Debian Bullseye, More Obnoxious Windows 10, Slack 14.2 Notes
Today in Linux news Debian announced version 10 codename at DebConf16 currently in session. In other news Microsoft was just kidding about that whole easier-to-decline thing and Li-f-e may be switching base from openSUSE to Ubuntu. Elsewhere, several reviews warrant a mention besides Neil Rickert's and my own thoughts on Slackware 14.2.
Neil Rickert posted a review of newly released Slackware 14.2 on his WordPress blog over the weekend. He began using Slackware in 1996, so it's safe to assume he's a tad familiar with it. His account is sprinkled with nostalgic notes from Slackware of yore. Rickert reported that he had to disable Secure Boot in order to install on an UEFI machine and required the large kernel in order to boot with GRUB. He also noticed /etc/crypttab seemed to be ignored on boot. Rickert concluded that because of being spoiled, he plans to stay with openSUSE.
I, on the other hand, moved into Slackware 14.2 today and plan on staying with it. Secure Boot has been disabled on my computer since I first fired it up, so I didn't notice anything with that. I too chose the 64-bit version and KDE as my desktop. Like Rickert, I found the installer to be quite familiar and easy. Unlike Rickert, I haven't configured GRUB yet. For now, until I have time to go back and read the fine manual, I just had the installer put lilo (which is all that's offered during install) on a boot disk (USB stick). It works fine, I mean how often do we reboot anyway?
Useradd and startx brought me to my shiny new KDE 4.14.21 desktop. I had no trouble importing my mail and news archives, nor did I run into any issues while fixing the desktop to my liking. I installed the NVIDIA proprietary drivers using its .run file and the Vivaldi browser using RPM2targz, as Rickert noted there isn't a repo full of Slackware extra packages. Yes there is slackbuilds.org, but that too requires new learning for me. It's not just an online repo of binaries. I did consult the Slackware Documentation to find out about slackpkg usage. Like Rickert said security updates are practically manual. You have to monitor the project's security announcements and update slackpkg. I really didn't run into any problems until I wanted compat32-tools. Installing that sounds like it's going to be a challenge, but I'll try to get through that tomorrow or the next day.
Using Slackware has been easy with my old trust KDE desktop. I did have to write a firewall and put a link in rc.local. I set the default runlevel to 4 and now it boots straight into the graphical KDM login. I'm a bit rusty as I've been using Mint for too long, but it's coming back to me. Yes, Slackware isn't as convenient as Mint and others, but I think the trade-off is worth it. It feels good to have some control back.
The exact opposite is what's happening to Window's users now. I thought Microsoft had seen the light and softened their stance on the high-pressure upgrade, but I should have known better. Now users are confronted by a full-screen attention grabbing Barney-purple nag screen. You will be assimilated.
In other news:
* Future of Li-f-e: Linux for Education distribution
* Review of Linux Mint 18, Thoughts on Mint 18
* Fedora 24 - It isn't for everybody, but then, it doesn't try to be
* Some OpenMandriva 3.0 artwork