Slackware 4.0 first impressions
The first major Slackware release of the 2.2 kernel era is here. After a fortnight of running it, the headline change is not the kernel — it is what becomes possible above it.
Notes from the field
Writing
Long-form thinking on cyber defence, detection, and resilience — from Slackware-era honeypots through to AI-driven SOC analytics.
Showing posts tagged slackware — 8 results.
A year of Slackware
Looking back on twelve months of running a Slackware box and trying to learn computer security through it. The end-of-year notes I want to remember.
Securing a public web server, end to end
What I changed on a Slackware box before I was happy to put it on the open internet with a real web server running. None of it is exotic. All of it matters.
Compiling the 2.0 kernel by hand, and why it is worth doing once
An afternoon spent producing a kernel that boots my exact machine — without any of the modules I do not need — taught me more about Linux than the previous six months put together.
Why running as root is dangerous, in concrete terms
Everyone tells you not to run things as root. Here is the specific, unglamorous, day-three explanation of why — written for someone who, like me a year ago, mostly did.
ipfwadm: my first firewall rules
A walk through my very first packet filtering rules on Slackware, written deliberately badly so I can explain what was wrong with each one.
Two weeks in: first impressions of Slackware
After a fortnight of installing, breaking, reinstalling, and finally understanding it, here is what Slackware has actually taught me. Mostly that simplicity is its own kind of hard.
First post — why I am writing this down
A birthday resolution, a borrowed modem, and a Slackware floppy stack. The opening note for what I am calling a notebook of practice — written so that I remember.