General questions about Vector (from long-time Slackware user)

[kikinovak]

Hi,

I'm an Austrian sysadmin living in Montpezat (South France), and a 100% GNU/Linux user since 2001. Back then, I made my first steps on Linux on Slackware 7.1 on a batterred 486. I've been working with various distros for some years, mostly Slackware, Debian and (lately) CentOS, a RHEL clone. I've also fiddled with all the major - and some exotic minor - distros. Right now I'm running a Linux consulting business (http://www.microlinux.fr) , and I do things such as networking public libraries using 100% Linux and OSS.

About two years ago, I've been working on a project called "Slick", which was basically Slackware + XFCE + GNOME libs + multimedia. I never really published that thing. Well, it was always sort of available as an SVN tree (200+ SlackBuild scripts and some documentation), but never aimed at the public, only for use in my business. But working on your own distro, even if it's just a spinoff, is quite some work, so I eventually switched to a second-best solution, a mix of CentOS and Fedora (quite heavily tweaked, old habits never die  ).

I just read the Distrowatch review of VL 6.0b, and I thought, heyyyy, this is exactly what my Slick project intended to be. So right now I'm downloading 6.0b to get an idea (I live in a remote place in the French countryside, we only have low-bandwidth DSL), but I'm curious about the innards of the distro. Do you guys publish the distro source somewhere, like Slackware does in /source?

cheers from the rainy South of France,

N.

[EyesOnly]

Salut Kikinovak et sois bienvenu icitte au forum de VL!

And that's as far as I'll go in my patois of French---as I'd soon have you laughing very hard when you see what a "hillbilly-redneck" I am! LOL! ("Akadien" is my Mother Tongue: Parent of Cajun.)

As to the "distro sources being published somewhere" I'll have to leave that up to "The Regulars" here to answer. I'm sure Caitlyn, who helps to maintain the repo on a volunteer basis, along with several others, would know for sure exactly where they are held and on what server, d'accord mon ami?

I just wanted to comment and welcome you to our little forum, and hope that you liked very much our VL distro! Myself, I use "VL-5.9 Light" for my preference. It's fabulous! It gave me a base with ALL the software I particularly use on a day-to-day basis (as if the Devs read my mind!) along with the excellent LXDE desktop (also JWM, Fluxbox, and Openbox), and then upon this lite-weight distro I've been able to build much more as my needs have grown---from both the VectorLinux and Slackware-current repos. (I mention this because of how you build your system, perhaps this may be something of interest to you as well?)

I also commented because I wanted to thank you for including your website URL. C'est vraiment interresant! Very well professionally done (of course), and a wonderful layout. I really have appreciated you sharing this and wish you much success with your business!

Et encore notre ami: Sois bienvenu au forum de VL!

Amicalement/Cheers!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge d'Acadie"

[caitlyn]

Welcome to VL!  I'm glad someone read my column

Yes, we have a /source directory in the repository for eacy version of VL.  For VL 6.0 it would be /vectorlinux-6.0/source.  It is not quite complete at the moment but that's because I am way behind on repository maintenance.  Some of the developers are pitching in so that should be corrected in the next few days.  As a general rule you should be able to find source code and build scripts for everything and anything included in VL.