I think I would try CRUX. From what I have read it seems interesting. I think it has a ports-like system without dependency resolution by default. I might try the PPC port on my old ibook, that or OpenBSD.

2 members found this post helpful.

Happy Birthday, Slackware!!!
I think I was 17 once, but it's that long ago I can't really remember.

I voted for Windows a few weeks back. The reason? I think that in the Linux world only Slackware gives an easy system to play with. Also I already know Windows and I'm starting to believe that I want a system that gets out of the way. So I don't want to have to learn a new system, and I don't want to spend a lot of time setting it up.
That said, Windows is really a nice choice but I am too much of a CLI user.

Due to personal annoyances with Slackware (below, if you want to read an offtopic) I went distro-hoping for a few days. Ubuntu was not tried (as I don't trust their upgrade cycle), openSuSE and Mandriva did not properly completed the installation on my laptop. So I tried Fedora, and I got a nice balance between control and configuration helpers / tools. It is not in the poll, but I'd definitely vote for it now that I had the chance of trying it.

[offtopic]In the last few weeks I got tired of KDE. Truly tired of the huge RAM usage, the slowness in the graphics effects, the sometimes not working hibernation and the plasma crashes. So I tried GSB, and I liked it, but got some really stupid behaviour from nautilus/thunar (i.e.: both will open if I insert a DVD).
So, I think I appreciate a fully-integrated system and Slackware, with its 'vanilla' approach, is not giving me that. Also software availability is something I have grown to appreciate. Slackware is great with its bundled software, but that is not everything I may want. Yes, I can compile everything required, and SlackBuilds and sbopkg are great tools, but I think I'm too lazy nowadays. Also I don't like the menus full of software I will not use.
So I have moved on to Fedora 13 on my laptop. Nice system, and something I find hard to believe: *faster and less memory usage* on GNOME than GSB on Slackware on the same hardware and almost without configuration.
Slackware will still be the system on the servers I build, as servers are less demanding than desktops on the points I made. But, mainly due to KDE4, I won't be seeing the Slackware logo on each boot on my laptop.[/offtopic - I feel better now ]

Does this mean that Slackware is almost an adult?

The first version I installed was released in November of 1995. Man, that was a long time ago. I bought it on a CD and I had to borrow a computer to make the stacks of floppies because I didn't have a CD-ROM drive. Then I did the install.

I spent months trying to figure out how to configure the X server and Open Look. Man it was painful.

I must have recompiled the kernel a thousand times trying to get all my hardware recognized. It was still way better than anything else out there, except for the expensive $2,500 commercial Unix offerings.

Those were the days! Things have really come a loooong way since then.

I went back to school for computer science, largely because of Slackware and Linux. I use it for *all* my systems, work and everything else.

Here's hoping for another wonderful 15 years+ ;-)

Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but it is rather odd that in a poll asking what Slackware users would migrate to there is no option to the effect of "a Slackware variant". Yes, I know it is covered by the generic options, but if it was there I wonder how it would change things.

I haven't tried many of those. I did give Vector a try but it just didn't feel right to me.

At 17? No, it means you can't trust your teenage daughter with it!

I'm a little late, but congratulations to the slackware team, especially the bdfl. May there be 17+++ more years

I started out my Linux journey with Zenwalk, and still use it on some machines. I have Vector on the wife's laptop, and she's happy with it (which is worth it's weight in gold right there ). I've played around with Absolute and Salix, but I reached the point where I wanted to try the original(Slackware) and am quite happy with! I like the variants much more than the alternatives (*buntus, etc).

I prefer Zenwalk over Vector, just on bias, but I would run either of those over jumping to something else - but wouldn't mind trying a *BSD flavor.

If you are a dedicated Slackware user, who was denied Slackware and really values power and control over your machine, how could you vote anything besides an LFS distro?

My journey started with Slackware in 99. Over the years (and plenty of distro-hopping) I eventually ended up back with Slackware in 2008. Bluewhite was a draw at one point because it was 64 bit but I never ended up installing it. Slax has come in handy on quite a few occasions. Lately though it seems to claim that it is mounting ntfs partitions as read-write but when I try to access them in a certain way it says that it has been mounted read-only. Very weird. Even a verbose mount command will claim it has been mounted rw, but access to it is definitely ro.

But yeah, until Slackware actually dies I don't see a need to switch.

Hmm, Linux from Scratch? I desire a certain amount of control over my OS, but forgive me if I'm wrong, spending my entire day searching to see if a security update has been released for a piece of software that I run is not my idea of fun.

FreeBSD gives you just a much control . . . Any Linux distribution could, also, after enough "typie-typie-hack-n-slash." LFS is more for a pure hobbiest or someone after a valuable learning experience. I don't think that it would be a good choice for a production machine, be it server or desktop. This is nothing like Slackware, which is perfect in either application . . .

1 members found this post helpful.

I think we can both agree that flexibility is the key issue. Slackware remains one of the most flexible distributions I've encountered. LFS certainly takes the idea of flexibility to the extreme, but that flexibility comes with a sacrifice of ease.

Searching all day for updated software will never appeal to me, either. A 'good' Slackware install can give even the most devoted LFS distro a serious run for its money.

Ultimately, whenever I need a highly customized machine I think you know where I start.