As a Linux user I am often asked or confronted about my distribution of choice. More often than not I respond with a statement that mimics the following: well, it depends on what I need out of the distro. Quickly, I’m met with; did you see this new distro that just came out? Did you see its package management tool? Did you see this… did you see that… etc.
For me, more often than not, the package management tool is the deciding factor in choosing a new Linux distribution. But what if someone has an old box; a development box, a web server box, a firewall, a box to run some services or compile some code or whatever. This machine runs a Linux distro which is so old, that you find yourself deciding on whether to wipe the hard drive and install a new distro or perform a manual update/upgrade. Many older Linux distributions don’t have an easy way to execute an update/upgrade. So what does one do?
Well, I am one of those people. I have an old machine running Slackware 8 and I recently ran into such a situation. Yes, I know the distribution is old and I should probably move to a newer version, but as long as updated packages/patches exist for it, I’m in a comfort zone, thanks to SWaret.
SWaret has saved me a ton of time, primarily because I did not wipe my box and go back to configuring the new installed OS to the way it was. SWaret takes care of all the little things I do not want to do manually to keep my machine updated and secure. For some slack users, this could take an extended amount of time, especially when packages have multiple dependencies.
So, SWaret, well, it takes care of dependencies, updates, upgrades, removal of packages and more, plus it’s easy to use and beats Slackware’s out of the box pkgtool. No it doesn’t have a web interface yet (although I think it’s in the works). However, it does have a GUI front end to it. The GUI front end does not come with the package, but it’s a separate project called QtSwaret aimed at Slackware and Slackware based distros. SWaret is not restricted for use on older Slackware distributions; it also works very well on new Slackware distros.
Share on Technorati . del.icio.us . Digg . Reddit . Slashdot . Facebook . StumbleUpon
Related posts:
