@birnim Slackware 0.x never had anything called package manager. Everything had to be built from source and you had to manage the dependencies yourself. Was a nightmare until we moved to Debian.
@ram What do you mean Slackware 0.x? The first public release was version 1.00 thirty years ago.
@birnim@fosstodon.org
@josemanuel @birnim couldn’t remember version number. Only remember it was the very first version. we had to compile everything from the kernel because we were tweaking it to make it run as a router and we had our own Ethernet driver because we tried to emulate atm switches and needed custom headers in the frame. Fun times…
@ram I fail to see how that was Slackware's fault. The Linux kernel itself was barely two years old and it would take another year for it to reach version 1.0. Were you really expecting it to be an easy ride? That's like trying to use Plan 9 or Temple OS for serious work and feeling cheated when one realises they're not well suited for it.
But that's not important. What really made me curious was the reason why you said that Slackware was “notoriously easy to break” when it is universally regarded as the most stable and rock-solid distro in existence. What did you do to break the actual distribution?
@birnim@fosstodon.org
@josemanuel @birnim I never said it was Slackwares fault. Just had too many instances of having to go correct versions of glibc or associated libraries to make certain applications work and it definitely was a nightmare if you were not handy with makefiles and C code. I don’t know which version of Slackware you refer to. The first versions had the latest kernel versions but nothing much beyond that. Try bypassing the package manager on today's distros and bringing up X windows for instance. That was pretty much what we were doing in the last century. What versions worked on one computer will most definitely not work on another just because the graphics card was different. And with no google around to help you figure out which ones worked. That is what I had in mind when I wrote “notorious” ;-)
Windows hid all the details behind their bsods which was really hell compared to Slackware’s inconvenience :)