REVIEWS Linux distribution
Slackware 15.0
He’s no masochist… until there’s a new Slackware release, when Mayank Sharma puts himself through all kinds of pains to relive the good ol’ days. IN BRIEF
Slackware was created by Patrick Volkerding and had its first release almost three decades back, in 1993. This makes the distro one of the two oldest Linux distros that are still actively maintained, with the other being Debian. They say, “If you want to learn Debian, use Debian. If you want to learn Fedora, use Fedora. But if you want to learn Linux, use Slackware.” This still holds true.
ne of the unique aspects that differentiates of users who are still using Slackware, and continue Slackware from the other distros is its glacial to do so. pace. Even as the distro is actively developed Another important change that helps catapult behind the scenes, it doesn’t put out releases as often as Slackware to the modern Linux desktop is support for the some of the current crop. PAM library. Starting with this release, the distro also So while most modern distros, such as Ubuntu and moved away from ConsoleKit2 to elogind that helps run Fedora, release every six months or so, Slackware follows software that depend on systemd while running on distro the “release when it’s ready” philosophy. No surprise, that doesn’t use it, like Slackware, which still uses its then, that Slackware 15 is the distro’s first major release in custom System V-based init system. over a decade. In fact, the distro last had a stable dot release back in 2016 (v14.2, in case you’re wondering). Into the workshop And what were the devs up to in the meantime? Designed for experienced Linux campaigners, Slackware’s According to the release notes of Slackware 15, they charm is that it’s the most Unix-like Linux distro. It tested over 400 different kernel versions before settling adheres to the Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) design on the 5.15 LTS kernel for this release, which will be philosophy, which enables advanced users to build their supported until at least October 2023, and going by Linux desktop or server exactly as per their requirements recent trends, most probably for quite a while longer. without any bloat and unnecessary components. In addition to the excellent hardware support brought Slackware takes pride in helping users exercise complete in courtesy of the 5.15 kernel, including preliminary control over their installation, and everything in the distro, support for Apple’s M1 chip, the distro can now boot on from its installer to package management system is a computers with the UEFI firmware. However, it still doesn’t reflection of its ethos of technical simplicity. support running under SecureBoot, but the release notes As is customary for Slackware, the latest release also hint that it might be supported in the next release. ships with two kernels. There’s the huge kernel that rolls in Another major update is the switch to the KDE 5.23.5, which is the desktop environment’s 25th anniversary edition. Slackware 14.2 was a rock-solid release, like all KDE releases, but it used KDE 4.x desktop, which was off-putting for many users, and made the oldest surviving Linux distro look the part. The other desktop that ships on the ISO is the lightweight Xfce 4.16, which is the latest release from Xfce. Other important changes from the point of view of the desktop is support for the PipeWire server for handling audio and video streams, hardware, and the Wayland display Slackware’s installer is replete with throwbacks to the good ol’ days. There’s even an option to server. This is going to benefit a lot install the LILO bootloader on a floppy disk.
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USABLE SLACKWARE Most Slackware users weren’t running Slackware 14.2 on their machines, and were instead using Slackware’s rollingrelease “-current” branch. This is where all the development takes place, until it’s considered stable enough for a release, at which point it’s split into the development branch for the next release. While it can be considered the equivalent of the Testing branch of most
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other distros, and isn’t advisable for production servers, it’s become a popular method for powering desktops among Slackware users. Then there’s Slackel that uses the latest software from Slackware-Current, and combines them with the userfriendly tools from the Salix project. Salix is based on Slackware’s stable releases and has been dormant for quite a while.
However the distro has produced some custom tools that Slackel has borrowed to give new users a pleasant experience, straight from installing the distro to the dependency resolving graphical package-management tools. Other desktop-friendly Slackware derivatives include Absolute Linux, Zenwalk, both of which have put out releases based on Slackware 15.
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