I don't have any UNIX or development background. I started around 1993 with DOS5 while in junior high school. After using every version of Windows from 3.11 to XP I decided I wanted to get back to a commandline OS with emphasis on stability and functionality. I wanted to get away from as much "handholding" and gui wizards as possible. My search led me to Slackware. As for the "most UNIX-like" description, I interpreted it as; stable and powerful with emphasis on commandline tools and resource conservation. Maybe because that's what I was looking for, and that's what I got, and I've never looked back.

Don't take "UNIX-like" literally, as if Slackware were trying to mimic UNIX, but figuratively, as what are UNIX's strengths and Slackware strives to achieve those same strengths.

I do, too, for the same reasons I left Windows. I use a gui for Firefox and OpenOffice and occasionally k3b, but everything else I pretty much do in a terminal, even mounting flash drives and activating my wireless connection.

I'm not familiar with that book, but that's a good definition of stability, which Slackware is known for.

Not a book (that would be, uh, too many words to adhere to the philosophy, eh?). Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy.

This is correct, up to a point. However, many other distributions will break if you install things beyond the capability of the package manager. Things may still function correctly, but automated upgrades may break whatever functionality one may be attempting to achieve.

By contrast, nothing is beyond Slackware's package manager. You want to create your own package? The tools are provided for you. There is no other distribution available (apart from Slackware derivatives) that makes it as easy to create and install your own packages. Debian makes this process nightmarishly difficult. Too bad if you want something that's not in the repositories for your current version.

Also, under Slackware, the complete build environment is installed straight out of the box. You don't need to install umpteen-gazillion *-devel packages just to compile things. You can do it immediately.
These sort of snide commentaries and observations are often made by Debian users, without considering the validity of Slackware as an alernative choice.

Believe it or not, there are good reasons for not wanting things like automatic dependancy resolution. What if I need a tool for a specific job that doesn't the require the 43 dependancies that Debian wants to install on my behalf? It doesn't know what I need. I know what I need.
Well said.

Of course


Nah, lets make it more complex insted, I'd say a bit suspicious for me, but hey it works, right.

I wouldn't agree more.

Actually I do consider Slackware one of the few valid choices of distribution, on the grounds that

1. it works

2. it stands alone, it isn't derived

3. it works

My criticisms (OK snide, but I thought funny) are not of Slackware but of the religious sentiment and behaviour around it. For a distribution which supposedly demands some clear and focused thought processes to install and configure, its advocates really produce some surprisingly unfocused, uninformed hocus pocus waffle, which as often as not is accompanied by a jaundiced view and misrepresentation of other similar systems. Here's an example:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...40#post3491540

I don't use Ubuntu, I don't like Ubuntu (for rather different reasons), but I can also recognise this as something unpleasant. It's either deception or self deception. And it went completely unremarked. This kind of narrow, parochial thinking is found expressed every day here. It's called preaching to the choir. I've noticed that when you come across groups routinely indulging in this behaviour that they have long since ceased to value or even engage in rational thought. It's religion. And looking at Slackware and J.R. Dobbs I can't help thinking that this is a truly sad irony.

I think Slackware users might do better to promote their favourite on the basis of facts rather than silly sentiment, bad mouthing everyone else and saying a lot of things which aren't true.

It's OK to say "I use because I like it". That stands alone as a good reason and needs no justification or explanation.

How about: "I measured the performance in terms of X,Y, Z and Slackware was best.

or

"I've run it for years and it's thoroughly reliable and consistent"

"It's easy to administer"

"It upgrades reliably"

"It's always properly supported with a security mailing list"

and so on.

That makes sense to me whereas the constant denigration of everything else combined with unfounded assertions of intangible/notional/fictional qualities-beyond-definition doesn't.

And one problem with claiming that other distro's methods are impossibly complex and "nightmarishly difficult" is that when the users of those other distros read that, their thought process might be something like "Hmmm, that's funny, it didn't seem difficult to me. These guys must be a bit....special..." It doesn't make you seem more credible. Stick to the facts and maybe people will see the virtues of your arguments and of your preferred distribution. Argue on the basis of misinformation, disinformation, unfounded criticism and hysterical groupthink and you will win over people who really can see the emporer's new clothes.

That special tool with 43 needless dependencies....can't find it anyhere. Might it lie just the other side of the looking glass?

Well that is not entirely true. Making packages is easy on all distributions that use tar.gz package managers.
eg. Arch Linux or CRUX.
In fact on both of these its much easier since a large part of the process SlackBuilds use too has been automated.

Package management is what i dislike most about the *BSD's (and all Linux distributions not using tar.gz PMSs). Even though they all offer the convinience of both ports and packages, making your own package for whatever reason is not as convinient as in Slackware, or at least it doesnt seem to be.

Yes, infact, the more you understand computers, the more suspicion you'll have. Computers are dumb machines, they blindly follow instructions. Automation scripts/systems are written by humans. Humans make mistakes and have oversights. Also, unless the humans spend an extreme amount of time coding and testing the automation system for every possible scenario it's ever likely to meet then sooner or later its going to encounter a scenario it wasn't coded to deal with and make a bad decision. I've worked with automation on UNIX servers and as a Systems Programmer on IBM mainframes, I've learnt through experience that treating automation with a healthy amount of suspicion is exactly the right thing to do.

That doesn't mean I'm entirely anti-automation. There are places for it and there are places that are best left to someone with the capacity to reason through a problem, rather than blindly follow a set of predetermined if clauses.

Dude, well-said!
I love Slackware because it does not have dependency checking. From my perspective package managers in other distros work up to a point and then they often break. If I need to make a package in Slackware that requires a dependency I can install the dependency.
The Slackware way works for me.

Yes, but is the desktop user or server administrator really going to inspect every script, link and binary in /bin /sbin/ /usr/bin and /usr/sbin /usr/local/bin? Of course not. Whichever distribution is used we already have placed our trust in the upstream contributors and the distributor, and of course all the people who test, feedback and contribute. This leaves us free to focus on the stuff that matters, stuff which makes a difference to us. Slackware, like every other GNU/Linux distro, is packed full of preconfigured and automatically configured scripts and binaries. That's why the thing works without taking a month to build and install like LFS or 3 days like Gentoo!

It isn't a hard, clear line and naturally different circumstances dictate different levels of inspection/audit/attention, but suspicion (or justifiable caution) too often becomes superstition, and intelligent choice, or discrimination, is usurped by received dogma.

I think that people who claim they want this granular auditing and maximum UNIXness (whatver that may be) should eat their own dogfood. Slackware is way too automated for anyone who says these things for real (instead of simply singing from the communal hymnsheet). It's time for those guys to download and build Solaris from source. It can be done and it is apparently the nirvana of which they speak. Any takers?

When you (or anyone, in general) refer to slackware's package manager, are you talking about slapt-get? Or just the classic .tar.gz configure/make/make install?

Does slapt-get stand up/compare to the regular apt-get? It seems strange to me, that if it did, more Debian users wouldn't turn to slackware for the best of both worlds?

Oh, and yes, I do have slackware installed and I am trying to muddle my way through it. Only bringing that up because whenever I do a google search, there's at least 3 guys in a thread that say "just install it and try it out!"

Thanks to everyone who's chiming in on this, it's really a confidence booster in the linux community - a nice counterpoint to anyone that says "well what if ian murdoch/patrick volerding/etc just decides tomorrow they've had enough? Then what happens to my OS?"

I didn't bring up the question of package management but a couple of true blue Slackware guys did so I'll mention it:

I have no issue with a distribution which elects the administrator to be the package manager's dependency handler. It's a valid approach and not nearly as onerous as people believe, especially if the distribution has the good sense to maintain a stable repository.

However this doesn't mean that dependency-checking package management is bad or will necessarily break any more than it means your brain will break doing it for yourself. Fundamentally the requirements are the same as with the Slackware model; a high quality and stable repository. It isn't rocket science to deal with a package's dependencies though with a very broad base of packages it necessarily requires the distribution to have plenty of people contribute.

Those distributions which don't pay enough attention to QA will always have trouble with dependency checking, regardless of which tools they use. But that's an issue with the standards required of their packagers and of the management of their repositories.

Dependency checking is one of those tasks that is entirely mundane. Check, check, fetch, check, fetch, ready, go. If this can't be reliably automated we should all give up and go back to waving incense and wailing at the sky.....oh wait, some of you did

I've compiled KDE from source in FreeBSD....that took days. Ports is an excellent package manager as is pkg_add. I've done the whole compile from source thing.
I prefer the middle way of Slackware; it allows me to install pre-built binary packages, I can use slackbuild scripts, I can make Slackware packages, and if I so choose I can compile from source.
You like apt-get and aptitude. Each to his own.
I like the logical design of Slackware. I get it.

Now for some "surprisingly unfocused, uninformed hocus pocus waffle" from a Slackware user who still regards himself as a relative newbie. I don't know or care whether Slackware is closer to Unix, closer to God, or even closer to the edge. All I can say is that Slackware gives me more incentive to learn and experiment than some other distros. With Debian, for instance, I feel my hands are tied - only loosely, but still...
A SlackBuild will tell you about dependencies, and if that doesn't, we can always find out by "waving incense and wailing at the sky" for answers from Bob.

That's nice but you can do all of that in numerous different distros. Nothing unique. The only difference from most is that you have to check the depends yourself...unless you use a buildscript and someone did that for you....

What makes some Slackers think that all normal packaging tasks can't be performed in other distros? It's pretty odd.

Install binary packages? Check

Install from distro's source package? Check (guess what, this is just like having the source...with a build script! It respects all your compile flags! Amazing!)

Compile & Install from upstream source? Check

Build own distributable package from upstream? Check


This idea that Slackware is unique in these respects is entirely unsupported by fact, yet it's routinely proposed as a Slackware virtue.

The "logical design"...another ethereal concept to add to the list of hocus pocus and pseudo-rational assertions. Maybe it's like intelligent design but with Bob Dobbs taking the place of the usual psycho?

Actually your reply is one of only a few that make sense to me, because you talk about your reaction and feeling as your reaction and feeling. That makes it an honest and well presented expression imo.