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Editorial Software Linux

Why Slackware Still Matters 313

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the stuff-that-matters dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In a rebuttal to the recent opinion column "Does Slackware still matter?" at Linux Watch, cRaig Forrester provides insight into Why Slackware DOES still matter--and not just to "hard-core group of hobbyists" or "highly professional" Linux server administrators--but desktop users and newcomers too."
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Why Slackware Still Matters More

Why Slackware Still Matters

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  • A number of years ago (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Namronorman ( 901664 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:16PM (#14103024)
    I used to use Slackware, and I'd imagine it hasn't changed that much since then. Granted it was fun while it lasted, I think it was too high caliber for me. When I finally switched to using distros with package management, everything felt alien. Recently I've been using Ubuntu though which I'd like to say is absolutely amazing so far.

    • Re:A number of years ago (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:40PM (#14103225) Journal
      Slackware has package management. If you read either of the articles, you would have noticed that. In addition, you can choose between package managers. From the article:

      On Slackware, you have a choice of package managers! Swaret? Slapt-get? SlackUpdate? Take your pick! In fact, I would venture to guess that given its agnostic design, more packages are installable on Slackware than any other distribution.

      Personally, I like Slackware because it is clean, simple (once you understand it), and easy to administer. With Slackware, I can understand everything going on in my computer, and that makes me feel happy.
      • I guess I wasn't too clear on the time frame, my fault. I meant that I switched from Slackware quite a long time ago before there was even the thought of Fedora Core or many of the newer distros. I was mainly trying to say that when I originally switched to a distro that had package management, it was alien/strange/bizzare.
      • I've gotten by with installpkg/removepkg for the last 9 years on slackware. I think I should check out some of those other tools...there must be an easier way then:

        less MANIFEST.BZ /libtiff #to find what directory the package name will sit in
        q
        ncftp <slackware mirror> #I like how ncftp preserves date stamps
        cd <path to package>
        get <package>
        quit
        d /var/adm/packages/<package> #to see if I have a prior version installed

    • Re:A number of years ago (Score:4, Funny)

      by JPriest ( 547211 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:23PM (#14103564) Homepage
      I tried Ubuntu also, but I found that it was just too difficult to install software. There is limited community support with sites like ubuntuguide.org [ubuntuguide.org] but the descriptions on that site are just too difficult to follow for me. The other thing I really hated about it were the overly bright colors and useless eye candy, it gives me a head ache. I with I could change it to something a little more earthy and easy on the eyes. It is out of my price range.

    • Re:A number of years ago (Score:3, Interesting)

      by farrellj ( 563 )
      As the creator of a Slackware based distro, MfxLinux, I can tell you that Slackware is one of *the* best distros for building upon. In many ways, it holds true to the concept of Unix, which gives you the full control to either do something wonderful, or totally fsck up. And that is so nice after the hand-holding that Red Hat, for examples smothers you with. It might be great for newbies, but for those of us who really want to have full control of their system, it is probably one of the best Distros for tha

  • Slackware? I'm still using SLS! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:19PM (#14103049)
    I didn't hear about this newbie distro "Slackware" since I'm using SLS and I'm happy with my kernel v0.97.1 (a.out)
    I guess I'll look into upgrading.
    I still need to have a "boot" floppy and a "root" floppy for my system to IPL, right?

    • Re:Slackware? I'm still using SLS! (Score:5, Informative)

      by tchuladdiass ( 174342 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:59PM (#14103356) Homepage
      You do realize that you can use rdev to set the root filesystem on your kernel, don't you? That way, you can copy your "root" floppy contents to a hard drive partition, stick your boot disk in the drive, and "rdev /dev/fd0 /dev/hda1". Now, next time you boot from that floppy, it will mount your hard drive partition as it's root filesystem.
      (ok, I'm really showing my age here :-)

  • It's a good first distro (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kavachameleon ( 637997 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:20PM (#14103050)
    Slackware was my very first distro. After Slack, I tried suse and mandrake, but found that when I had problems with using the GUI or configuration tools, that the experience I had gained in Slack was my most useful tool in solving the problems. No, I'm no Linux guru. I use XP on my box for various reasons: particular software availability being the primary reason, and ease-of-use quite honestly being the second. I just don't have time to learn a new OS as well as I know Windows. I use the tool that works best for my situation. Frequently, this means OSS. Sometimes, it means Microsoft. Oh well. But anyway, just gauging from my own experience, Slackware definitely has a place, even for new Linux users.

    • Re:It's a good first distro (Score:5, Insightful)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:26PM (#14103098)
      It's a "good first distro" like DOS was a good first OS. I don't mean that in a good or bad way. It's just the way you may approach and then grow while using any OS.

      With DOS/Slackware you have to actually know some structure, commands, and have a bit of basic knowledge to do anything more than whatever the base install can do. Sure, plenty of people can use Slackware, type startx, and use a window manager just like you could have typed "win" when you booted your DOS OS and gotten to the same thing.

      Slackware was my first Linux distro and I learned a ton from it. I learned how to compile my own kernels (after screwing them up 100s of times), how to make sure my system stayed in order, and how to edit my own .conf files. DOS taught me quite a bit of the same stuff.

      I run Debian now (after trying various other distros but mainly RH 5.1, 5.2 and 6.0) and with the knowledgebase I gained over the years running Slackware I'm comfortable using maintained packages while still being able to know what the fuck is going on in my system.

      Problem is that people don't typically want to "learn" how to "properly" use their OS. They want to turn on the machine and surf the web. That's fine. Slackware is not all that great for that. I would recommend something more modern for that type of user.

      So, if you're looking to actually *learn* about Linux, use Slackware first for a couple months and then switch to something else that's fancier... If you're looking to use Linux to replace your XP experience and you don't want to fuck around with a bunch of work, use something modern right off.
      • not only is it a good first distro but it kicks all other distros asses hard when you try something complex.... like building it into your own embedded distro/OS for a 8meg flash/16meg ram embedded processor.

        My alarm clock run's Slackware. and does things that most people would kill for in an alarm clock. (mp3 wake "ringtone" text to speech good morning with weather and news, waking me 30 minutes early because it snowed last night, etc....)

        I've tried the embedded distros and tried making redhat fit in small

    • Re:It's a good first distro (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @06:54PM (#14104607) Journal
      It does encourage you to learn a lot, but in that you're going to scare a lot of new users off. The attitude of slackware is really well described in the article:

      Alan Canton simply took nearly 500 words to express what could have been summarized in one sentence: "Linux, as an operating system, is too complex for me."


      Slackware users seem to have this odd puritanical notion that makeing things hard on yourself is a good thing. That somehow they're better people because they can make Slackware work. In my opinion, anything that can be automated should be automated. That's what computers are for! It's not necessarily that anything debian does for you is complex, it's just tedious. What's the benefit of doing all that extra work?

      Also, it's worth pointing out that in your case using slackware as a first distro lead you to not choose it as a primary desktop OS. Had you tried something better you might still be with linux.
      • Slackware users seem to have this odd puritanical notion that makeing things hard on yourself is a good thing.

        As an admin of 40+ Slackware boxes (including my work and home desktops and my laptop), I have to say that's complete bunk. I like to make things as easy as possible, and that is one of the reasons I use Slackware.

        In my opinion, anything that can be automated should be automated.

        Funny, that's my opinion too - again, one of the reasons I love Slackware.

  • Gentoo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jimmyhat3939 ( 931746 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:20PM (#14103053) Homepage
    I was under the impression that Gentoo [gentoo.org] had gotten a lot of the users who want the level of deep control and configurability that this article is associating with Slackware.

    I don't think most people would agree with the following: "So, does Slackware matter? Simply put, YES. Slackware matters because Slackware IS Linux." The reality is that many people who are experimenting with Linux for the first time now use Fedora or Ubuntu.

    I will say this though. I definitely harbor fond memories of using Slackware from 1995. I remember vividly those Boot and Root 1.44MB floppies and trying to install from their extremely early packaging system. Ah the memories...
    --
    Free 411! 1-800-411-SAVE [1800411save.com]

    • Re:Gentoo (Score:4, Interesting)

      by CSGeekPyro ( 897189 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:47PM (#14103269) Homepage Journal
      Gentoo got me!

      I started with running linux "for real" (that is, outside of a VM, as a real, permanent OS on my box) with RH6 way back when. I stayed with RH until the great "piss of everyone with [gnome+kde=bluecurve]" scandal...they still have me drawing a blank on how THAT math works...anyway, after that, I was having to have so much junk on my system to do basic things with it without waiting forever for apps to load.

      After RH did this mess, I went to mandrake linux, but wasn't happy there either: it has almost the same level of bloat. And RPM hell. Don't get me started on that -- I've spent hours fixing rpm dep problems after deciding to try the "development" yum repos on FCx boxen. Why there can't be a "yum downgrade" option...

      After 2 months with Mandrake (I give every distro at least 2 months to learn it's idiosyncrasies before I toss it out of rage or sheer disgust) I tried slackware. It wasn't as shiny as the other previous distros I'd tried, but I figured what the hell and got it up and running. After a week and a half of my slack box up and running, a friend of mine asked me to help fix his gentoo system. He gave me root on his box because he was about to reformat it anyway. The machine was on it's last leg -- the entire HD was such a mess that I told him to back the machine up and we'll reinstall it. I tried to talk him into FC2 (at the time) but he persisted in Gentoo. I thought he was off his nut until I actually installed it. I've been a gentoo user since then and never looked back.

      I have one FC4 box that I use for my router at home, which is only that way because I need fast updates without too much risk of things breaking. Since the system doesn't have X on it, it doesn't seem to have any problems with RPM's with the exception of openssl being the breaking point for just about every pkg on the system.

      Otherwise, my amd64 desktop, my HTPC box, my #2 computer at work, and my Dell Inspiron 5150 all run Gentoo exclusively. I even have an iPaq running familiar+GPE that talks to all my boxen without any problems :). The laptop is a slight exception: it has vmware on it to run windows when some jerkwad just HAS to give me code in one of those .HELL languages with LoseForms that Mono+GTK# can't work well with. I think it's a bit of irony that I went from a windows user with linux in vm's to the exact opposite.

    • Re:Gentoo (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Orgasmatron ( 8103 )
      Quote:

      I don't think most people would agree with the following: "So, does Slackware matter? Simply put, YES. Slackware matters because Slackware IS Linux." The reality is that many people who are experimenting with Linux for the first time now use Fedora or Ubuntu.

      I think you may have missed the point of that quote that you used. When he says "Slackware IS Linux", he doesn't mean that Slackware is the biggest, or most used, or whatever distribution around. Instead he is saying that it is plain; raw.

      W

  • and now I'm wondering why I ever left. That's it, I'm going back to the Slack *now*.
    • libc5 vs glibc/libc6? That's why I switched. It was too much of a pain in the ass to manually upgrade all that shit and it was a fuckton easier to just use something like RedHat instead.

      I stayed away because while it gave me a TON of base knowledge about Linux as an OS, it was too much of a pain in the ass to maintain compared to other distros out there.

      aptitude update; aptitude upgrade is much better than tar -zxf foo.tar.gd ; cd ./foo ; ./configure && make install

      That's me.
      • libc5 vs glibc/libc6?

        For me it was the ELF migration. I managed to get halfway through recompiling everything, then I gave up and switched to Red Hat. I may even have the hard drive around somewhere, in its half-way a.out/ELF state. Stuck with Red Hat ever since (Fedora now, of course.)

  • Reading good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PetriBORG ( 518266 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:22PM (#14103068) Homepage
    I don't know abotu anybody else, but when I first read this headline I read "Why Slackers Still Matter" to which I thought to myself, "Of course Perl programmers still matter!"

    In all seriousness though, I will always feel that Slackware (and others like Gentoo, or home-rolled linux) will matter because installing and using these sorts of distros really do give you an understanding into how Linux works(tm), and maybe more importantly, how to change how it does something. You can't make improvements to something as complicated as Linux without first understanding how it works.

    • Re:Reading good (Score:2, Informative)

      by lRem ( 914073 )
      I will always feel that Slackware (and others like Gentoo, or home-rolled linux) will matter because installing and using these sorts of distros really do give you an understanding into how Linux works(tm)
      I'm using Gentoo for almost a year now, and I'm not so sure I would put it into this group. When it's already installed, emerge teaches you more or less the same things you would learn with apt. The installation and initial configuration used to force people into learning something, but now there are som

  • New Slackware user (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MaelstromX ( 739241 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:23PM (#14103070)
    Throw me in the "newcomer" camp.

    As it happens I just installed Slackware on an old PC I had lying around. Though I had installed and used other distributions before my experience with them was quite limited and I've been mostly a Windows user.

    I chose Slackware merely because it was the easiest to acquire. They offer the torrents right from the official website and they're always well-seeded. I got both CD's in what seemed like no time at all.

    After about a week of usage, it's been holding up fairly well, even with the ancient specs my old PC has. It was even able to support a wireless adapter I stuck in there after I installed madwifi [sourceforge.net]. However I definitely needed a lot of outside help in accomplishing that task, and overall though I was able to get it installed and running fine, a total newbie would have gotten nowhere. If Slackware wants to appeal to that demographic at all (which it very well may not) it needs to fix that.

    • Re:New Slackware user (Score:3, Informative)

      by DaveV1.0 ( 203135 )

      However I definitely needed a lot of outside help in accomplishing that task, and overall though I was able to get it installed and running fine, a total newbie would have gotten nowhere

      Maybe yes, maybe no. Most "total newbie" users will not go for Slackware. It has a low profile. Chances are they will start with SuSE (available at CompUSA) or RedHat. And, if they get bit by the bug, maybe they will learn to actually use the command line, then decide to try something different.

      I have been unhappy with my

      • Personally, I don't think forcing people to actually learn about their O/S is a bad thing.

        I must disagree with you. This is like saying that if you do not know how to change give your car a tune-up, then you should not be driving.

        I certianly admire the true geeks who know Linux inside and out. I am not one of them. I have one full-time job, one wife, two small children, and various other family and church obligations. I like Linux, and I love Ubuntu. But I do not have the time to really learn the nuts

        • Like I said, it is a personal opinion. I could be wrong. And, you may be right about people abandoning tasks if they are to hard. But, I believe it is more like "people should not own cars if they don't know how to drive".

          With all technology, there is a minimum safe knowledge level. It is different for computers than cars, but it still exsists. It maybe a higher level for computers, but it may be the difference between having your identity and life savings stolen or not.

          But, it is a case of the genie being

  • Insane (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The idea that Slackware is hard to install and use is just insane. I began with Slackware eight years ago and I am still using Slackware today. It's so straight forward and simple to configure and use. I really don't understand why people complain about Slackware, frankly I find all those so call "easy" distro like Redhat and others confusing as hell. Why do people continue to perpetuate this Slackware myth?

    • Re:Insane (Score:3, Informative)

      by phlegmofdiscontent ( 459470 )
      I agree. I started out using Red Hat, but then decided to switch to Slackware. It was as easy as partition hard drive, boot to cd, choose packages, run.

    • Re:Insane (Score:3, Funny)

      by robertjw ( 728654 )
      I really don't understand why people complain about Slackware, frankly I find all those so call "easy" distro like Redhat and others confusing as hell. Why do people continue to perpetuate this Slackware myth?

      Because all of us Slackers like it that way. It used to be enough - just using Linux made you a tech God. These days Linux use is much more common. Slackware is just another way to separate us true Geeks from the posers - and that's the way we like it.

  • It matters to me (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lispy ( 136512 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:26PM (#14103104) Homepage
    As an admin of a dozen of boxes that handle almost anything from webserver, Tomcat/SQL Server to mail/OpenXchange Server and since last weekend a Samba Domaincontroller to name a few, I must say I am the most happy Slackware User in the world.

    Stability, flexibility and sanity are the main reasons for me to use Slack.

    Personally I like my uptime in the three digits and a straightforward configuration. This is where Slack delivers for me. Combined with Dropline Gnome it also makes the most lovely Desktop box. ;)

    Keep slackin, Pat!

    • Only three digits of uptime? That's only 999 days, at the most, if you're using days as your measure. There are VMS systems out there which haven't been rebooted in over a decade. Last I checked, there's one VMS on Alpha system at a firm I worked at that hasn't been rebooted since 1996. That was about a month ago, so considering its long uptime, it's probably still up.

      Now, if you're measuring stability (as in 99.999% uptime), then VMS most likely is still the champ.

      • Well, I am at this company now for nearly a year. ;)
        The company before was mostly windows based and I was doing desktop support there wich is why I left.
        Well, give Slack a chance. If the company exists in 10 years, well, I still think I will move away from some of the older Slack boxes. Uptime is not the only thing that matters after all.

  • Slackware matters because... (Score:5, Informative)

    by chipster ( 661352 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:27PM (#14103110)
    • It's quick and easy to install - even for someone who has never installed it before (folks tend to judge Slackware by it's dialog`-based installer right off the bat)
    • Slackware's simple package manager is exactly that - simple (and portable)
    • Longevity and survival (and Slackware has been, and will be around for a very long time - believe me)
    • Light on the patches (Slackware has a philosiphy to keep the packaged software as pristine as possible)
    • Small footprint if you don't need the graphical stuff
    • Slackware is always on top of security
    • Unique, controlled development model which fosters stability (some could argue it's a bad model, but she's still purring!)

    I could go on.

    • I hate to rain on everyone's parade here, and I hate to sound like a troll, but. When you have to write an article about why your operating system matters, you've kind of set yourself up as looking like you don't matter at all, and are simply trying to advertise.

      Slackware to me has always been a niche distro; to those people who really love Linux, the people who want to control every aspect of their machines, fine tune things, etc. The Gentoo of years past.

      These days, we're starting to see distros lik
      • Either you were an hour late into the discussion, or you were waiting for your web browser to finish compiling on your Gentoo box before you could reply ;-)

        In any event, I won't disagree with Slackware being a nich distro - but lots of distros appeal to certain niches. Additionally, use of the term "irreleva(nce|nt) is kinda strong - and I repecfully disagree that Debian and Slackware are even remotely "irrelavent." Polish? That's quite a subjective term. Lots of folks may think Debian or Slackware or

  • Slackware is simpler (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wbhauck ( 629723 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:27PM (#14103113)
    In my opinion, many things are simpler in Slackware. Since there are no (or very few) GUIs to use to administer your machine you can go right to the configs and make things the way you want. Red Hat, like Microsoft, hides the configs behind layers and layers of GUIs. It also doesn't seem to do things in a standard way. (I ran RH from 4.2 to 7.2)

    I'm a geek so my opinion might be skewed toward text-based configs, programs, etc. But then again, /. is for geeks. I run Slackware 10.2 on my Dell Inspiron 5100 with everything working, even suspend--the wireless doesn't restore, though.

    Just a disclaimer, I started with Slackware. I ran it for three years before switching to Red Hat 4.2. I stayed with RH through 7.2. I did it mainly because the company i worked for used RH. I switched back to Slackware in late 2003.

    Bottom line: Slackware is very fast, very stable, and very useful. What more could I want?

  • Why Slackware (Score:5, Insightful)

    by everphilski ( 877346 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:34PM (#14103163) Journal
    Slackware doesn't suffer from all the bloat the "other distros" seem to suffer from. From the simple but sufficient text installer, to just the right number of packages - its not bloatware. They also tend to stay a step or two behind the other distos with respect to upgrading libraries and such so your applications tend not to break as often...

    Besides, what other distro has aSmoking Tux Logo [slackware.com]?

    -everphilski-

    • Re:Why Slackware (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      From the simple but sufficient text installer, to just the right number of packages - its not bloatware.

      Other distros may suffer from too many dependencies -- installing vim shouldn't need to drag in another 20 packages along with it. But you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many available packages that you don't need to manually add.

      • Better spoken :)

        -everphilski-
      • I agree. I teach a 3rd year operating system class and I use
        linux as the lab platform. We run it inside of Virtual PC since
        the lab machines are all XP. The student disk images
        are all stored on a central server so that they can get
        to them from several different labs. However this limits
        us (for various reasons) to 500 MB per student. Slackware
        was one of only twp distribution that I could put a reasonable
        environment in that space from the main installer without
        doing a lot of manual tinkering with individual

    • Re:Why Slackware (Score:3, Insightful)

      by at_slashdot ( 674436 )
      I found this "bloat" recurring theme silly.

      If you want you can use whatever you want, you can use Fluxbox instead of KDE, xterm instead of konsole, and so on.

      Most importantly, Linux is not Windows, if you don't use/run a program it doesn't slow down your system it can sit on your HD and occupy space but that's that, it doesn't slow down your OS. Nowadays when hard disks are >100GB, The "bloat" is probably less than 0.1% of your disk space, I wouldn't lose much sleep over that.
      • You are thinking desktops. Once you get to distros like Linux from Scratch, Slack, etc.. you are often talking embedded systems you might have much less diskspace (like none).

  • Package management! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by snark23 ( 122331 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:35PM (#14103180) Homepage
    It's all about package management. Slackware has long since been replaced as the hobbyist distro-of-choice by Debian and Gentoo, and the casual users who simply want a "basic distribution that works" have turned to Ubuntu, Fedora, Knoppix, etc. Slackware has not evolved.

    My roommate, I suspect, is the typical Slackware user... using it because it's what he was using in the 90's, when he chose Slackware for its laid-back, non-commercial attitude and for its geek-chic. More power to him, but I think that the newbie-hobbyists of today are not choosing Slackware as their first distribution crush... it simply doesn't offer the compelling technical advantages of Gentoo or Debian.

    (note that the author of the linked article doesn't even mention Gentoo... -1 credibility...)
    • Slackware has not evolved.

      That's just not true. Slackware has changed significantly in the last 5 years. It still has flaws, true, but the installer, number of packages, community support and upgradeability has come a long way since "the 90's". It may not be the trendy geekster-hip distro it once was, but Patrick hasn't been sitting around twiddling it's thumbs.

      One thing I find funny is how often a Slackware article is posted to slashdot. I should run some searches and see which distro has article

  • Linux made Easy (Score:2, Insightful)

    by LeapingQuince ( 873872 )
    I stumbled into Slackware out of dumb luck. It was the first distro that actually installed on my laptop with no huge problems. I seem to remember the RedHat installer choking on something and failing to get the SuSE net install working for some reason or other. I had to put in my own ethernet and battery support, but once I found the drivers and some FAQs, it was no biggy. (For the record, I was working with a Dell Inspiron 2200 and with Slackware 10.)

    Maybe this is the minority case, but Slackware s

  • I mean this in the nicest way, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by devphaeton ( 695736 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:37PM (#14103196)
    ....slackware does matter. I am seeing a trend of ppl who try out linux first with either Mandrake or Fedora core. Nothing wrong with that, but as n00bs the do the usual thing such as install everything and turn everything on. Nothing wrong with that either-

    -however-

    Instead of going the classic route of tuning a 'big' or 'bloated' installation to fit their needs, they seem to be tossing it all aside and jumping on the Gentoo bandwagon. Not a bad thing in itself, but by comparison Gentoo will *seem* faster to them because the only experience they had was their Mandrake box running KDE, Apache, Samba, et all and having all these background services running. It perpetuates the Gentoo Myth and creates some zealotry. (or maybe the zealotry is unavoidable regardless, i dunno).

    Very "straight forward" distros like slackware and debian will always have a place for advanced users to build the linux they need. It also serves as a good demonstration that the benefits of linux aren't unique to Gentoo. Whether Gentoo's model is good or bad is up for debate, but it is good to have different philosophies and different development strategies.

    Besides, Slackware is classic.

    • but by comparison Gentoo will *seem* faster to them because the only experience they had was their Mandrake box running KDE, Apache, Samba, et all and having all these background services running. It perpetuates the Gentoo Myth and creates some zealotry. (or maybe the zealotry is unavoidable regardless, i dunno).

      Well, at the risk of sounding like one of those zealots you mentioned, I think the "Gentoo Myth" itself is conjecture. The problem is several things are being conflated together in the debate o

    • My first distro was Slack which I really liked. Then I went to Redhat 4.2. These days I can't stand Redhat since about 9. Tried FC4 about 2 weeks ago ... ugh. Back to Slack 10. Why? A lot of FC seems impenetrable because of proprietary config methods and non-standard locations of things ... I finally lost patience when in RH9 I couldn't even modify the menus (some helpful reader told me where and how to modify the xml ... but really ... just so I can modify menus?). I think the major thing is that if you (m

  • slackware matters (Score:3, Insightful)

    by trybywrench ( 584843 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:38PM (#14103202)
    It's been a long time since i've installed linux from scratch so things may have changed but Slackware will always have it's purpose. I understand the reasoning behind dumbing down Linux for the masses since the more users the more relevant and main stream Linux will become. But there will always be the need for a distribution who's purpose is only to provide a framework (scheduler+filesystem+[IP stack]) for services or specialized applications to run on and Slackware is the best way to get there short of building a custom dist. IMO.

    Again, it's been maybe 4-5 years since i've installed Linux from scratch rather then recompiling/patching so maybe the modern distributions can be stripped down but in what experience i have with them they're all aimed at setting up a home computer.

  • Rules for Me, Rules for You. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Franciscan ( 720329 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:40PM (#14103218) Journal
    I've noticed that a lot of tech pseudo-journalism boils down to the following:

    (1) I like technology X, Y and Z.

    (2) I don't like technology A, B, and C.

    (3) A,B, and C shouldn't exist, because by existing, they distract people who don't know they really shouldn't like A,B, and C, and if I could just force them to see things my way, they'd do as I do.
    I find it amazing that people bother reading the original article, to which this article responds, and dignify it by any response at all. Slackware will exist as long as at least one slackware developer/maintainer finds it useful, pleasant, or in some way desires for it to continue to exist, and thus Slackware, or something very like it, is likely to continue to exist. It's the oldest surviving linux distribution, with a longer history that even RedHat or Debian, if I remember correctly.
    I'm a Debian fan. I like their packaging, I like their stable/unstable/testing partitioning. I like the community and the debian process. That doesn't mean I feel any need to impugn the Fedora/RedHat fans, or the Slackware, or any other Linux distro fans. Guess what guys, it's splitting hairs. I have compiled thousands of tar.gz (tarballs) containing thousands of software packages, on over 100 different versions of over 20 different distributions, and the differences are so vanishingly small, compared to amount of things that are the same, that any kind of "my distribution is better than your distribution" discussion ends up mostly moot. If Ubuntu has some better feature than basic Debian, or if Slackware people invent something neat, chances are most of the rest of the Linux world will borrow, adapt, and absorb whatever they can into the environment they prefer.
    These people who claim it should be otherwise should go to Apple, or Microsoft, and say, "here's my money, now control everything and make it uniform, and make sure everybody does things the same way, all the time". Those who are attempting to do this in the Free Software World, suggesting that something is irrelevant, dead, unimportant, or detrimental to the free software world, because it exists, are idiots. Ignore them.
    If technology really has become irrelevant, it requires no commentary to establish it. Anybody remember Yggdrasil Linux? I can now dare to say that Yggdrasil Linux is probably pretty close to dead. Anyone want to disagree with me?
    Regards,
    Warren/Franciscan

  • Is (was? I'm not sure, it's been a while) a slackware derivative and it worked great on the first really old laptop I ever installed Linux on.

    Judging by distrowatch's numbers, they are holding steady, but not as popular as some others.

    Here's a distro that's been around forever and doesn't really get the buzz that some others get. It's an interesting problem and I'm wondering if anyone has any insight as to why it may be that way.
  • I have been using Slackware since 7.0. In the mean time I have worked in places where I was told to use Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, etc. In that time I have always found Slackware far easier to setup and keep runnng. No strange configuration tools, such as Yast, where if I change something in the file and then run Yast, it reverts all my changes. I am not a PHD and when I started using Slackware I was new to Linux. However in the time, I have learned more about the inner workings than any other distro cou

  • Recommended for experts AND newbies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fak3r ( 917687 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:41PM (#14103229) Homepage
    I started with RedHat 5.0 back in the day, but didn't feel like I really "got" linux until I started with Slackware. Learning the real way of doing things got me more in line to handle things like Solaris, AIX and FreeBSD. While I don't use Slack anymore (ubuntu on my desktops, freebsd/openbsd and gentoo on my servers) I'm glad it's still around, and have sent newbies (ones that WANT to learn) slacks way.

  • Two points, really quickly... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Noryungi ( 70322 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:43PM (#14103245) Homepage Journal
    1. "Alan Canton" is a very well known Usenet troll, who regularly spews nonsense in alt.os.linux.slackware. He seems to think that Slackware is going to die out, because of dwindling market share. Reasoning with him is a waste of time (I know, I have tried).
       
      AFAIK, He seems to think that, because he is some sort of entrepreneur, Patrick Volkerding should abase himself in front of his intelligence and follow his every advice. Since Patrick Volkerding avoids this Usenet newsgroup like the plague, Alan Canton is very unhappy and disses him, and his distro, every chance he gets. In short, he behaves in a very unprofessional and immature manner, criticizing and belittling everyone who disagrees with him.
       
    2. As a simple rebuttal, I am currently working as a system administrator for a small company, managing 16+ servers, almost all of them running Slackware -- from an ancient 7.0 machine, all the way to the latest 10.2 distribution. I could not be happier! Slackware is simple, light and powerful, which makes it ideal for most uses. Even at home, I use Slackware, and I am using it right now to type this message under Firefox.


    As an aside, if you haven't tried Slackware, give it a spin. Its simplicity and power are enough to shame many other well-established distribution...
    • I am not trying to troll here, but statements like this all over this article confuse me...

      Slackware is simple, light and powerful

      I have been using Linux for the past 10 years. I have used it all, from RedHat to Linux From Scratch to Slack to Debian to (my current) Gentoo.

      No distro is any "faster" or "more powerful" than any other by itself. They are all running the same (or simmilar) kernels, they are all using the base software packages. They can all be configured to run or not run certain services at s

    • In my endless quest to build the perfect "at home" workstation, I'm more or less narrowed down to Novell/SuSE or Ubuntu. One has a lot of history, it pretty danged polished, and has a large corporation behind it. The other does pretty much everything I need it to do and it fits on a single CD. Right now, I'm leaning toward Ubuntu. I've kind of discounted Slackware, not because of the lack of graphical auto-configuration "gee-gaws and gimcracks" (couldn't avoid the hat-tip to J.R. "Bob" Dobbs), but more

      • The "purist" nature of Slackware appeals to me, but what is holding me back is a perceived journey into "dependancy hell" as I try to manually sort out package management.

        So, if you don't mind my picking your brain, how do you manage packages on Slackware?

        I thought "dependency hell" is what people experienced with .rpm/.deb distributions.

        I've used Slackware since 7.0. Before that I took just about every distro that was around at the time for a spin. I was utterly overjoyed to see how ea

  • I use Slackware... (Score:4, Informative)

    by TCM ( 130219 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:46PM (#14103267)
    I use Slackware tarballs to extract libs needed for Linux compatibility on NetBSD. This way I don't need to install a full-blown Linux tree including rpm tools when I just need some library.

    Yay for .tar.gz!
  • After cutting my Linux teeth on Slackware I tried different versions of Red Hat, Debian and SUSE. In every case I came back screaming to Slackware.

    Whenever I need Linux, I get Slack.
  • I switched all our servers from redhat to slackware about three years ago. Having tried many distros I found slackware was the most stripped down yet contained all the basic stuff you need for a server environment (sendmail, IMAP, POP, apache, etc.). The main reason I switched was library conflicts. Most other distros come with too much stuff and as you install more stuff on top you inevitably run into probelms. Slackware is nice coz it's bare bones.

    I've had way more problems with config programs and pac

  • Does it really? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by goofyheadedpunk ( 807517 ) <goofyheadedpunk&gmail,com> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:52PM (#14103305)
    I'd planned to submit an Ask Slashdot about the article this one rebutts, but decided that it was really too childish to spend any time one. I suppose that since it's come up now I can go ahead and ask.

    Does Slackware really still matter? The author of this article seems to think so, but he also doesn't seem to be the most partial. So, what do you guys think? (No need to be partial, but it sure would help.)
  • I first used Red Hat 6.2, and while it was interesting, I didn't really learn a lot about how it worked. Slackware was the first distro that I actually spent a lot of time with. I installed it on a couple home computers and a previously unused server at work. Nowadays, I use mostly Ubuntu and CentOS (RHEL clone), but I do nearly all my administration work from the command line. Slackware is the most logical of the Linux distro's I've tried, and therefore very good for learning. Not too suitable for desktops

  • Slack is easier (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blindbat ( 189141 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:55PM (#14103323)
    I find Slackware the easiest distro. I use it on servers, desktops, and laptops. Granted, I came to Linux from FreeBSD so I had no fear of text files. Doing everything in a GUI can only take you so far, especially when the GUI tools do not fix the problem. I find it is also the easiest install for selecting what you want and do not want based upon what you intend to do with the computer. I also tend to be very eclectic in the software that I run. I like to pick and choose the best file manager, text editor, etc. for the job. I use fvwm for my window manager. I use Linux because it affords the best choices. I try to get new Linux users to try Slackware because once they understand how to do things they learn that they can do almost anything with their computers. I have heard of people that use Linux for a year and still don't know how to do anything with it because they are limited to what they can point and click in the default menu.

  • The Author Makes Really Good Points (Score:3, Informative)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:56PM (#14103335) Homepage Journal
    The author makes some really good points that apply not just to Slackware, but to distros in general, and I wish more people would realize them.

    ``What Slackware advocates are telling you is that in order to truely appreciate Slackware for what it is, you must learn how Linux works first, because Slackware is just unadulterated Linux.''

    Right! Slackware is a very good distribution to learn how GNU/Linux really works. Very little is automated, so you have to figure out how to do it yourself. This is useful even if you later switch to a different distro, as you may be able to understand and fix problems better, because you've already been in similar situations.

    ``I would assert that a distribution's viability is based on its usefulness to a user-base, regardless of the size of that user-base.''

    Indeed. Just because something isn't your cup of tea, doesn't mean it's not anyone's. Multiple paths lead to enlightenment.

    `` Canton: I think Slackware has a lot going for it... but not enough for it to sustain itself should Linux become as popular as the pundits say it will. To those who run and who love Slackware, that's fine. To the rest of us, well, it doesn't matter.

    That may be true, but then, that could be said of any other distribution as well. SUSE makes no bit of difference to me... or Mandriva, or Linspire, or.... but this is what makes Linux so great! CHOICE!''

    Right again. It's all about choice. Some people feel it's bad that not all distros are compatible, so that binary software can be easily installed on all of them. Well, who cares? If you want a distro on which binary software X works, then use such a distro. If you don't care about software X, but you like a feature of some distro that happens not to work with software X, then you can pick that distro. To each their own. It's through the many choices that Linux can be all things to all people - everyone can adapt it to suit their needs, with no regard for anyone else's need.

    ``I chose Slackware because I disliked other distributions' bloated installs.''

    That tops it off. Here's a great example of why Slackware still matters. Where all other distros in the DistroWatch.com top 10 try to attract users by adding ever friendlier features, creating ever larger installers and base installs, Slackware stays slim. And guess what? People appreciate that. That's why Slackware still matters.

    This post brought to you by a long-ago Slackware user, who has since switched to Debian to get quick and easy package installation.
  • I'm thinking of building a file server that will be storing a bunch of media files. So, probably will use RAID 5 or something. Probably in the 1-3 terabyte range to start.

    What OS should I use for that? If Linux, would Slackware be a good choice? I'm hearing good things about Solaris and ZFS, so I'm also considering using that.

    Also, I might decide to put a couple thin terminals around the house. I'm wondering if the file server should also be running the X sessions, or if I should get another heftier bo
    • i'd go gentoo & portage for that. if you want topnotch performance, you gotta compile the whole package as it suits your machine the best and not to follow the specs of the machine that was used by the package creator.

      most binary packages out there are i386 ... this means that more than half of your processor capabilities are ignored ... and i guess you don't want that, do you ? besides there are really nice hacks for some stack tricks and registers which will make the code faster exactly on that box wi
    • Choice of OS is almost completely irrelevant unless you need to connect to a SAN or something, in which case driver availability will be more important than particular OS features. If you're using a PC with SATA drives, I would suggest one or more 3Ware RAID controllers for driver maturity and performance.

  • Focus (Score:2)

    by stox ( 131684 )
    More than most other distro's, Slackware has a clean focus on what it is trying to accomplish. Pat does his thing, and does it extremely well. He does not fall into the hole of trying to be all things to all people. Slackware has been amazingly consistent, and reliable. Keep it up Pat!
  • Back in summer of 98 I bought a cheapbytes package. It came with Slackware 3.4, and whatever the Debian and RedHat were of the day. I tried Redhat at first. The debian install was broke. Redhat didn't agree with me... I was used to and fond of unix, and I couldn't understand why things were going so poorly.

    Then I tried slack... and it made perfect sense. I've been a big fan ever since. I work for an ISP, and we have standardized on mostly redhat variants.

    I understand Linux in general because I learned
  • Slackware is probably the best Linux Distro I've used. I got started on Fedora. Tried what was then called Mandrake. I got frustrated with Red Hat when they stop producing the free version which became fedora. Mandrake seemed like a crippled version of red hat to me (i.e not everything was available unless you purchased the full version). Then I tried Slackware. I honestly have to say that was when I dove into linux. I personally learned more about Linux running slack then when I was running any prev

    • Re:Hell Yeah Slackware Matters (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JamaisVu ( 83448 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:44PM (#14103705)
      I totally agree with you. I've always been wary of RPMs, probably due to the same ignorance that people claim that slackware either doesn't have or has inferior package management. There have been situations where my RPM database said that an RPM wasn't installed but it was, and I didn't have the patience to sort it out. Also, the RPM dependencies insistence, only defeatable with --nodeps (which maybe caused my RPM db issue) always interferes with a project. Slackware now has slapt, although one can easily do an upgradepkg ./* from a directory of packages. The dropline and freerock management systems make keeping your windowing system up to date a breeze.

      And most importantly, Slackware has actually prompted me to _understand_ what all the bits are for. I have an edge now, because I never started with magical RPMs or a magical up2date (although those tools are available now in various carnations for both RPM and tgz packages). I still recommend slackware to people who want to learn about linux.

      It's also considered a conservative distribution, which tends to mean it will stay with a stable version for longer before upgrading. That's official though. You can always compile your own from source and then CREATE a package.

      There are great home-made packages available from www.linux-packages.net and various other sites.

      I love slackware, and hope Pat's healthy and having a good time.

      Yeah!
  • I made the switch to Linux probably about 3 years ago, and I've used it ever since. (I would use it exclusivly, but the damned airport extreme specs are closed.) The distro I setteled on way back then was Slackware and, you know, then I would have said pretty much exactly what cRaig Forrester(sic?) did: Slackware IS Linux.

    (For the sake of the argumentation let's assume that he means the whole philosophy of choice thing surrounding Linux. Of course the assertion is wrong from a technical standpoint, but who
  • I put Slackware 10.1 on my current home workstations. Why? Well, I used to use RedHat, and I was a paying subscriber. But they dumped me at 7.3 and refused to support me any more unless I switched either to their Enterprise license (no thanks, I am a *home user*) or else go to Fedora. I have heard that Fedora is supposed to be a kind of "bleeding edge, let the community work out the kinks" distro. Now I fall into that strange middle ground - I am not a casual user (I run a website with hundreds of users) an

  • SuSE and Ubuntu wouldn't install, enter Slack (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kronocide ( 209440 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:18PM (#14103515) Homepage Journal
    Ubuntu froze during the disk partitioning program on my PIII 700MHz, 64MB Thinkpad. SuSE spelled it right out, "You have too little memory to run the installation program, please activate a swap partition." (Sure, if you would just let me run fdisk!) Slackware installs and runs without a hitch. Slack matters to me.

  • Hey! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cytlid ( 95255 ) * on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:19PM (#14103532)
    Will Al Canton sign an official piece of paper saying I'm a "highly professional" with a Ph.D because I love slack?

  • Observation (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gothzilla ( 676407 )
    This is not meant to be a flame, but a simple observation. As a windows user, I've noticed that every so often a story comes up that attempts to justify the importance of a particular flavor of *nix. Are different flavors in danger of dissapearing into irrelevance overnight if stories are not done on why they are still valid?
    I use windows because that's what my employer has on the network and there is no room for nix. At home I've used FreeBSD, Slack, and Mandrake. For the desktop I don't really see much di

  • Why Slack over Gentoo? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DroopyStonx ( 683090 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:33PM (#14103633)
    Personally, I think Gentoo is a godsend for everything from teaching beginners step-by-step how their system is structured to creating a quick and powerful system 100% designed around YOUR machine.

    Back in the day I used Slack because I didn't want bloat - just wanted barebones install with working network. Even when it came to installing packages... selecting from a list of pre-compiled bloated binaries is still bloat.

    It's not truly optimized for YOUR system.

    But there was a downside - say you wanted KDE, you'd have to compile by hand ALL the dependencies. Not fun. But I wasn't gonna sacrifice performance with the pre-compiled binaries.

    I'm not bashing Slack, it was a great distro back in the day, but now that Gentoo exists, which gives you infinitely more control over your system not to mention automatic compile/emerge for anything you choose to install, why would you stick with the former?

    It just seems counter productive to run a production based system on pre-compiled packages OR compiling everything yourself by hand and dealing w/ the dependencies.
  • Slackware is good, simple, robust and efficient because it works exactly like a BSD : you set it up using your brain, then you definitely forget it because it works and does never play magic tricks under you. It does what you want. Recently, I installed FreeBSD on a machine, and felt as if I was "at home" on my slack. Same philosophy, etc...

    It's the best distro to start Linux for people coming from the BSD world (including those of the old SunOS 4.1.3 era), and probably for anyone too. It can be hard to set
  • I fully agree with the reasoning behind this article. A lot of users will only want a pretty desktop, intelligently-designed apps and a lot of hand-holding. For the geeks among us, they will want to 'figure out' the system, and distros like Suse and Redhat make that a little bit more difficult. It makes sense to start from scratch and build up the knowledge from there. In fact, I highly recommend it. I remember back in '98 using Debian on a 386-33 with 8 megs of ram. I learned the system, the file str
  • I have been using Slackware since kernel .9x. and I am running Slack on every box that I install. Slackware is elegant, powerful and gets out of the way so you can do your job.

    No stupid GUI, no RPM nightmare. It is simply the best.

    Does Patrick make money out of this? I don't know. I hope so. I always buy my Slack copies so I do my part.

    Alan Canton: Who asked you if Slackware matters? Go on with your miserable existence and leave the
    real Linux work to the pros.

    I think you are running Windows and don't know a
  • Although I've tried all the distros, I have stuck with slackware over the years. A lot if comes down the lean basic installation and easy installation depending on what I have to get done.

    Last year I was taking care of a student computer lab. We had a couple servers for remote use, some old computers suitable for networked dumb terminals using XDMCP, and a few powerful regular desktop computers.

    The beauty of slackware is I can sit down at each of these computers and quickly get an appropriate installation w

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