hello
i am a slackware newbie and i love it. but arch seems pretty interesting. would you guys care to comment on some advantages or disadvantages.
is arch gnu compliant.
if so why not arch gnu/linux?

http://polishlinux.org/choose/compar...e&distro2=Arch
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/...h_vs_Slackware

If you want the grand Slackware, go for it. But if you just want the easy route with all the goodies of Slack, take Zenwalk - it's got a great package manager, it's always new (and therefore sometimes less stable than Slack, but only slightly) and so on. There are no that big differences really. Original Slackware doesn't have package management program that does everything automatically for you, so if you want to have the latest apps easily available, go for Zenwalk.

Hi!

I'm rather a Linux newbie, but always eager to learn more. By coincidence I tried to install both Slackware and Arch a few days ago.
With Slack i was stopped halfway. The reason was the bootloader: Slackware uses Lilo as default, and I don't have experience with that. Immediately something went wrong, and I couldn't boot into the system after the install. I know a little about Grub, and in my opinion it's easier to configure.
Installing Arch to my surprise went very easy: in a very short time I had a basic system running. After some small configuration problems, I now have a GUI (Fluxbox) and Firefox running. I can even ssh into my other Linux box over my home network, and copy the files I want. Arch gives me the feeling that I'm the master of my system more the the other distro's I've tried before (Suse, Ubuntu, Fedora). I like the package system (pacman), and the overall idea of K.I.S.S. I can certainly recommend to give Arch a try. The base-system is less then 200 mb, so very quick to download.

Ko.

If you suspect that you're going to have a growing interest in Linux and its inner workings, then I'd recommend staying with Slackware for at least 6-12 months. You'll get a good understanding of Linux that will prepare you for experimenting with other distros later -- or you may just want to stick with Slack.

Over the course of the past five years, I've gone from Slackware to Gentoo to Arch. I love all three of them, but I have a special fondness for Slackware. Some of that may be sentimental, like the feelings you may retain for a first girlfriend, but I do know that Slackware is an excellent learning tool. All three of these distros will provide sufficient challenge to keep you moving up the learning curve, and all three have excellent community and developer support.

the only factor that is really forcing to use arch is that it supports 64bit processors. i have a centrino duo. so it might be interesting for me, especially since i work with multimedia.
will slackware ever be ported to 64bit.

My real linux experience started with Slackware and I have learned alot from trying to get it the way I wanted it to be. However, I grew tired of the absolute "no hand holding" that Slackware offers. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the Ubuntu-experience, I want to fiddle with the cli and text files to set up the system but sometimes it's nice to at least be able to be lazy.

I first turned to Zenwalk but didn't really find it to be much of an improvement of Slackware... then I turned to Arch and it has everything I am looking for.

Arch, like Slackware, doesn't hold you hand and you are forced to do alot of manual, non-gui, settings by hand = you will learn alot by just using it.

BUT Arch have Pacman! The best package mangement that I have come across this far. You'll find almost anything in the default repositories and the ones missing is (probably) in the AUR. I have been giving Arch and Pacman a real battering for 4 months now (both for my laptop and my server) and it hasn't faild me yet.

Pacman is the reason why I chose to stay with Arch and ditch Slackware...

i couldnt agree more ...
i started as a newbie with suse.. but when by a propose of a friend decide to put arch..well its a brand new world.. especially with pacman !

Give Arch a try - you'll not regret it!

Well, it's a bit late but better late then never You may want to try Debian. Not Ubuntu, just the pure Debian stuff

A Debian base system installs generally in about 30 minutes, on modern hardware more often 20 or less. For superior package management you can't beat apt and it's ncurses frontend aptitude. It's simple, you don't really need a Linux background (but it does help ) and offers you full control over the packages you'd like to install. The net-install cd is twice the size of Arch, but in contrast to others (including Arch) Debian supports no less then 11 architectures. The repositories contain over 15,000 packages for the i386 arch alone, so you're spoiled for choice.

I started with Mandrake but it is Slackware that made me learn linux. Sometimes , especially when working late nights , our brain may not cope up with Slackware. But once you master Slackware you can try any other distro with confidence.

I struggled a little with Arch ,especially pacman,but once the system is tunes it is rock solid like slackware. Presently Arch is my main distro which I never touch. My recent addition is Absolute Linux which is based on Slackware yet very simple and powerful.

I can't comment on Slackware, but I can definitely give the thumbs up for Arch. The config files are well documented within, and you get to learn a lot about Linux in doing so. At the same time, you can build a system a lot quicker than compiling from source with the pacman manager. I have yet to break Arch by a complete system upgrade (pacman -Syu), which in other distributions tends to cause some breakages (most notably RPM based distros).

I heard that slackware has a package management system called slapt-get, but I don't know much about it.

You might also want to check out Gentoo, and it's Portage system.

well, never tried slackware as it lacks a package manager (and folks said it is a feature) but Arch is pretty good with excellent package management system known as pacman. i am running it. all configs are text-based, no GUIs. 2nd, it has rolling-release system which is much better than the release cycle i think.

2nd, if you are really interested in learning *NIX internals, then try Gentoo, it is source based but you will never ever find any other distro which can match with Gentoo. try it.. it also got the best source-based package manager "emerge". the time you will put into Gentoo will always be useful to you, no matter what distro you will use later. start here:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml


well, the same reason why we have Fedora Linux, we do not have Fedora GNU/Linux. though, the system is really "Linux based GNU Operating-System"

As a point of clarification, Slackware has a package manager. The primary complaint most people have with it is that it does not resolve dependencies.

being a new convert to arch, I've now updated my preferences...

slackware or openbsd on the server

and arch on the desktop