Slackware.com still down
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 19, 2012 12:09 PM EDT |
Not being a Slackware user, I haven't kept much of an eye on the distribution's current trouble. But the web site remains down, and I don't see a lot of information out there other than "buy some Slackware stuff." Anybody know anything? |
| slacker_mike Apr 19, 2012 1:14 PM EDT |
the website that runs slackware.com is down. It isn't clear to me that Slackware itself is in any real financial trouble. There has been no word from Pat V on the subject and all the mirrors are functioning properly. The site was actually up yesterday for a point in time. This isn't the first time slackware.com has gone down, but it is the longest outage since I have been paying attention. There is a lot of speculation going around on the internet but until we hear otherwise from Pat V that is all it is. Heck linux.com was down for a long time for different reasons, so things can and do happen. this post from the LQ forums is worth reading. |
| caitlyn Apr 19, 2012 2:40 PM EDT |
The LQ forums are filled with wagon circling and outrage the someone dared question their holy distribution once again. Outrage at me is nothing new there. The only source of information is Eric Hameleers (a/k/a Alien Bob) who indicated that it was a hardware problem on the server and lack of funds (initially) or how funds are prioritized (later comments) was part of the problem. A website is the public face of any company or organization. The fact that slackware.com has been down for six days tells me there really is a financial problem. The alternative, that they just don't care about the website, has even greater implications. No matter how you slice it the facts presented by Eric Hameleers (and we have no reason to doubt him) indicate a distro in trouble. I think most of the ire directed at me was for two comments blown way out of proportion. First, I compared Slackware to Mandriva. That's a fair comparison as both have financial issues. That was reinterpreted by Dugan to mean I said that Slackware was in danger of disappearing immediately. I said no such thing. Clue: I don't think Mandriva (the distribution) is in any danger of disappearing no matter what happens to the company. ROSA Linux is rebranded Mandriva and nobody has suggested that ROSA Labs is in any sort of financial difficulty. Neither distribution will die now or soon. Second, we decided the rebase the Yarok Project off of the same enterprise code used to create CentOS and Scientific Linux. I've been advocating that for four years now. The disappearance of the Slackware website and the blog post I read on TuxMachines.org finally brought the arguments I've made for years into clear focus for the other developers. I don't think basing anything on a small, community based distribution with a small group of developers is a good idea. I've written that repeatedly in different contexts than this. So, yes, we jumped ship. The impact of that on Slackware: exactly zero. |
| slacker_mike Apr 19, 2012 3:53 PM EDT |
Perhaps there is an issue but to be honest I think the issue is being blown way out of proportion. The Linux Foundation and Linux.com sites were down for a lengthy bit of time and no one concluded that they were in financial trouble. Lxde.org is down quite frequently yet I don't see anyone conclude that the LXDE project is in trouble. I think we could all agree that this speculation could be avoided if Pat sent out an official message addressing it. As for Slackware.com being the public face of the company, but lets agree that Slackware doesn't pride itself on its web presence ;). Maybe I am naive but I have faith that Slackware is in no trouble and will continue to be the same solid dependable distro it has been for almost two decades. I also am a DVD subscriber and have purchased two shirts from the Slackware store. As for the Slackware community I have always found it very friendly and helpful. I will concede they can be a bit protective at times but that is true of any distro. |
| tuxchick Apr 19, 2012 5:24 PM EDT |
The Linux Foundation and Linux.com sites were down because of a security breach. Both are big sites with thousands of pages and giant archives, so it was a big job to check and restore everything, so that has nothing to do with Slackware.com's problems. LXDE I don't know, but "other people do it too" is a poor excuse. According to the LQ link the problem is "The slackware.com server is down". Seriously? That's all? And it can't be fixed? A cheap Web hosting account is six bucks a month. A new server is a few hundred dollars. Slackware is a wonderful distribution, but Caitlyn is right-- these sorts of problems are red flags to anyone looking for a solid distro they can rely on. And how, pray tell, is anyone who wants to support or download it going to do that when the site is non-functional? |
| montezuma Apr 19, 2012 5:29 PM EDT |
Slackers! Strangely the slackware store is still up. So you can get the t-shirt but not the distro (updates?)! |
| tuxchick Apr 19, 2012 5:33 PM EDT |
I should snag a new Slackware bottle opener before the store disappears. I bought a bunch of them once upon a time to give away and didn't keep one for me. |
| gus3 Apr 19, 2012 8:43 PM EDT |
Quoting:A cheap Web hosting account is six bucks a month.I understand caitlyn was looking for an affordable hosting solution for a distro... |
| slacker_mike Apr 19, 2012 8:48 PM EDT |
@tuxchix, I guess the point I was trying to make is slackware.com is down ==> to Slackware is in financial trouble without any official word from the man in charge is not a leap I will make. I don't know the details of what caused the outage or why it didn't get resolved quicker. Just as I don't know why lxde.org seems do go down every so often. By the way the slackware.com is back up so I guess you are safe to get that bottle opener. @montezuma you could obtain the distro and any updates from any Slackware mirror during the outage, they never went down. @caitlyn I can speak as a Slackware user that I always enjoy your writing and hope to see some more reviews articles soon. The LQ forums are actually really nice and the people in the Slackware community are very helpful. I would say in general they are sensitive to the common perception that their beloved distro is antiquated, archaic, or no longer relevant. Honestly though I have seen people bristle on every linux forum I have ever visited, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, Gentoo, etc. In general though I find the Slackware community on LQ great. Heck it was people like Chess Griffin whose Linux Reality podcast got me to try Slackware for which I will always be thankful for, and then he wrote the essential sbopkg tool. @All hopefully Pat V will shed some light on the outage. At any rate I think I will order my third Slackware shirt tonight, I don't have a blue one yet. :) |
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 19, 2012 8:57 PM EDT |
I wouldn't mind a few Slackware shirts myself. How do you get to the store? |
| slacker_mike Apr 19, 2012 9:00 PM EDT |
@Steven here you go http://store.slackware.com/cgi-bin/store/scan/fi=prod_slack/... |
| montezuma Apr 19, 2012 9:21 PM EDT |
Wait folks I have found the slack saviour! J.R. "Bob" Dobbs is a hero of mine (and slackers everywhere) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Volkerding#Slack |
| jdixon Apr 19, 2012 10:09 PM EDT |
> So you can get the t-shirt but not the distro (updates?)! According to what folks are saying, ftp .slackware. com (spaces inserted to prevent auto html effect) is still up, as are the mirrors. Only www .slackware. com seems to have been down. And it seems to be up at this precise moment. |
| tuxchick Apr 19, 2012 10:39 PM EDT |
So how is a person supposed to find the Slackware store and ftp server when slackware.com is down? Yeah google, I guess, if you think making potential users work for it is an effective tactic. slacker_mike, the link you posted said financial problems are why slackware.com keeps having outages. When project maintainers can't even keep a basic Web site up it doesn't look good. |
| jdixon Apr 19, 2012 10:48 PM EDT |
> So how is a person supposed to find the Slackware store and ftp server when slackware.com is down? You know, TC, there's a reason it's named ftp . slackware . com.(spaces added to prevent the auto html effect). Pretty much the same reason the web server is www .slackware. com. Now, the store I'll grant, as there is no standardized naming convention for a store front. |
| gus3 Apr 19, 2012 10:53 PM EDT |
@tc, WTH? One asked a question, the other supplied a quick answer and a link. The store's landing page is linked no fewer than 4 times from the Slackware home page, which is currently up anyway. And if some parties are interested in making purchases or donations to help bring the Slackware home page back, then yes, they will find a way to the store. Said interested parties, being dedicated Slackware users, probably already know that sed 's/www/store' is the way to do it. |
| slacker_mike Apr 19, 2012 11:08 PM EDT |
@tuxchick the link I posted was for these quotes from Eric Hameleers: "The slackware.com server is down. This is a technical malfunction. It costs money to do something about that. Something will be done about that server, but if it takes a while, it is most likely caused by prioritizing and finances. Slackware was without its own web server for a long time in the past. And still active are http://ftp.slackware.com and connie.slackware.com, so what's the big deal?" "There is no reason to doubt the availability, stability and long term viability of Slackware, the distribution. It has not been a one-man show for some time, the development effort is substantial and plainly visible in the ChangeLog, and there are no plans to switch to another development model or even ditch the distribution." "Slackware will not die because of financial issues, it will die if all of its users leave." Those quotes don't indicate financial jeopardy to me. Pat has made his living off of sales and subscriptions from the Slackware store for many years so if those sales and subscriptions dry up then he would not be able to make his living directly from Slackware, but that has been true all along. To your point how is a person find the Slackware store or ftp server, yeah Google would work, so might Distrowatch. I mean it is not like there are tons of new Linux novices searching for slackware.com, I can readily admit that even being a big fan. The days of Slackware being the first distro someone stumbles upon to start their linux journey have long since gone. The more likely new user of Slackware is a Linux user who has been using another distro and wants to try something more involved. This person is going to be no stranger to Google and other methods, and well making users "work for it" seems to be the type of user targeted anyway. All of that being said would I like to see slackware.com up everyday, of course. I just don't believe there is any real evidence of newfound financial jeopardy to Slackware that hasn't existed throughout it's history. Maybe I am wrong and you are right, but I sure hope not. |
| Koriel Apr 20, 2012 9:38 AM EDT |
The majority of folk today looking for Slackware are not going to be linux newbies and if they can't type into google "slackware store" or goto http://ftp.slackware.com then really Slackware is not going to be for them. Note I said today because back in the day when I was a linux newbie, Slackware was my first distro but things are a lot different now. I don't believe all this hullaballoo over them dying, so they lost their website through either server failure or non-payment of bills, big deal, happened to me twice this year due to lack of funds. Sh*t happens and im sure they are trying to deal with it, doesn't matter if its not very "professional" with their net front gone if you dont have the cash then thats it , whats he gonna do rob a bank? I know im not going to feed my kid baked beans just to keep my web front going, for professional appearances sake. Some people really need a priority re-adjustment if they think a web front is the be all and end all, especially in the current economic climate. Hopefully Patrick and crew will sort things out, I would also donate to them but like them I just don't have the cash so all I can do is wish them luck. |
| tuxchick Apr 20, 2012 12:37 PM EDT |
Oh you funny people, such stereotyped cliquey thinking, if newbs can't find Slackware why then Slackware doesn't need them. And anyway it doesn't need users or money, except when it does. As long as it's just a hobby distro no worries. |
| number6x Apr 20, 2012 1:17 PM EDT |
I was a newb when I first used slackware in 1997. 486, 75 MHz, 8 Meg Ram, 20 MB HD, floppy drive and about 21 3.5'' floppies. There were more floppies available, but those were the ones I needed. I can't remember If I started with version 3 or 4, but it was ELF, so it was after version 2. I started in December 1996, but got my first fully loaded system in early February 1997. |
| jdixon Apr 20, 2012 1:52 PM EDT |
> ...if newbs can't find Slackware why then Slackware doesn't need them. TC, how many newbies do you think even know about Slackware any more? It's not a newbie oriented distro, and isn't marketed as such (to the extent that it's marketed at all). |
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 20, 2012 3:19 PM EDT |
Installing Slackware is not appreciably more difficult than any other Linux distribution, especially if you have it on a DVD and don't need to burn multiple discs. |
| jdixon Apr 20, 2012 4:07 PM EDT |
> Installing Slackware is not appreciably more difficult than any other Linux distribution... Assuming you understand partitions or have an already partitioned hard drive, that's true. |
| caitlyn Apr 20, 2012 8:28 PM EDT |
Quoting:The LQ forums are actually really nice and the people in the Slackware community are very helpful. I would say in general they are sensitive to the common perception that their beloved distro is antiquated, archaic, or no longer relevant.My experience with the Slackware community as a whole matches what you say. My experience with LQ over the past four years or so is just the opposite. I would rate that segment of the community, in terms of wagon circling and hostility to any sort of criticism of their beloved distro, as the second worst I've seen in the Linux community. Fortunately there is a huge gap between first and second, but it's still bad and definitely puts me off. Worse to me was the, to quote a sensible LQ poster, "harsh" reaction by Eric Hameleers (a/k/a Alien Bob). I expect that from fans. I've never seen the like from a core developer of ANY distro. My personal take on Slackware is that it is most certainly antiquated, archaic and Byzantine compared to most other distros, including ones aimed at seasoned users. As jdixon often points out, an experienced user can add to Slackware and turn it into anything they want, including something that resembles other, more modern distros in features. My honest question is this: why bother? There are distros that have forked Slackware or are derived from Slackware that have done that already and done it brilliantly. Does the extra work have any real benefit to me? Honestly, I don't see that it does. Of course, most of those distros wouldn't exist without Slackware. Consequently Slackware is still VERY relevant to Linux today. Regarding the financial future of Slackware: I see it the same way I see any small, community built distro with a small team and no sponsorship. I consider all such distros risky. When CentOS was having problems a year or so ago, Joe Brockmeier wrote that nobody every gets fired for choosing IBM but you might get fired for implementing CentOS. (I'm paraphrasing but I think I'm pretty darned close to his words.) The same can and should apply for Slackware. That is not a reflection on the quality of the distro, which is excellent in many ways, or on the talent and ability of the developers, which isn't in question as far as I am concerned. |
| jdixon Apr 20, 2012 8:44 PM EDT |
> My personal take on Slackware is that it is most certainly antiquated, archaic and Byzantine compared to most other distros, Antiquated and archaic are probably reasonable descriptions. I disagree with the Byzantine. I find other distributions far more Byzantine than Slackware. Compared to even Debian, Slackware is easy to understand and work with. But then, as I've noted before, ease of use is subjective. :) > The same can and should apply for Slackware. For corporate use, sure. I doubt most home users care. |
| gus3 Apr 20, 2012 9:05 PM EDT |
Quoting:an experienced user can add to Slackware and turn it into anything they want, including something that resembles other, more modern distros in features. My honest question is this: why bother?Because that's how I take ownership of it. It's customized the way I want, with packages that I both built "by hand" and built from SlackBuilds.org with equal comfort. I use Postfix to manage my mail queue, downloaded from a dropbox via Fetchmail. I run a "Byzantine" window manager called Sawfish, the likes of which I can neither download nor build on any Ubuntu LTS (yet). (Before you point it out: Sawfish in the latest Ubuntu LTS isn't current, and the current Sawfish won't build in the latest released LTS. That'll probably change with 12.04.) I've been a distro-hopper. I've tried dependency-tracking. I've tried "build it all from source." The fragility is the same in both: pray, pray, and pray some more that the people managing the dependencies don't screw it up, or you could end up with a system that can no longer download and install updates. "Byzantine"? The only system that I could recover after an update trashed things was Slackware (ran out of disk space while updating glibc. Bad! Bad!). Fedora, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Gentoo left things so demented, my only option was to wipe and re-install. If/when I want that, I'll run Windows. The only dependency-based system I'd trust is Debian, thanks to their long road of experience (just weeks fewer than Slackware) and the policies borne from those hard knocks. And right now, I am trusting it, on a small, credit-card sized scale, running it on my new Raspberry Pi. But that isn't a fresh install, it's an image developed specifically for the RPi. OTOH, I'd really like to put Slackware on the RPi, just to show that (1) it's possible, and (2) that I can. I'd even like to do a HOWTO on it. I know, bragging rights don't pay bills, but that's not what I'm looking for with my computer work. Those days are done. |
| slacker_mike Apr 20, 2012 9:09 PM EDT |
I disagree with Byzantine as well, that is actually how I feel when I use Debian or RHEL distros in comparison to Slackware, Arch, or FreeBSD. As for Slackware in the corporate setting, sure. You aren't going to run Slackware at a Fortune 500 company as you would be on the hook for support etc, but that is true of basically any distro outside of RHEL, SLES, and Oracle. Corporate environments want the SLA's with vendors to go with it unless they have a massive in-house IT support model. As for the harsh treatment from Eric Hameleers, well I don't think it is the harshest reaction I have seen by a figure in the FOSS world. I think Linus still takes top honors there, and reading some of the Debian developer blogs you can find all sorts of, um, passionate people. I think it is sort of the nature of FOSS sometimes. When someone puts lots of heart and soul and a lot of time into a project, usually with no monetary reward to go with it, it is a passion project. Sometimes that passion can surface in a harsh manner. I am not defending Eric's comments, it is just an observation on why these types of responses are often seen (at least seen by me that is) throughout different FOSS projects. |
| BernardSwiss Apr 20, 2012 9:51 PM EDT |
> My personal take on Slackware is that it is most certainly antiquated, archaic and Byzantine compared to most other distros, I plan to play with Slackware a bit, soon --I have to build a box for it first, but fortunately I have enough spare parts to do so. I nearly started with Slack instead of Debian, but Apt had a reputation for actually working as described, reliably -- that was too hard for a newbie to resist. From what I have seen though, Slackware is not so much "antiquated, archaic and Byzantine" as it is consciously "simple by design", eschewing "refinements" that add complexity for relatively little gain -- especially if such refinements involving altering upstream components. This stands in distinct opposition to the kind of unending tinkering that makes debs and rpms from one distro incompatible with other distros supposedly using the same system. Imagine if LEGO blocks worked like that. Or automobile parts (...ummm... wait a minute...). It reminds me of some of those kitchen utensils and appliances that supposedly make life easier. Often a well equipped kitchen counter is cluttered with "labour-saving devices" that leave scant room for the cook to work, and require so much work to set-up for use, adjust for the current task, dismantle for cleaning, and clean, care for and maintain (safely), that they end up gathering dust while the cook "makes do" with utensils that have been around for centuries, that are readily available in the drawers and cupboards of almost any kitchen. (OK, OK -- aside from the whole SysV versus BSD init thing -- which might be a bit antiquated, but it still works as reliably as a bicycle) |
| BernardSwiss Apr 20, 2012 9:55 PM EDT |
@gus3 This is distinctly off-topic, but I'm feeling lazy so I'll just ask you. I really liked Sawfish, when it was the Debian default -- is it compatible with compiz? |
| caitlyn Apr 20, 2012 10:09 PM EDT |
I've never had a problem with a dependency system. Every problem I have run into can be traced to poor packaging or to poor repository management. I have never had a problem with Red Hat or its clones, or, for that matter, with SalixOS, a Slackware derivative. Dependency checking is a basic function. Without it installing unfamiliar software is a time consuming mess. I wouldn't consider a distro without it. I also have yet to run into a Red Hat/Fedora system I couldn't recover. Ubuntu, yeah, it's a buggy mess. Life is way too short for Gentoo. |
| gus3 Apr 20, 2012 10:11 PM EDT |
@slacker_mike, let's not forget Richard Stallman. @Bernard_Swiss, no, it isn't. It's on the to-do list, but AFAIK it isn't a high-priority thing. |
| gus3 Apr 21, 2012 7:04 AM EDT |
Well, since nobody else said it: OMG! LXer.com went offline! They must be having I55UE56!!!!1111one |
| montezuma Apr 21, 2012 9:14 AM EDT |
Slack is back! http://www.slackware.com/ All hail the Church of the Subgenius: "The central belief in the church is the pursuit of Slack, which generally stands for the sense of freedom, independence, and original thinking that comes when you stop worrying about personal goals. In essence, Slack is about finding satisfaction with what you have and who you are, as opposed for searching for satisfaction in accomplishment." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius#Slack |
| BernardSwiss Apr 21, 2012 7:34 PM EDT |
@gus3 I was going to say it, but I got distracted by a sawfish. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!