We conclude our Slackware challenge & share the lessons and results.

Plus why you really need to give Firefox another try, easy sandboxing of any Linux app, GTK4’s blockers, the official anti-systemd resource… And we announce another meetup!

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Show Notes:

Follow Up / Catch Up

Without systemd Wiki

The ultimate anti-systemd reference, for us Slackers.

Stratis Is Red Hat’s Plan For Next-Gen Linux Storage Without Btrfs

Stratis aims to deliver equivalent features and ease of use of volume-managing file-systems like ZFS and Btrfs but via a hybrid model. Stratis is being developed by Red Hat developers but hasn’t received too much widespread attention yet.

Firefox 55 Released, This Is What’s New

Projects, technologies and changes like Quantum Flow, Quantum Compositor, Stylo, Photon, WebRender, and WebExtensions sees almost every inch of the browser benefit from a refit or refresh.

Solar Eclipse Oregon Meetup

Solar Eclipse Meetup Map

When:

  • Monday, August 21, 2017
  • 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM

Where:

  • Pacific Wayside Crest
  • 43405 U.S. 101 S, Neskowin, OR

Linux Academy

The Mad Botter launches ‘Alice’ AI bot to assist with productivity and collaboration

Michael Dominick, Founder and CEO of the startup explains, “Alice was born out of the challenges I faced when managing a distributed team. Many businesses are interested in the perks of being able to hire employees all over the world, such as access to great talent at a lower cost. But communication can be challenging without conversations in the hallway. Alice fills the gaps, and makes the distributed office more efficient.”

Progress towards GTK+ 4 – GTK+ Development Blog

The bulk of the time was devoted to discussing all the things that we want or need to complete for GTK+ 4. We have a pretty good idea who is going to work on each of these items, but we did not nail down a very detailed timeline for completing them.

At the end, we collected a list of the items that we consider blockers:

  • Constraint-based layout
  • Support for defining states and transitions in ui files
  • Designer support
  • Convert keyboard handling to event controllers
  • Non-fallback text rendering
  • A finished GL renderer
  • Clean support for subsurfaces in GDK
  • No more root window in GDK
  • Event cleanup

Linux kernel hardeners Grsecurity sue open source’s Bruce Perens • The Register

Our customer contract doesn’t violate GPLv2, biz insists in defamation lawsuit

Share your input on the upcoming Librem Phone’s features – Purism

We’re starting to zero-in on the hardware specifications that will define our first Librem Phone model, and we’d like your help to evaluate a few of the outstanding questions that come down to personal preferences.

DigitalOcean

Firejail | security sandbox

Firejail is a SUID program that reduces the risk of security breaches by restricting the running environment of untrusted applications using Linux namespaces and seccomp-bpf. It allows a process and all its descendants to have their own private view of the globally shared kernel resources, such as the network stack, process table, mount table.

TING

The Slack Challenge

Slackware KDE Screen Shot

Slackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. Originally based on Softlanding Linux System, Slackware has been the basis for many other Linux distributions, most notably the first versions of SUSE Linux distributions, and is the oldest distribution that is still maintained.

  • Initial release 17 July 1993; 24 years ago
  • Latest release 14.2 / 30 June 2016; A Year ago

Slackware, the oldest Linux distribution still being maintained, has turned 24 years old.

Slackware Select Media Screenshot

  • ✅ Booted from USB, get dropped to a login, prompted to login as root, then prompted to run setup.
  • ✅ Felt like modern Linux has worked out those unneeded steps in the installer.
  • ✅ Old school ncurses install as expected
  • ✅ Installed all packages, without prompt. Felt boss level.
  • ✅ The Prompt to create a USB Boot stick at the end is great.

Slackware Select Packages Screenshot

SlackBuilds.org

Our goal is to have the largest collection of SlackBuild scripts available while still ensuring that they are of the highest quality – we test every submission prior to inclusion in the repository.

Salix

Salix is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Slackware that is simple, fast and easy to use, with stability being a primary goal. Salix is also fully backwards compatible with Slackware, so Slackware users can benefit from Salix repositories, which they can use as an “extra” quality source of software for their favorite distribution. Like a bonsai, Salix is small, light & the product of infinite care.

Salix is available in several editions, each built around and focused on a different Desktop Environment or Window Manager. In this page, you can find iso images for MATE, Xfce, Fluxboxand Openbox editions of Salix.

Who is Slackware for?

  • Take the analogy of a “simple” car verses an “easy-to-use” car.
  • The easy-to-use car will have cruise-control, power steering, power brakes, climate control, etc.etc.
  • While the simple car will have none of that.
  • The easy-to-use car will have an automatic transmission that will shift gears for you based on a simple algorithm while the simple car will have a manual transmission where the user has decide when to shift gears and then work the clutch and shift lever to change gears.
  • Now if the “price” for both cars are approximately the same, most people would naturally take the easy-to-use car.
  • But there are some very good reasons some people will take the simple car.
  1. If you are responsible for ensuring the car is 100% operational for 24/7/365, you would probably take the simple car with less that can fail and less complexity that can get the way of you fixing the car.
  2. If you plan on making modifications to your car, it’s easier to do on the simple car.
  3. On the easy-to-use car, sometimes the automatic stuff will make the wrong decisions. E.G: an automatic transmission that up-shifts just before you push the gas pedal and really need it downshift.
  4. Resulting in reduced performance and added stress on the parts.
  • Now Slackware is a distro that goal of simplicity means that easy-of-use is often sacrificed. People
  • People who value reliability, maintainability, modifiablity and predictability know that Slackware has a very prominent place in todays distros.

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