Do you think Slack has a really hard learning curve?
 

Hi all Im curious if people think Slack has a hard learning curve to it.

I didnt find it any harder to setup/install than red hat 7.2 (in text mode)

In fact I liked the way that you could be provided with verbose info on the packages you were installing.

Also the whole editing by hand via the Shell using Pico, Vi or Emacs isnt that difficult, (although I do find it difficult to use Vi, which is why i stick with Pico)


So if people could vote and explain in a post why they voted as they did it would be great.

Well for a newbie it's hard to edit files by hand. They see a bunch of garble, and can sometimes be hard pressed to know how to start their distro from a command line.

Yes, for a newbie, I believe Slack is VERY hard. For someone who has used Linux for a little while, and has a slight grasp on things, Slack would be fine. The learning curve is still rough, but it's sort of like going to a foreign country to learn the language. You are thrown in, and have to figure things out real fast, or else you are going to be using a black screen for a while.

IMO

Compare it to an engine of a car. If one isn't interested in doing something with it, he won't touch it and will never know something about. If one is interested in modifying it and watches the mechanic, he is going to learn but not much. If you do it yourself, you'll have a hard time, but not for long. And you'll learn fast - nobody wants to destroy an engine do we?

It seems like most people no matter what distro are going to get in there and fiddle around. So I say it's somewhat similar.

Well I can tell you all that Slack isn't as super hard as people say it is. Well maybe for a complete newbie this wouldn't be a good distro to start from but at least for me it was fine although I used only Red Hat 7.2(for 3 weeks) before Slack and I can say that with the help of the good people at this forum(remember me Dai:) ) I didn't have a lot of problems.(except when I had to write down the resolution I want to use into the XF86Config) But almost everything else is same as other distros and I find Slack the best distro there is if you want to get into Linux. :)

Personally, I have stayed away from Slack simply because so many users have taken, and continue to take, great pride in its difficulty. The macho crap about how hard Slack makes you work to it set up really turned me off :D .

To me there's nothing worse than a useless OS. And an OS that deliberately makes itself difficult to work with, especially in its set up, is not going to be very accessible or very satisfying. If it is not accessible or satisfying, it will have a low perception of utility and is not going to be used. The less it is used the less useful it is.

Slack has, in the past, made little effort to make the installation process more utilitarian. It wasn't until the likes of RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, and others started to make the installation less painful, that Linux started to have a reputation as being useful to more people. Slack may be changing to something less painful, thankfully, but it still won't be in my plans for use ;) .

How can I forget ;0)

Did you sort out the XF86Config file in the end?????

Yeah, everything is just fine now. KDE works like it should and I'm happier then ever :).(Although I don't spend a lot time in KDE it's still great that it works)

I believe Slackware is a very good choice for newbie... it isn't that hard, it's only text mode... most progs will install with 3 little command (./configure make make install) instead of one (rpm -option), except if you use easy install tgz (what I hate to do).

The only hard way is to learn and remember all useful command first. With GUI distro (Slackware has a GUI of course, but it's not used for config) most of time you only have to point and click.

Newbie think Slackware is hard because they are brain-washed by Windoze-point-and-click installation/configuration. But even with Mandrake, installation and configuration will, a day, take you a little more reflection than only point and click. I think it's a better idea for a newbie to start first with the "hard" text mode way before trying something that LOOKS easier. The newbie will probably have 1 or 2 months of headache (until he learns the basic stuff he need), but then, he will be able to get out of difficulties by himself.
And you will no longer see treads like "Cannot start my something.exe please help" here :D

Slack is not hard to learn if you already have some Linux knowledge, but it does make you get your hands dirty and makes you learn how an operationg system works. Yes its true, Red Hat and Mandrake are easier to learn and install, but you will never learn that much with these distros than with Slack. So if you feel adventurous and hungry for some knowledge, go ahead and try it. I tried Slack after using Red Hat and Mandrake first, and I am not going back. The diference in speed and stability is noticeable. But if you feel like being boring and not so adventurous stay with RH and Mandi.

I guess it depends. I got really used to the Hat's way of rc.anything so the switch to slack was a bit of a culture shock, but then again /etc/rc.modules makes life soooooo much simpler than other distros way of handling things, and I guess I had really gotten hard into slack before I started looking for answers on places like here, but for the most part yeah, its got a steeper learning curve, but you either hold on and learn a lot more a lot faster, or give up and let Mandy's buggy GUI tools break things for you.

Cheers,

Finegan

Slackware doesn't do the hand-holding that RH or Mandrake do, but it is straight-forward, and much easier than Debian.

LOL that's why I LOVE Slackware... and why I hate Mandrake :D

DISTRIBUTIONS SECTIONS

who are you hackers_ ? You maybe not notice but you're NOT a mod. And until now, 2 mods and a LQ addict reply to this post. Calm down and find somewhere else to have cops-like power trip. If there are a problem, mod will take care of it.

I hate these little people that want to govern others when it's not their job.

I use Redhat on my main connection server simply because it is left unattended, and I think redhats up2date is great. They are up on security problems and bug fixes. I can update it, and check it's login and update status from anywhere in the world. I receive email when I need to login to redhat and schedule an update.


I like slack for it's easy layout, not much hidden stuff burried in scripts that is obvious in the RedHat like distros.

I think it's easier than the large distros, only because of it's simplicity.


I do not fiddle with my server because I do not want it to go down.

I fiddle with my slackware box.

I wanted to try mandrake so I put it on my laptop I use at work. I am not really crazy about it, it is to me a slightly modified copy of redhat but that's not a bad thing.

I have built a few lfs systems, and am working on my own system that is in the ram mounted rescue disk stage for OS/2, NT, and Linux at this point.


The botom line is they are all Linux, which I like using for everything that I need it for.

Slack is easier to learn, but harder for a newbie to install and configure.

Let me explain:

With RH, Mandrake, Suse, etc you usually don't have to "learn" it. You just run their install and configuration programs and hope they work. When they don't, and you have to get "under the hood" to see why, you'll find out how hard to learn these distro's really are.

With Slack, the simple install and configure programs are versitile, but not very complete. You then are expected to finish configuring a lot of the system yourself, manually. This makes things harder for first time installers. The simplified structure of Slack, however, makes this part much easier than with those others above. After the new user gets through this part, they've really learned some good fundementals of their OS.

In both cases however, the new user will likely have trouble figuring out where to go for help, since documtation is not as organized as it should be.

I totally agree, Slack is the easiest.

It's simplicity that makes it solid.

Just go for it.

I can't see what the big deal is, if you don't like it go on to the next distro.

It's not like you have to pay for it. If you like it go out and buy the boxed set to help support the cause, if you can afford it.

All of the distros are free for download, a heck of a lot of work goes into it. So I think they are all doing the linux comunitee a service.

If you have trouble with slack setup you can always get help here

http://linuxquestions.org

There really is a misconception about how difficult slack is. Anybody reading these posts should be able to see that now. When I queried about Slack and its difficulty it put me off a bit but I decided to try anyway, and Im so much happier now.

I mean as Wartstew said the other distros are great for doing things for you until things go wrong at which point a newb doesent know where to start (other than on this forum:)) So with Slack you get to identify issues immeadiately and corect them with a minimum of fuss.

How is this harder??????

I dont think its easier than other distro's but it definitely isnt harder, its different and in my opinion better for Newb's due to the lack of gui configurable tools that plague the other distro's.

Once a Newb has learnt Slack he/she can probably take on any other distro with a minimum of hassle due to the knowledge gained from doing things manually.

P.S Hackers_ I apologise If posting this and the "Best distro Poll" in this forum has upset you but as Half_Elf said moderators and LQ Addicts have posted and they havent complained so please dont Shout. ;)

I think that the main Slack's problem is hardware configuration:)

shouldn't be anybody's job to govern other people; people should govern themselves-which is what slack offers me, it's been one thing after another to learn, but i'm happily still with it long after a brief and boring fling with rh and mandrake(though i like mdk's potential as linux for the masses; yes, a linux for the masses would be a good thing for linux in general)-lfs may be even better as a personal os.

Yes and no to the LFS idea. LFS is good for those who have the time to take it all in, and the resources as well. If you've not a got a decent connection to the net, and plenty of time, LFS is going to be taking up a good chunk of whatever life us Linux geeks have. Don't get me wrong, I am in no way saying LFS is not totally worth the time, I am just saying that it's maybe a step above the already lengthy time it may take someone to setup a Slack install. I gave LFS a run a while back, and it tought me a LOT, but since then my XP rescue disc (and someone not knowing a thing about my partition setup) has destroyed all my OS's, requiring blanking both HD's and starting over. I am not any time soon, planning on starting another LFS project, and am actually very happy and impressed with a recompiled kernel and a Slack disc.

Yes though on the Mandy bit, I agree. I think Mandy is a very good possibility of "Linux for the masses".

Cool

I've used Slackware for about 2 years now on my main Linux box and like it alot. I've used both Slack 8.0 and now 8.1. Both work well. The install process has definitely improved from 8.0 puts it's nowhere near as thorough as RH or Mandrake but it did recognize my soundcard and NIC right away. On my laptop I've alternated between RH and Mandrake for the last 3 years. Slack takes a little longer to configure but once it's setup properly it cruises. If you know any other variation of linux already than you know Slack. The biggest difference is that you need to manually modify your configuration files: /etc/inittab, /rc.d/modules.conf, etc.. but they won't change on you unexpectantly. I use KDE and it works great. The other thing that is different in Slack is the package tool which has .tgz extensions. You can usually go to http://www.linuxpackages.net and find the most up to date versions of differnt software. You can also convert .rpm's with a utility. A lot of times I download the source code and compile it. I have an extra HD (where 8.0 was installed) sitting around and I'm thinking of trying Debian, Gentoo or even one of the BSD's. Is there a LUG near you? Go to the meetings, talk to people and ask questions. People are willing to help you if you ask for it. Go to one of their installfests and you'll get assistance from experienced users. I was a little hesitant to try Slackware until I joined the local LUG.
Good luck :)

Power To The Slack People

well, i think each distro will need some kind of tweaking or other. some are more automated, some are not. i mean, what's the big diff, applications-wise? it's not conceptually more difficult to tar-xvfz package and compile than rpm -i package right? it's just typing a bunch of commands one after the other.

i think the part where slack is less friendly is the hardware part. if i buy an old piece of junk (like my current 2nd hand monitor) with no manual, i'll have some trouble. otherwise, hey it's fantastic. i learnt where things go and how they work on slack. rh does it for me but ok i'm never sure where some things go. but hey, it works and its linux.

Dai says with his Slack Hat Firmly secured :)

Yes it can be difficult to configure certain thing's but would you say its any easier in other distro's?????

I mean if theres an issue with hardware it would probably effect all distro's with the same kernel surely????

What I would say is from a migrator's perspective. Slackware is superb for folks running servers, and who are comfortable with the command line installation and interface. Debian also is. For someone with one box, a production box, something more like what he is used to might be in order to begin with. Multibooting is fun, but not id you do not know how to recover from m ultiboot failures correctly. Grub is a decent booter when fed the right data, but Lilo is easier to understand (Grub has a way of dropping out device numbers from the boot order if the IDE devices are not HDs, so hdd1 could become, to Grub, device 2, partition 0 (expressed in the SCSI manner, sans lun, as 2,0 in this case) if hdc is a CD-ROM. Slack is full of such things for the unwary, but highly usable for those who are familiar with some of the pitfalls which were there for the ones who stumbled about blind in the first discovery attempts in an unfamiliar file structure option set both logical and physical in nature.

Patrick Volkerding's semi-classic "Linux System Commands" was very good, but it was a shock for this semi-newbie (who tried slack but then moved to RedHat and then Mandrake looking for hardware integration issue resolution without knowing how the driver modularities worked-- found it in Mandrake, as I had a NIC similar to the one posted about recently, and a USB printer and scanner of fairly recent vintage) to discover how radically new and different each distro was when it came time for the details of handling.

John.

1) Some distros try to guess what you want your bootloader configured, (lilo.conf) then don't give you a chance to do anything about it. Because of various hardware and BIOS incompatibilities that aren't worked around, the result is sometimes computer that won't boot. A little bit of a pain to fix after it happens.

2) Some distros require X to be functional to do the install, then tries to guess it's configuration. When it gets it wrong, a dead console is often the result. It often takes a few reboots to work around the problem.

3) Sometimes (not very often, if your sane) you might be trying to boot Linux using strange disk controllers (rare SCSI's and such). Some distro's just won't do it unless you come up with a kernel (like from Slackware!). Slackware has kernels already compiled to handle just about any possibility.

4) The single file: "rc.modules" is a lot handier than the many it often takes for those others to manually configure drivers, and services that you might be loading as modules. The sample setups in "rc.modules" seem to usually work. All you have to do is uncomment them.

5) The fact that Slack uses pristine unpatched kernels is handy when you want to compile your own, or upgrade to provide among other things: increased hardware support. You never have to try to figure out what extra patches you might need to apply and why.

6) The Slack doesn't use "initrd"s (which is a pretty neat deal actually) in it's normal default bootup, this makes Slack simpler when changing hardware driver module loading procedures.

Some of these things are very minor, or of questionable validity, but they add up.

Not all kernels are compiled with the same hardware compatibility, this avoids having bloated kernels. (The default kernels end up being very bloated anyway). The others sometimes get fancy with "initrd"s to deal with this problem. Slack just gives you a bunch of kernels suited for special needs.

In reality, those other distro's are getting better and better at correctly detecting and configuring you hardware. It *is* very nice when they work. Slack is sure nice when it doesn't.

very well put forward argument there.

I agree with what you say about Slack especially with regards rc.modules as it makes things so much easier.

And as long as the gui installls and auto-setups make a hash of things Slack will be King of the Linux Castle.

However Even if all of the issues are sorted Slack will still be the most easily manually configured distro out there.