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Reflections—Day 24© Copyright Darrell Anderson. I am getting more comfortable with Slackware and at this stage of my journey I now see no reason to try additional distros. Slackware frustrates me because of the lack of intuitive tools, but I now have invested sufficient time that I know my way around the Slackware environment and I possess no desire to start over and learn another way. Despite the lack of intuitive tools, the simplicity is almost too much for me to resist. For example, I now loathe the idea of using a System V init system. Unless something disturbing happens with Slackware, I think I have found a GNU/Linux home. However, something on my mind for the long-term is how I am going to maintain and update my Slackware environment. I am on dial-up and almost all software vendors these days provide updates through their web sites and mirrors. That’s great for people on broadband, but relegates people on dial-up to the back seats of the bus. The best solution seems to have a broadband buddy to download and burn the Slackware ISOs. Although there are many web sites to obtain the “stable” version, I know of only one web site where complete ISOs for current are provided. I could teach my broadband buddy how to FTP the entire current tree, but I don’t know how to create a bootable ISO from raw files, especially on Windows, which many people use. I suppose I could have my broadband buddy send me the files as data disks and then I could learn how to create the ISO. Another hurdle to jump, I guess. Once I have the disks, whether as ISOs or data disks, I then could configure slackpkg, slapt-get, swaret, or kpackage to look locally for the updated files. Of course, I always could wait for the official stable release and update from those CDs. Yet, current seems as stable as any distro I’ve seen, so why not update continually in small bites rather than wait? Massive updating has never been fun or easy in any operating system. Nonetheless, I seem “stuck” having to maintain my system using a manual “change log” process. Is there a more convenient way I am overlooking? On my to-do list is to install K3B. I’ve been using K3B for a couple of years, although I barely know all of its potential. For example, as I just mentioned, I don’t know how to take a data project and burn a bootable ISO. Thus far, I’ve only burned data disks and created bootable CDs from existing ISO images. I am concerned with how to configure K3B because of the differences between the 2.4.x and 2.6.x kernels. The latter series no longer needs to use scsi emulation for CD writers. Thus, I don’t know what device K3B will see when running under either kernel. I think my earlier premonition and desire for stability dictates that I simply use the 2.4 series of kernels and remain a happy camper. After all, I have been using the same NT4 kernel for more than four years! Eventually I need to set up a user account and test K3B from there. I don’t recall any problems when I configured K3B in Mandrake 9.2 and I hope my previous experience is matched with Slackware. Thereafter I need to configure my dial-up and internet connection. I won’t set up any of that under root. I can’t imagine dialing out as root. Not smart from a security perspective. I haven’t yet found the time or energy to assemble the parts of my second computer. Therefore I am still toggling with multi-booting, which is inconvenient without an internet connection. That is, I have to boot into Windows to surf and gather information, then boot back into Slackware to test further. The easy plan is inhale and build the second box, and then I could keep the Slackware box running in real-time while I surf for information using the Windows box. Despite having space, however, I don’t want the extra clutter in my office. My primary concern with configuring my GNU/Linux internet environments is firewall protection. Unlike my NT4 side I don’t have any firewall script running in Mandrake 9.2, but on-line testing reveals that all ports are closed. This is one of the nice things about the inherit GNU/Linux design philosophy. Even without a firewall all ports are inaccessible. Obviously a firewall becomes imperative if one needs to open ports, but I do not anticipate that in the near future. Thus, I probably will be fine without a firewall. Yet, even with GNU/Linux a firewall seems like sensible additional protection. Especially if someday I want to connect to my home computer from elsewhere. However, IPTables is not something to master in one evening! I plan to use a front-end utility and hope for good results. I might have found a GNU/Linux home, but I certainly have far to journey before I can kick off my shoes and relax! Finis. |
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