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  ThinkPad X220 (2011) running Slackware-current in 2026. Linux console + tmux. Sometimes that's all you need. :) #slackware #thinkpad #x220

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  GEFS on OpenBSD, a very early preview. Ori Bernstein is porting GEFS, the crash-safe, snapshotting, copy-on-write filesystem originally written for 9front, to OpenBSD. https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=178948744271633&w=2 #openbsd #bsd

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  Ref: https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@lex0de/117260305094274544 This is exactly the kind of project I like to see: small, focused, terminal-first, and portable across Unix-like systems. Nice work! @lex0de@bsd.cafe

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  After a few months of work, slackfetch has reached a mature 1.0 release. A minimal and readable system information utility for Slackware, inspired by ufetch. The normal output and a cowsay -n composition are shown below. https://forge.slackware.nl/r1w1s1/slackfetch #Slackware #Linux #Unix

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  Trying out NextSpace on Slackware -current with XLibre. A modern implementation inspired by the classic NeXTSTEP desktop. It's interesting to see how its design and workflow still feel relevant decades later. Definitely a fun project to explore. #Slackware #NextSpace #XLibre #Unix #X11

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  Before USB sticks, before cloud storage, there were floppy disks. Which one was your first? Mine was the 5.25-inch, and I still remember the sound of the drive reading it. I'd also love to hear what machine you used it with.

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  A short but thoughtful post about cwm. I particularly liked this sentence: "cwm is the only one amongst the minimalist window managers that has managed to make me think the least." Whether you agree or not, it's an interesting way to think about window managers—not in terms of features, but in terms of cognitive load. Worth the two-minute read. https://williamjansson.com/posts/cwm/ #cwm #OpenBSD #Unix #Linux

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  XLibre has landed in Slackware-current's testing tree. Thanks to Patrick Volkerding for making the packages available for testing, and to the XLibre developers for their work. Looking forward to seeing how the project evolves. #xlibre #slackware `Thu Jun 11 23:52:08 UTC 2026 ap/vim-9.2.0620-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. d/cbindgen-0.29.4-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. l/cairomm1-1.18.1-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. l/gmm-5.5-noarch-1.txz: Upgraded. l/libmpc-1.4.1-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. l/meson-pytho...

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  Plasma 6 has officially landed in Slackware-current. Mon Jun 15 23:27:31 UTC 2026 Well folks, it seems that the stars have aligned to bring us a bunch of long- awaited updates, including ffmpeg8 and Plasma 6! This has been developed in a side tree for several weeks, and I'll be happy to get that off my plate and have a greatly reduced todo list. Many thanks to alienBOB for getting the tree in good shape, helping when I got stuck, and for being a good manager who inspires me to do my bes...

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  Plasma 6 has officially landed in Slackware-current. After years of community testing and development, Plasma 6 is now part of the official Slackware-current tree alongside the ffmpeg8 transition. Many thanks to Patrick Volkerding, alienBOB, LuckyCyborg, and everyone who contributed code, packaging, testing, and bug reports along the way. Mon Jun 15 23:27:31 UTC 2026 Well folks, it seems that the stars have aligned to bring us a bunch of long- awaited updates, including ffmpeg8 and Plasma 6! T...

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  Are you familiar with dwm's powerful tag feature? THE TAGGING MODEL Many desktop environments organize windows using rigid workspaces: Workspace 1 Workspace 2 Workspace 3 A window belongs to a single workspace. dwm uses a different model, treating workspaces as bitmask labels (tags). This allows a single window instance to hold multiple tags simultaneously, acting as a persistent visual anchor across different contexts: Firefox -> Tag 1 (Web Browsing) s...

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  19 June 1984. Bob Scheifler announces the first release of the X Window System: "I stole a fair amount of code from W ... and called it X." Forty-two years later, I'm still running X11 daily on Slackware. Happy Birthday, X. Source: https://www.talisman.org/x-debut.shtml #X11 #Unix #Linux #Slackware #XLibre

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  Someone in IRC asked when dwm would be rewritten in a memory-safe language. I think we're only a few decades away: "First rewrite Xlib, Xft, and all the Linux kernel dependencies." :) #suckless #dwm #linux

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  The UNIX shell is still one of the best IDEs ever created. grep/find/sed/awk/make/ssh/git/nvi often compose better than many modern “integrated” environments. Small programs connected together still scale surprisingly well. https://repo.or.cz/code-notes.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/notes/Unix_As_An_IDE.txt #unix #linux #slackware #vi

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  Reading an old UNIX Review article from September 1984 about termcap. Fascinating how much modern terminal software still inherits ideas from this era. vi depended heavily on terminal capability databases to remain portable across different hardware terminals. Bill Joy originally wired vi only for Lear Siegler ADM-3A terminals, and termcap was born from the flood of requests for support on other hardware. "Termcap Unveiled" by Douglas R. Merritt, pages 42-48. https://archive.org/deta...

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  the secret: sxhkd handles the keys. the WM handles the windows. dmenu handles the launching. swap any one. the others don't notice. ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ sxhkd (global, WM-agnostic) │ │ ├─ super+space → menu │ │ ├─ super+p → dmenu_run │ │ ├─ super+l → slock │ │ └─ media keys → volume / brightness │ └─────────────────────────────────────────┘ │ ┌──────────┴──────────┐ ▼ ▼ ┌──...

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  Spent the day exploring heirloom-ex-vi (n-t-roff). It's essentially the cleaned-up 1985 ex/vi 3.7 code — small (~25k LOC for the editor itself vs ~38k for nvi), simple, and very readable. Memory footprint is lower (~3MB RSS vs ~6MB for nvi in typical use). Feels snappy. Limits are by design: fixed temp-file blocks, line pointer table capped at LBLKS=900 in the default build (~230k lines, ~30MB of text). Above that: "Tmp file too large". Trade-offs: no set ruler, single-level und...

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  Spent the day exploring heirloom-ex-vi (n-t-roff). It's essentially the cleaned-up 1985 ex/vi 3.7 code, brought forward by Gunnar Ritter and Carsten Kunze: small, simple, and very readable — about 25k LOC for the editor itself, versus 38k for nvi. The memory footprint is lower too, around 3MB RSS against nvi's 6MB in typical use, and it feels snappy in daily use. The limits are by design rather than oversight. Fixed temp-file blocks and a line-pointer table capped at LBLKS=900 in the de...

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  Slackware Patches "Copy Fail" Kernel Bug — CVE-2026-31431Slackware has issued a kernel security update for CVE-2026-31431, the Copy Fail vulnerability disclosed April 29, 2026. It's an out-of-bounds write in the AEAD userspace crypto interface (AF_ALG) that lets any local user get a root shell via a setuid binary — the same 732-byte Python PoC works on essentially every Linux distro shipped since 2017. If you can't patch right away, Slackware ships the affected code as a modul...

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  the secret to surviving years of WM-hopping: sxhkd handles the keys. the WM handles the windows. dmenu handles the launching. swap any one. the others don't notice. #suckless #unix #dwm

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  Wrote a howto on ZRAM configuration for Slackware -current, covers compression algorithms (lz4, zstd, lzo-rle, etc), device sizing for different RAM scenarios, and monitoring. Useful if you're tweaking the defaults in /etc/default/zram. https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:slackware_admin:zram_configuration #Slackware #Linux #ZRAM

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  Slackware has always been a fantastic environment for development, and officially adding QEMU 10.2.2 to -current just confirms that! 🐧 ap/qemu-10.2.2-x86_64-2.txz: Rebuilt. Recompiled against libcacard-2.8.2, libslirp-4.9.1, spice-0.16.0, and usbredir-0.15.0. Thanks to Daedra. ap/qemu-guest-agent-10.2.2-x86_64-2.txz: Rebuilt. l/graphviz-14.1.4-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. l/libcacard-2.8.2-x86_64-1.txz: Added. Needed by qemu-10.2.2. Thanks to Matteo Bernardini. l/usbredir-0.15.0-x86_64...

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  Finally tested wayback with dwm on Slackware -current! 🎉 wayback is a stub Wayland compositor that hosts a rootful Xwayland server, letting you run your full X11 setup unchanged on top of Wayland. Built from source, wrote a small launch script and dwm came up fine with st. Still experimental and needs some tweaking but the core concept works — keep your dwm, st and all your suckless tools, just drop Xorg underneath. If you're a minimalist X11 user not ready to jump to a Wayland WM, keep a...

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  If you really know your GNU coreutils, you probably don't need as many extra tools as you think. 🐧 KISS isn't just a design principle — it's already built into your system. A comprehensive review of every coreutils command, with examples and honest opinions. The lobste.rs discussion is also worth reading. Article: https://ratfactor.com/slackware/pkgblog/coreutils Discussion: https://lobste.rs/s/xqf5ex/coreutils_comprehensive_review_2023 #linux #unix #coreutils #gnu

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  Ever wonder why vi uses hjkl for movement? It's not arbitrary—it's hardware history. The ADM-3A terminal had arrows printed directly on those keys. ESC was also where Tab is now. Vi wasn't designed for ergonomics, it was designed for the keyboard that existed. http://www.slackware.com/~r1w1s1/nvi.html#_curiosities #nvi #vim #vi

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  Slackware and age verification laws People are worried about laws like AB 1043 (and now similar discussions in Brazil), but they assume a centralized OS with accounts and app stores. That’s not how Slackware works. No forced onboarding, no app store, full user control. Patrick said it best: “my code is my speech… government compelled speech” https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/how-is-ab-1043-going-to-impact-slackware-4175762747/page15.html#post6626190 Slackware wi...

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  Kernel 6.19.9 running on Slackware -current I updated the kernel guide build. https://git.sr.ht/~r1w1s1/code-notes/blob/main/notes/Slackware_Kernel_Build_Guide.txt #slackware #kernel