Re: LPI and Distros...

["Brandon Joseph Adams" <bja@illinois.dyndns.org>]

 >> Also, I have been thinking about using Slackware as a server distro, I
>> have read many sparkling reviews for Slackware in the server department.
>> Anyone have some comments or suggestions?
>
> People who use Slackware are even less sane than the Gentoo users.
> Slackware was great in 1994, but it was left behind a *long* time ago.
> (It has no package management.  It has no real QA.  It doesn't even
> have a significant user base.)

As a slackware user I have to respond. There is standard package
management. It is very simple, in the pkgtools with no dependency
checking. There are several websites devoted to providing Slackware
packages, much like freshrpms.net for RedHat or PLF for Mandrake. Look at
www.linuxpackages.net. They are an all-slackware site. www.dropline.net is
also an interesting site. They provide a customized to Slackware, GNOME
distribution with an installer.

If you don't like the spartan package management, build your own from
tarballs. There is no difference in customizing something for slackware
using ./configure than editing an rpm.spec for Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE/etc
except that ./configure is not rpm-specific.

If you actually want something a little more organized, there is NetBSD
pkgsrc. pkgsrc is a very portable infrastructure of "ports" (well
packages, in NetBSD terms) that is very similiar to FreeBSD's ports or
Gentoo's portage. You can bootstrap pkgsrc on Linux. (I've heard of Debian
installs, but I see the most posts about Slackware and LFS.) After you
install pkgsrc, you have a hierarchy of Makefiles that automate the
download, configuration, building, and installation of anything from
simple text editors to complete desktop environments like KDE. If you want
to go this route, I suggest installing just enough from the slackware
distro to get on the internet and get to www.pkgsrc.org and download it.
You'll need a buildsystem (gcc, etc)  and probably lynx or links (I don't
know where the info is on ftp.).

The QA is up to the administrator and the package designer. If you would
use known good packages (e.g. don't use a random gcc build to bring up
your system), you don't have quite as many problems. Interactions still
need to be understood. That's one of the reasons the admin is paid.

I'm not seeing how userbase matters. For example, because Steve's rpms
don't have a lot of users, does this mean they are bad? Of course not. I
use them, along with a lot of other people on this list. A large Userbase
can help with QA, but I haven't seen any show stoppers in Slackware yet
(Not recently , within the past 5 years anyway).

Anyway, Slackware would be a good distro is you want vanilla "Linux".
There aren't any hand-holding tools, or fancy GUI wizards. You get
well-commented, standard configuration files and man pages. There is also
google, which is helpful with any Linux. The only real nonstandard aspects
of Slackware are that Patrick, the guy that runs the project, is very
conservative with his releases (the new release is still 2.4, with 2.6
optional after the install) and Slackware has their own, much simpler init
system. The init system is mainly a thing of preference. I find that I
like it. I also like the latest NetBSD/FreeBSD init system.

If you have a spare system, check it out. Slackware is production quality
though, so if you need a minimal server without the hassels of other
distros, Slackware is there for you. Please use 2 systems for production
though. All changes and testing should be done on a mirror of the
productions system. This is good sense, not specific to Slackware.

> Steve

Brandon Joseph Adams
bja@illinois.dyndns.org


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