VL-5.8.6-SOHO-Release Candidate Two

[uelsk8s]

The VectorLinux development team has decided to cancel further development of the 5.8.6 series.
The limitations, and conflicts of an old toolchain mixed with new software became too much of a hassle.
We have decided to post this RC2 release mostly for historical purposes, and because it may be useful to some.
It is quite stable, but on some machines Beryl causes problems.
This release is considered unsupported. If you have a problem with it we will try to help, but may eventually just recommend a different version.
That being said This release has many improvements from RC1.

The 700 mb iso release is here: http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/veclinux-5.8/iso-test/VL5.8.6-SOHO-RC2.iso
md5sum: http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/veclinux-5.8/iso-test/VL5.8.6-SOHO-RC2.iso.md5.txt

Cheers,
The VectorLinux team

[Dweeberkitty]

What are the plans for the future? Is the development team going to start on 5.9 series or just jump right into 6.0? What major changes will be presented in the next planned release?

[uelsk8s]

I am glad you asked.

We are starting with 5.9
It is based on slack-12.
The biggest change that I know of now will be the requirement of packagers to submit source with there packages.
The 5.9 repo is populated with packages already, and we have a packagers build ready for download.
The dist-upgrade option should work.
you can get the ISO here: http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/veclinux-5.9/iso-test/VL5.9-Pseudo-1.iso
the installer is ugly, but it will help us make sure packages are built correctly.

Thanks,
Uelsk8s

[Dweeberkitty]

Will the 5.8 packages still be compatible with 5.9? I would expect that most would except for an obvious few. In particular, is their going to be much trouble getting our Video Production Bonus Disc ported over to this? Will we have to rebuild most of the packages or do you think that most will work with it?

The dist-upgrade option should work.

Will it work to upgrade from 5.8 to 5.9 or is that too big of a jump?

I'm really looking forward to a Slackware 12 based Vector Linux!

Keep up the good work devs!

[uelsk8s]

Will the 5.8 packages still be compatible with 5.9? I would expect that most would except for an obvious few. In particular, is their going to be much trouble getting our Video Production Bonus Disc ported over to this? Will we have to rebuild most of the packages or do you think that most will work with it?

IMO the packages from 5.8 should not be used on 5.9. They might work, and they might caused segfaults on some systems. not worth the risk if you ask me.

The dist-upgrade option should work.

Will it work to upgrade from 5.8 to 5.9 or is that too big of a jump?

this shouldnt be a problem, 

I'm really looking forward to a Slackware 12 based Vector Linux!

Keep up the good work devs!

you should give it a try it is a nice system so far and will only get better

Uelsk8s

[Dweeberkitty]

you should give it a try it is a nice system so far and will only get better

I will give it a try as soon as I can make room on my system for it. One more thing that I'm curious about, why the 5.9.x naming scheme? It seems that everything that you said about the changes are big enough that it would warrant naming it 6.0. (Slackware made the jump from 11.0 to 12.0)

Also, how much of the next version will be taken from slackware-current? It seems that if VL is based on slack12 it would quickly become behind when the next version of Slackware is released and the rest of the world moves on. Why not take as much from slackware-current as is reasonably possible (without sacrificing stability and sanity of course) so as to have pretty much the same package set as the upcoming version of Slackware? Maybe you do that already, I don't know.

Looking forward to trying it out!

[Joe1962]

...why the 5.9.x naming scheme?

This follows one of the common version numbering conventions, like Gambas2-1.9.x is the development series that will become the stable 2.0. VL 5.9.x is the development line for 6.0.

[exeterdad]

Whoo Hooo! This is going to be fun!

How, where, when do we submit packages for 5.9?

[uelsk8s]

Whoo Hooo! This is going to be fun!

How, where, when do we submit packages for 5.9?

1)How?
same as with 5.8, BUT you must also submit a source dir with the package.
2)where?
In your vectorcontrib in a folder labeled 5.9 packages
3)when?
Now


Thanks,
Uelsk8s

[exeterdad]

1)How?
same as with 5.8, BUT you must also submit a source dir with the package.

Wouldn't have it any other way 

Yeay... New toolchain! I can't wait to see what

--hash-style=gnu

in the LDFLAGS will do with speeding up load times of the bigger apps.  50% faster on VL will be very exciting 

[Dweeberkitty]

Yeay... New toolchain! I can't wait to see what

--hash-style=gnu

in the LDFLAGS will do with speeding up load times of the bigger apps.  50% faster on VL will be very exciting 

Are you serious? I find that hard to believe, 50% faster is such a huge amount that it doesn't seem that it would really be do that. Where did you get that information?

[exeterdad]

I posted about it in the "Roadmap to 6.0" thread but no one seemed to notice.  There are links to info's

http://www.vectorlinux.com/forum2/index.php?topic=3782.msg24616#msg24616

I'm on the new vl5.9 right now.  I'm thinking about building  firefox after

export LDFLAGS="-Wl,--hash-style=gnu"

and then compare it to a regular firefox build to compare load times.  But other than a stopwatch, I don't know how to benchmark load times.

Just for the heck of it I built ntpd with the above mentioned export.  I could see the hash was included successfully by checking a binary

readelf -a ntpd |grep -i GNU_HASH

The result:

  [ 3] .gnu.hash         GNU_HASH        08048148 000148 000048 04   A  4   0  4
 0x6ffffef5 (GNU_HASH)                   0x8048148

So know we can do it with the new toolcain if we chose.  It's already available.  We just need to harness it.
BTW I've been checking random binaries and can't find any packages built thus far with the hash included.    The more built that way would just add to the overall speed of the distro.

[Dweeberkitty]

I posted about it in the "Roadmap to 6.0" thread but no one seemed to notice.  There are links to info's

http://www.vectorlinux.com/forum2/index.php?topic=3782.msg24616#msg24616

I'm on the new vl5.9 right now.  I'm thinking about building  firefox after

export LDFLAGS="-Wl,--hash-style=gnu"

and then compare it to a regular firefox build to compare load times.  But other than a stopwatch, I don't know how to benchmark load times.

Just for the heck of it I built ntpd with the above mentioned export.  I could see the hash was included successfully by checking a binary

readelf -a ntpd |grep -i GNU_HASH

The result:

  [ 3] .gnu.hash         GNU_HASH        08048148 000148 000048 04   A  4   0  4
 0x6ffffef5 (GNU_HASH)                   0x8048148

So know we can do it with the new toolcain if we chose.  It's already available.  We just need to harness it.
BTW I've been checking random binaries and can't find any packages built thus far with the hash included.    The more built that way would just add to the overall speed of the distro.

This will be interesting to test. When I get 5.9 installed, I'll try it with Gimp or something similar that takes a relatively long time to load.

[rbistolfi]

hmm, gimp will need to scan for plugins at startup anyway, and mozilla apps still needs to load a lot of classes in ram at boot time because of the nature of the code. Same for OO and almost every cross-platform app. I dont have a suggestion to try the new compile flags , but I think those apps will not gain too much.

[exeterdad]

hmm, gimp will need to scan for plugins at startup anyway, and mozilla apps still needs to load a lot of classes in ram at boot time because of the nature of the code. Same for OO and almost every cross-platform app. I dont have a suggestion to try the new compile flags , but I think those apps will not gain too much.

KDE    ...but I'd REALLY want to have to test it to build it 

I've got firefox building as we speak.  Hopefully that will answer some questions.  Somewhat anyway.