I started using Slackware (since 12.2), because I wanted to learn more, to make the things the hard way and to be as the sysadmins that I admire. At the start it was too hard for me, coming from Ubuntu, but with the time now I think that some processes are simpler here in CLI that GUI.Besides, I just liked the name, logo and everything else the system - it was something like a challenge and enigma. Using Slackware I just feel like a system administrator The newer features are in current and that separation i like a lot.

Georgi Georgiev

Slackware is great for everyday use. It is my choice of distribution because every time(rather 99.99% of time) something is not working as i want to, or if there is some problem i run into, it is ME who is the problem. Slackware makes you learn from your mistakes. It is very stable(even -current) and it is developed with care; it may be not so shiny as other distributions but after a while it smiles back to you - you know then you have learned the fundamentals of linux.
Quiet water wears down a mountain.
3-4 years, started with Slackware 11.0

(Off topic) I would like to see a nice how-to when you get a chance.

Used AlienBob's instructions for PXE booting to install and then modified a couple things to make it hands free. I've posted instructions on my site: http://mutagenix.org/pxe_kickstart/index.php, but they need to be updated. The thinclient is a further modification to that process, which pulls a very thin (76MB) image across the wire that comes with X, fvwm and xterm. I'll post instructions for that process when I've got it a bit more finished.

Perhaps you need to view certain things a different way before writing the review. People often view Slackware negatively for design features that are different than the design features of another Linux Distro.

Not using GRUB is a design feature. This is not 'moving slowly'. Just because GRUB does boot loading [wrong|differently] and it's for some reason popular does not mean Slackware should use it.

As for adopting the latest versions of everything, often the latest version, especially 0 releases (e.g. 1.0 2.0 3.0 etc) contain numerous new issues and bugs associated with it. Slackware shouldn't fix these bugs so waits until the developer fixes them before including it in the main OS.

...

Similarly making disparate programs forcibly work better together, either through default settings or extra source code patches, is also a design feature in Slackware. If VLC developers intended it to be the ultimate streaming program for Firefox and other browsers, then they would maintain settings for that. And vice verse on Firefox's end.

...

But anyway, people don't write reviews by pointing out facts. Much like entertainment news doesn't report the facts without putting their spin on it. So a review will be written by somebody, Positive or Negative, and ultimately somebody else will have their 2 cents to say about it.

I'm using a Slackware 13.1 64bit for my all-day-use laptop, and a Slackware 12.2 (the best for me) for an old Toshiba laptop that works very well (better than win2k, for sure).
I'm using it because i can control ALL the aspects of the distro.
Have you ever tried to recompile a kernel on a {Deb,Rpm}-based? It's like the plot of an horror film.
Only Slack and Arch can do it easy, but Arch is too bleedin' edge for me (but yaourt is a very good package manager...)

Absolutely PRO. If it works well, why change?

I'm too young, i started with Slack 11 (the worst IMHO), and i fell in love with the 12.2

It is THE distro for me. Stop.

Using it on a netbook, 2 laptops and an ~10yo desktop.
Its undefiable stability is not my no.1 concern, since i dont run any servers.
But when i try most of the other distributions it certainly makes me appreciate it more than i normally do.
What i probably find the most appealing of what Slackware offers in compare to other distributions are:
a) its package management. It consists of 4 and a half commands: Makepkg, installpkg, removepkg, ,upgradepkg and explodepkg for the missing half.
b) most importantly: the fact that the distribution is primarily maintained by one person. Furthermore by a person who's been around as long as Linux itself.
While Slackware contributors and users may push things in all shorts of different directions, in the end theres always one person to make the decision. Every decision,
Naturally thats the one who knows the system best. That gives you the feeling Slackware has a direction, and that it makes sense.

GRUB is still marked by the GNU as alpha software. AFAIK it has always been available in ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/ from its first release til this day. Is it considered to be production ready nowadays?
But even so, GRUB is available, just not the default bootloader.

There are some other parts of the system that could be considered to be lacking in features for todays standards eg. sysklogd or considered too cumbersome to use eg. sendmail (in compare to postfix) or maybe even inetd. But those are relatively easy to replace if you dont mean to use.

There is also some software past its prime. Particularly network related, & also some command line applications eg. audio stuff. But its software that still works. Since Slackware includes many applications that do the same job it manages to keep many people happy.

The absense of PAM, at least from a non server users POV means lack of an additional layer of complexity (of which we have quite a lot) to deal with. Thats a big bonus, and i could probably include it in the reasons i use Slackware as well.

I have been using Slackware since Spring 2007, a while before version 12.0 was released.

PS. Thats the real Slackware story.

I'm running it as I type this on my home PC. I run it on the machine that I use to run my house's internal network (dhcp server, dns server, imap server, and a file server). I ran it on my work desktop (self supported, since it wasn't a distro that my IT department used) for 12 years.

In my case, the way that Slackware did things was very similar to the ways that my work's HP-UX workstations did things.

It's a don't care for me. If I really need some feature, I normally just build and install it. Most of the time, that works.

Since 1998. I believe the first version that I used at work was 3.4.

I've never found Slackware to be a confusing distribution. That may be due to my age (52) and that my first experiences with computers were mainframes, PDP-11/40s, Apple II+, and TRS-80s: pretty much all command line machines.

(I do use X, but I'll pop up terminals as needed to do things.)

Use my forum username.

I'm running it on my laptop for daily basic usage, and my 6 year old daughter's laptop - for stuff a 6 year old would do (GCompris, TuxMath, SuperTux, etc.) Simplicity. Stability. Ease of configuration. Up stream - as is, not modified.
I've used Ubuntu. I'm not a huge fan of the every 6 month-new release thing, or the multiple weekly updates. I don't need a computer crashing because some developer decided they MUST have the latest and greatest of program-X. Rock solid stability. I prefer Xfce. I like simple, and functional; I use LILO.
I have some 12.1 discs around here somewhere...... but got my first taste of Slackware via Zenwalk (v.3.8). I still run it on my desktop, as well as Vector on my wife's laptop. I like to see what the off-shoots are up to. Once I was comfortable with Zenwalk and Vector, I then made the move to Slackware. I had used the *buntus enough to know that I didn't want to try Debian. Slackware and Slackware-based just seemed natural, and simple.
It has taught me so much about using/configuring linux. I just feel like I can move forward and conquer even more.
Forum name or my given name - Darth Larry - your call.

I use my ThinkPad running Slackware 13.1 for day to day purposes, like school, work, social networking, scripting, and a little gaming. I ran current for a while, but had to remove it due to an issue I was having with a package I need. I started out using Red Hat/Fedora 6 years ago, and have gone through several distributions since then. Using Debian for the longest amount of time, but having the most fun with distros like Fedora Core 5/6, Wolvix, etc. My lazy days were filled with Ubuntu/Debian/LMDE.

Coming from LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition), it was a hard transition from getting updates daily over a nice package manager to installing every update myself. It has made me sift through the packages I regularly install, and cut down on all the bloat that a rarely use. Thinking about it though, I don't really miss any of that. I don't HAVE to update daily, and my system seems much faster and much more stable. It was difficult to go back to LILO, since I haven't used it in years. Learning the configuration files over again was fairly difficult after being pampered by Ubuntu/Debian based systems.

I ran Wolvix (based on Slackware 11) for about 6 months a couple years ago. I still use it quite frequently on my flash drive, but I've only been running Slackware on my new ThinkPad x201 for a little over a month. I had LMDE on my old x60 before this.

It's hard... but that's not a bad thing. I always complain about how Ubuntu treats it's users like children, and although you can do a lot with Ubuntu/Debian just like Slackware, you don't HAVE to. It doesn't FORCE you to look in your config, rc, lilo/grub files. Slackware seems more "Linux" to me, while Ubuntu/Debian seem more... well... Ubuntu and Debian. Although I miss my package manager, I enjoy having more control over my system. The more I use it, the more I learn.

[QUOTEIf you respond, please indicate in the post how you'd like to be attributed if I use your response in the story. (e.g., sign your name or indicate that I should use your forum username, etc.)[/QUOTE]
-Jinx <3

I use Slackware on both my machines; The wife still runs Vista, but I never have to touch it. What I like about it is simplicity, ease and that I can compile everything myself if I ever want a new application; Slightly before I started to use Slackware, I began with RedHat; I had that installed for 3 days, after which I had given up on compiling the applications that I was developing back then. A college-mate of mine told me "why don't you install Slackware?" and that's when it began. Never strayed away, although I have had to work on other distributions as they came pre-installed, among which an Ubuntu. I must say that I had a very hard time getting things to work the way I wanted to (to some degree) on Ubuntu, this proved to me that Slack is the true way.

I think this is a misconception. Slackware moves pretty much along with the flow. There are choices made to use Lilo for example instead of Grub. I'm quite happy for that, as I am not really inclined to have a bootloader that needs drivers for the disks to actually work. Anyway, back to the misconception thing: what's different with Slackware as opposed to many other distros is that the things included are only those that are stable (enough) to put it in production. I remember well how long it took for Slackware to adopt the 2.6 kernels as Pat found some issues that would not have them be safe in a production environment. The 2.4 kernels were a better choice at that time, until 2.6 was fixed sufficiently that it would be safe to use. The keywords are "proven" and "stable" and that's what I want out of the box; It's my own choice if I want to use bleeding edge stuff, and it's easy to make that choice and implement it.

Others mentioned dependency tracking: I find it a great asset that Slackware does not do this for me. Dependencies are generally easily resolved by hand, and I don't want my system to think for me that if I want to use package X, then I'll also want package Y. If I wanted / needed package Y, I want to figure that out for myself.

Back in the 90ies, so I reckon it was 3.0

If you want a rock-solid, stable, simple distribution: then Slackware is for you. If you want that your commands are executed, and not have the system "think" for you "he says a, so I think he means b", the Slackware is for you. If you say "a", the system will do "a" and not move in mysterious ways and do something else. I'm happily looking forward to Slackware 13.2!

You can use my name (not in vain), no worries.

Slackware is my preferred server OS and I have it on one of my Notebooks at work. Over the years i tried many different distributions (Debian, RedHat, Gentoo, LFS and many more) but I always came back to Slackware. The way Slackware works (from the package management to the startup scripts) was always the easiest for me to understand. Other distributions just seem to be messy campared to good old Slack. The KISS design ist what makes it the most usable distribution for me.

I never felt I have to have a bleeding edge System, stability is more important to me. There is always the option to compile the software on your own, what is usually no problem. GRUB is available for Slackware, but lilo was always the better option for me.

I started using Slackware after it made a big version jump. I think it was around version 7 or 8. Not remembering that shows me again why I love it, it just runs and doesn't get in my face.

English is not my main language, my appologies in advance.

You may not be looking for an answer from someone like me who used Slackware for all of a week and then went back to Debian but I want to throw in my two cents.

I'd been interested in Slackware for awhile just because I heard that it was harder than others and one typically learns more from it. I was also interested in trying out a non-Debian based distro, so I installed 13.1 when Debian was having problems upgrading packages that I couldn't figure out. Turns out that it was a simple fix, I just had to remove a couple of lines from my sources.list, I learned this when I re-installed it and still had the problem before even altering it, but I digress.

I liked Slackware. I can't name much as I spent such a short time with it but I just liked it. I've heard that it is pretty damn stable but going a week without instability is nothing. One thing that I do really like a lot about it is the fact that upstream packages aren't altered in any way as far as I know. It seems like they'd be more stable that way. I even kind of like the fact that you have to handle dependencies yourself. I re-installed Debian and within a few days I was already having dependency issues simply from installing and upgrading packages. Slackware also seems to offer maximum control. Sure you can have maximum control over any distro but you may have to jump through some hoops for them, but Slackware puts you into the control center and says "Have fun."

I won't comment on how it moves as I don't have enough information to make a credible statement.

So if I like Slackware why did I go back to Debian? Homesickness for one, I started with Ubuntu and after a couple of years moved to Debian for about another year. Another reason is because I needed to have an operating system that I could set up in a day and forget about. I will give Slackware another shot though, probably within the next few months at most. Speaking of which, I wish to deviate from the topic at hand for a moment and ask a question. Next time I install Slackware I want to try out GnomeSlackBuild. I've skimmed through the instructions; is slapt-get required, or can I just stick with sbopkg?

(sorry guys, gonna break the thread, a little off topic here. This is just to Tribulation's post.)
Tribulation,
You are on the right track thinking about gnome on slack. I found that KDE in slack13.1 to be very unstable(guess thats why even Linus himself moved to gnome). I did some searching round and alot of people have had troubles with it too. I switched to gnome and no more problems!!
Cheers.

Well, sbopkg doesn't know anything about GSB. I run both sbopkg and slapt-get without major issues; you just have to be awake when you are upgrading things. (In most cases, the two systems don't stomp on each other. You'd use sbopkg to install stuff that isn't part of standard slackware or GSB. You just can't blindly use the "--remove-obsolete" flag to slapt-get, unless you set your /etc/slapt-get/slapt-getrc file to ignore Sbo packages.)