that say Slackware certainly had but also there is actually
another point is that some of the Slackware actually takes inspiration from BSD.
Some of the start-ups in like initialization scripts are done in a BSD style so I think that<61>s
probably why I feel you know a step towards BSD for me is actually an easier step than a step
off in the Ubuntu end of the Linux spectrum. Yeah for me there was my first impression from Slack
where it feels very much like a BSD system. Not fully it<69>s still Linux but there is things
that are I think one thing I like about BSD systems and also Slackware it<69>s way easier to understand
how the system works in something like well I never tried Ubuntu but some high-level distribution.
It<EFBFBD>s quite hard to figure out how the boot process works and everything and in Slackware or
also BSD is just like a few scripts that are in a given order and that<61>s how your system boots
it<EFBFBD>s nothing magical about it. Yeah I mean actually although it<69>s not the reason I use Slack
ware in the first place because the reason I use Slackware in the first place as I said is my dad
gave me that was a stack of floppy at that time but the reason that I stuck with it over the years
I kind of went away from it and then came back to it and when I came back to it I started really
appreciating the free software underpinnings of it and as you mentioned the clarity of the scripts
and let<65>s say clarity of the scripts it<69>s not something you could expect your grandmother
to start using or grandfather just avoid being sexist but something that<61>s in principle if
you<EFBFBD>re going to put a bit of effort into learning bash scripting you can see exactly how it
boots up. In fact I went and I deleted half the the the start up scripts and they are c.de
directory just have to the contents of them and then rewrote them myself to understand what was
going on and it was perfectly possible to do and you realized actually how most of what the scripts
do what<61>s in the scripts is redundant because it applies to hardware situations that you might
not have, for example you might not have a you know that<61>s because you drive the old style or
you might not have a little of those PCMI cards that old laptops have and all this stuff and so you
could remove fast swathes of them and it would still work and that made me appreciate exactly
how simple the boot process can be but also how much effort goes into creating a Linux distro that
works in almost any hardware I mean that that latter bit is really where my hat goes off to the
likes Patrick Volkadine behind Slackware and also the Debian people and they<65>ve been to people
and everyone really that is really hard to make sure your distro works in any hardware.
Yeah true I think I<>m always in favour for systems I can more well I<>m not saying I fully
understand the system but I usually prefer systems where I can understand how they work and they
don<EFBFBD>t seem at least to me magical that<61>s the reason why I buy old cars because old cars just
I know where what goes and new cars have like all the software you don<6F>t know how to debug anything
and the same goes for computers I like bicycles because bicycles are just that simple to repair
I like things I understand yeah I<>m exactly the same I give you a very stark example
a few years back I had a Volkswagen Passat feeling you one and it went wrong and I had to keep
jumpstarting it off my 1970s Mercedes old sort of looked like a bit of a banger but it was more
reliable than the modern car because I had no electronics yeah I think I had a Volkswagen
a van was 20 years old when I got it I was built in 1988 just knew how everything worked
I was even able to fix it myself but I don<6F>t know a lot about cars and it<69>s just obvious how
it works so maybe let<65>s just move on or move away from cars and back to Slackware so maybe talk
a bit more about the installation process what I<>m also interested in I installed Slackware
as a desktop at the moment but I<>m basically looking for a way to replace my Debian servers too
well because again I tried to stay away from system DS4 as long as possible but what<61>s a
difference there? Do you run Slackware servers? Do you have any experience doing this?
Yes I do although oddly enough at this precise moment I don<6F>t have a Slackware server running
anywhere and my server I<>ve got is running send to us and the only reason I did that is because
I<EFBFBD>m a little bit of a distro hopper and I was looking for something rocks old and reliable
to run a small server and I could have easily used Slackware and in some ways I wish I did
but I just wouldn<64>t felt like learning something different so it<69>s running the latest 6.7
send to us and by do run servers I have run servers with Slackware and my overall
impression is just very easy because everything I want to run the server is more or less already
they are especially a patchy and my sequel and PHP and Ruby and all these things you would
want for a web server so installing likes of own cloud is a doodle and so on. In fact this
episode is being recorded not in a server but the mumble server is running in my laptop here
so my laptop was turned into a server temporarily for this and installation of the mumble server
was just a quick Slack build with almost no dependencies I don<6F>t think or one proto buff maybe
which I already had installed so yeah I found it very very straightforward to run Slackware as a
server but having said that I don<6F>t do it professionally I would hesitate to just give my own
experience to say to a professional look this is a production ready server not because anything
against Slackware is just that that<61>s not what I do I am not professional in that regard
but in my amateur capacity semi professional capacity maybe I have really enjoyed running
Slackware server is very straightforward how do you go about to run a Slackware server
room usually on a desktop you do it just a full install which is 8 gigs I think or 9 gigs
of data and probably if you run it on a vps where you only get like 30 gigs or something
you don<6F>t want to do a full install is there some server install or do you manually
uninstall packages or how do you do this well actually that is not something I have done recently
I did do it not for vps but I had a little a lunatop box and I think I had one gig on board
you know like hard drive flash SSDs very slow and small and you know it was no faster than
really running something off a usb stick and for that I did have to turn down Slackware and I have
to say that was hard because Slackware is designed for a full install so some weird things happen
like for example if you think well I<>m never going to use an x server I<>ll do my maintenance
from the command line which I<>m happy to do but I was rather taken aback to discover that one
of the dependencies for PHP was inside the xorg package I don<6F>t ask me why this is I did read
it and confirmed it was true but that was a bit annoying having to install a bit of x even
though I had no intention of running it but having said that people far more experienced and
adept that with Slackware than I have have created a set of tag files so you can create minimal
installs for servers but doing it yourself I have to say if you want to cut it down yourself
that is quite tough if you want to get it down to a gig certainly and that was tough three gigs
yeah I might not speak straight forward just leave old KDE or something but yeah cutting it right
down to a minimal server it would be tough and I probably want to go for a debut in our arch
and build your way up that would be an easier approach because they<65>re designed to do that and
so what does it mean to have a tag file and never it says something's lackware specific or
is it just a lack of knowledge in my side oh no sorry that's completely my fault yeah it is a
Slackware specific thing but it's like all Slackware things it's far simpler than it sounds it's just
a tag file is just a list of packages and it specifies whether yes install this package no
don't install this package or ask the user so it's like you know for each package you can put one
line in entry and then say what you how you want it to be treated by the installer so you basically
use this in the install process you just select this tag file and it tells the system what to install
not to install exactly yes so I mean if you look at the first page install as a cursive installer
and at the bottom and it's easy to miss because it's like eight options or something at that stage
it does say use a custom tag file but you know most users wouldn't use that you need to be fairly
expert and to do well it's not difficult if you somebody's giving you the tag files not
difficult to do but most people wouldn't be going around writing their own tag files is what I mean
okay let's continue about the installation process I think it's fairly fairly straightforward to
install it from a CD you just downloaded or from floppy disks even there is still floppy disks to
install it but if you don't have a computer with a disk drive how how do you ins how do you have
to do this how do you do install where you don't have a disk drive well there's two ways to do it the
first one I used from my line atop was pixie boot which is where you get your boot up files from
a remote server combined with a TFTP server it's just trivial FTP so that was one option so it's
like a network boot essentially and you just all you need to do then is make sure that you got some
existing computer in your network set up to do it and and this made a fairly clean instructions
and how to do that it's a bit of a hassle network boot and of course not all biases will let you
do it I don't even know about whether pixie boot still supported in in UFA or wherever I've
never even encountered it there but I've stopped doing that for two reasons mainly I got a
as a slacker subscriber I get mailed the DVD so and I've got a USB CD DVD drive so I tend to use
that but when I don't what I've done is one of the ReadMaze on installation disk or on the websites
is readme for how to do a USB install and you just take an old flash drive use dd to copy an image
to it or you can use a Windows equivalent I think there's instructions for that to stick that in
and then it'll boot off the USB stick and at that point as long then after that all you need is
all the slackware installation files in any old directory that can be accessed so that could be
over the network it could be on a a CD drive or it could be on another USB stick or even the same
USB stick principle you could do it that way those are all different ways of setting it up if you
don't have access to a DVD drive in the machine that's basically what I did that's what I'm used to
just dd there ISO onto USB sticks and it works but actually this uses this has to be a special ISO
some kind of hybrid ISO and usually you just download them and they work but in slacker this
was kind of funny you have to download the ISO and then you have to use a script that's on
on your slackware install where you make this ISO hybrid and I don't think this script exists
in other distros at least I didn't find it so to be able to dd the ISO to to a USB stick I had
to have a slackware install somewhere around to use the ISO hybrid script or did I miss something
do you know another way around this well the well I go to the in one of the slackware mirrors
and the entire contents of the installation desk will be on the mirror and so I'll just download
I forget which directory it's in but it's one of the top level directories I'll just download
the USB boot tools so I don't need to download the whole ISO I just need to go in and download
you know the image which I can then do but as you say that image isn't the full installer image
it's just enough to get your system booted up into the slackware installer and then you need
you then you need access to the rest of slackware installation directory from somewhere else but
that could be anywhere okay so you don't have to download everything from from a FTP server
or a mirror you could just copy to some second USB stick or to different partition in the same
USB stick and then use the minimal minimal image right yes that's right yeah so you can just
download it manually from the website and in principle use no reason why you couldn't do that in
the installer wget is there if you want the network gets up and running in the installer if you're
in that for which in a possession then you can sort of wget then all the files you want to install
onto a USB stick okay well the last installer had to do or well I did I didn't have to
the last install was on a machine where I didn't have a network connection and I didn't have a
CD drive so there was kind of hard because I couldn't get it from just from wget from the web
but do you know the reason why they just just don't give you a hybrid image to download
why you have to use this iso hybrid script to make it hybrid no I don't really know what the
reason is for that it's never really occurred to me I think it's never occurred to me because
I've always had the slackware DVD and you know remove USB DVD drive so so I don't know
I don't know if there's other people who who do find that more irritating than I do but I can
understand from a you know from from where you're coming from that is that it could be could be
great and convenient well in the end the the install process was was not that hard as soon as you
find a read me scripts maybe maybe it's good it's a good idea to mention there are different
read me scripts so if you want the juice LVM you could use or look another look at another
read me script there is a read me LVM script there is also one script for locks for a disk
inscription you could use LVM on top of locks I think that's also explained in the locks read me
file maybe we we don't go too much into this but just look at the installation disk everything's
there so maybe we just move on to packages and packaged while ways to install install packages
so could you tell me something about what's there how do you go about install software that's
not in the base install in slackware right okay so the first thing to mention is that the base
install is quite comprehensive in terms of libraries which it has to be because otherwise you'd
be chasing dependencies a lot which is why you know obviously with a minimal installer and other
distros at an arch or debi and as soon as you want even the simplest of packages installed it's
gonna have to pull in on lots of other dependencies so that doesn't happen in slackware because you
start off with quite a broad base of libraries to build on so if you want something that doesn't come
on from official slackware then then the simplest thing to do would be to head over to a website
that's put together by a chap called alien bob or his real name is Eric Hamleyers and he's one of the
main contributors to slackware and emphatic vulcating in a sense is the is the main man who
earns his living off it and alien bob is like a super enthusiast who supports it but he
maintains loads loads of packages that he has built and he's very knowledgeable about slackware and
very reliable and you can be sure that if he's built something it's of good quality and it's
signed with a key an MD5 summons available all very professionally done actually so for things like
LibreOffice, VLC, virtual box, wine, all kinds of things that you need day to day useful wise
but LibreOffice is absolute pain to compile that from source he provides a lot of those packages
and although they're not technically official they're the next best thing so you can get that either
just by going to his website and downloading them manually and then on the command line you download
a package and a package would just be a tower ball looks at dot tgv tgz or txz file so
tard and zipped in some way and compressed and then you would just type install pkg all together
space the name of the package and then it will be installed and that's that you know it's really
as as simple as that so and then there's a few tools that go with that the this remove pkg
does what it says and upgrade pkg which does what it says and those three tall tools together
are all you really need to install remove and update like we're packages as we as we said before
we don't have any tool that does dependency resolution so those tools just install delete and
yeah packages as they say so how do you find out what what the package needs let's say you install
something that needs a separate library that isn't in the base install how do you find out do you
just run the program and it tells you well there is something missing or is there a way to figure it
out before you install the package well i used to do that and i used to use ldd to try and figure
this out i think i filmed it was a much simpler way that is um well frankly rtfm like alien bob site
the slack build site which would be discussing a minute they all tell you very clearly what the
dependencies are and in many cases you'll find that a full install of slackware satisfies the
dependencies in a few other cases what's many other cases i would say you've got one or two other
packages that are always provided a philian bob's provided package x and it depends on why he'll
also provide package y as similarly with slack builds so all you have to do is read these readmase
and they will tell you what dependencies need to be installed if there are any and then you
can choose to do that manually or there are ways of automating it yeah and you mentioned this
website slack builds the dog um probably you explain later what it is you probably do a lot better
chop than i do but art is this run by the same person it's basically a website where you don't
download software packages it's basically a website where you download scripts that build the
packages for you are the the packages from alien bob are they built from slack builds or does he
write his own build script he writes his own um slack build scripts so if actually all the sources for
slackware include the slack build script slack build scripts that Patrick Volkodink has created
freech package that's really useful because that means you can roll your own packages quite easily
and see what tricks Pat has uh and similarly for alien bob the great advantages with alien bob's
repositories he provides the build packages as well um for recent slackware versions um so that's
really important if you're running a very puny little system little netbook and you want to run
liberal office is no way you can compile it in your netbook so you really have to go to the pre-built
packages slack builds however as you said only provides the slack a written slack build script and
the slack build site is a community driven affair with a small core of experts who review the
slack build scripts and that's very important because you will generally run slack build scripts
as root and so you really want that to be a trusted source and it's backed up with you know um
uh GPG keys and MD5 sums and links to the source and full documentation and this
trusted inner circle of uh um maintainers who will approve uh the slack build scripts as being
up uh this is a a script that we trust and then we can release it to the community is is it correct
i think i had just had a close look at those slack build files but basically a slack build is
just a shell script right that installs the builds and installs the software or is there anything
else to it no basically that's it i mean a a slack build can be as simple as take the source
turbo unpack it go into its directory do configure make make install um or whatever you know
it's auto tools but you can use as versions for seemake and python pep and all kinds of variations
but you know so it could be as simple as untar build uh install into a dummy directory and then
create a slack we're a package out of it and that's it you know so it could you could have a
slack build that was three lines long generally they're longer because you want to strip out you
know debugging information from binaries and move man pages around in a maybe rearrange things a
little but the general rules the rule of thumb and slack query is do as little as you can to
upstream i mean that that that goes all the way from up Patrick vulcrating vulcrating does
through alien bob and also through slack builds as if if if you can possibly avoid it don't tweak
the defaults given by upstream and that brings tremendous advantages especially if you want to
roll your own package so basically a slack slackware package is just some files in in a file systems
rupture and then they get copied into the file systems rupture of the system right exactly yes
if you if you take a slackware turbo dot tgz or txz you unpack it you'll find it you've got like
slash us or slash etc it's familiar sort of um Linux file system top level roots root file system
structure um and then the only other thing you'll see in there is a slash install directory and
then there will be a few and similarly file and salary files um that described installation one
was just a small text we've made called a slack desk is in slack description file and uh and sometimes
there can be a do inst dot s h file which just runs post installation um tidy up and essentials
but they're not you know always present so yeah it's like where package is really just a parable
of what's going to be installed it is that simple in almost all cases and if I understood
correctly I think there is no like database where they keep what files belong to what package is
basically just one file per package some per per package somewhere in a folder where the files are
listed so basically if you want to know whether package is installed you just list of the content
of this directory and you get a list of all the install packages and if you want to find the file
or whether file belongs to this or that package is basically just a you just look through those files
and you could use sad and crap or whatever to compile a list of files right yeah exactly so the
list you refer to is a directory in slack we're called slash bar slash log slash packages and in
there will be a file for each package you've installed right onto the base system you're right
down to the base of um fundamental binaries uh and in it scripts and everything and uh in there
you you you you can just use standard commands you can use ls to find the package name you can use
greptus search through the scripts and actually that's one thing when I went to other distros that
had me tearing my hair out because it was one time that's I can't remember what it was exactly but
it was it turned out was a bug in an arch package would do with pearl that meant the whole of a patch
you wouldn't start very you know only lasted for matter of hours or a day until somebody fixed it
but I was trying to track down what would go wrong and it was very difficult for me coming from
slack where to understand how to use pack man to get at where which package brought in that
particular library it wasn't at all obvious to me and I still find that when I'm using the sentos
server that something's happened has been an update and I can't figure out which package has
has broken something or I'm not not broken it in sentos but it changed the setup so I don't
understand anymore where's in slack where I just go into that bar log packages directory and a
quick grep I found the file that I want that's maybe causing me gyp or causing me an issue and
then I can really quickly understand just using dead simple you know very Linuxy or Unixy text
processing tools figuring out how my systems put together so very basic yes but then I don't
have to go down learning various tricky command line options for pack man or rpm or yum or whatever
so I see that as an advantage of slack where although I can see a lot of people see that simplicity as
well it's too basic I like my package manager doing that for me for me that was this was also a
nice experience because I come from other distros and whenever I distro hop to distro where they use
a different packaging system you have to learn all the commands and how the packaging system works
and how you figure out where files belong and whatever but in in slack where this was just
I arrived there and I got my standard tools I know from Linux anyway I know tar I know grab I know
ls whatever and you should use them you don't have to learn anything you use what you already know
nothing that's that's a good thing yes but that certainly is what attracted me no that wasn't
what attracted me to track where but it's what kept me with it all the years is that when I went
other distros I always had this feeling that I don't really know what's going on and I am
and invited at fiddler I do like to understand what's going on and tinker with it so that's
important to me and I see it's certainly not important to all Peter users by no stretch to the
imagination that's basically the main reason why I moved away from from windows when I was a boy
when I got this redhead CD which is this was a system I could more well I never fully understood
at least back then but it was a system that doesn't stop you from understanding it there is also
always a level below you can understand where with windows you just some when you hit the wall
and there is no way to break the wall because that's where Microsoft wants you to stop yes indeed
yeah exactly and and other distros do you start to feel like that to me and and that's where
our conversation could do to adventure on to a system D territory because that I feel is why
I don't really like system D I really actually I'm nothing fundamentally against it just doesn't feel
fits with it's certainly with slackware it jars with it was slackware in the philosophy would
behind understanding everything through text file configuration in these in it start-up scripts
it doesn't sit well at all with that and yeah so I'm not going to make any huge criticism system D
it just does not feel like micr pity at all yeah that's exactly the same for me it's a
it's that I say system D is a bad idea I and the way too little about system D to even judge whether
it's it's a good idea not I run it on a large box and I pretty much like the fast boot time but
when I use the use system for me it's just not obvious how you use it with those you have binary
log files so you can't just go to a log directory and use the tools you're used to you have to
learn new tools for for things that where you used standard tools standard unique tools that
have been around for ages and it's just nothing nothing that suits me but there's probably just me
being liking the ways the ways they are just me being conservative yes and I think I mean that's
slackware in that sense it's up to date in the sense that it gets new release every 18 months on
average and it's up to date if you slackware current and that it's pretty much a rolling release if
you fall slackware current but it's very conservative in its design decisions it never adopted
pulse audio pulse audio still does not come with slackware you can install it if you want and I
and I I only once had to install slackware for the game almost all software works just fine with
also the the ELA SE null system there are almost no bits of software in fact there are no
bits of software I've come across that require pulse audio and it turns out the one time I had to
install it it turned it was for the game is it VVVVV how many VIs it as I forget but it required
pulse audio to be there but it turns out it only the installer expected pulse audio to be there
and then you can remove it again and it doesn't seem to mind and it uses also just happily so I think
that was a peculiarity of the installer so I'm thinking if pulse audio was a big awesome
balancing solution to the Linux own problem how comes slackware has been able to exist without any
pulse audio without any significant audio problems or dependencies on it right up to 2014 many years
after pulse audio was supposed to have solved all our problems well I don't know I basically never
used pulse audio because a long time I used orch Linux in orch Linux you decide what you
installed what you don't install so I usually didn't install pulse audio and I was fine with
also I'm fine on slackware so I'm not really sure what problem so I was solved there as long
as it works I'm fine we talked earlier about the BSD style init system I think that's also
something they they try to keep simple I think there is also Pam like the authentication mechanism
isn't around in slackware as it is in in other Linux distributions right yes that's correct
I'm not I'm not because I'm a slackware user I've never really had to tangle with with Pam
so I really can't say much about it other than occasionally I occasionally read that it
causes problems for the maintainer's distribution if some important bit of software that comes with
course slackware needs something like Pam I don't know how to deal with it but certainly I've never
come across a single issue where it's caused me a problem and it's also worth saying that slackware
although it's conservative is quite pragmatic I wouldn't rule out the possibility of something like
Pam or system D being brought into slackware if there was no other choice it may well be that although
Patrick vocating doesn't really like system D any I don't think he really said anything that
strongly about it alien bulb has he has been very critical of of system D and how it's come into
being from red had and over you know he's very vocal about it Patrick vocating is a bit more quiet
and pragmatic about it and that he will bring system D and like other distros do when it really
just becomes impossible to avoid it when it's the pragmatic thing to do yeah I think that's also
something well I'm always talking about things that like about slackware but that's something I liked
when I came across slackware it doesn't it tries to keep things simple but it doesn't feel like
they just oversimplify it we're like keep it too simple that you can't work with it so
they just seem to do what's necessary and keep keep away what they don't need or what they still
can live without so moving back to the BST style in its system do you know anything about the
differences where where difference is because well no comparative system D compared to SSV in
it as we have it in in the other distributions nowadays again I have I'm so
so long in the tooth experience with slackware that actually I don't really understand well enough
how either BST or system 5 in it work or system D for that matter and to answer that question
properly all that I can say is that if a package comes along or you built you have to build your
own package which I've done occasionally and it has and it's expecting a a usual system
5 in it set up then the directories and stubs are all there under slash etc so that it's
completely system 5 in it compatible although the slackware way of doing things the scripts themselves
the RC dot whatever scripts they look a lot more like BST which to my mind is cleaner and easier
to follow than the system 5 equivalent equivalent but be honest if I were to say any more about it
I would be venturing into territory when I'm not uh not not uh not really experienced enough to
comment yeah it's probably a bit the same for me I'm definitely not an expert I know in sys
sysv in it every every software that has to be stored it has its own script that's run
I think one difference is in sysv in it you have links you have one directory per run level
and then you have links to the files what to start and if you remove a link something isn't
stored in so how does this work in BST in its systems how do you tell the system yet I want to
start network manager or I don't want to store or I want to store the patch or don't store the
patch where do you where do you edit this in sysv in it you just create links or you delete links
well I in slackware I'm off top of my head I believe you just edit one line in slash etc slash
in it tab which is a text file and then there you specify the default run level by default it's
run level three which in slackware means boot to the command line and then if you change it to
to default to run level four in that text file it's just editing but I think you just call
into a line and call into another one then it will run to the whatever default graphical
login screen which I think by default in slackware it will be kdm for kde because that's the default
if you haven't specified otherwise it will go to kde so it's it's comment in and come out
a line in that file to change it so if you plan to remove or add something to a run level let's
say you're on run level three you don't want the x to run but you need network manager or you
need a patchy how could you add this to the run level do you know this I actually don't not
strangely enough because I always run at run level three I always go to the command line so it
never it's never occurred to me before I'd want to do that if I do if I want to change the
behavior of whether things start up or not which I do all the time so for example the mumble
server is not something that I want every time I boot up my laptop then I just make sure that the
file slash etc slash rc dot d slash rc dot murmur that is set to be non-excutable and if it's not
executable then it will never get started if it is executable then it will get started by default
when I enter run level three or maybe before so I know I'm not answering your questions
directly because I don't know the answer but it's whether whether those rc dot files are
executable that will determine whether they run or not I need to check to find out which script
actually launches them and whether it's part of their unlevel script there are c0 dot d etc so
so basically from from our emitter review of things it's a difference of creating
creating links as opposed to marking a file executable or not indeed and I just quickly checked
and my current install I'm using so it's like we're 14.1 install I'm using and rc 0 dot d rc
dot d rc 2 dot d all exist under slash etc but they're all empty so what it tells me is by default
as I was saying earlier system 5 in it is supported and you can put scripts in there if you want
but that's not the way that slack where it works by default that those directory start out as
empty because they're all living in the rc dot d directory instead yeah and I think that's also
the directory where where start up scripts live in bsd so that's one thing that comes from bsd
wherein linux it's more in it dot d and then I don't remember rc 1 up to 4 dot d for the run
level links or something so maybe just let's move on to talk about the community of slackware
I mean slackware is run by Patrick Walker ding as one guy I think he lives from doing slackware
yes he does and so the the subscriptions like the one I pay and only donations and merchandise from
the shop that funds his life you know so I guess he's been able to make a reasonable living out
of slackware for these last few decades but he's only person that is directly funded by a slackware
you just go to a shop to their webshop and order CDs and t-shirts or is there an actual
subscription where you pay like an annual amount or something yes so there's the subscription
which is what I do and I get mailed a DVD on f and build whenever there's a new release so
the we're at slackware 14.1 so if slackware 14.2 or 15.0 I don't know which it'll be yet
whenever that comes out then automatically my credit card will be billed and I'll be mailed
the new DVD all right so that's that's probably how he manages to keep up our revenue stream because
if you rely on people going to the webshop it probably doesn't work over over the years
people just tend to order ones or twice and then move away so where where does the slackware
community where do you meet them in the web what options are there there's IRC there's a slackware
channel in three-node I very rarely go there I'm just I like IRC in principle but I find
the interactions there not just slackware but I find that often a bit too a bit too abrasive for
my liking so I generally go to the forum some Linux questions and I find that is quite
a friendly place in general although a few people get a bit sure to with you if you haven't read
the readmaze and you're asking basic questions that are answered in those which I feel is a
little bit unfair but mostly people will just politely say look have already the readmaze first
because if you're not prepared to do that with slackware you're probably not looking a person
that wants to use slackware so there's a few people that would be more gentle than others and I
certainly I'm one occasion I on the forums I got pulled off for something other and had to stand
my ground and the person eventually apologized so it was um it can be a little bit intimidating if
you're a bit of a newbie but um but I think overall it's a friendly place to be but very very
factual you know it's not not much the way a joking goes on in the forums it's all very sort of
rooted in nuts and bolts of how to do things yeah I think in every online community
there are people that aren't I think people just there are people that aren't as nice online as
they would be in person so they tend to tell people off faster than in real life I guess
yes yes that's I mean that's that's in that sort of endemic in the way but I mean it's like
where slackware forum is actually a pretty good place to be you know as internet forums go
although it has its moments and certainly if you mention system D in a thread or especially
on the title of a thread then it ignites immediately and you know can go on for weeks and months
of repetitive discussions which I try to avoid yeah I think that's probably something at a moment
no matter where you go in the internet if you just mention system D that's that's what happens
you could probably mention system D in in a Windows forum or something and the discussion would
start for for ages is is there or are there any other places to go to like for for people that
are not too fond of of web web into faces are there mailing lists news groups or any of the
other things to go to the only mailing list I'm on for slackware is security advisories so
you know when like the likes of heartbleed came out there was a an update for that and
you know you get mails pretty quickly you know the quick response of his path to those kind of
things but I don't think I'm on any other mailing lists there may be others but I certainly there's
no there's no ones for the official distribution where like yeah there's just notification lists
for slack builds I am I'm on the mailing list for slack builds although I very really
post to that reply to messages on that it's generally people sharing information in quite
constructive way but how best to put slack builds scripts together you know it's so it's a nice
nice community again very very nuts and bolts like the like the Linux questions forum and so in
the end it's basically the Linux questions forum forums where you go I think at first there was
a bit confused that slackware doesn't have its own forum or its own mailing list for discussions
but I mean in the end it saves it saves time and money to not run your own forums but use
what's already there it's a bit it's a bit the same as with off-twearing slackware it's basically
their philosophy just use what's there use upstream and don't don't change everything and don't
invent everything new yes I mean that's it I mean it's very practical reason is that there's only
one person you know one full full-time maintainer Patrick and he can't be maintaining forums
like and sort of sort of outflame wars while maintaining the distribution so he does pop up in
Linux questions and I think he did there was a time slackware around its own forums but I think
that was just too draining in his time I think I get as you see it was a pragmatic and sensible
move you know keep him doing what he does best and let the moderators from the community sort out
the forum which is how it works yeah well we are now up to one hour recording so maybe when
we are at the end of the list what we wanted to talk about is there anything we missed anything
we should we should still talk about no no I think we've covered just about everything without
going to nitty gritty details and corners I think you know if there's one thing that's repeatedly
said I'm worth emphasizing yet again is that slackware is simple but no simpler than it needs to be
and it doesn't mean that it's going to be easy to use but it means it's possible to understand
and that's the main attraction in it for me for me it's definitely the simplicity but well at
the moment I just I'm just a new slackware user and for me it's always when things are new
attend to be excited and then it turns out whether I'll use them over time so this still has to
be seen it's Debbie and it's one thing I keep calling it back to because I just like the way it
works I like the way you can do a minimal install and then move on on from what you have there
I don't know yeah whether the simplicity of slackware also sticks with me so maybe we should talk
again in one year or something and see whether I'm still in the slackware if I am then that's
probably a good sign and I'll probably stay for for a bit longer indeed yes that would be interesting
and I keep meaning the one that's true I've never seriously tried as as Debbie and there's no good
reason for that but maybe also what I should do as we should do this other way around is that I
should give Debbie and I go for a while and and then then we can we can talk about that instead
yeah I think that would be interesting also again I'm just like an amateur user I'm definitely
no expert I probably know more about Debbie and then I know about slackware and well we can
give it a try and see how it works out so well then basically this is the end of the podcast and
what what's left to us is to tell the community who we are because we didn't we basically didn't
in the beginning so let's do this now so if you try to find me I'm on micro.fractf.com for
micro blocking new social as Navigil and I'm on sdf no yeah on sdf for email as Benny at sdf to
the work so if you try to contact me or what you could do is just record another show and tell us
what you think about slackware so let you tell everyone where to find you yes well my name is
Andrew but on the web you will generally find me called McNalloo MCNALU and you can
I've got a blog blog dot McNalloo dot net or you can find me in the GNU social fediverse
called McNalloo at micro.fractf.com so and of course you can leave comments on this episode on
the Hacker Public Radio site in a big thank you to the Hacker Public Radio community and
as Benny said either leave a comment on the site or record a show in response yeah I think that's
one of the things I like about Hacker Public Radio I would never do a podcast myself but here you
just record something throw it up on the web and wait for people to tell you what they think and
you don't have to keep doing one recording a week or whatever so you just record something if
you feel like it and throw it up and there it goes indeed well thanks very much Benny it's been great
talking to you thank you was great thank you for coming on the show and telling me about slackware
because I couldn't have done it by myself I guess because I'm just still a newbie and don't
know too much about slackware okay guess that's where we stop the recording right
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