Well, I've had some problems with the recent SLS. For one
thing, they've unnecessarily compiled in the ethernet drivers into the
a1 kernel, without making any use of them. On the machines we use here,
that causes a1 to lock up, because we have WD8003EB boards that the
driver doesn't correctly identify as being 8-bit, and it tries using it
as 16-bit. After removing the board, the SLS installed smoothly, and I
went on to attempting to recompiling the kernel. KA-BOOM! Their ipc
patches were apparently incorrectly applied (they don't seem to
distribute the same linux source that they use to compile the boot
kernel - if they did, it would avoid some of these problems). If they
haven't fixed it yet, you'll need to fix 2 #include lines, one in
linux/ipc/sem.c, and a corresponding line in linux/ipc/shm.c. They
include <sys/s[eh]m.c>, instead of <linux/s[eh]m.c>. I fixed that, and
set the FORCE_8BIT flag in the WD driver, and I'm up and running with
tcp/ip. I'm still working on smail, but I'm getting there. To be
frank, I'm disappointed with the declining quality of the SLS, as
measured by the inattention paid to the core files, but the
ever-expanding range of utilities pleases me, so I'd have to say it's a
wash. If you don't have any odd-ball kernel problems, and don't feel
like compiling everything under the sun, it's a good thing to get.
--
pegasus@csd4.csd.uwm.edu David R. Hucke
UW-Milwaukee Film Major