Linuxtopia: Slackware 7 Review | Linux Today

Linuxtopia: Slackware 7 Review

Written By
D
Dave
Nov 15, 1999

This release is a huge step forward for Patrick Volkerding
and the entire Slackware team. It is based on glibc libraries,
instead of libc5.
The main problem I had with Slack 4.0 was
that we couldn’t run some of our favorite programs, since they
needed glibc. This could have been done manually, but we just
didn’t have the time to set it all up. Slack 7 included everything
right from the get-go, which made installation and configuration
much easier.”

“Since this release includes the latest versions of everything,
it will have little difference between the latest versions of other
distributions. We Linuxtopians are most familiar with Slackware and
Red Hat, and Slack 7 is nearly identical to Red Hat 6.1, in terms
of libraries, programs and features. Prior to installing Slack, I
made a tarball of my (Red Hat 6.1 based) home directory. After the
installation, I untarred the tarball and checked out how everything
worked. Everything worked perfectly. I didn’t have to recompile
anything, reset any settings, or anything else. It all just worked.
This was another nice little surprise.”

“Our overall impression of this release is mostly favorable. The
newest libraries are very nice, because they keep us from having to
scramble for the latest and greatest (at least for a little while.
🙂 Being based on the 2.2.13 kernel ensures that the greatest
range of hardware configurations is supported. All in all, this is
a great release, and I think I’m going to end up using Slackware
from now on!”

Complete
Story

D

Dave

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