I like SalixOS and occasionally use some of its packages, however last time I had it installed a security fix came several weeks after the Slackware update. This made me realise that whatever distribution I chose, I would always compare it with Slackware, so I am now 8 years with Slackware.

SO I VOTE : 2

samac

I put my 18 year old son (with no linux skills to speak of) in front of my laptop over the weekend (so he could write an essay for school and create a powerpoint) he proceeds to dig around a bit and finds KWord and KPresenter and goes about creating his essay and his powerpoint.

My point being is someone who is familiar with computers and is not intimidated by them will figure out any OS in a short amount of time, Slackware is no more difficult to learn and admin than the 900 versions of Windows software available (after having been an admin on windows and solaris platforms i can speak from experience), i have had to "re-learn" windows several times, all I have ever had to do on linux is learn additional items, the core never changed...

Rasta420

Thank you everyone for your replies. I must say, I am a little surprised. I expected most Slackers to cringe at the idea of an OS like Salix. In addition to my own experience, what Slackware users think is valuable knowledge. It will help me when giving advice on other fora. If someone is afraid to try Slackware, I shall not be afraid to suggest Salix as a stepping stone.

For the record, in terms of Slackware versus Salix, if I ever decide to switch distributions, my preference would be Slackware, even if I had to learn a little more before installing it. Salix is nice, but like a few respondents, I am generally not a fan of derivatives.

Straight from Windows to Slackware 11.0 here. My administration skills were not particularly good in the early days but I haven't managed to mess up a Slackware system yet. It's not an impossible task if you're willing to read and really learn the system (and bash/GNU/Linux).

As for the poll...I haven't tried Salix and I'm not particularly interested in it (so invisible option 5, as mentioned earlier). I'm sure it's a nice system but in the end I use Slackware because I like its design philosophies (and implementation of those philosophies).

A hearty #2....tried it...definitely good intro for some to Slackware.

Not really sure. Manual dependency tracking is a skill I can wholly thank slackware for, and its a skill that has allowed me to be more successful with various UNIX projects than I could have been before becoming a slacker. I've used nothing else since 12.1, and can't see changing ever. Even if slackware *god forbid* ever went under, I think the skills I have gained from using it would enable me to at least keep the system updated and functional without having to switch or install a new distro. I can't imagine a derivative intending to "make it easy" for the end-user providing that kind of training.

On the other hand, slackware is also, without-a-doubt the most stable OS I have ever used. Never have I had a problem that I couldn't fix with a bit of elbow grease (and it often turned out that the problem was due to my own tinkering anyway). I can see no harm in helping expose the end-user to the stability and straightforwardness of slackware. Its a great system, and as long as Salix doesn't introduce new problems (i.e. broken dependencies, altered functionality) I think its great that people are getting introduced to the glory that is slack.

So while personally, I don't have much use for it, I can see how it has well deserved place in the distro market. I suppose I'd be inbetween a 1 and a 2. While I'm not jumping around screaming Salix's praises, I can certainly see the benefit of its existence, and wish it well as it continues to make slackware available to those with less patience than myself.

Just to clarify, I was not comparing Salix and Slackware. Salix is not perfect and has its own set of problems, but it is a useful step for newbies I think.

I've never tried Salix but after reading the comments on this thread I'm inclined to give it a wee look.

I love slackware, wouldn't like to use anything else - but! - Salix is fantastic for my eee laptop with it's little 700mhz processor and 4gb ssd. When I am using this at work on the move and suddenly want a program quickly, tracking deps and installing from source using slackbuilds is way to time consuming. Salix and it's extra repo packages solve this for me. If it wasn't for salix my little netbook would be running Arch. So thanks Salix, thanks for keeping Salix Slackware compatible and making a easy to use distro that doesn't rip the heart out of everything that makes Slackware the great distro it is.

Well done!

2 members found this post helpful.

I found Porteus quicker all around on my acer aspire one 751h than Salix albeit I use Salix on my primary box as I'm lazy these days and prefer a sparse install based on xfce with my own compiles, and slackbuilds to fill in whatever else

That being said I always have Slack installed somewhere as a reality check and used it from 8.0 to 13.0 almost exclusively. I learned linux on it and I configure Porteus and Salix based on what I learned and used on Slackware. I've a Raspberrypi on order and am looking forward to using slack or a derivitive on it. I've tried the raspberry debian image using qemu and find debian rather alien to me (sorry bob if your listening).

I do make one mod to Salix, that is I run the default kernel from Zenwalk on my eee (uses the BFS scheduler and I really can't be bothered to compile one). I find this improves flash and other video viewing. On my desktop Slackware machines I just use the generic-smp kernel.

I've never tried Salix but -

^^^^

Having trouble partitioning during install? What method are you using? It really doesn't get much more straight-forward than cfdisk. At least in my case, it's always seemed pretty easy.

Who? Me? No. I don't know where you've got that idea from.

That will probably end up on my tombstone.

I've been using slackware since Red Hat decided no more "Red Hat", only Fedora and RHEL. I guess that was round 2002.

Where Salix fits in for me is friends and family.

Prior to Salix, when a friend of family member wanted me to set them up a "guest room" system, or a "kids system", or any kind of system, which was secondary to their windows machine, that would always provide web and email functionality, regardless of how hacked the windows machine became, it used to be Ubuntu that I would throw on their spare PC.

But now I do Salix for those situations. I get the quick and dirty install, I get access to a lot of packages, and wicd comes ready out of the box. It's an attractive default desktop. So it's GTG.

All my personal systems are slackware, and I implement slackware as a server for my close business clients.

So Salix is my new go to OS for quick deploy on friends/families secondary (and sometimes primary) computers. Ubuntu has been jettisoned.

I have a very positive view of Salix.

d