[geeks] the virtualization project

[Phil Stracchino]

On 09/09/2011 06:53 AM, vintagecoder at aol.com wrote:
> I don't use Linux packages but I do use Linux for my main desktop.
> Slackware! Try it, it's bloat free. You control everything that goes on
> your system because it's one of the few Linux distros with no dependency
> management. It has package management but no dependency management, if that
> makes sense. I make my own packages with available tools.

Actually, this is why I eventually had to *abandon* Slackware a few
years ago.  I long since gave up on using Slackware precompiled packages
because the available set of Slackware packages was too small and too
old - frequently, there either *was no* Slackware package for something
I wanted to use, or the package was compiled without support I wanted,
or the package existed but was multiple *MAJOR* versions old, or feature
support was missing in ways that made things just Not Work.  (Often
because Patrick Volkerding chose to configure things in ways that were
just flat-out broken.)  The only way I could get current versions of
everything I needed on Slackware was to compile everything from source
by hand, but Slackware's complete lack of dependency management meant I
was spending days at a time just chasing down dependencies by hand.
That crap is strictly for the birds; I want to get to actually USE my
systems, not spend all my waking hours just maintaining them.

At one point, shortly after Slackware 9 came out, I tried to "upgrade"
to Slackware 9.  It didn't work, and I couldn't make it work, short of
completely reformatting and starting over from bare metal; because too
much of what I was doing, on my highly customized, originally Slackware
7-based install, was *TOO NEW* for Slackware 9.  Slackware 9 didn't
support it yet.  While I had improved, updated, and added new
functionality, Slackware had sat on its ass making mostly cosmetic changes.


Gentoo lets me configure everything the way I want it, with minimal
bloat, with dependencies handled for me automatically (but only the
dependencies I want),and only takes a couple of minutes a day for
maintenance.  I can decide which packages I'm happy with using stable
versions of, and which I want to push to the latest versions of, with
package-by-package granularity.

I kind of see Gentoo as the spiritual heir of Slackware, except more
realistic in the modern world.  Slackware used to be the hacker's
distribution, but has now become the crotchety old man in the pinstriped
shirt who sits on his porch all day reading the newspaper, waving his
cane and yelling at the neighborhood kids to stay off his lawn.


-- 
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
  Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, SQL wrangler, Free Stater
                 It's not the years, it's the mileage.