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Reports of Slackware's death way premature
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Comments (16)
Mr. Volkerding actually responded to the same story posted on Slashdot with what I believe are the only public comments he has made on the website outage.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2816335&cid=39828905
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2816335&cid=39828905
@gus3: The website is up again.
Of course, the Slashdot story was, at best, misleading. This comment (which I cannot take credit for) lays it out well:
Sadly there are some points in Brian Proffitt's story that give a somewhat misleading picture as well. I agree with his premise and his points, but... there also was a development slowdown where little went into the changelog for several months immediately prior to the outage. It wasn't one outage that caused the concern. It was a series of events.
I remember what Joe Brockmeier wrote when CentOS was having difficulty delivering releases and security patches. It applies to Slackware in this case as well:
Slackware will undoubtedly survive in one form or another. So will Mandriva as I pointed out in the same LQ thread Brian Proffitt quotes and as he points out in the article. It still is better, if you are going to build on someone else's work, to pick a source with a solid foundation. Slackware has a solid technical foundation but a very small, insular development community and little financial backing.
Oh, and FWIW, we didn't rebase. We went back to our roots and are rebuilding it from scratch. Expect a Yarok alpha release in late June.
Read the whole commentOf course, the Slashdot story was, at best, misleading. This comment (which I cannot take credit for) lays it out well:
Quoting:The summary is, as usual, misleading. Caitlyn Martin didn't post this in a DistroWatch article, she (and some other posters) mentioned it in the comments section of that website. She also didn't say she was moving the derived distro to a new base, she said she and the rest of the development team would be voting on the issue as to whether to move to a different base.
Honestly, how bad does a person's comprehension skills have to be to submit this kind of summary?
Sadly there are some points in Brian Proffitt's story that give a somewhat misleading picture as well. I agree with his premise and his points, but... there also was a development slowdown where little went into the changelog for several months immediately prior to the outage. It wasn't one outage that caused the concern. It was a series of events.
I remember what Joe Brockmeier wrote when CentOS was having difficulty delivering releases and security patches. It applies to Slackware in this case as well:
Quoting:Nobody Got Fired for Buying IBM: You Might for Deploying CentOS
You know the old saying, “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”? I don’t know if that’s true or not — seems likely to me that somebody, somewhere may have been fired for buying IBM in its rather lengthy history, but as a rule it’s a good call. And it’s quite likely that people have been laid off to make room in the budget for an IBM purchase, but I digress…
IBM might be pricey, it might not be sexy, but you can count on it. On the other hand, if you’re betting your job on CentOS, and some admins are, you might want to think twice.
Slackware will undoubtedly survive in one form or another. So will Mandriva as I pointed out in the same LQ thread Brian Proffitt quotes and as he points out in the article. It still is better, if you are going to build on someone else's work, to pick a source with a solid foundation. Slackware has a solid technical foundation but a very small, insular development community and little financial backing.
Oh, and FWIW, we didn't rebase. We went back to our roots and are rebuilding it from scratch. Expect a Yarok alpha release in late June.
Just before the (first) outage, KDE 4.8.2 (and related dependencies) was added to -current, and there have also been updates to the kernel and several other packages there in the last few months. I'm just going by memory here, but "immediately prior to the outage" doesn't jibe with my recollection of the sequence of events. That said, I do seem to recall a lengthy period of calm prior to maybe 2-3 months ago.
You're correct that 4.8.2 was pushed, but that was a day or two before the outage. The lack of development activity for a long time, even if followed by a short period of activity, and then the outage, *IS* cause for concern from where I sit.
I would amend your statement to read,
Quoting:The lack of visible development activity for a long time...
No, gus, from what Eric Hameleers wrote there really was a development slowdown. My statement is fine as is. However, you have put your finger on one really big issue the Slackware developers have: they don't communicate well with the community, if at all. It took a statement made by Eric Hameleers in passing to blow up in his face to even get some communication this time.
Okay, I'll grant that. But I do remember earlier times (ancient history by now) when periods of silence on the ChangeLog.txt were followed by several packages updated together, including glibc and/or the kernel and/or the coreutils and/or gcc.
@gus3: No doubt. I really think the problem here was communications. First we had almost none for a long period of time, then Eric Hameleers made a very short post that someone ran with and it ended up in a blog and then in the wider tech press where I saw it. The issues with Slackware were never technical. They may not even be a serious financial problem though there is, at this point, no way to really know. There is a serious communications problem. That's hardly unique to Slackware.
"What wee have he-ah, is a failyah tah comyoonicayte..."
@gus3: You'd fit in real well around here. You're learning to talk like the natives :)
Caitlyn,
You sound suspiciously like a NE ayleetist.
You sound suspiciously like a NE ayleetist.
I don't think one American accent is superior to another, montezuma. I'm just pointing out that a Southern accent is very distinctive. Also, a North Carolina accent is very different from a Georgia accent or an Alabama accent.
FWIW, I did catch the "My Cousin Vinny" reference :) Very funny movie on a lot of levels. I think it was also the last screen appearance for the late Fred Gwynne.
FWIW, I did catch the "My Cousin Vinny" reference :) Very funny movie on a lot of levels. I think it was also the last screen appearance for the late Fred Gwynne.
Just teasin' Oz style.
I went to Europe last year and was told I had the strangest accent somebody had ever heard. An Australian New York hybrid.
I went to Europe last year and was told I had the strangest accent somebody had ever heard. An Australian New York hybrid.
> ...and was told I had the strangest accent somebody had ever heard. An Australian New York hybrid.
I think I've heard of someone who has that beat. He's a former quarterback for Marshall University. The story has it that he came from the Quebec region of Canada and spoke almost entirely French. He learned to speak most of his English while he was at Marshall. So he speaks English with a combined French and southern West Virginia accent. :)
Unfortunately, I can't remember his name, and Google isn't helpful.
I think I've heard of someone who has that beat. He's a former quarterback for Marshall University. The story has it that he came from the Quebec region of Canada and spoke almost entirely French. He learned to speak most of his English while he was at Marshall. So he speaks English with a combined French and southern West Virginia accent. :)
Unfortunately, I can't remember his name, and Google isn't helpful.
"Youx all"?
"Yeux all"?
"Yeux all"?
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Let's hope it's for infrastructure upgrades.