After well over 10 years using Slackware, the time has come for me to say goodbye, well, to the desktop at least.
I will keep my server running S14, simply because of the reliability and stability of it and because that seems to be it's strength.

But, as for the desktop, I have finally admitted defeat at the hands of trying to compile once again various bits of software I wanted to try out, and the 3 hours + that it took to build the latest kdenlive, hunting down and compiling all the dependencies, and dependencies of dependencies and dependencies of dependencies of dependencies etc etc left me with 3 hours less time to actually use it.

Expecting all the "but that's what makes Slackware great" fans to step in here BTW, but hey ho.

I'm just getting to old for this crap and so have installed Suse. And what a difference. It boots faster, runs faster and installing software is so easy. I even broke it on purpose to see how to repair it and guess what, it even repairs faster and easier. So if Slackware as a desktop scores somewhere around 80% satisfaction, Suse adds at least 15% to that so far. Still looking for the 100% though

So it is somewhat sadly that I wish you all a fond farewell. I may be back, but I very much doubt it at the moment. Time will of course tell.

Many thanks to all who have helped me in the past and those that have put up with my occasional rants.

Cheers all.

Not sure if you've ever tried slapt-get etc., but I admit I'm also running other distros -- a CentOS on my VPS, and a Ubuntu, simply because the Ubuntu users from Cisco are so incredible that their software depends on certain bugs in Ubuntu. What's different is, however, that I always felt Slackware desktop very comfortable (with KDE 4.11 compiled by Alien Bob, not the buggy KDE 4.10).

Installing dependencies by hand is what Slackware is about. Sorry, but you knew what you were getting into with Slackware with dependency resolution. If you like OpenSuSE then by all means.

The only reason it boots faster is that it uses systemd, not rc-init. Parallel daemon start is nice, but you better hope nothing screws up on boot, such as networking. Plus, there is no single user administrative mode anymore.

And automatic dependency resolution isn't all that great. It seems nice at first, but after a while you miss getting the ability to edit a build script and tune the package to how you want and not how the maintainers feel you need it.

Sorry, but been there, done that, and went back to Slackware.

There's also SalixOS which has dependency resolution.

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I fully understand where you're coming from vdemuth. I run Slackware on all my servers, and currently on 12 desktops at my business. I also run Ubuntu 12.04 on 4 desktops, and I have to admit that the four Ubuntu boxes are far easier to manage in a desktop environment. There are just too many small things you have to maintain by yourself with Slackware, that are just a simple apt-get command away with Ubuntu.

My personal workstation and laptop are both sporting Slackware64 14.1 with xmonad, and I don't plan on switching away from that awesome setup anytime soon, and if I do, it'll probably be for FreeBSD.

What is your purpose with this thread?

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Bet you 10p you'll be back within 3 months.

I use only Slackware and when a new version is released it takes me much more than 3 hours to compile the additional software I need. I do this when I know I will have time for it. Last time I ended up with over 200 packages that took about 1.5GB. Almost everything was installed from SBo with the help of sbopkg.
Once I had the packages, it was a matter of minutes to install them on another computer with one single command:

installpkg ./*.t?z

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I think the Linux desktop is way beyond its zenith, but that is not Slackware's fault. We all depend on what upstream delivers.

Why compile it anyway? http://kdenlive.org/download-slackware

But I can see your point: installation of third-party applications is quite hard on Linux. Mainly due to developers unwilling to provide self-contained working binaries of their creations. That affects every distribution and it is one of the main reasons for the failure of the Linux desktop.

Distro-hopping doesn't solve anything, it's just exchanging one set of problems with another one.

I realize that sbopkg doesn't necessarily have *everything*, but when used with queuefiles I honestly don't understand the "dependency resolution" dilemma.

That being said, no one distro can satisfy all, and as is said, once you know Slackware, you know Linux, which immediately puts a former slacker firmly into the driver's seat when changing distros.

godspeed (and I'll add 1p to BL's bet (erm, that's a penny, right?))

Fair enough. I might not have agreed with everything you ever said but would be sad to see you go nonetheless. With regards to dependencies and other Slackware "core tenets" it is nice to hear opposing opinions from time to time, otherwise this forum could get boring.

However, what are you really leaving? Slackware (as a desktop) or the Slackware sub forum. I hope it is just the former as you no doubt still have plenty of useful stuff to say with regards to Slackware, given your length of time using it (and the fact that you intend to stick with it server side).

Well vdemuth has been a member of these forums since 2003 and posted a fair number of times. I think it is interesting to know when a long term user changes distro and why. It also gives some context to his future replies.

Anyway, if you don't find it interesting, why did you comment? Or to put it another way, what is the purpose of your comment?

7 members found this post helpful.

Well you could do that with any distro. I have tweaked a few Arch PKGBUILD scripts and some rpm spec files in my time. I'll grant you that something about Slackware encourages this behaviour more than in many distros but it is not something totally unique.

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He knows that Slackware does not do any package dependency resolution for him, yet he complies about it, it sounds odd, especially with 10 years of Slackware. At least, after 10 years he should have known how to build a queue-file for the common "ffmpeg" (which is a part of kdenlive dependency and needs most part of the other subdependencies).

Good luck with Suse!

I can actually say just about the opposite from the OP.

I started using linux in 2000, Mandrake, and it was a real PITA, but compared to how sick of M$ I was, I kept trying. I didn't even know there was such a thing as 'Linux' until I got on the 'net and did a search for OS's at the time. I'd tried a Mac one day while I was in the mall and didn't like it at all.

Then I found SuSE. I ended up dual-booting that for about 6 months until one day I realized I hadn't booted into the M$ side in 2 weeks. Got the latest version right then and re-installed to a completely linux desktop. Used SuSE up until openSUSE 11.3. Got tired of the politics and disgusted with the buddy-buddy with Oracle and went looking for a new distro.

I've been using Slackware since 13.37. Never looked back even though it was a bit more difficult to figure out than those 'rpm' distro's (I don't claim to be a smart person, just being a knuckle-dragger type, but I try hard, heh), and now have 14.1 installed and using it fine.

The past few weeks though for some reason I've been curious to try other versions of linux, so I've been downloading and trying things out on the spare drive. I've tried a couple of the BSD's and came to the conclusion that they just don't have a lot of the software I use and are even harder to put together/build an app I might want that isn't already in a repository. This is just my humble opinion as I'm sure the BSD's make great servers.

Gentoo and Debian were also kinda PITA's to install, then I found out that they're 'rolling distro's' and being on satellite where I'm alloted so much download/upload amounts per month I just can't do the 'upgrade anything/everything whenever a new .0.0.0.1 comes out of something'. So that ended those and if I remember right another one or two distro's that were 'rolling release'.

Read up on the Redhat's, Mandriva's etc and their 'open*' versions and none impressed me enough to even try them again.

Then for the heck of it, read up on openSUSE and downloaded it (13.1) and tried it. Yes, the whole rpm thing was a good deal easier, but the dependency thing wasn't *always* easy either with it. Thing is, like others have been saying in this thread, I couldn't be sure what those rpm's were solving for me or what was always being downloaded and installed. I didn't have anywhere near the control I'm used to having with Slackware. I didn't like that at all, plus...it was friggin' *BORING*. It was/still is, a over-bloated distro meant for beginners to linux and serves that purpose well, but it's now off the spare hdd and I've pretty much come to the conclusion there isn't another linux distro out there that I need to try out to satisfy this recent curiosity anymore, except for Puppy. I've yet to try it, but I can see that as more of a 'use to show how easy linux is to use' for someone curious about linux in general than an actual 'keep it as my daily user desktop'.

This has been my take on the whole distro/dependency/ease-of-use thing. I'm no programmer, can't even make a simple bash script. I'm just a simple linux user, but Slackware has come to be actually the easiest, most functional and 'let-me-remain-in-charge-of-*MY*-system' distro I've personally used in the past 14 years. It's this way for *me*, and so ymmv for anyone else, but I don't think the OP is going to be very happy with any other distro's for very long.

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Yep but if you have ever read any of his previous posts you will know that he was never a fan of manual dependency management. At the time he liked Slackware in spite of that. Here is an old quote (a quick search would turn up plenty more like this):

I'm sure he does know how. To play devil's advocate I guess his point is he shouldn't need to know how.

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