TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

Slackware. It's an institution in its own right. Some might argue that it's *put* people into institutions as well, out of either frustration or zealotry. Whatever your opinion may be about it, there's little doubt that it's a strong one.

My own opinions about it have certainly varied throughout the years. I can't decide if it's because Slackware is changing or I am. Perhaps there *is* no Slackware. Hmm...

Release 13 is noteworthy in that it's the first one to officially support the 64-bit X86_64 architecture, which is a good thing. Perhaps at some point in the near future all distributions will actually start exploiting the architecture to its fullest. Acceptance is the first step.

I'll be ranting on the 32-bit flavor, and if I have the time and/or bandwidth I'll check out the 64-bit one at a later date. Quality control is generally quite high for Slackware, so I don't expect to encounter any snafus in the 64-bit versus its 32-bit sibling.

Before I get started, allow me say hello to all the new readers of my site that are inevitably drawn out of the ether whenever I cover a release of Slackware. Welcome. Hope you enjoy the show.

Install:

Much like Ben Stein's inflection or the uncoolness of Furries, the Slackware installer doesn't change. I think I can count on one hand the new things I've seen in it since I got started using Slack around version 7. I won't bother posting screenshots because there are probably hundreds if not thousands of them available on the web.

It's text-based with simple colored graphics via ncurses. If you're old enough to remember the DOS installer for DOOM, you know what I'm talking about.

I'm not knocking the technology behind it. You always know what to expect when installing Slackware. It's a constant. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It just is what it is.

I set up my partitions manually using cfdisk and started the install. I picked my swap partition (128MB, why do I even bother?) and chose my formatting options for root.

I noticed that the default is now EXT4, the journaling descendant of EXT3. I've never used EXT4 before so I'm curious if it will offer any tangible benefits from an end-user perspective.

I basically left the default software selection alone, which installed everything except the extra languages for KDE, and let it do a full install.

Here's where I was kind of worried, because I only downloaded the first 3 ISO files. I was curious to see if I'd have to go back and either get the last three or bite the bullet and get the DVD.

Disc 1 finished, and I continued installing on Disc 2. So far so good. Disc 2 finished, and I went on to Disc 3. I noticed at this point KDE was being installed.

Another milestone of the 13.0 release is the move by Slackware from KDE 3 to KDE 4. Considering almost nothing new gets added to Slackware without exhaustive testing I had high expectations for the stability of their version of KDE 4.

My past experience with this desktop hasn't been pretty, but 4.2.4 is noticeably better than 4.0/4.1, and if Slackware says it's stable, I'm willing to give it a try.

Disc 3 finished and my fears were apparently unfounded. I wasn't asked for any more discs. Why didn't I just start with the DVD in the first place, you ask?

Well, to save time and bits (won't anyone think of the bits?). I only have so much bandwidth and time to wait for something to download, and I figured like Debian the last 3 CDs probably were just obscure stuff I didn't need (turns out I was right).

I configured my network, root password, and desktop preference and rebooted. Tux apparently was replaced by an impostor for this release. Is it a badger? No, apparently it's a tasmanian devil named Tuz.

I had to refer to a previous rant to remember which user add utility I needed to set up my regular user (adduser, for those keeping score). I logged in and started X Windows.

KDE 4 does give Slackware a strangely shiny appearance. I'd kind of gotten used to the typical KDE 3.X desktop look as just a Slackware standard. To suddenly see a desktop that looks more at home on Fedora or OpenSuSE was a bit of a shock.

I was immediately greeted by an error dialog about Akonadi. I don't know what it is, but apparently its "control process was not registered at D-Bus."

I also had trouble getting my X windows resolution changed to something sane (anything but 800x600), but like Slack 12, I'm still not sure if this is a problem with the distro or their choice in desktop environment. KRandR is a functionally useless tool for me, since it only lets me choose between bad resolution (800x600) and worse resolution (640x480).

I tried to circumvent it and use xrandr instead, but I got an error that the resolution couldn't be set to greater than 800x600 (despite the fact that my screen supports 1280x800). I'll probably get emails about this.

Software Selection:

I certainly can't fault Slack 13 for following the usual KDE-distro crowd and not including games. There was quite an impressive collection included on the default install, with everything from Sudoku to Battleship to a 3D Rubik's cube.

KOffice was the suite of choice, but Firefox, Pidgin and GIMP were present. Amarok, Xine, Audacious, and JuK were just a few of the choices for media players. MP3/WMV playback worked as expected.

KDevelop 4 and Qt Designer were the heavy hitters in the development directory, but CVS and even a UML application were also installed. I confirmed the presence of GCC and Java. Slackware has always been developer-friendly.

Conclusion:

Discounting the resolution problem, Slack 13 didn't give me any trouble to speak of. The absence of any sort of automated software handler on the level of Apt or Yum keeps me from using it as a daily desktop, but that might not be a problem for some.

Before I get emails about it, I am aware of slackpkg. It's a good tool, but not what I'm used to working with (apt/Synaptic). Perhaps I'm lazy, but I just prefer the way software is handled on a Debian system.

Overall I felt like release 13 was more of the same for Slackware. They're no longer to the point where I can easily make fun of this or that feature (or lack thereof), but I still don't feel like I'm their target audience.