Nothing that comes without a price is appreciated,
and you'll be glad for all you learn in Slackware...

Yeah, that was what I was looking for anyway. I know I am going to spend many frustrating nights on my computer and these forums, but what the hell, at least I will have something to be proud of. Two things...

If I use Slackware for a year, would I be able to use almost any other distro?

Can any of you show me a picture of the default desktop?

Well I think the linux distributions would be MUCH better off if they decided to all try and earn money. There would be more inclination to be user friendly and nice to the user. Some of which has been tried and failed, but I have yet to really find a distro that I truely found to be useful for any newbie. If people wanted to earn money off of linux, they would make it more easily accessible and easy to use for the general public. (And no quoting lindows in wal-mart, all consumers reports said they were useless)

Personally I use LFS so I find that user friendliness is pointless for me, but it is a feature that I believe would truely and greatly affect the useablility of linux. As it is, its for geeks. Don't deny it, don't rant about it. Most people buy a pre-made computer from some place like dell and get windows XP pre-installed on it. Only people who like to play with things like this will put a new OS on their systems.

Well um. There are a couple desktops you could choose from, GNOME, KDE, Blackbox, etc etc. And they will all look amazingly different, its up to you to choose which one you like then customize it. Quite frankly, thats one great thing about linux, is that you customize everything you want.

Pauli,

Good points. In it's purest form, a Linux distribution
is not for a Windoze refugee, but rather, for someone
who wants to have control of their computer system,
and who will spend the time to learn and configure it
the way they want. It was originally designed because
Linus wanted something better than Minix, and he's
still working feverishly to improve the kernel; not to
compete with Windoze.

Windoze does not compete with Slackware. They are
two different systems, designed for two different types
of users. Windoze (all OSes) are far inferior to Slack.

If you think with your index finger, use Windoze. If you
think with your brain, use Slackware.

Making a Linux distribution easier for the point-and-click
mind, which doesn't want to read and learn, has not
produced any distro worth the cost of a CD yet; and it
never will...IMO

Yes, definitely, because Slack is so standard. With Slack, almost all of what you learn is generic knowledge, not specific to Slackware.
You'll be able to use ANY other distro, even the dreaded LFS.

Simple : as Slackware doesn't change any of the default settings, the default desktop is the default config provided by the developers of the DE you'll use, (for example KDE). These defaults are not very good in my opinion (fonts are too large), but you'll find it easy to adapt it to your taste.


Don't be afraid of Slack. An example of Slack toughness is that some features like supermount (the ability to detect inserted CD-ROMs automatically, without mounting them manually) are not enabled by default and will require you to recompile your kernel. But don't worry : you'll perfectly survive for a few weeks without supermount, and then you'll have enough experience to try your first kernel compile.

Another example of Slack toughness is that by default it boots to text mode, so you have to type a command to lauch the graphical interface. If you want to boot directly into a graphical interface, you have to modify the file /etc/inittab (but don't worry, there's only one character to change!)


The one necessary thing to begin with slack is an internet connection that's always available, so that you can ask questions on forums (the official slack forum is here at linuxquestions) when you need help.

What I mean is, when I downloaded Ubuntu, it had a brown screen with one bar on the bottom, and another on the top. I liked the way it looked, because it wasn't too flashy, but still appealing to the eye. Does Slackware not have a default desktop like this?

But ah! If they can earn shitloads of money off of it they may just try harder

But yeah, you do have a point that all those distros that try and be point and click really really suck. Its like using visual studio or any do-everything-for-you IDE, it ends up with shitty code.

And it depends :-P However inferior it may be, it is so much nicer to use windows xp to run a windows program than use slack or any distro to emulate it. Emulation has always annoyed me :-P

You can set it up like that. I forget, its been a while since i used slack default. But in KDE its a different default than it is in GNOME. But you can always make it the way you want, so if you liked that desktop then I'm 99% sure you can recreate it in GNOME or KDE on slack if you want to.

I realize that this question may have been motivated by the fear that Slack, being a somewhat hardcode distro, might neglect graphical beauty. Don't believe that : Slack provides very up-to-date for X.org, KDE and XFCE, and if you want very good GNOME packages, google for dropline. So you'll take advantage of all desktop improvements.

I'd say you're wanting Fluxbox. On my system it loads in about 2 secs.,
and then you have one little bar on the bottom. You right-click on the
desktop for a menu. You edit it from /home/username/.fluxbox/menu
and make it just like YOU want it.

You should look at some LQ Member desktops and search
for "post a link to your screenshot" thread here at LQ, and then go
to the Fluxbox website

I sure hope you're d/ling those Slack isos while we evangelists
are posting this stuff...

If you want to see real stunning desktop screenshots, go to www.lynucs.org

That's quite true -- something we should point out to Lyko before
he heads down that road. I tried using Wine and the commercial
product that bought the maintainer/developer named Julliard from
Wine, but they could not properly run Adobe PageMaker or Photoshop,
so I'm still dual-booting that stinking OS for those two products.

Scribus is maturing really fast, but is nowhere near the product that
PageMaker is yet; and GIMP is the same compared to Photoshop.
This month I'll be giving them another good try, since that's about
all that's keeping me from being totally Windoze free...

That and me playing vampires the masquerades.

And HL2.

And UTK.

And ...

:-P

Wintendo :-P

photoshop and Half-life 2 run fine under linux, using wine and cedega, respectively.

EDIT:
ok, i've not tried the advanced features of photoshop, so if you says it runs not so good with wine, then you're right, not me.

Before we get flamed, I would like to say that I for one
am not asking, or depending, upon someone to "make
software designed for Billy Gates' 2-bit OS work under
a Linux distro."

I'm current on Scribus via cvs, but haven't really kept
as current with GIMP, because of (a) lack of good
documentation, and (b) the GIMP Users Group could
never answer any tough questions for me...

Well, before I got it posted, there's someone to
argue the point. So I'll counter -- post or email me a
screenshot of Photoshop 7 running under Slackware
with a file containing at least 10 layers open, and we'll talk...

Edit: Photoshop running under Wine, or something
free. I'm not paying for something to run Windoze software
under Slackware when I already paid for Windoze...