I started with Slackware, quite by accident. I had downloaded something else and couldn't get it install.

Now, wherever I wander, I always come back to the elegant simplicity of Slackware.

My Chrome issue got me frustrated some days before and I installed PCLinuxOS on the spare partition to use as the main workstation, just to revert back to Slackware the very same day. Cleaned up my system a bit, installed another instance on the spare partition to use as the test bed for KDE releases and all seems great now.
I swear on my 2 goldfish this is true- once you Slack, you can never go back.

Regards.

I'm still a big Debian fan, and will continue to use it on one of my boxes, but yes, Slackware just keeps calling me back to it. It forces me to dig deeper and learn more, which is a good thing.

Same here, I started using Slackware and could never turn my back on it. I tried other GNU/Linux distributions like OpenSUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch and so on.
There was never anything close to Slackware and there still not is.

I recommend it to everyone I know, but they never wan't to try. I feel sad for them.
I wish I would still be in contact with the guy who recommended it to me...

My Slackware knowledge is definitely paying off. I work as linux administrator and basically my responsibility is to take care of a few physical and many virtual servers running in KVM. We use Gentoo on all machines for it's versatility (but to be honest, I hate full system upgrade - it takes quite a lot of time and anything can go wrong at any point).

Funny thing happened when my boss had to decide if I really get that job after trial period. The conversation between my boss and colleague (who also make decisions in this project) went something like:

Boss: "Hmm, I'm not sure. I don't think it's good idea to hire that guy."
Colleague: "But who else? He use Slackware so he could quite easily dive into Gentoo. If you'd hire 'professional' admin, he'd definitely know only Debian and THAT could end bad."

So Slackware saved the day and I got job :-)

BTW: What it takes to be Slackware Certified Engineer?

Haha, wow, that's a great story! Yeah, I would say that Slackware, Gentoo, and Arch (of the major distros), FORCE you to actually LEARN Linux. There are a lot of knowledgable and talented Debian users and admins, but it really doesn't make you learn Linux like the others.

eyeofliberty,

It was interesting to read your confessions.

Here I described my computing experience since mid-80s of the 20th century to now as a reply to Woodsman’s memoirs. Maybe both these reports will be interesting for you as well.

***

Sometimes our experience is similar: I started with Red Hat as well, I prefer used ThinkPads just like you, I tested all major Linux distributions since 2000 similarly like you.

In the other cases we differ: you read “In the Beginning was the Command Line” many years ago and I started to read it merely two weeks ago.

Here I published a short introduction to the after-installation configuration of Arch Linux.

I've been using Slackware for a very long time and there are still things I am learning every day.

Believe it or not, but after all of this time I only just recently learned how to set up NFS shares. It took me all of 5 minutes, and most of that time was spent reading.

One thing that I really enjoy is that it is trivially easy to configure any of the services which come pre-installed in slackware. This is because most of the configuration files are well commented and easy to edit.

There is a lot to be said for the functional [and elegant] simplicity which slackware provides. I will continue to use it for as long as it exists.

I was away from Slackware after the unfortunate demise of a previous laptop. The one I got had some weird network-card-pretends-to-be-Intel-but-not-quite problems. I was on Fedora for a while, which is not bad, but it is not home.
With my latest one, everything works out of the can, and I can not begin to describe how nice it is to be back on track. Slackbuilds keep me up to date and makes it easy to take out support for something I have removed or to add support for something special I need.
It is - to some ironically, to some absurdly - the friendliest OS for the way I work.

I started using Slackware because I could actually figure out what the setup utility was doing and where I could add the "magic" to make my fake RAID boot. Afterward I discovered that most software would compile from source and the distro was very stable. I also liked the fact that Slackware uses KDE rather than GNOME. When I discovered XFCE I was even happier. Slackware includes a great variety of choices and leaves the choosing to the user.

The Slackware Documentation Project was another selling point for me. I'm not sure where that stands. The last time I checked it was lagging behind Slackware quite a bit. Still, I found it a great introduction and beginner's reference to Linux. After using a number of Unix systems on mini-computers and mainframes I was skeptical about Linux. The biggest problem with most of the Unix systems was the lack of friendly documentation and the need to do everything differently than every other Unix system. I can't count the number of times that I swore while trying to figure out what yet another Unix system decided to call the tape drive device.

Patrick does a great job focusing on making a stable and useful distro rather than a bunch of cosmetic changes or trading reliable versions for bleeding edge improvements of dubious benefit. Yet, I have never gotten stuck trying to resolve a Slackware problem. Lots of people are willing to help and many of those directly involved in Slackware will step in with good advice on the tougher problems.

One thing that I do have difficulty with is making a custom installation DVD. That is probably because I haven't spent enough time looking at the available resources. I'm pretty sure if it isn't a standard script that comes with Slackware, there are some scripts on Alien Bob's web site that will help.

Welcome to the Slackware community!