TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

It should come as no surprise to most of you that I do not like Slackware. It does not behave the way I want a Linux distribution to behave, nor does it follow a philosophy with which I agree.

Some have even questioned why it is that I continue to try out new versions of a distribution I so clearly dislike.

Believe it or not, it isn't because I thrive on spite. That's just a side effect. I genuinely hope that one day Slackware will be the kind of distribution I want. Until then I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment.

Install:

Slackware is a slow distribution to change things, so I wasn't at all surprised that the installer is the same ncurses text-based one that has graced it since... at least version 8. At least I can say that for those familiar with Slackware installs, this one offers no surprises.

I set my swap and root partitions and told the DVD to install the whole 4.5GB. I figured there was less chance of me missing something I needed that way. Install went off without a hitch and upon reboot I came to a bash logon prompt.

This is the point where new Linux users would notice something amiss. If your first introduction to Linux was a distribution like Ubuntu, SuSE or Fedora, you'll likely be confused by the total lack of... pretty. This is intentional.

I logged in as root and created a new regular user. This is something that I still believe should be handled inside the installer. I logged back out and in again as my regular user and started X Windows. I was pleasantly surprised that it worked.

KDE started up just fine and I was greeted by a fully-functional (if completely default and sparse) desktop. So far so good. A terminal "uname" later and I was assured that I was running kernel 2.6.21 out of the box. This was another pleasant change.

I inserted a data CD and was greeted by a wonderful Konqueror error: "A security policy in place prevents this sender from sending this message to this recipient, see message bus configuration file (rejected message had interface "org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume member "Mount" error "(unset)" destination "org.freedesktop.Hal").

I'm sure you all just jumped out of your seat and said, "Of course! I know exactly what that means!" Don't all stand up at once. I assumed it was a permissions issue and manually mounted the disk as root from a console.

MP3 playback was included, which almost made up for the fact that I couldn't insert a CD and have it mount on its own. MPG movies played back fine in Noatun, but anything I opened with Xine would show up green and distorted. The second time I did this KDE crashed on me.

At this point I decided to install the commercial Nvidia drivers. The install didn't complain, and I saw the Nvidia splash when I restarted X. A quick edit of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf got me my 1280x1024 resolution and all was well. Another step in the right direction.

I was suspicious that my media files were crashing because of the VESA driver being used, and upon restart of X Windows those suspicions were confirmed. All my videos played just fine with the Nvidia display driver.

I almost got excited at this point, until I plugged in my scanner. The version of libsane included in Slack 12 does not include the proper backend for my CanoScan LiDE 60. Thus, no comics could be made with this distro.

Software Selection:

The basic array of programs were present: Firefox, Pidgin, GIMP. Unfortunately OpenOffice was supplanted by KOffice. Not my personal favorite, but fixed easily enough with a hundred MB download or so.

Java 1.6 was included, I noted with pleasure. Work would not be a problem on this machine. Several different audio/video playback programs were included, as was the KDevelop C++/Qt suite.

It should go without saying that if you're a Gnome fan, you'll need to obtain it somewhere else, but that's been an issue in Slackware for a few versions so by now I expect you have your sources.

Who's it best for?

This version of Slackware came damn close to being usable for me, and considering my history with it, that's a monumental acheivement. I didn't find anything (other than the mount permissions issue) particularly annoying, and most things I wanted to do worked out well.

Slackware is not for beginners, but it certainly won't require you to learn as much about Linux internals as Gentoo. It's a medium-difficulty distribution that shows in this release the willingness of its creator to actually update a few programs (and even *GASP!* the kernel) from time to time.

Although still not the distribution for me, Slackware has turned my head with this release. I look forward to trying the next version. Not to bash it, but to use it.