Neither.
slapt-get is a 3rd party add-on meant to add functionality to Slackware's native package management tools and make them behave like their Debian counter parts. You can find info on the Slackware tools here :
http://www.slackware.com/config/packages.php

AFAIK, slapt-get only emulates the basics of apt-get, and doesn't include as much funtionality.
As for Debian users turning or not to Slackware...Maybe they're happy with what they're using.

I can't believe I missed that this whole time. So this is the specific utility people are referring to when they say that Slackware's package manager doesn't do dependency resolution? Certainly have to look into this tonight!

Slackware does come with it's own package manager: pkgtool. You can also use slackpkg, which grabs the files from a mirror and then installs them - neither does dependency checking.

I know this was a statement and not a question but, I have thought about it quite often... Patrick IS Slackware. If he quits or something incapacitates him, you would think that we Slackers would be screwed.

I don't think that would be the case. Slackware seems to have a very loyal fan-base. I'm sure someone/organization would take over OR there would be forks.

Slackware fills a niche very nicely so, there's not 50 flavors waiting to fill it's shoes.

Sort of getting off topic here, but do these guys actually make a living with these distributions? I read recently (which doesn't necessarily mean it was a recent article) that the Debian team doesn't get a dime even with Ubuntu's success?

Back on topic - to get a feel for what's happening under the hood, I'm doing a Gentoo install right now (which is why I have spare time to be on here), and the term "sane" keeps coming up. I've heard this before, in reference to directory structure/installation habits, as well as compiling packages. Can anyone shed some light on this, or point me to some documentation? Every search thus far just turns up someone using the term "sane" in their post/blog/wiki, without actually describing what it is!

Yep, Linux guys think it's more Unix-like because it uses BSD-style init scripts and all the other Linux distros are System V-like.

Slackware isn't the only distro that is used by zealots and elitists. Some of your prior posts in this thread seem to perfectly demonstrate the superiority complex many Debian users seem to have.
Again, is this really unique to Slackware? I bet for every example from a Slacker you can find here, I could find 10 from "superior" Debian users.
OK. Maybe I was exaggerating slightly when I said that it is "nightmarishly difficult" to create a Debian package. In reality it isn't that hard, but the process is a lot more complicated than it needs to be. Emotional opinion it may be, but having used several distros over 10 years of playing with Linux, I can honestly say that I find it much easier to create a tgz package than an rpm or a deb.
You're not looking hard enough. Secondly, "needless" vs. "I don't need them..." There's a difference. My needs are different to yours. Why should I have to install everything you have if I don't need it?
There's that superiority complex again.
Gold!

In the interest of accuracy...
There are certainly other distributions besides Slackware that use a BSD style init. Arch and Crux both do, as well as Slackware based distributions. if you want to count them. There are likely others.

Also, there are other/newer styles that are being developed. A quick search turns up a decent, concise page on Wikipedia :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Init

Doesn't anyone else think that's funny?

Slackware is more UNIX like because it's like BSD and other distros are less UNIX like because they are like.....UNIX...ho hum.....

Great post Crito, but I think it's been subjected to a see no evil, hear no evil filter...

Whether someone wants to call it more or less UNIXlike is of no interest to me. Slackware's init approach is nothing like OpenBSD's (though I'm not sure how traditional that is), so calling it more BSDlike may not be entirely accurate either.


Slackware's approach brings all the advantages of modularity that SYSV init provides, while still maintaining most of the simplicity that BSD's scheme has. All the daemons on OpenBSD are started from one big rc file, which is a bit of a bind when you want to manually stop/start an individual subsystem/daemon.


I prefer Slackware's hybrid approach to the pure BSD init, which I feel is too cumbersome, and also to the pure SYSV design, which I find to be over-engineered. I think the debian guys went pretty much for a more or less pure SYSV approach, but then over-engineered and debian do seem to go hand in hand. To be fair, I suspect that they had good reason and that the way the SYSV init-scripts use Snnxxxxx/Knnxxxxx stop/start links in the runlevel directories was a good match for their chosen software delivery system (packaging scheme).


Having said all that, I'd take either of them over Ubuntu's Upstart event driven init replacement, which IMO is just trying to be too clever for its own good and is just asking for trouble!


All the above is of course personal opinion.

I've never understood that argument either. People who make this claim obviously haven't seen true BSD-style init scripts. They're nothing like the scripts you get with Slackware. The fact that SysV-style init scripts fit neatly into Slack's init is testament to that.

This Slackware "hybrid" approach is an ingenious solution to the compatibility issue. I also find it extremely useful for packaging things which require init scripts.

Like back in the day when Slackware and things like SCO Xenix and some others were both installed with lots of 5.25 floppies. That was fun .