I won't feed with an useless post this "Big Endians against Little Endians" discussion.

Oh my, I did just that

Thanks for your reply, I appreciate that. For the record I love Slackware, Red Hat, Suse, and a lot of other OSs. I am very happy to see the growth of Linux in the corporate sector. It is all good.

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Corporate sector Linux also has a lot to deal with in the upstream of development with Linux software usually in patches, repacks, and R&D projects that may or may not find their way into vanilla packages.

Without Red Hat, Ubuntu, and other's like VMware, OpenGroup, etc. Linux might not have gotten as polished as it is today. If you compare Linux to as it was about 10 years ago, it's come a long way and now is about as easy to use as any other operating system out there with the right administration and tools, and now has the true potential to usurp Windows, though most of that potential comes from Microsoft's own undoing.

Noah's Ark was a lone amateur's work, whereas the Titanic was a professional project. Now see how they fared.

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I'd just put that Red hat(The Company) and Slackware(The OS) both have their own places in Linux ecosystem.

Regards.

Do not want to start holywar, but: can you name me at least one international, independent, authoritative, non-profit organization which declared/accepted/adopted RH as "Standard Linux Distributions for Servers"?
Moreover, I have searched for (payed) web-hosting services all over the world. None of candidates proposed RH. None! CentOS - yes, Fedora - yes, Debian - yes, Slackware - yes, RedHat - No. What kind of standard is it?

It's the kind that earns a Billion Dollars in a single year (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-sourc...-arrived/10692). Obviously you're not really looking very hard in your search to find an international, independent, authoritative, non-profit organization running Red Hat.

Reaper, You are exactly on point! 100% agree with you. I have used linux 15 years ago I know how it used to be like waiting for startx loading for a crummy desktop with an x pointer floating in the screen and frequent crashes... and just too many problems to list. Back then I had to buy an external modem since win modems didn't work with pppconnect or whatever it was i forgot been a long time. We should thank Redhat for their hard work, but they get compensated enough so I will take my "thanks" back lol. Ubuntu and many distros have helped Linux get to where it is while Slackware remained Stable like a Rock being SLACKWARE. Any old Linux guru that has used Slack before usually returns back to Slack for many obvious reasons.

Feyfre, you live in Ukraine. But in USA Redhat is by far the most used in enterprise servers. If you do a job search in USA you will see this reality. Most of servers of Google and a lot of other giants use Redhat as well. Now, am I saying they are right to choose Redhat? Presently, I think they are right. In the future? I believe Slack will take the benefits of all the distros as it allready has been doing. Redhat has put most the work into the Linux Kernel alone, and Slack benefits off of it... Slack is like the old wise man. He is lazy but smart and patient. Currently he is enjoyed by geniuses that prefer Practicality, Simplicity and a closeness o UNIX standards. So slack gets best of all worlds... And its free. UNIX is the backbone of the internet. So Slack is closer to "the reality" of the internet infrastructure and how things really work. Therefore it is a more practical operating system. Is it perfect? No. It has many flaws. But I believe overtime it will just get better and better as more and more geniuses move towards the distro for its many valid reasons. So, I don't know wtf you mean by a "holy war"... First of all I am pro Slack so you have me confused. I prefer slack over redhat even though redhat is more accepted and a current business standard. And I listed my reasons. As for now I only like 2 OS's. Slack and FreeBSD but I prefer Slack over it because 1- I am used to Linux and 2- Linux Kernel has competitive advantage over FreeBSD. The only thing I like most about FreeBSD is its closeness to a real UNIX BSD system along with Ports and ofcorse ZFS. However its possible to use ZFS on Linux as well. But out of the 2, Slack is my choice. I don't use Redhat as my option at the moment. I use Windows and Slack for now. If something unexpected happens to Slack and it goes down (God forbid) then I will switch to FreeBSD not redhat.

Slackware is not "dependent on the goodwill of a few volunteers." It's backed by a for-profit business, and this business' survival is absolutely dependent on the success of its flagship product. When you consider how long the business has lasted, and how successful it has been in building long-term relationships with its customers (read: "loyal Slackware zealots"), its reliability starts to look very good.

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Yea, but are the developers of Slack getting paid to do their work like Redhat pays them? In my opinion Slackware is greatly motivated by good will. Those that keep Slackware alive don't necessarily have to keep working for it as they are not economically tied to it. They can just quit anytime they want (although I doubt they will)... Where as in Redhat the story is different. A lot of people are tied "Economically" to keep working for Redhat. Now will that change in the future for Slack? I do not know... Patrick doesn't even know from what he said in his interview of the future.

I like Slackware "Present" even though I have good feelings about its future. Honestly I am unsure where it will go in the end. But if all these other new distro's came out of no-where to grow and make so much money... I don't understand how slackware the grandaddy will just vanish... I will continue to use and support Slackware as long as its still here and stays to its true roots and not sell out and change its philosophy. That is why I prefer Slack over Redhat even though it has less support... it still works better for me.

The essential one is. Slackware provides a living for Pat and a few other people (you need people who aren't developers in other to maintain a business). They work for the business full-time and are being paid from the revenues of the business. Just as Redhat's employees are being paid from the revenues of the business. They are not any more or less dependent on the business economically than I hope Redhat's employees are.

If you're talking about the possibility of Alien Bob, Robby Workman and the other volunteers who aren't part of the business quitting, well, my opinion is that this unlikely possibility would not cause Slackware to fail. It would be bad news, and a setback, but it would not be an existential catastrophe.

Anytime anyone even discusses Slackware is failing it gives me the creeps - call me a zelot if you want - but there is simply nothing that will replace Slackware. Debian and scientific linux or centos are giants in their own rights but this Slackware David is what gets the job done _everytime_.
To be honest if slackware disappered I woud have to jump to the *BSD bandwagon which comes a long distance second.
Long live Slackware.

You probably would be surprised that all the Linux distributions do work together on some level. Red Hat, Slackware, SuSE, Gentoo, Ubuntu all have developers that contribute not just to the OS that is distributed, but to the core projects that every distribution is founded upon. Without that all distributions might not even exist.

If Slackware fell apart, every Linux distribution would be greatly affected and not in a good way. Slackware is a great Linux learning tool. Without it, even systems like Ubuntu which has so much automation in it's tools, would have nothing to fall back on when the automation fails. You'd be surprised at how many Linux certification handbooks actually point out that learning minimalist based systems like Slackware are a key fundamental starting point.

How would you personally compare Redhat use to Slackware. I have used centos for a very brisk period. It wasn't bad and very stable using minimal rescources and clean desktop. I honestly couldn't find much to complain about it but I still felt more comfortable with slack and wasnt too used to rpm's and the redhat way of doing things. What made you choose Slackware over Redhat? Perhaps you have more experience then I do. Can you please elaborate on technical differences between the 2 distros?

Here what I wrote over on phoronix, on a FreeBSD thread.

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