I've just installed Slackware again on a laptop -- after a 20+ year hiatus.

The feelings of joy and relief make a welcome change.

To be honest, I can't remember why I ever left. Maybe some SuSE CD set looked inviting. Maybe I was deceived into liking some sysadmin tool. (In those days pppd, or was it isdn or something could be a pain in the neck. Maybe it was a SCSI scanner or CD burner.)

Anyway. I went through Debian and Red Hat as well, but got fed up around 2000 and got a Mac with OS X 10.0. I used Macs until 10.7 (Lion). I've stopped buying Apple hardware since they won't let me install 10.6.8 on anything new. Then there's all the spying and stuff. Yuck!

So, this year I bought a nice Dell XPS 13. I'd read about Unity (Ubuntu), tried it, and confirmed it sucked. Then I heard about Arch linux and how it was clean, simple, minimalistic and had good docs. But it turns out they've adopted systemd too. :-(

And Debian?! Good lord! I feel really sorry for all the people who've left. It sounds like there's been a secret alien (RH? MS?) invasion and their (the remaining people) minds have somehow been taken over. Perhaps some slug-like creature in the ear...?

Anyway, I had Arch installed. journalctl used to show *reams* of totally uninteresting garbage and nothing of what I was looking for. For a couple of months though, there have been no entries at all. WTF? Oh, never mind...

Tadah! Slackware 14.1 installed within minutes. The blessed /var/log/messages implies that my Intel 7265 wifi isn't being recognised and a google says I should have installed -current. Oh well. A quick little wpa-supplicant, followed by a dhcpcd and... I was online. That was astonishing. startx -- and X starts (fvwm2, like in the good old days). No configuration to do at all. Amazing! The trackpad seems to be working. Even the fonts look good!

There's a bit of tweaking to do; things like getting power consumption down to a minimum and configuring screen brightness and volume keys. Then I'd like to find my 20 year old, lovingly crafted fvwm config file... But on the whole, it's already perfectly usable for me (couple of xterms and firefox).

So I'm really happy at the moment (despite geopolitics and TTIP etc). Thank you so much Pat and all the others!

Welcome home.

Welcome home, colinh2.

I completely understand. My story is similar.

That feeling when I boot and the Slackware logo appears in the lilo screen. Yay!

Welcome back :-)

I've spent quite a bit of time evaluating and running a number of operating systems over the last two years on my test box: Debian, openSUSE, Arch, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD.
In the end I always come home to Slackware. It is good to chill, relax and just enjoy my distro. Praise Bob.

Hehe, we always come back...

One reason I quit looking around or trying other distributions several years ago.

Yeah, I've fairly much given up on non-Slackware as being quality based. Funtoo is nice and intriguing and B/LFS is a good informative educational experience, but nothing beats Slackware, nothing.

I think we've all been there.

Me in 2012. Praise "Bob"

+1 on the OP

"Once you go Slack, you never go back"

Words to live by, IMHO

I'm pretty much a Linux newbie and even I can see how awesome Slackware is. I tried a few distros recently -- E.g., Fedora, Mint, and Salix -- and I found myself constantly thinking, "no, don't like that" or "why don't they just do it like Slackware?"

Slackware + Xfce is computing bliss if you ask me.

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Even the T-shirt is better than other distros' :-)

Thanks for the welcome backs.

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Back in the day (circa 2000-2005) when almost all Linux required manual setup of hardware (remember fax modems?) I used Corel Linux to help me see how it detected and setup my hardware on my box to help me understand some options of how I could do it manually in Slackware. Within a year, though, I found myself trying to make Corel (and it's morphed offspring Xandros) behave more like Slackware.

The "Linux Light" had flared "Eureka! I SEE!" within about 3 months of using Slackware (with just a little nudge in hardware setup from Corel) and within that year I had left Windows and OS/2 behind almost completely (Linux uptimes in months). I continued to multiboot so that I could both learn and speak from experience about other distros but I found it made no good sense to try to make other distros behave like Slackware and I began testing by letting them show me their way. The results are that while I have a multiboot system still, my Slackware install has enjoyed uptimes as high as 15 months so all others, including other linux distros have been at best in the back seat if not the trunk or in the case of Windows, hastily strapped on the roof LOL.

Bottom Line is that I have truly given many others the proper test and they ALL fall short. Slackware is simply elegant and in my not so humble opinion, the best OpSys available, anywhere, at any price. I feel exactly what you mean and felt compelled to write about. Welcome Home.

Cool. My first version of Linux was Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 in 2002, then I went to Red Hat 9, then Slackware in 2004.
Accept no substitute. Slackware!