@ harishankar

you haven't chosen the easiest distros out there either. why is that? maybe because they were more chalenging than installing fedora or suse?
and did you only install them once and that was enough to never ever forget anything about how to set them up? with you, possibly, but i have only been using linux since february and only been using slackware since about 3 weeks ago, and until about a week ago i had no idea what system-v or bsd-like init scripts were.

Microsoft has done a nice job of keeping people in the dark, so that when something goes wrong with a user's computer, there is a huge "mistique" about what happened. virus? spyware? bad drivers? who knows....but what they do know is that they have to take their computers back to the shop, or call a technie. and what happens after that? windows is normaly just reinstalled, like MS suggests it should when things go wrong, and the user coughs up 70€

maybe this sounds out of context, but its what i ised to do because i had no option. even when i installed fedora: when i screwed something up, i would just reinstall the etire system because i had no idea where to start fixing.

after using slackware for this short period of time, i no longer panic if things go wrong and have to go through a tedious reinstallation proccess.
by getting to know right from the start what makes the OS tick does make a difference.

and because i have learned all his new stuff, i am compelled to learn more. i want to try gentoo in my christamas hollidays, and have already ordered a book on bash scripting.

2cc

Not because they were easier, but I chose my distros out of circumstances because

1. I got Debian on a DVD a long time ago with a magazine. I only reinstalled once in 3-4 years and that too because I accidentally deleted the Debian partition when I was trying out Arch Linux.
2. I could download Slackware easier because it's just 2 CDs (and only 1 required for installing a basic system) while others are not and requires more CDs.
3. As for Gentoo, I plain admit that I was intrigued by it because it was different from the rest.

As I said I am a Linux enthusiast, I've tried Fedora, SUSE and RedHat in the past and I finally settled on Debian. The only major distro I've not tried yet is Mandriva (or Mandrake).

I unashamedly claim that I am not the average user... I'm a Linux enthusiast.

All I am saying is that it's all very well to ask users to "learn" their system inside out, but the fact is a majority don't consider that as a "learning" process and I quite agree with that when it's not something that increases their idea of productivity. It's only a few users like us who actually want to learn how the computer works. For the rest, its a tool to get the job done. So yes, there are alternatives for everybody.

The other thing I wanted to point out is that the fact that we're using Slackware is no reason to feel superior to other users just because we know a little bit more about the system.

yeah... so i guess we could call slackware is the linux enthusiast filter

Yes, so there's definitely enough choices for all of us. I'm definitely a newbie in many aspects of *nix.

Slackware seems to catch your interest so what best way to resolve your problem than trying it? It wont do any harm! (or are you afraid to become a slacker? )

For me slackware == challenge, I guess that explains why I like it.
Hard to learn, true, but when you now your way around everything becomes more clear.

Slackware is like any other distribution, it has its own audience

Bottomline is use what you like.

BTW: people with an attitude are everywhere, theyr like fungus, growing everywhere

Unobtrusive.

It doesn't second guess me. I really like that. Sure, for someone new to that way of life, it can lead to some pretty fantastic errors (I speak from experience!), but that's just a matter of learning and doing things "right".

A Vision.

It seems to me that Patrick have a vision for Slackware. All too many distros suffer from lack of vision. They change direction as the wind blows, and that can be quite annoying when trying to maintain a bunch of servers. With Slackware I feel fairly safe in knowing that Patrick probably wont wake up one morning and decide to make any violently drastic changes. Sometimes dictatorship is a good thing. I think we all appreciate the fact that Linus have maintained complete control over the kernel. The Slackware approach is IMHO somewhat similar. It makes me feel safe.

The People.

I'm new to Slackware, but I've already come to appreciate the community around here. People are nice and help is abundant. It might just be me, but I really feel that Slackers often know a wee bit more about their distro of choice, as opposed to say Suse or Ubuntu people. The Trustix peeps are also quite helpful, there's just so damn few of them.

The Package System.

I've only just started to mess around with makepkg, but damn it is sweet. It's not that the Slackware package system is much better compared to other package systems, it's just that to me it "feels" right. I can't explain it any better. I just really enjoy being able to create a custom Dovecot package from source. Configured my way, packaged my way - it installs my way. Unobtrusive. There's that word again.

aye! i second that!

I think the point I was trying to make in my post which I didn't explain to well, was that you don't have to "learn" Slackware to use it, and you can "learn" Linux without Slackware, but Slackware as a distribution is well suited to the person who wants to "learn" Linux.

As for feeling superior, I do feel that I know more about Linux than most people, so in that sense I am superior. A mechanic working on my car better feel superior to me in terms of automobile repairs, I'd be very concerned if they didn't...

It's probably true that some people gloat over their perceived superiority, and I suppose the argument is that Slackware users have a larger than average proportion of gloaters, but people who pride themselves on their superior knowledge tend to choose the tools that enhance this knowledge (audiophiles aren't as likely to buy Nexxtech gear, for example -- no offence intended, Circuit City).

I may be over stepping my bounds here, but...

That paragraph says alot to me.

Hmmm? He's made 9 posts here at the forums most of which are here in this thread

Sir, are you writing a book or another "is slackware 'still' relevant article"?

Truly if you want to know these things, look @Ilgar's links, read Slackware's to do list, or go out on the net and read blogs if you need to do research.

We have a new vesion of Slackware out and people to help out, this is really counter-productive.

I think (judging by the replies) he thought he was misunderstood, and his posts were polite and mostly apologetic. Every now and then people come and ask questions of this kind, and I don't think there's anything to worry about this particular thread.

i used mandrake first ,then redhat.then suSE, then slackware.. im kinda stuck here because i want an os that DOES WAT I TELL IT TO DO

Fedora et al just offer more software in their repository. A fairly complete development system can be installed in around 2GB in Fedora and RHEL. That's GNOME plus the usual suspects (gcc, valgrind, many development libraries).

Let me comment on a some parts of your post as someone who has used Slackware for eleven years (besides the BSDs), and quit about a year ago.

The only real netinstall option in the Slack installer are NFS installs. For installing from an internal NFS server, that's great, but absense of FTP installation support is a pain.

Yeah, you have to select all packages manually, and have to know the library dependancies (or find them out by trial and error).

Each to its own, but I started to agree over time. If you have a deadline, say next week, it is really painful to manually compile program X which has n dependencies that are not in the standard Slackware package set.

Another nit is that the package set is very small. This means that you'll often have to install other software, and to track security updates for this software. Even basic widely used packages like PosgreSQL and Postfix are not there. And outside a hobbyist setting, you can't really sell that, especially because others do it with a simple apt-get upgrade or yum install. It is just something that is not viable within most (but not all) parts of the real world.

This is probably one of the reasons why you barely see Slackware installs in enterprises these days. It is mostly Debian and Red Hat.

When it comes to a building a minimal system, most BSDs beat Slack hands down. BSD libc and userland are a lot smaller, but have better features at the same time.

Yup. This forum is great. Most other resources are a lot of ego clashing.

If you learn Slackware, you learn Slackware. There is a standard (LSB) that specifies what a Linux system is. IIRC this implies having a SysV-like init system like Red Hat or Debian, and having the RPM or DEB package manager. Slackware does not conform to the LSB, and differs from many other distros.

The other argument usually put forward is that Slackware forces you to learn Linux. Most Red Hat system administrators that I know don't install system-config-* and do manual system administration. So, it is just what you want. But learning Debian or Red Hat gives you more knowledge of 'mainstream Linux' than Slackware.

---

My point of view is that Slackware is a great-UNIX like system. And that's why I used it for such a long time. But it is not viable for me anymore. The BSDs provide a system that feels even more like UNIX, and are much more modern. E.g. they support modern networking technologies, have better package management, better portability. As a Linux system I can't really recommend Slackware for people who use Linux for critical systems. The investment in unnecessary software maintenance is much too high. It uses a vanilla kernel that was never really tested for higher end machines, clustering, etc. With enough work, you can do everything with Slackware. But why tinker with e.g. software RAID, LVM, IPsec, if it works out of the box on other systems, and they can be administrated with the usual suspects (mdadm, lvm, setkey/racoon).

It is a fine system, but slightly overrated by its community.

hi guys send me a ragnarok bot plz send it in my email luidpasco@yahoo.com

I tried FreeBSD 6.1 and liked it a lot, but, I always come back to Slackware. I'm not a Linux professional, but, a hobbyist. I love to tinker with Slackware, plod along, and learn about this fantastic OS. I know sysadmins who do deploy Slackware in corporate settings without too much difficulty. Slackware is a stable, robust distro. I've also used RH and currently run Debian Etch. Etch has apt-get which I agree is an amazing package management system.
But, I will always be a Slacker. I find this forum to be very helpful, I learn a lot from the veteran Slackers here. Slackware does the job for me.

This is understandable. Your needs are obviously beyond what Slackware can provide. I can see how a Slackware system would be frustrating to someone who had to use it for a living, because it is far from the most complete Linux out there. On the other hand, it's simplicity and flexibility suit me. But I'm not an IT professional. Computers are just my hobby.
I tried OpenBSD about 6 months back. It was the version dubbed "the Blob". I can't remember if that was 3.8 or 3.9. While it did have a driver for my wireless NIC, that particular driver didn't support WPA encryption. This was a deal breaker for me.

WPA encryption has worked flawlessly for me under various flavours of Linux (including Slackware) since September 2004.

That said, I understand that the OpenBSD driver was written from scratch without the use of proprietary "binary blobs", unlike the Linux driver for my card. This is an attractive feature. I will be trying OpenBSD again in the future, but for now it's Slackware all the way.