Mu.

Arch and Slackware? Chalk and cheese. And cheese is more nutritious. Arch is OK, but I'm too lazy to deal with rolling releases. Need a break now and then from typing pacman -Syu.

@notsure:

Only opinion that matters: yours

Only way to get an opinion: try

systemd = deal breaker. Any further comparison would be redundant.

I ran Arch as my primary OS for a little over a year before making the switch to Slackware. Arch in many ways surpassed the expectations I had prior to actually using it. I really didn't expect the level of stability I received from a bleeding edge distro. I thought I might end up having to fix it every other week. In reality, I had a couple of minor breakages in that time but nothing that couldn't be resolved fairly quickly. Also the things that drew me to it in the first place, its simplicity and the fact that it provides a great way of testing against the latest software and libraries were still true when I moved away from it.

The reason for switching was primarily the fact that the constant updates required too much of my attention, not just to run a few pacman commands but to consider what some of those changes will mean to me and what adjustments I might need to make. Granted for the most part very little but I still had to consider their impact (I don't like taking too many risks, especially on my primary work machine).

This started me on the hunt for something that, like Arch, had a simple design and didn't try to be too clever for its own good. Slackware seemed like an obvious choice though I must admit I was initially concerned by the lack of inbuilt dependency management. Nonetheless I made the jump and was suprised to discover that dependency management actually turned out to be something of a non-issue. I have never had the urge to move back.

That all said, Arch is a fine distro and if something dramatic ever happened in Slackware land it would probably be the first candidate shoud I need a replacement. FreeBSD would be the another obvious choice for me, though inferior hardware support and some missing proprietary software might make that a trickier option.

P.S. One area where IMHO Arch still trumps all is its Wiki. But this is not a problem as I still use it. ;)

Hello

My opinion on ArchLinux is that it's a very good distribution for certain users.

I don't necessarily like Slackware "better" than Arch, but prefer to think of distributions as options for end users rather than competitors.

There is not a better distribution than another one.

Each one is different, has its own specificities, for his own use, so the question has no sense.

Hi, I like Windows.

OP troll is long-gone.

[EDIT]
..... and I'm proven wrong.

Sorry, notsure. Didn't mean to offend, but given the wording and subsequent absence from conversation, I made an assumption.

You know that they say about those ...

Sure, I could have worded my OP better, but it got results, thanks. I'm late for work because I read all the posts.

That has been my experience as well. I've run Arch a few times and I found it very annoying that the system would routinely break when updating it. Slackware is rock-steady. :)

@willysr, @hitest: Keep in mind that with Arch you do have to follow what is happening in the news and community (and update very regularly). You are very active here on the Slackware forums. If you had that level of commitment when running Arch (i.e. following and the news, events and discussions in the Arch world) I think it is very unlikely you would have been tripped up.

Yeah, that happened to me, too.

Yes. Very true. If I read the Arch news as regularly as I read the -current changelog I would not have encountered the breakage as much. Arch is a good distro for some users. Each to his own. Slackware for me. :)

@ruario:
Yes, i agree with that, but even though i have read all the news, if you didn't update your system for too long, the upgrade process might be a little tricky