On Tue, 25 Mar 2003, Gordon Messmer wrote:
Everyone has what they want, except for those who want the same old
thing.... If you want the same old thing, run Slackware. It hasn't
changed in YEARS. As a consequence, it's a damn pain to maintain.
I take offense to that, as a longtime slackware and redhat user, I find
nothing hard about maintaining slackware in the least. This list is not
the place for mudslinging. Maybe you haven't changed in years, but I would
suggest you look over the software implimented in the new slackware 9.0,
you might be surprised. :)
I'm aware of Slackware's state.
I find that people who become accustomed to a thing no longer think that it's hard. However, keeping a large farm of Slackware machines up to date is significantly more difficult than it is on any other common Linux distribution. On Debian, you can "apt-get upgrade" and be done. On Red Hat, you can do the same, or you can subscribe to RHN and get a web based view of all of your machines, discover where updates need to be applied and apply them. What has Slackware got that compares to that?
Slackware's package management tool is basically the same today as it was 7 years ago (or more). Back then, it might have been acceptable, but today it is not. Package management software is expected to track dependencies to prevent you from installing something that isn't going to run (like an update to openssh that was built on a different version of openssl). Until such a thing is introduced, keeping a Slackware system up to date or installing new software on a Slackware system will be less reliable/simple than the same task on any other distribution.
It's not personal, and there's no reason for you to be offended.
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