Keys to the Slackware kingdom
While Slackware isn't as hard to use as some would lead you to thing, it is different enough from Ubuntu, Debian and Red Hat that a how-to is in no way a bad thing. In fact, a lot of things are easier in Slackware than in other distros because Slack's command-line tools do more of the work for you than many Slackware users would have you believe. (I love xwmconfig, netconfig and pkgtool and wonder why Debian doesn't have similar utilities ... although apt probably makes up for all other omissions.)
Still, if there were any up-to-date books on running Slackware, I'd be the first in line to buy one or all of them. Alas, there's nothing out there.
But my Slackware guru, Willy Sudiarto Raharjo, points out an online Slackware how-to that has just been updated for Slackware 12.
I recommend this site for anybody who wants to learn Slackware, and I suggest you go to the Slackware Linux Basics home page, where you can choose between the HTML version, a single-page HTML version, or a 234-page PDF (I'll take a PDF any day ... but it's nice to have the HTML version for when you happen to be online). The version for Slackware 10.2 is there as well, and while the Slackware 12 version is called a "work in progress," it's of very high quality.
I'd like to thank Willy for pointing me in the right direction, and I'd also like to thank all of those who work on Slackware Basics for the much-needed service they are doing.
Why there are no up-to-date books on the market for Slackware or Debian ... or pretty much anything that isn't Ubuntu, SUSE or Red Hat ... is something that mystifies me, but then again, I'm not in the technical-book marketing business.
Comments
Hi Steven,
Cheers for posting the Slackware links. I've had the chance to admin quite a few of them in the last 6 months at work so you'd think I would've found those pages myself. Instead I've made do with a dog eared copy of 'Essential Slack' from a number of years ago. Up to date technical books are great but it's much easier to find important sections in a book that's well broken in. Our version is multi-user, meaning it's so well broken in it has broken in two.
As for Debian books there are a few freely available ones that are regularly kept up to date:
GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide
http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/
Debian Reference
http://qref.sourceforge.net/Debian/reference/index.en.html
The Survival Guide is available free as html. To support the author you can buy a pdf version.
The Debian Reference is a more technical focus on the OS itself. If you always want the most recent version available even when offline you can simply 'aptitude install debian-reference-en'. How cool is that?
Regards,
ABCC
Posted by: ABCC | January 23, 2008 12:06 PM
ABCC, thanks for the Debian Survival Guide and Debian Reference links -- I'm eager to see both of those.
Both Slackware and Debian are great choices for both critical server installations as well as desktops. One thing I will probably do the next time I install Slackware is add slapt-get and Gslapt as soon as possible. Using Gslapt to update my Wolvix installation has made it so much easier to keep the box up to date. With Slackware, I started out the last time checking the Web site, FTPing the updates and installing them with updatepkg ... but after a while, you might say I "slackened" up on doing the updates.
Still, I'd like to see books in the commercial marketplace -- at Borders, Barnes & Noble, on Amazon, etc., -- covering Slackware and Debian. I think there's a market there, but the big publishers don't seem to agree with me.
Posted by: Steven Rosenberg
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January 23, 2008 12:34 PM