No mystery, Slackware.

This paper introduces the Slackware design idea and its notable features in a more comprehensive way, and tries to attract more people to understand and try this excellent distribution.

Introduction

The 10-Year-old Slackware is the longest-surviving distribution in Linux history, with the largest number of users in all distributions in its heyday. But with the commercialization of Linux, Redhat, Mandrake and SuSE these products dominate the market through large-scale business promotion, and Debian, as a community release, also has a large user base. By contrast, Slackware's silence has made it disappear from the vision of many people, especially those who have recently started using Linux.

Slackware's weakness in Chinese support has also criticized it for Chinese users, with the result that Slackware's number of Chinese users is much lower than other prestigious distributions. The number of domestic users, so that Slackware was covered with a layer of mystery veil, some rumors, such as difficult to install, Chinese support is not good, so many users dare not easily try.

But in fact, Slackware has long been known for simplicity, security and stability, with a wide range of loyal users worldwide, whose status is ranked among the top 5 in all major distributions. Many people think that the slackware is strange, ease of use, deviated from the mainstream of Linux business applications. But in my opinion, Slackware is the most suitable distribution for personal learning and use.

Slackware's philosophy of design ──kiss

KISS (Keep It simple,stupid── keep it simple) is slackware consistent principle, as far as possible to keep the system concise, so as to achieve stability, efficiency and security. In Slackware's philosophy, simplicity (simple) means that the design of the system is concise, rather than user-friendly (user friendly), and Slackware to some extent sacrificing ease of use in order to achieve a simple goal.

Under the guidance of the KISS principle, even if the GUI gets a lot of applications today, even though many users are now unfamiliar with the text interface even fear, Slackware consistently maintain the text interface of the system Setup program, maintaining the Text Interface System Setup tool. In Slackware's view, the graphical installation interface and system management tools, although user-friendly, are too complex.

BSD mode of start-up management, is slackware most independent of the place. Today, with the introduction of System V in most distributions, Slackware still insists on the BSD approach, because the BSD approach is simpler and more intuitive.

Slackware's unique in package management is also the embodiment of KISS principles. It is in the tgz format of the package, is the ordinary tar.gz format compressed files, package management tools are just some shell scripts.

In the choice of software package, Slackware does not try the perfection, only installs some commonly used software. The software version is not necessarily up to date, but more about security and stability, and is designed to ease the burden of system management.

It is the insistence of the kiss principle, Slackware has won the reputation of simplicity, security, stability and efficiency, and has won a large number of loyal users.

Below, I will make a detailed description of these features of the Slackware.

Installation and setup tools for text interface

10 years of Slackware installation procedures are text interface, the reason is that the text of the system to face the low consumption of resources, in addition, even if the system on the machine graphics equipment support is not good, as long as the text interface can work, you can complete the installation of the system. Although the text interface installer is now a lot of users are unfamiliar, but as long as overcome the initial fear emotion, carefully and carefully according to the screen prompts to operate, installation of Slackware system is not a difficult, fast installation speed is the use of the text interface compensation.

Slackware almost no graphical (GUI) system configuration program, only a limited number of text interface settings tool. In contrast, Redhat is known as redhat-xxx-config Configuration tool, Mandrake has a well-known Drake series configuration program, SUSE provides an integrated YaST configuration center. Something like this is slackware inside the house.

In the view of Slackware designers, the text interface is simpler than the graphical interface, as long as access to the system, the text interface commands can play a role; graphical tools require graphics system support to work properly. On the other hand, although the graphical setup tool makes system management easier, it hides many details of the system setup. In Slackware, you need to know more details, so even if you don't have a special configuration program, you can often edit the system's configuration file directly with the editor, giving you a full sense of control.

It should be pointed out that although Slackware only uses text interface tools in System setup, it does not mean that it rejects graphics systems. Slackware provides a standard XFREE86 or xorg (starting from the Slackware 10.0) X Window System, all X window based software can be successfully installed and run in Slackware.

BSD-mode startup management

Today, in the vast majority of distributions that have selected the System V-boot script, Slackware still insists on using the BSD-style startup script. In Slackware's view, System V scripts can create unnecessary complexity for systems management, with complex structures that are both difficult to understand and difficult to maintain. Of course, supporters of System V believe that System V has a more flexible and powerful structure. The advantage of using BSD-mode startup scripts is that it is easier to track the system's startup process, and its structure is more intuitive and easy to modify. However, because some of the large software is designed for System V Linux systems, installing in Slackware can encounter incompatibilities. To improve the compatibility of the Slackware system, from version 7.0, Slackware also added support for System V startup scripts.

Simple and flexible package management mechanism

Slackware is also a significant feature of how software packages are managed differently from many other distributions.

Most users who know a little about Linux systems know that different distributions provide different mechanisms for package management, a convenient installation and uninstallation of software, and the second is to solve the problem of interdependence between software packages that are often encountered in the installation. The most commonly used package format is the RPM format developed by Redhat, and several major distributions such as Redhat, Mandrake, and SuSE are all in this format, while Debian uses its own Deb format, and some distributions use their own unique formats.

Slackware adopts the ordinary tgz format. The tgz format is actually a gzip compressed, tar-packed file format, and the common tar.gz in the format exactly the same, the difference is in the tgz package to add to the Slackware package management tools identified by the description file, provide the software installation destination and other information. When installing the software, the Slackware Package management tool copies the files according to the content of the description file to the corresponding destination while decompressing.

In particular, Slackware does not consider dependencies when installing the TGZ package, that is, it does not check for conflicts between the newly installed software and other software that is already in the system, and does not check whether it is necessary to install a different package before the current software works properly. In the use of RPM users, it is not too insurance? The reason for Slackware is that the system administrator should know what's in their system and should know what to install. Since a variety of package management tools can not fundamentally eliminate dependency hell nightmare, rather than simply by the user to decide.

Due to the relatively small number of software in the tgz format, it is often necessary to compile the software from the source code when using Slackware. Interestingly, although Slackware basically takes a "laissez-faire" approach to package management, it's very rare to compile the software without having a problem with the library or the library, and most of the time it's very smooth.

In order to facilitate slackware software upgrades and installations, and to make improvements in dependency management, projects such as Swaret, Slapt-get, and slackupdate have emerged.