I chose Slack, because it had the least istallation problems than installs with Fedora, SUSE or Mandrake.

The problems, such as video drivers, sound, always resorting in heading to the command line anyway - and then could not be rectified.

I've never tried slack, and don't personally know anyone who has, but more power to ya for trying it, i sure as hell will one day, I've heard all good things.

but just an fyi:

not everyone who uses suse/rh/mdk use all the gui's....not all of them put it on just to say they use linux.....i put it on due to interest, out of bordem and to learn...i'm almost at the point now where windows can finally leave my laptop. i like the control i have in linux, and i can certainly see why people want MORE.

All i have to say is that getting my DELL inspiron 8600 with a 15.4 inch wide aspect LCD.... geforce fx 5650 and a broadcom chip wireless card all working and connecting to different wireless ap's was not just point/click gui's. it required lots of reading and learning and executing. also question asking here in these forums. and 99% of it was either in terminal or out of X in command. had to compile and write a script for xsupplicant for the PEAP auth on the wireless network at school.

many of the people that have posted in this thread are speaking like people are using mdk/rh/and suse just like windows, install and go... I've learned alot in the last week ( put suse 9.1 on, and got it fully functional ), and yea slack is prolly cool because the control you have over it...but do you NEED the control? I'm a college student who plays jka...jka is why i keep windows... lol. have not found a good distro/wine combo to get jka to install :-\ and i doubt slack could help in that way.

I think distro choice all comes down to what you become familiar with and what you want out of it. I need functionality, and simplicity. i need wireless support ( which is non-existant in any distro for 90% of wireless cards ). any normal user ( and by normal user i mean probably most of you ) doesn't need the control of slack..it's simply an extra toy. nothing wrong with toys...i love toys.....but just because you use it and like it...doesn't make it the best...

how often do you see a Honda civic cruising down the road with a 200$ "performance" muffle, body kit, obviously compressed springs(sometimes just poorly cut, haha) and a trunk rattling sound system..... and just laugh...well it's the same thing with using slack extra bells and whistles don't make something BETTER. maybe its easier to install...maybe your hardware HAPPENS to be compatible with slack...o well good for you...some day I'll put slack on here just for kicks and i might like it better than suse or redhat...i don't like mdk. who knows, but i sure as hell won't sit here, or anywhere, and talk about how it's better....btw i laugh when i see ridiculous civics rolling around...is dynamat really that expensive...and do they know that wings/spoilers have little to no effect under 120 mph ? :-\ yea gasmilage is better...but damn it looks weird.

some of the smartest computer guru's i know.....use windows and most of them have a G4 as a laptop.....why ? functionality. it's what they need.
all of the people that i know that rely on their computer EVERY WAKING MOMENT, all use windows. again reliability/functionality/compatability.

most of the people that have posted here have a very specific definition of best: What they think is more superior.

there is no best...all preference.

this entire thread is devoid of the "open source feel", just a bunch of people that like something better than something else and giving irrelevant reasons as to why...sorry not even reasons...simply explanations as to why they like it....I've seen no justification as to why i should think it's #1..looks nothing like a "community" to me....and yes there is a difference between the word explanation and justification.....sorry to all of those who gave normal/cool/appropriate responses.


** btw i really like suse 9.1, works great, I'd reccomend it to anyone who wants an alternate OS to windows, after a week of tinkering with settings/config files/ndiswrapper the wireless seems actually BETTER than windows...in some aspects...faster..another uber cool thing is the ability to check spelling in any application.**

Hmm, Slackware isn't number one on say DistroWatch, Yet most of the Linux users are Slackware users. Most people convert to slackware from newbie distros. Mostly, When people ask this kinda stuff, I'd say "Whocares? Slackware rocks!"...... so Who the Heck Cares? Slackware Beats anything else with a stick :}.

what makes you say most linux users are slackware users? as great as slackware is, i seriously doubt it. got stats?

According to this...................2003 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards

Slackware had 25% of the total votes............

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ro+of+the+year

lol, yeah, but those are just some people on LQ who voted in a poll. that's not ALL linux users. or do you think no distro has more than the 448 users who voted for slackware?

I currently use both on the same hardware on side by side machines. Debian is *NOT* harder to install than Slackware. I found the old Debian installer easy and the new one is a breeze.

What makes me shudder is the Red Hat installer.

It's quite simple in my opinion. Slackware isn't even trying to be mainstream. It's aimed for linux/unix geeks just like Debian (ok, some Debian based distros are competing with Fedora etc) and Gentoo. Word of mouth is the way these distros spread. Slackware has been around for years, so it's natural that it has a fairly large loyal user base. Although even if Slackware is the most popular distro on LQ, Debian and Gentoo are both more popular. All three are good distros though.

Slackware is the most popular distro in this lovely forum because this is the official forum for Slackware users.
http://www.slackware.com/links/

There are other forum for Slackware but this is number one forum. But the other distro have different story.....

Gentoo users have their own official forum:
http://forums.gentoo.org

Debian too:
http://www.debianhelp.org/

Fedora too:
http://www.fedoraforum.org/

What I am saying is most Slackware users hang around in this forum. But the case is not the same with other popular distro. I think if you want to search the most popular distro....
www.distrowatch.com

Slackware is not number one but yes, it is in big six......

I'm not sure which is the most favorite distro, but I wouldn't use distrowatch as any valid statistics. Go read how they count. They count the number of clicks for that distro. More like newbies checking into Linux.... Mandrake, Fedora. See a pattern here? Or when there is new news for a distro. Of course I use Slackware, but have 'looked' at other distros' news and such.

Look how some distros jump all over the chart.
http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity

As of this date, Ubuntu is #5 from #15 three months ago. Don't think it's that popular, just folks reading up on it.

distro wars suck.

im new to Slackware Linux, but I like it, however in my opinion , I wouldn't mind if it attained only a 'cult following' status, sometimes I think its best if something doesn't get too popular, because it might lose it's original purpose/meaning. You know, a long long time ago, Microsoft was just a small and decent company , but now look at it, its big, arrogant, a monopoly. But then again, one can argue that the more popular an os gets, the more support there is for it. I mean, really its more of a trade off if you think about it. A little while back, before people started trying Linux, and were using windows, it worked ok, even now windows does have SOME value. Of course the only reason I say this, is that more people today still use windows than linux, and usually the main reason for this is hardware support, and this is a rather true statement. Windows' slight edge over linux is hardware support. When you buy a new piece of hardware, 99.9% of the time, it is garaunteed to work, in Linux it may require some tweaking, however even now, hardware companies such as ATI, are offering linux drivers for their products. But I digrees, I didn't mean to get off topic and into such a tangent. The point I am trying to make is that, there are both advantages and disadvantages to the popularity of an OS (a good example, not just windows, is redhat, since redhat is no longer free, but there is always fedora, for those redhat loyals outthere), or with anything else in that matter. When something becomes very popular, it is inevitable that there would be major changes, that some might like, but for others who are more dedicated, might not like. And now I close this post with this for everyone to think about. Just exactly what would Pat do, if slackware became the most popular distro. Would he continue to offer it for free , now and forever, or would he follow the RedHat example.... Hrmm , Think about that for a while..

Considering the low media profile Slackware tends to take, along with the non-commercial approach that is taken to design decisions (what works well rather than what attracts attention - like sticking with the 2.4 kernel in Slack 10), and its not-terribly-newbie-friendly (although it's not nearly as bad as it's often made out to be) nature, it is perhaps more remarkable that Slackware continues to enjoy the enduring popularity it does.

Which, as we all know, is simply because it is a really neat, sturdy, well-put-together distro.

hrmm all this makes me wana go home from work and install slack on muh desk top.

for speed and sheer ease of use, i think arch linux easily has slackware beat on the desktop. though i really like slack and it's my favorite distro (after arch), there really is no contest. for a server, it might be a different story.

Over the years I used probably 10/12 distros and stayed with Slackware for several years. I'll have to agree with AxelFendersson, simple, well put together distro.

y0shi, coming from SUSE, you may be shell-shocked at first. But you will get to know 'Linux', not just Slackware. If you hang in there, it will be as simple as SUSE is to you now. But if it isn't your cup of tea, SUSE is a fine distro also.