Last edited: 8 July 2009. Probably still works. That's the power of following the Unix philosophy. With Slackware, you learn how to use tools that apply across the *nix ecosystem and last a lifetime. Little time is spent on distro-specific knowledge. And you still get a stable system with wide software availability.
Maybe I'm lazy, but I like my software dependencies. I like being able to apt upgrade everything and not have to worry about it. Also, especially now with a lot of kernel exploits running around I want a distro that patches everything quickly.
Slackware has a great track record for providing security updates for older versions at least, often pushing security updates to versions that came out more than 10 years ago. What you're talking about is timely security patches and that's different. It's possible they don't push as many security updates as other distros or not as timely from lack of manpower but I'm not sure even of that, the team is very competent. Check out this page for their security advisories. There were three kernel security patches pushed to the repos this month.
So I don't know how many there are in Debian but what I want to clear up, in case your impression was different, is that people don't install Slackware and then just never update. There is a package manager called slackpkg. To update all packages that are included in the distro, the commands are:
Then you have to tell your bootloader about the new kernel.
Regarding dependencies: Slackware simplifies package management by shipping with a lot of software including libraries so that you usually already have them installed. A full install basically includes everything in the official repositories. Slackware is stable so updating within a release should go fine while updating to a new release requires care just like with Debian. Resolving dependencies is only relevant for 3rd party repos like Slackbuilds and there are in fact package managers that do that. Sbopkg is a program for downloading and executing slackbuilds automatically. It comes with a tool called sqg which builds que files for every available slackbuild. You can just load one of those and it will resolve the slackbuilds in order. It seldom fails for me. It's comparable to installing software from the AUR using one of the dedicated tools for that.
Nah I realize people update Slackware, it's just more work. At least it was when I tried it out. I have nothing against slack, I just want a stable release with timely updates that I don't have to tinker with. Debian has filled that need for me for quite a while, but there are pros and cons to every distro.
Fair enough, we all have our own experiences to go by and I'm not trying to convince you to switch to Slackware or anything. I wonder why our experiences are so different however. Things can always go wrong when it comes to updates. Everyone says that Debian is rock solid but it consistently breaks for me. I treated it the way you describe, just apt upgrade everything, however it would recommend to change essential boot files that render the system unbootable. I even foresaw it going wrong, but trusted the system's confidence in the change by defaulting to Y. I simply did apt update; apt upgrade and hit enter a bunch of times, and that was enough to render it unbootable.
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Last edited: 8 July 2009. Probably still works. That's the power of following the Unix philosophy. With Slackware, you learn how to use tools that apply across the *nix ecosystem and last a lifetime. Little time is spent on distro-specific knowledge. And you still get a stable system with wide software availability.
Maybe I'm lazy, but I like my software dependencies. I like being able to apt upgrade everything and not have to worry about it. Also, especially now with a lot of kernel exploits running around I want a distro that patches everything quickly.
Slackware has a great track record for providing security updates for older versions at least, often pushing security updates to versions that came out more than 10 years ago. What you're talking about is timely security patches and that's different. It's possible they don't push as many security updates as other distros or not as timely from lack of manpower but I'm not sure even of that, the team is very competent. Check out this page for their security advisories. There were three kernel security patches pushed to the repos this month.
So I don't know how many there are in Debian but what I want to clear up, in case your impression was different, is that people don't install Slackware and then just never update. There is a package manager called
slackpkg. To update all packages that are included in the distro, the commands are:Then you have to tell your bootloader about the new kernel.
Regarding dependencies: Slackware simplifies package management by shipping with a lot of software including libraries so that you usually already have them installed. A full install basically includes everything in the official repositories. Slackware is stable so updating within a release should go fine while updating to a new release requires care just like with Debian. Resolving dependencies is only relevant for 3rd party repos like Slackbuilds and there are in fact package managers that do that.
Sbopkgis a program for downloading and executing slackbuilds automatically. It comes with a tool calledsqgwhich builds que files for every available slackbuild. You can just load one of those and it will resolve the slackbuilds in order. It seldom fails for me. It's comparable to installing software from the AUR using one of the dedicated tools for that.Nah I realize people update Slackware, it's just more work. At least it was when I tried it out. I have nothing against slack, I just want a stable release with timely updates that I don't have to tinker with. Debian has filled that need for me for quite a while, but there are pros and cons to every distro.
Fair enough, we all have our own experiences to go by and I'm not trying to convince you to switch to Slackware or anything. I wonder why our experiences are so different however. Things can always go wrong when it comes to updates. Everyone says that Debian is rock solid but it consistently breaks for me. I treated it the way you describe, just apt upgrade everything, however it would recommend to change essential boot files that render the system unbootable. I even foresaw it going wrong, but trusted the system's confidence in the change by defaulting to Y. I simply did apt update; apt upgrade and hit enter a bunch of times, and that was enough to render it unbootable.