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Slackware is by far my favorite Linux, I find it easier to use and it does not get in my way.
Slackware is my main system and I have it installed on a Thinkpad W541, which I purchased in 2021. Slackware works great on the W541 and the only thing I did was upgrade the HDD to a SDD.
These are notes related to Slackware I have written/collected over the years:
And what follows are notes for various Slackware Versions.
Slackware info, slightly out of date, but has good information.
Slackware Version 15.0 came out in Feb 2022, but since I was already on RC3, nothing needed to be done. The addition of PAM is staying out of my way and everything works great. Again, this is another immensely stable release.
One nice change, seems a bug was fixed in wish(1), that fix corrected an minor odd issue with cbb I had on 14.2. I use cbb to keep track of my checkbook.
See below, RC3, for some customizations I made when I went to RC3. I kept those changes in the release.
Went to Slackware 15.0 RC3 15.0 RC3 in my Thinkpad T420 on Jan 16, 2022.
These items I modified/enabled to make my life easier:
RC3 is working great and I have yet to have any issues.
Slackware Version 14.2 came out in July 2016 and I quickly upgraded. This release had a lot of back end changes and again it has all the stability one expects when using Slackware. I would suggest you move to 14.2 if at all possible.
The Nvidia Driver I use is about to go out of support. In the past I would use the Install from Nvidia, for 14.2 I believe you should use the slackbuild since it will allow the driver to install without any issues. Nvidia's install had an issue with my system.
Out of the many backend changes, Slackware 14.2 now comes with OpenMotif, this means you should be able to compile just about any Motif applications without any issues. You can view the Changelog to see all the changes in 14.2, it is quite impressive.
Anyway, if you like Slackware as much as I do, please try and support the project by going to: patreon or paypal.
Slackware Version 14.1 came out in Nov 2013, I was going to try and wait for the dvd to arrive, but ended up installing it from a torrent download, which I kept up for a while to seed. The dvd arrived 2 weeks later.
As expected no issues going to 14.1 and it is very solid and stable release. Nouveau did have some issues with my hardware, see for details, but this issue is beyond the control of Slackware itself.
Now the fun stuff! Release 14.1 again proves Slackware is the best system for general UN*X development, opencobol was added as a standard package. With that you get all the major development languages as without extra work, it even includes clang, so no need to load extract packages.
With that said, there is one exception, Java. You need to download that yourself, but on the dvd under subdir "extra/source/java" there is a slackbuild and a README file that tells you how to create a java Slackware package and how to install it. Java is not included due to Oracle's license restrictions.
So you get a lite and concise development system without fluff and because it now has both Cobol and Fortran, you can party like it is 1979 :)
Slackware Version 14.0 came out in Sept 2012, I originally was planning on skipping this release and stick with 13.37, for no other reason than the fact I liked the version number :) and was lazy.
Turned out I could not resist, so in December I installed 14.0, I am quite glad I did. A lot of utilities were upgraded and seems networking is much faster than under 13.37. Network speed increases alone seems to have been worth the upgrade. It also comes with clang in addition to gcc. To me this keeps up it's reputation as a great development system.
The following relates to a change beyond the control of Slackware, Slackware has no choice but to implement it:
One upstream change creeped in, /run now exists. I am not sure if I like /run, but for now Slackware seems to use /var as it always did, that means /run is only used for udev, so does not bother me. Upsream is suggesting a lot of data written to /var be migrated to /run and to mount devices under it. That I do not really care for, creating files there could hurt in tracing crash issues.
Slackware Version 13.37 came out around the end of April 2011, so I recently upgraded from v13.1 64 bit to slackware 13.37 64 bit.
So, in my opinion, Slackware 13.37 is one of the best (if not the best) Slackware release so far and a worthwhile system/release to use. Remember to upgrade fvwm2 using fvwm 2.6.1 from the extra on the DVD :)
I do not use KDE, for some reason KDE has always caused my eyes to strain, but seems the issue is much better starting with version 4.6x, I upgraded to 4.6 from AlienBob's site just to see how 4.6.x is. KDE seems a bit complex for me, so I stick with my favorite fvwm2 and sometimes vtwm and rarely twm. From what I have seen, KDE seems to be very nice, also I really like KDE's applications and games :)
Slackware Version 13.1 came out around the end of May 2010, so I upgraded from v12.2 to slackware v13.1. For some reason I expected a slight performance 'hit' on my 1GHz PIII, turned out it seems slightly zipper and works a bit faster.
The PIII died in late 2010, system board issue. So had a new PC built and installed Slackware Version 13.1, 64 bit. Worked like a charm, no software issues.
This page hit the WEB on Dec 16, 2008. It was created under Slackware version 12.2 using vim.
I have been using Slackware since Version v2.2.
First Linux Question :) From google groups comp.os.linux.setup (https)
Slackware Version 12.2 Version 12.2 came out around Dec 9, 2008, so the following weekend I upgraded. Of course it is working quite well and quickly on my 1GHz PIII. That is one thing you will always hear about Slackware and Linux/GNU in general, it always works.
I found 12.2 to be a very nice release, I ended up skipping 13.0 because I did not want to do the upgrade.
$Id: slackware.gmi,v 2.6 2023/11/13 16:12:40 jmccue Exp $