i hear ya, ubuntu is a nice distro for beginners, hell i don't think i told it anything to setup, plus after the install was over it auto updated itself, kinda nice, kinda made me think "wtf is going on", but i dealt with it, well after the install was over, i had no vid drivers installed, so i figured no prob, lemme throw them in there and install them, till i realized that the stupid install never made me specify a root password, and then i was lost, i said forget this and then slack10.1 came out the next day, had it up and running with 2.6.10 and nv6229s in about 20 minutes (+drive reformat time), i've tried my hand at arch also, but i never could get used to the hds being in /dev/discs/disc0/part1, always had an awkward feel to it, didn't especially like that, plus, everyone says it's optimized for an 686 system and beyond, and it didn't feel any faster than slack which i think can go as low as a 386 system, slack is elegant and slack is nice, but most of all slack just feels right (for me)

To set a root password in Ubuntu:

sudo password root

HEY I USE GNOME! *sigh*, *runs off into a corner*

I like slackware as was stated earlier, software packages are left as they were meant to be. Nothing irked me more than when I loaded up suse, had two eth devices, created a dhcpd.conf to administer ip's on one dev and dhcpcd on the other to get internet, and when the dhcpcd started it overwrote my dhcpd.conf file. What does that have to do with anything? extra features? gah! Loaded up slackware, ahhh bliss

My first distro was a Mandrake 10, i lasted 2 days. with all those RPM's giving errors and stuff. Then i heard about slackware as beeing a difficult distro to install and manage. Beeing like i am i knew that that was the distro that would use. then i found out it was in my eyes much easier then mandrake who is made for that

Friendly community, and great lots of information, the community is friendly and as said will try to help you insted of throwing a RTFM in the face this said .tgz is a great way on packaging system, and all is where it was designed to be.

As i said before slack was basicly my first distro, in a couple of months i leard so much that, i don't say i'm a guru now, but i can find my way in most cases when i have a problem, by opening the console and know what to do. If i would have sticked to another distro, i don't know how much about linux i could have learned. Those distro are doing a good job aswell, but tend to go in a direction of where you get the system and don't need to know how the sytem works to use it.

Ubuntu is a nice distro aswell , the detection phase is really smooth and is a good thing for a future expansion of linux to a wider range of ppl. if you want to learn linux tho, use slack

For the rest, i think the most important things are said above

haha, nothing wrong with using gnome! I use install it too just for Evolution...I confess, I like Outlook, and so what?

I love slackware because it has always worked on whatever hardware i put it on. I have tried it on two desktops and three laptops and the hardware was all detected perfectly (OK, except PCMCIA, but i don't use it anyways) and the X server works on all of them. THat's what i care most about. That might not sound like much but you'd be surprised that the X server often does not work for some other distros when you install it on a laptop.

A bit off-topic on this thread, but you can tell YaST/SuSEconfig not to overwrite your config files. After that you can modify config files manually, but you break SuSE's concept of organising things. Which I think is the most consequent and well-thoghtout *other* concept compared to Slackware. SuSE and Slackware are totally different, but both have clean and consistent concepts. It depends just on what you want to do with your system, which path you will find easier to follow.

So: I like YaST.
But: I also like to be independent of vendor packages. Typical "managed packages" distros won't make it as easy as Slackware to compile arbitrary source packages from somewhere on the internet on your system. Although in recent SuSE version I can see that they are obviously working on this issue --- it's getting better.

I haven't found a third mature distribution of which I could say that, although ROCK Linux appears to be on the right track and Gentoo appears to be good, too.

gargamel

I'll try my very best... ;-)

I think there are two things that might be of interest to Gentoo fans in Slackware.

(1) It's a binary distribution. 8-)

Serious: Depending on your environment this *can* be an advantage. Eg, think of mission critical production servers connected to the internet. You won't want to have a C compiler on such a machine. And, of course, binaries can simply be installed much quicker, and if the packages are from your distributor, they will come pre-configured with a suitable setup for your system (usually, at least). In Slackware this pre-configuration is almost always the default set by the original supplier of a piece of software. Slackware is the only mainstream binary distribution that has virually no distibution specific patches, and is still stable and mature and - yes! - user-friendly.
All the other candidates are Slackware based, like Vector and Amigo.

(2) Patrick Volkerding.

(3) Security.

Patches for Slackware meet the highest standards. You can apply them on even the most critical machine, without having to fear that something gets inconsistent.

(4) Patrick Volkerding.

(5) Slackware runs about on everthing x86 based, from aged laptops to clustered high-tech monsters running weather simulation programs. This is not an advantage compared to Gentoo, of course, but it is some feature of Slackware that other main stream distributions don't offer, anymore. Thus, if a Gentoo user thinks of using a binary distribution, Slackware will be a natural choice.

(6) Patrick Volkerding.

(7) All the many things that others have mentioned regarding things like package management and such.

(8) Quality. Which is synonymous with what I said under (2), (4) and (6). ;-)

To explain: In a critical environment it is important that you can count on your vendor. It's good to know that he has taken the burden of testing upgrades for you --- it can save you a lot of time if you just know that the packages you install will work. And Patrick V. does an excellent job, as a distributor and package maintainer.

(9) Slackware is easy to set up.

The setup tools aren't graphical, but simple to use and understand.

(10) Security: Slackware has no PAM.

Patrick Volkerding has good arguments for this, although it is unique among the Linux distros I know. In fact, Pat says, that Slackware has been immune against some security problems other distros have suffered in the past. In particular, some of the OpenSSH (or was it OpenSSL?) problems could just be ignored on Slackware, because they were PAM related.

I suggest that you just try it. As a Gentoo user you will have already all the skills necessary, and you'll probably feel highly comfortable in Slackware. You won't lose a lot of time, and certainly have some fun.

gargamel

I use Gentoo on a server-- I built a /courier-imap/apache2/php/squirrel mail -- mail server. There were security problems with several packages. So I updated each package one at a time with emerge- I got to maildrop and it simply will not build. No matter what ebuild I use (old / new it doesnt matter) or make.conf options it will not build. I'm afraid to build the program the normal way (./configure --help, ./configure +options, make, su, make install) because gentoo puts things in very odd places, I may cause more problems then I solve. So I feel like I'm at the mercy of the package maintainers. So until an updated package builds correctly -- My mail server will remain down. (No big deal it is for personal use). I have found only a few programs that will not build on slackware and have never had a problem with an official slackware package. (A few minor hickups with "current" packages -- though nothing like the problems I have had with debian-SID...) "Current" packages are FAR more stable than ~x86 packages in gentoo.

Dont get me wrong I like gentoo-- but I cant help thinking in my head that if it were slackware I would have found a resolution or been able to create a solution by now. However I must admit that after building the system gentoo doesnt require much thinking (in this case just what I wanted) -- not too hard to emerge this and emerge that.

Two things that are very similar (in feel at least) between slack and gentoo:

1 both very hands on
2 both require good knowledge of bash cli

Why not use them both?

(after all I use slackware, ubuntu, debian on mac68K, clarkconnect, redhat, gentoo, osx, win2k....)

Have fun

I installed Slack, and I am sorry to report that I did not like it. A whole bunch of stuff did not work out of the box. Although I could get it to work (there were plenty of similar instances on Gentoo) I just don't have the patience or desire to coax a whole new distro into working. Furthermore, it took forever to boot, and was slooow (which is usually a necessary consequence of being a binary distro) It's still on my drive, and I may try it again later, but it failed to impress.

okay uman, let me get this straight. You didn't like Slack because you would hve to do some setup to get it running the way you want. But your main distro is Gentoo....... Are we just trolling today.

I ran Slack for a while...back when 8 came out and I loved it. That was back before there was much in terms of real package management for Slack, or more aptly put (no pun intended...being a Debian lover and all) I was ignorant of any real package management. So Slack was my first adventure into compiling everything from Source. And I learned a lot as a result. There is something to be said for the pain of fighting through a dependany problem. I had installed Slack 10 not long ago and started using slapt-get. Which I liked. However, for whatever reason, it felt like it ran slow to me.

Right on target.

My take on Slack.

First though, I always suggest that it is a good idea to keep a partition or two open to try any distro that catches your fancy. Really, how else are you supposed to know?

Slackware is the oldest currently maintained Linux distribution. Patrick maintains Slackware to be a very complete Linux distribution but in no way includes everything imaginable. I believe the thought is that you should be able to build any additional software you wish from the source code to the already well running OS.

I have almost always had a version of Slackware installed since 7.1 but it has never become my main choice for use. I love Zipslack and often install it on low end machines or even in BOCHS. I consider Zipslack the best of the useful and necessary command line tools in a small format. I learned some of my Linux command line usage from using the commands found in the Slackware Linux Essentials, which is an excellent beginner book. Slackware will install on PC's where many other Linux distros will choke.

Oh, but I do NOT consider Slackware to be the penultimate destination of every Linux users journey.
Slackware did not support my video chipset out of the box with the first version I used. Slackware did not initialize my external USR modem with it's default settings. Slackware did not compile a kernel when Debian would. I am not a huge fan of compiling my own software, though I have done Linux From Scratch in the past (with Mandrake) and am likely to have a go at the new version that uses the 2.6 kernel. There are a lot of premade packages for Slack from the Linuxpackages folks.

I hope that anyone that is interested does give Slackware a try, but I will stop short of even suggesting it is necessary.

Good Luck

It works.
It just always works.

I can understand your points - you're more of a SuSE guy. But I am surprised you use FreeBSD then - doesn't it have all of the problems you mention for Slackware, and then some?