hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3598.txt

Episode: 3598
Title: HPR3598: Slackware 15 - 32 bit Operating System from day one.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3598/hpr3598.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 02:00:08

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3598 for Wednesday the 18th of May 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Slack or 1532 bit operating system from day one.
It is hosted by Zen Flotor II and is about 63 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, the pros of using a Slack were 32-bit operating system.
Hello boys and girls from your favorite magical forest squirrel, former human being converted
into squirrel in the 1960s by aliens here for another podcast.
On Hacker Public Radio, and I think what our subject today is going to be Slackware Linux
and why I'm using it right now, why does squirrels like Slackware Linux?
Well, if we go to the wiki on the internet that covers the subject of Slackware, we see
that Slackware was first introduced in April of 1993.
I happened to get involved with it when I walked into a computer store, a large computer
store, the size of a grocery store, in the Houston, Texas area, and I think it was the
fall of 93 and they had come up with a box set of Slackware for, I don't know, it's
around $100 and I bought it because at that time I was beginning to work with a lot of
Unix's and Skow was one of the Unix's that we were working with commercially in business
ventures and I thought it would be cool if I could have my own lease of Unix but I didn't
realize at that time that Slackware was based on Linux and not Unix and the two are different
as part of my learning lesson.
That was also the time that I learned, you know, at the beginning of the 90s, how to
get on the internet and that was with DOS and Windows at the time, Windows 311.
So trying to get Slackware Linux on the internet was quite an experience until I found out about
a program called WVDOW which made it easy but let's see, I still have that box set of original
Slackware around here somewhere, I think it's out in the garage in one of the boxes.
But at any rate, version 1 was released on 1993 July 17th and it had kernel version
.99.11 alpha and I was thinking I either got that one or the 99.13 kernel with version
1.1, I don't really remember, it could have been 1.1, it was a long time ago, I'll have
to go see if I can find that box and look that up sometime because it's still sitting
out there, you know, Slackware is nearly 30 years old, it will be 30 years old, kind of
April of next year in 2023.
All right, in 1994 July 2nd, they released version 2 of Slackware with a 1.09 kernel.
Slackware 2.1 was released in 94 in October 31st, again a 1.1.59 kernel was released on that.
And let's see, here's version 2.2 in 1995, March 30th with a 1.2.1 kernel, these are the
very early days in Slackware 2.3 was released in 95 and we progress forward, I won't read
through all these, there's just so many of them.
By 1999 in October 25th, we were up to Slackware 7 and they were finally at the 2.2
.13 kernel.
And I remember running a lot of 2.2 and 2.4 kernels back in those days, those are very
interesting days, down there 20 years ago, well over 20 years ago actually now, isn't it?
Let's see, we move forward.
It was in the 90s when Patrick Volkerdink, the owner and producer of Slackware, moved
from version 4, he released in 1999 on May 17th, all the way to version 7 on 1999.
October 25th, because he felt the version numbers weren't reflecting the progress of Slackware
compared to other distributions, it was a marketing decision.
So you won't find a Slackware 5 or 6 in the reference.
Now we move forward to Slackware 10, which is released in 2004, June 23rd, and that
had a 2.4.26 kernel moving forward to Slackware 11, released in 2006, October 2nd, still
with a 2.4.33.3 kernel.
There's quite a long span there of 2.4 kernels from version 8.1 of Slackware all the way
up to version 11, they're all using the same kernel 2.4 series.
Then with version 12, they went to a 2.6.21.5 kernel in 2007 in July 1st, and moving forward,
we'll just jump forward to Slackware 1337, released in April 27th, 2011, and he jumped
to a 2.6.17 kernel, or no, 2.6.37, excuse me, I can't read kernel.
This is all from the wiki.
Slackware 14 was released in 2012, and the 14 series was 14, 14, 1, and 14 too, and 14
was released in 2012, September 28th, with a 3.2.29 kernel, and we finally got out of
the 2 series of kernels, went to the 3, and I remember that was a big deal when they
jumped from the 2X to the 3 series kernels, and then with 14.2, he had a 4.4.14 kernel,
which was the last Slackware we all ran some 4, 5 years ago, 4 years ago, and well actually
5 years ago, 6 years ago, 2016 was when 14.2 was released in June 30th of 2016, so that
was, boy, that was quite a long time ago, wouldn't it?
And of course, now we're on Slackware 15, that is jumped to a 5.15, that 19 kernel,
Linux kernel, and it has FFM pegging it now, so we don't have to compile FFM pegging
anymore, there's been so many improvements to it, the distribution is over 3.5 gigs,
the DVD size, approaching 4 gigs in size, probably with the next release, I'm sure, and
he's throwing everything, but the kitchen sink into this, I mean, it's almost like installing
Ubuda or something, I mean, everything's in here, there's very little left to compile,
so we asked the question, what has Slackware done in almost 30 years of existence?
Slackware being the oldest surviving still produced Linux distribution, it wasn't the
first, there were, I think two of them before it, SLS and Dragon, something or another,
I can't remember, I read about it in the 90s, there were some other Linux distribution,
but they're both gone now, so Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distribution,
and in nearly 30 years' time, Slackware still uses a very simplistic text file-based operating
system that uses BSD scripts or BSD log scripts, no one can claim the right of ownership
of what is a BSD init script, I mean, because if you look at being a BSD user, an open
BSD user anyway, open BSD has their own, net BSD has their own, and so does free BSD,
and I don't think there was ever a time when you could go back there and say, well, this
was what a BSD script is, what we're talking about is a nitscripting that existed prior
to SISV-in-net, system 5-in-net, that isn't still used today, and SISV-in-net is a unique
and separate from the BSD-in-net system, you know, SISV-in-net is what Debian used to use,
and Red Hat used to use back in the 90s, so Slackware tries to remain as much unchanged from its
original release in April of 1993 as possible, over the years it has added things to the system,
and I have a list of things that were added here in the Wiki, for instance, in version 3.0 of
November 30th in 1995, Slackware finally transitioned from an A out, executable, and linkage format
ELF to, I mean, 2-in-ex-cubal linkage format ELF in version 3.0, which was in 1995,
and I can remember working with that in my house when I was learning Slackware,
and learning the C language. Slackware added KDE to its distribution on May 17th, 1999 with version 4.
They added the NOME desktop with version 7.1 on June 22nd of 2000. They added the Mozilla browser,
with Slackware version 8 in July 1st of 2001.
Now, let's see what else. Oh, they switched from the OSS sound system to ALSO
in September 26th of 2003 with version 9.1. They switched from the X-Free 86
server to the Xorg server for your desktop applications with Slackware 10 released in June 23rd of 2004.
Then in, with Slackware 10.2 in September 14th of 2005, they removed NOME. So NOME had been in there
from June 22nd of 2002, September 14th of 2005, ending with Slackware 10.2, because
Patrick just couldn't keep up with it. You know, it was getting to be too much of a problem.
Too much of a mess. And, you know, with as much effort as they put into keeping KDE Plasma in Slack,
where I'm surprised that it hasn't been pulled to, frankly. The first release offered of Slack
ware on DVD. In other words, they moved from CDROMs to DVD. And originally, by the way,
when I bought my box of Slackware, the very first box, it had install floppies,
but it also had a CDROM. You could install from a CDROM. So I considered that to be really
modern for the day, you know, back in 1993, the fall of 1993. I mean, I thought that was
ultra cool, because they just came out with the CDROM technology for computers. I believe that year,
or, you know, pretty close to that year. That was back in an era where everybody built their own
vanilla PC, because if you went to Dell or Compact or IBM to buy one, you're going to show out
six grand. And I didn't have that kind of cash back then. And very few people did. And if you
did have that kind of cash, you were probably running Windows anyway. You didn't give a damn about
Slackware. Let's see what else here. Oh, with Slackware 13 released in August 26 of 2009,
they added 64 bit version. I guess they, they finally offered a 64 bit version of Slackware
and switched from KDE 3.5 to the 4X series. So Slackware makes little movements and desktops and
stuff like that. And of course, the major move going to a 64 bit version. They'd been 32 bit before
that. Let's see. They offered GPT, GPT discs for it. And the butter file system BTRFS with
Slackware 1337, which is released on April 27 of 2011. And Slackware 1337, that was a very special
mystical version number that Patrick picked for that release based on his, I don't want
to call it religious belief, but whatever. They added the network manager and removed how,
and I remember how God, that was simply awful, merged into UDEV with Slackware 14. And September 28
of 2012. So Slackware is very slow moving. You know, network manager, I believe, had been available
on on Red Hat. If I'm not mistaken, like at the turn of the century, or pretty close to it.
They've added support for UEFI hardware with Slackware 14.1 released in November 4 of 2013.
They added Pulse Audio finally. And with Slackware 14.2, I remember that. That was a big deal,
you know, because you were using also before that. And you know, even OpenBSD doesn't have
also yet, but they do have Pulse Audio support. And of course, the current Slackware that
has FFM Peg in it, and all kinds of video codecs and stuff that used to be illegal to distribute on
LNX distribution, even though we all know for the last 20 years Red Hat, you be doing everybody else,
you know, throughout time. And the last 20 years has been offering VLC FFM Peg and everything,
even Gen 2, you could just compile it up. So anyway, Slackware is a very slow moving operating system
as far as development goes, compared to the others. So the question comes up, why would anyone
want to run Slackware? Well, one of the things that comes to mind is if you're running another
distribution like Red Hat, let's say back at the turn of the century, or OpenSus, or Debbie,
or anything, and let's say they throw out an update that breaks something in your system,
well, you're pretty well screwed. And with Slackware, you compile your own applications
on the system, and when you compile them there, for ever, no one's going to touch them.
Because the only thing that Slackware updates through its Slack Package system is the base
operating system. There was what came on the DVD that you originally installed. So basically
with Slackware, it's like you're writing on a surfboard in Hawaii, the surfboard being what you're
standing on, which is Slackware. It is the DVD because you're coming into the beach and Patrick
Volkordink is supporting that surfboard to make sure it runs right. And anything you bring on
board, a cooler, a boom box stereo, a microphone so you can sing out to the crowds as you come in on
your wave, there in the Hawaiian beach, that's all stuff that you put on Slackware, and it will not
be touched by Patrick Volkordink or the Slackware team. Unlike if you're running Red Hat or OpenSus
or one of the other distributions you do, Debbie, that offer you package updates, you see they do
all the work. And you don't do anything. So if they screw up something upstairs and send it
downstairs to you, you're stuck with it until they fix it. That's one of the reasons that people
run Slackware, while Slackware is not only is it BSD and it's set up like a BSD operating system
where you have a base that's supported by different people from the applications as with an
OpenDSD as within NetBSD, as within FreeBSD or Dragonfly. Slackware is the same way. It's
perhaps the only Linux distribution that I'm aware of that separates the base operating system
from the user's applications in responsibility of who does them. All the other Linux distributions
throw all that in one pool. So you're stuck with whatever the, you know, the distribution leaders
hand to you and you need to hope that it works. And if it doesn't, again, you're screwed.
Now with Slackware, if something gets screwed up because I compile something wrong or deleted
something or did something wrong, I get to fix it. I own my own operating system above the
base operating system. I'm in control of all my applications. So whatever I put on here
will always be on here unless I screw it up. I am responsible for my own operating system.
And, you know, you can have a Slackware distribution like 14.2 sitting there on a laptop
for quite literally four or five years and be supported. You know, he'll send you patches to
the base operating system to keep you security up for four or five years and you can sit there
and run that. Run that thing that you compiled four or five years ago, VLC, audacity, play music,
use g-potter, you know, whatever. It's all going to be there for four or five years because nobody's
touching it. It's not moving. It's not going to change. It'll never get broken.
And that has worked out just fine. It's worked out fine for a great many people and they like it
that way. They don't want their applications to be updated and broken. You know, if you have a VLC
player that's working, why change it? Because really, they haven't offered any new functionality in
the multimedia for probably ten years, I'm guessing. And I'm probably going to get some comments over
that comment that I just made about VLC. But for the common user, there's no video or audio
format that you couldn't play with a player from 10 to 12 years ago. Today, you know, if I had
a Slackware box set up that I set up in 2007, I could play any MP3 or org file or MP4 file that was
available then or available today without any problem using that, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15 year old system.
So that's one reason why people use Slackware is you own your own system. You know, you have control
of your own system. No one will be kicking over your work that you've done on your operating system.
You know, your applications, they won't be interfering with your production because they can't.
You're the one that puts the applications on there, they don't.
So when you got something set up and it works right, you can keep it for years. Now, Slackware is also
one of the first operating systems that I'm aware of that's offered support to the base system
for five years or more. In fact, I was sitting here looking through the Wiki and they were
claiming on some of his versions, he'd actually provided patches for 10 years. That's a long time,
you know, to offer patches for close to 10 years. I don't think any other Linux distribution
is come close to that, you know, to keep your security up and reliability patches. What have you?
I happen to have here, Slackware 15 installed on a 2007, IBM Lenovo laptop. This is a really
expensive machine. I think I gave a little over two grand for it back then and that was a lot of
money. It has an Nvidia card built into it from back then. Use the Bumblebee driver. I'm not
currently using it at the moment. It has a huge 17-inch screen, very pretty screen. DVD burner, of
course, and three or four USB plug-ins and it's got an old ATA drive from the era. You know,
it's not a modern drive. It has one of the original track pads with separate left and right
clickers on it and an old mechanical keyboard just like the original think pads had. Only this is
in a a G series Lenovo laptop product. Business model, it's got it's got a glass top to it. It's
very nice and it's still in great condition except for the track pad which just got some fingernail
damages from the squirrel. You know, squirrel claws are hard on a track pad. But other than that,
it's beautifully lit up. There's all kinds of pretty lights on the front of it and on the
the top of the unit it has a numeric keypad and a full keyboard on it. It also runs open BSD,
by the way, perfectly because of the old track pad because open BSD doesn't work well with I2C
track pads of modern computers, not yet anyway and the I2C controller keyboards and stuff like that.
By the way, I tried running the current version of MX Linux 21.1 on here and I couldn't get it to
work with the track pad. I mean, it would move the mouse a little bit on the screen but it was
really hard to control and I could tell there was obviously something wrong and I'm going to just
knock that up and say they've got the newer distributions already set up for I2C that are devian
derivatives or Ubuda derivatives there. They're already set up for I2C so they're not going to run
right with the older systems that aren't under I2C and so that causes a problem. Now Slack
or 15 happens to run beautifully with this old laptop. This modern Slack or 15 runs beautifully
and the track pad works flawlessly. It's nice and glassy smooth and it responds to both the
click keys and also a tap to the main pad and I don't have a track point on this. I wish I did
this particular model doesn't have a track point but if you did it would be able to handle that as well.
Beautifully. Unfortunately, this old model has a Broadcom based Wi-Fi in it which requires
a special wind driver that Linux used to support back in 2007. They offered and I forget what they
called it but they had a module that would wrap around a Windows-based binary firmware blob
to make it work for Linux and I believe they've quit supporting that and so what I have purchased
for this laptop is a USB plug-in Wi-Fi antenna and I don't mean dongle. I mean large antenna.
The size of a CB walkie-talkie antenna it's huge and it sits here at the edge of the bed. I'm
sitting on the bed right now doing this podcast and eating cookies and drinking coffee and Pepsi.
And this large antenna gives me excellent range for OpenBSD and for Slack or Linux.
I've also chosen personally to install the 32-bit version of Slack or Linux
not the 64 because I don't have any use for and don't like that much. Some of the options that
you can get with 64-bit and I don't like the way 64-bit runs frankly. I think 32-bits a lot
smoother and it runs better. I've had 64-bit on this laptop. It supports the trackpad and
everything like you would expect it to but as far as flat packs go I have to ask the question,
gee why do I even need to run flat packs? Perhaps the only thing that you get out of it that you
couldn't get normally might be support for some of the social websites that people go to
like Discord which I don't go to. So it's up to you. If you need support for flat packs you're
going to want to run the 64-bit version of Slackware. But for me I don't see any use to it.
I already have a Dacity programmed or compiled on here in the 32-bit mode and VLC and MPV and
everything even though I didn't need it. GVC view, OBS studio, all that stuff is already compiled
and set up here. And I noticed when I was on 64-bit Slackware with some flat packs the drop-down
controls on things like adacious wouldn't even drop down. I mean you click on them and you couldn't
access the menu list. I don't really like flat packs that much. You know maybe they run better
with other operating systems but I'm not that crazy about flat packs if you in Slack where you know
why install a flat pack when you can just compile what you need. Of course the other thing that
you're going to be missing running a 32-bit Linux distro is you won't be able to run Chrome or
Chromium and for me I still don't care. And that also means you probably won't be running brave
because it's based on Chromium. But I could compile pale moon on here which is a nice lightweight
browser and Dello. And I was thinking there's one more that we can compile but I can't remember
the name of it right now. I haven't run it in a number of years but there's at least one more
browser that you have an option of compiling that'll work under 32-bit. So yeah 32-bit software is
the same operating system venue that Slackware 1 was released under the box set that I bought it.
Slackware was a 32-bit operating system from day one so it was Linux in general you know the
kernel. It was 32-bit from day one and back in 1993 that was also a huge deal because most of
us were running Windows and Windows was I believe just a 16-bit operating system at that time.
And Windows wasn't really a multitasking multi-user operating system either whereas Slackware Linux
was multitasking and multi-user from day one in 32-bit which means you could have more than one
person working on the computer through a dumb terminal at the same time you were using it
and it would run multiple programs for each user and everything would work fine. What you could
never say of anything from Dawson Windows land that would never be true. It also offered security
and separation between the users which is fantastic for the time and that's what excited me so
much about it that I loved about it at the possibility of having my own commercial units like
operating system at my house running on a 46-computer which is what I had back then
which would be kind of slow and it was slow for Slackware but it did work and it was cool it was
very cool. Now I've got this 32-bit Slackware 15 operating system installed on the Lenovo.
One of the sad things about running a 32-bit operating system is the world is trying to phase out
32-bit operating systems now and make them all 64 because all the newer laptops will be UEFI only
and that means that you can't run Slackware 15, 32-bit on those machines because
you have to run 64-bit to get UEFI support and you also can't run things like ZFS on 32-bit support.
I mean there's there is a growing list of software options that are going to be 64-bit only
is not just chrome and chromium and say brave but there for instance the Tor browser for a while
there was 64-bit only but I happen to have the Tor browser thanks to Slack builds compiled
in 32-bit mode and it's working on this machine and I thought they had done away with that but
apparently they didn't it's it's it's you can still get it compiled for 32-bit to works just fine.
Well I thought I'd just go through my menu here I'm running the KDE desktop and it's Plasma 5
I forget which version but I want to go through the menu here and just kind of look for the
applications and I won't go through all the development applications it's about the same
development stuff that you found on previous slacker models slightly beefed up there might be
a few more items in here that you didn't get from Slack or 14.2 I won't go through them
and the usual number of games but one thing I did find out interesting aside from FFM
Peg being offered is standard on the new Slackware which was an absolute no-no on Slackware 14.2
in previous versions because if you know the copyright laws and patent laws and all that crap
we we find that Patrick Volkertink has put on here Kaden live Kaden live is standard
simple screen recorder is standard you don't have to compile that
there are several video and other MP3 MP4 playing pieces of software which you've never seen
in previous distributions so there's quite a bit of multimedia codex that's included with
Slackware 15 that we didn't see on previous releases of Slackware you had to compile your own
software if you wanted MP4 support or MP3 support on previous versions of Slackware and typically
most people would use Slack builds.org as the website to get the sources and recipes for making
that software work on Slackware I have compiled a library office for instance on here and it has
the most modern version available and Calibri is on here which I installed from their website
YouTube downloader I installed from the YouTube downloader website
so yeah it has the most modern they offer the most modern library office from Slack builds that
you would find on the new open BSD 7.1 which I just installed this weekend I upgraded from 7.0
to 7.1 so open BSD doesn't have as much software as Slack builds does but everything that they do
have is the most modern version you can get another thing that I'll note is Patrick apparently added
to Slackware 15 as something they call poor man's internet radio which I thought was a live
internet radio streams program which is a console based program that runs an internal and it's
very cool and I was playing with it and I love to play internet radio so anyway that's all set it
for you and I like that program it's it's it's sweet I use MP3 blaster by the way quite a bit
when I play podcast and stuff if I but my typical player by the way is XMMS and XMMS is becoming
hard to find another distributions and they have all the skins for XMMS and I've always felt that
XMMS was more beautiful than the audacity or audacious excuse me a player that they have today to
replace it with and so I still run XMMS so if you have an old application that you like and you
don't want to lose and you want to keep running it Slackware might be the only way to get it
other than maybe good arch I guess one of the cool thing I found out too while I was upgrading
a BSD is SlackBills offers signify there's a build for signify which came from OpenBSD
so you can get their signify public keys from OpenBSD and signify and verify downloads from
OpenBSD you know your your install files and your your firmware and everything is all signified
so it you can use that to verify OpenBSD material you can also use signify to
create your own key and sign your own packages which SlackBills could do or Slackware could do
and have signed and check some packages just like Red Hat and Debian would have
uh currently Slack package is the only way you get upgrades for the base system on Slackware
and I believe that has a check sum to it and a GPG key already so they have uh I guess basically
the functional equipment it's equivalent it's and they've been using that for years
but signify is just super cool uh you can signify anything anyway I would recommend um I wouldn't turn
my nose up at 32 bit Slackware in fact I believe that uh Patrick will make a 32 bit version of
Slackware available for several more releases before they finally probably have to drop it if
they ever drop it in fact I'm of the belief that uh they'll probably be some companies that will
be making some pinium class type systems maybe AMD based who knows certainly within the ARM
community even in the 64 bit ARM um there will be uh people who will be using operating systems
without UEFI and um I'm not that crazy about UEFI I'm also not that crazy about SystemD and I'll
talk about that for a minute as you all know SystemD tick ever all the other distributions
with the exception of Gen 2 and Void Linux and Slackware and I think damn little else uh dev1 of course
doesn't use SystemD um they give you three options for init systems over there assist vnit
what is it init rc or something like that and then the last one is run it
if you recall one of the big selling points that they made two years ago about SystemD was
that it'll be make it easier for system administrators to control servers and that the turnaround time
for servers would be much faster because SystemD boots so much quicker and I know you're all having
a laugh right now as I say that as I'm having a laugh because you know now that four or five years
have gone by we noticed that virtually all of the operating system providers that provide a Linux
system D with the exception of REL I think REL is the only one that still does it right
their boot up times have gotten worse than Slackware 32 here I can get this box up to a desktop
faster than you can get you be to running and that's because the people that make these operating
systems have just quit bothering to tune SystemD from release to release when they they put them out
it's become bloated to pig-ish and it's a trash truck going up the street that's that's what a
SystemD distributions like to me nowadays it's it's one of their bright ideas that just turned
cow shit so again in my opinion Slackware wins hands down is still probably the best Linux
distribution you can have because you're not going to find one not even with an arch that will
allow you to have this much control over your operating system I mean when arched as an update
your system will break even if it's a package from the AUR you are helpless until somebody fixes
it Gen 2 same way void Linux they try to test everything that they they have
but void Linux doesn't have the packages that you could put on Slackware
you can use the AUR as a packaging system and make packages for Slackware by the way it's
possible people are doing it you can also install Geeks the Geeks version that will run as a
foreign operating system within your operating system and I could even run known three as a desktop
on Slackware even in the 32-bit version if I installed Geeks I may try that again I did that
what two three years ago I made a video of it on my my video channel
you can also use the ports and packages from netbst and install applications that way if you
want you know compile your own applications so there's a multitude of ways to do it including
just doing it by hand you can just download the source code from Git and have Adidas
all of Slackware's package management system is based on a tar gz format so the binaries go in
as a tgz with install package and that's how we have accountability for packages installed on
Slackware where this the system is very primitive and it hasn't evolved much in over 20 years
it hasn't evolved much but it works and it's as good as any of the other distributions packaging
systems believe it or not it does everything the other versions packaging systems does it has a gpg key
signed you know thing and it does a checksum well at least it does a gpg signing of the
of the catalog I don't know if it does it of every package but every package has a checksum at
least I'm pretty sure if they use signify they'd have both on everything and that would work to
their advantage there is a long list over history of Linux distributions that are based on Slackware
first and foremost would be salix os which is an xfce based distribution desktop based distribution
on Slackware that has its own pre-compiled application software database for the user so they don't
have to compile their own software and it claims here that they have a kd version and lxde
flux box rat poison I don't know if they have all those now or not in 32 and 64 bit versions but
I know for sure they have xfce
vector Linux is based on Slackware as zenwalk is based on Slackware and that distribution is
also xfce based for desktop but it uses the cis v in that system I think that's their big difference
there's a whole list of them here if you if you just type in list of Linux distributions based
on Slackware a lot of them are dead because a lot of them come and go for instance
slacks used to be based on software and now it's based on it used to be based on slacks used
to be based on slackware but it's now based on on debian so it kind of fell off and then there's
zip slack and some of the others that have come and gone I used to use a free software version of the
32 bit slackware 14.2 called conache OS and that has come and gone the distribution provider decided
he wasn't going to do that anymore there used to be a free slacks project that renamed themselves
to free nix and I don't know if they're coming out with a slackware 15 based free nix or not
I saw somebody on there their forum asking about it and volunteering to help but no one responded
to him so I'm assuming that the free nix project right for right now if they're not hip deep and
maybe it's dead I don't know I don't see any activity on their website that indicates that
they're working on it but that was a a based on slackware only it was blob free you know a totally
free operating system that had no proprietary binaries in it at all slackware has a few proprietary
packages and blobs that it distributes which would just barely disqualify it from being a free
operating system it couldn't make the free software foundations list so they came up with the idea
of coming up with the free slacks free nix and conache OS ideas and we'll see if they bring them back
I like again I know conache OS is dead I don't know if free nix is dead or not we'll see
whether you use the 32 bit version of slackware 15 or the 64 there are instructions on the DVD
which will help you create a fully encrypted install on your hard drive to protect your data in case
your laptop gets stolen and also instructions for how to use UEFI computers and install the UEFI
partition EF00 to make that work slackware is also probably the only distribution that I know of
that allows you to say make an encrypted install using loops LVM and run it with the butter file
system which is something that I wish Linux meant would finally come out with to have an encrypted
install that used the butter file system instead of EXT4 and got only knows why they're not doing
that but they're not dev1 they only allow installation in EXT4 so I guess they're having some
issues with it I don't have any issue with that running slackware so slackware is capable
due to its simplicity of doing some of the harder things easier than the other distributions because
they keep tripping over themselves with their own code bases system D and whatnot that's just
causing problems like their disk installers that were really hard to write when you install slackware
it is a very much human involved process there's nothing that's really automatic or automated about
it very little anyway so you have a lot of control over how you install the operating system to your
laptop or your desktop how you choose to do it and what you're going to install on you know how
everything's going to work together I mean it offers the maximum amount of flexibility and it's
the easiest to use in my opinion even easier than arch or gen2 by far it when it comes to installs
or void it's it's much simpler to create a complex install environment with slackware than any other
distribution on the face of the planet that's a fact a final selling point on slackware if you're
a developer of course it has probably the most serious and intensive number of developer tools
and compilers of any distribution on the planet which are installed as part of the base system if
you install the packages it is as severe and as beefy in his battleship like as open BSD as open
BSD man they provide you with everything and I think slackware actually beats open BSD
because it has the LLVM client as well as it does the GCC compiler and all the goodies from
Good Newland it's it's the best of all worlds slackware is is the the only Linux distribution
that I'm aware of that gives you a full set of development tools upon install whether you're talking
about Git or LLVM Clang or GCC or G4 Trin compiling or cobalt cobalt's in there somewhere
I just compiled mono the other night from slack builds you can get that and of course there's
Java all kinds of Java you can install yeah you can really beef up a slackware box but the
base install that you get off the DVD it doesn't I don't know if it has Java on or not I know it
doesn't have mono I don't think but it's it's got probably more compilers and development tools
and stuff on that then then any of the other BSDs or Linuxes you can point to oh excuse me
you know it's funny but Arch doesn't provide you with any development tools you have to go
download everything that you need Gentie pretty much the same way because Gentie will only
bring forth a compiler or something if it needs it it doesn't provide you with a complete layout
pearl and Python and everything you know it doesn't it doesn't give you Ruby or any of that
stuff unless you build it and request it slackware gives you all of that stuff right off the DVD
from your first minute of using the operating system you have a world of tools at your hands
and that's important especially if you're using an operating system where you're going to be
compiling all the software you're going to use you're going to need all the compilers
you know I really like the older generation of hardware like this old Lenovo
because it's built so much better and the keyboard feels so much better all the modern computers in
my opinion they totally suck I mean they just suck outright and that that's not because they don't
offer you a CD DVD reader writer even though that would be nice they're trying to
obsolete all that technology that's speaking of which slackware install media can be burned to a DVD
it's too big for a CD ROM slackware 15 I believe is the first release that
that doesn't offer CD ROM images anymore those are gone so you have to burn a DVD
or you can just DD the entire image to a USB stick drive a little thumb stick drive and install it
from that and either the 32 bit or 64 bit modes so you have those two options as well as
creating a little tiny installer that will work off of the internet if you have a network connection
that you can install slackware with you can do that too so in that regard it covers everything
that open BSD doesn't they're installers because open BSD will install from a hard drive
if you have your base files on the hard drive so we'll slackware it'll install from FTP or HTTP
HTTPS over the internet or it'll install from a CD DVD drive or of course as I just mentioned
the USB thumb stick you can you have several options that you can use to install slackware Linux
and so it's very flexible with its hand drawn installer there are a few other issues I want to
talk about for instance with with slackware of course you don't have system D it's the BSD
init scripts and they use their own version of udev that has been developed by other teams from
from other operating systems slackware doesn't actually develop any software by the way
they just use the software that's available out on the internet and try to make it work with
the next version of slackware and it's because they're continuing on supporting operating systems
out there in the community that are not system D based that I have firm belief that I don't
think they'll ever eliminate 32 bits off or either for the same reason because there are too many
vendors that are going to provide you with chip sets and motherboards for machines that don't have
UEFI that can run 32 bit software and I predict it'll be around 20 years from now it'll be like
spark boxes you know there'll be people that'll be able to get a machine that will run a 32
bit slackware distribution 20 years from now and I predict that's going to be true the other thing
I want to say that's good about 32 bit is it doesn't have the vulnerabilities that 64 bit Linux
has with a specter attacks because they never did resolve the specter attack issue
with all of the intel chips including the ones that's in this very Lenovo that I'm using
but if you're using a 32 bit version of Linux you don't have to worry about it because you're not
vulnerable so this 32 bit version of slackware since I am a security oriented person and I run
open BSD this 32 bit version of slackware is actually safer to run than the 64 bit because of that
because eventually someday in the future they'll exploit the specter vulnerabilities in all the
processors and this will become an issue for everybody that's not on an ARM chip because I believe
ARM is the only one that is not vulnerable in a 64 bit version because their CPU is designed a
different way to to not be vulnerable but if you're running 32 bit Linux of any kind whether it
would be dev1 or slackware or I don't think they make a 32 bit rel anymore if I think they
discontinue that but there may be a few other instances of 32 bit software perhaps gen2
I don't know avoid Linux as a 32 bit or not maybe they do maybe they don't can't remember
and arch I don't know I'm not really up on arch but there are certainly a few
software vendors that are still offering some 32 bit support slackware isn't the only one
and if you're running 32 bit Linux you're in better shape against those kind of attacks than
the 64 bit people are open BSD is the only distribution that I'm aware of that has resolved
that on a 64 bit issue there's the only ones that that cannot be attacked from a specter attack
open BSD by the way is also the only operating system in the world that has 64 bit time which is
also just jaw dropping to me that no one else in all this time in a decade has even attempted to
come up with their own 64 bit time in Linux I'm assuming they're still working on it but
time is running out for you folks the other thing I like about old Lenovo equipment or old IBM
equipment is you can always get it rebuilt you can either do it yourself or go to somebody and
just pay to have it rebuilt and I need to replace the DVD CD ROM burner in this because it's
quit working a few years ago but other than that I can expand the memory in this particular unit
up to 16 gigabytes it currently has only six gigabytes in it which is more than enough to
you know do what I need you might ask why didn't pull the Broadcom Wi-Fi out of here and change
it out with something more compatible engineering and that's because I'm worried that it might not
boot because a lot of the biases were set up this particular box does have a UEFI switch in and I
could go to UEFI but some of the laptops wouldn't boot if you change at the Wi-Fi card it
just screwed with the bias enough that it wouldn't and I don't know that this one is this particular
Lenovo is compatible with any of the free biases that are out there the two free biases that are
out there that can be installed on on Lenovo hardware don't know that it is this is an i5 base
machine by the way which is at the time I believe the hottest chip you could buy it I don't think
the i7 was available or it was the i7 would be fixing to come out a year or two after this
thing was was put out in the market so the the i5 was really the hottest chip for a laptop at that
time they probably had some i7s at the desktop but I don't think they had any on the laptops
so you know if you're starting out in Linux you could go out some place and you know used
computer equipment store or garage sale or whatever and find yourself one of these big big ass
you know 17 inch laptops Lenovo get a new battery for it have the keyboard replaced or rebuilt
cleaned out you know get a new DVD burner in it have the CPU repaced it expand the memory on it
and they're great machines I mean the the USB plugs on this thing after all these years they're
still tight they work great as opposed to the more modern machines where all the USB plug-ins they
get really loose you know and wobbly and they're just horrible builds you know I don't even like
the new Lenovo's because they they don't use mechanical keyboards they've got those bubble
touch keyboards or what are going to call it and they they don't feel right and well I understand
they're Lenovo's supposed to be making a new laptop that's based on the the think pad line from
you know years ago but I haven't heard any reviews on it or anything maybe somebody could do
one if they they have one and talk about it but generally I'm very depressed about all the new
laptops and hardware I mean compared to the the older laptops from 15 years ago they I don't see
anything that really excites me or feels of quality you know and I'm not looking for the world's
lightest laptop I'm just looking for the one that's the best built because that's the one that's
gonna last longest you know carrying this dude around in a a hammock bag as I walk out to the car
and go over to a friend's house or whatever no problem I mean it weighs more but it's not like I'm
carrying an amulet in a bag or something you know it's not that damn bad so anyway that's my talk
about slackware Linux and the slackware 15 and 32 bit operating systems and I hope I've been
able to persuade at least a few of you to maybe go back to the old ways the old ways of the old
squirrels goodbye for now you have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio
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