Because you only install it once (really, you can keep an existing install cruft-free for a LONG time, I'm going on 3 years now with this same install)

Yes, stay tuned.

Hmm, not really. It has a less flashy installer and less flashy config tools, but they are also generally more well-designed, IMO.

Well, I don't think that's the biggest selling point, really, but your estimate is also way low

Slackware: there isn't anything special about it, really. That's by design. I call it the "undistro", because that's pretty much what it is. It just gets you a working system and then you do whatever, with no more help, basically. Debian, on the other hand has a lot of special stuff (I'll get to it)

Well, yes and no. You may learn a way that works for all Linux distros, but that doesn't mean it's the way you SHOULD do it. Tools are designed for a reason

Funny, I never look in there. All you have to do is deal with scripts in /etc/init.d and use update-rc.d. I never ever ever make symlinks for init stuff, nor do I even have to look in those rc#.d directories.

Um, only if you install a graphical login. If you've installed one, why the heck wouldn't it use it?

Red herring. Show me a study that proves this and I'll show you one that says that Debian outperforms a custom-compiled Gentoo.

Okay, so I don't go over the message length limit I'm going to post my "Why I Love Debian" post in a separate post.

The original post asked to "Describe Debian for me..." so here is my "Why I Love Debian" diatribe.

Is it apt? No, not really. Is it the fact that it's not a corporate distro? Nope. Is it the huge number of packages available? Not really.

If I had to sum up why I love Debian in one word, it'd have to be: infrastructure. Not only the package infrastructure, which is indeed excellently augmented by tools like apt and aptitude, but the development and administrative infrastructure. Debian exists solely to serve its users and to promote free software. No other motives whatsoever.

As such, their entire development process is open to users. You can see pretty much every bit of development that is done on the Debian distribution. They still distribute the original sources that they use for each package, and they just apply a diff to each to get the "debianized sources". So you can see everything that they change. Of course, all the tools they use to do Debian-specific stuff are all free software as well, so you can see all of that as well. You can see all the bug reports for a package, you can see all the build logs of packages, you can see all the automatic QA done on a package (specifically, the lintian runs on the package), etc. The whole process is rather transparent. You can get the email of any package maintainer as well.

I think one of these days I need to come up with a canned response for this so I can just link to it, but until then, it is THIS which I enjoy most about Debian. Yes, apt and the associated tools are great, but that's just an outer shell on a greater inner core which is just as great

that's extremely cool... but if it is such a great system, why is it not more widely used (though i have no report saying slack is more common than debian, by the distro listings under people's nicks, only sometimes do i see "debian" listed, compared to slack)

and yes, i have heard of the special debian downloader that let's u keep the current distro and upgrade it with no hassle and such, but it still doesn't sell to me that it is any better than slack (not to bash Debian as i have never used it, seen it, or experienced it in any way)

but why i use slackware is because it IS bareboned: because i don't worry about extra fluff, because i never worry about compatibility or problems installing things from sources or normal rpm's (don't get me wrong here, i'm sure debian allows this too, but i doubt as well as slack)

the fact that it is bareboned means that the user builds to his need only what he wants by himself, no distro will do it for him and i like the feeling of that: this does not in any way mean there is no infrastructure in slack, in fact, the structure is just as strong as the way debian does things (this is what i've derived from these posts)

slack simply puts in linux, that is it: slack is there not to benefit slack, but linux; slack doesn't care about helping the user, which is often a good thing, and therefore creates a stronger system by only providing what is necessary linux


but anyway, thx for the great response: because of all of you, i may just try debian for the heck of it and publish my own findings about sources vs. rpm's in terms of speed decrease/enchancement, though i do agree with the people that say sources are far more reliable and faster than their rpm counterparts (the one's you download off the net that is, not necessarily ones you make) because if have heard my friends say this, and i have felt this when comparing things i have installed via rpm under redhat vs. the same things i installed under slack via source

I tried slack, I dont see any difference in speeds of slack and redhat on my system. It took me a lot longer to get the basic services running. Different people have different choices and mine is redhat. I installed it in under 1Gig and is easy to configure.

cool

I'm quite sure that Debian is more widely used than what you see by people's nicks here. It's definitely widely-used. See here for a very partial list of places that do use it.

To me this says "yes, I see a tool that Debian has that is better than anything Slack has, but I don't see how that makes it any better". Well, all other things being equal (which they definitely aren't, Debian wins over Slackware in pretty much every which way unless you happen to like BSD init better than Debian's style of SysV init for some reason), then this would be enough in and of itself to say that Debian is better.

Debian is as light as you want it to be. I've had an entire functioning Debian install fit into 50MB. Granted, it was pretty much only a shell, but it still worked and I could still have upgraded and whatnot from there with no hassle Why take the time to compile things and introduce your own particular problems when you can just use precompiled things that have been tested extensively on systems running the same software? (and don't say speed optimizations because: a) I will ask for empirical evidence, and b) >95% of the apps you use on a daily basis are NOT CPU-limited)

Slack has no infrastructure, by comparison. The only "official" bits of Slackware are the install CDs. Anything beyond that is your own work. Debian, on the other hand not only has official packages, but they have an official constitution and an official process for applying to become a new developer, officially supported architectures, etc. Debian will also not do anything that you don't want it to do. Like I said, Debian can be as light as any distro, but it doesn't make you deal with compiling crap and all the problems associated with that (I find people who run source-based distros claiming that their distros are "light" funny, because of all the development libraries you have to have installed to compile the apps that I run).

What?


Compiling from source and RPMs are both crappy ways of maintaining software on a system A centralized (with many mirrors) software repository with an apt system is the way to go.

Seems to me that slackware users take pride in their distro being non-usr friendly..I find it amusing

no, they take pride in being able to do things themselves.

I was running Slack for a year and I experienced "Dependancy Hell" maybe once. I never had a problem compiling software and never craved APT.

I did get tired of Slackwares slow release dates though.

There's a huge difference in being user-friendly (which slack is, IMO) and hiding things in a gui. Anyway... I'm posting regarding some gentoo comments earlier (sorry i got here so late). I also got the whole holy trinity of slack, gentoo and debian impression. I was very interested in trying gentoo but wondering about the init style. I hate sysV (sorry, no offence intended) What does gentoo use?

I never experienced those problems either(with redhat) and yes I do things myself. You have the option of using gui or commandline..so what makes u think that redhat users dont do anything themselves? My university lab uses redhat 6.3 and they have been using that for years.. Yeah, I understand if you like slack or any other distro but you shouldnt think other distros are waste of time because they are not.

You just hate RAW SysV Bundle the right tools with it and it's just as easy as BSD, only more powerful.

Gentoo actually uses a really good init system. It's actually dependency-based. NetBSD came up with it, I think. I wish Debian would adopt it, but Debian's SysV really isn't that bad because they designed update-rc.d which makes things super-easy.

Obviously not all Slackware users are good with linux and not all Redhat users are newbs, but the difference is that in Redhat there ARE GUI configs and in Slackware, there isnt.

So I know that if someone is administering Slackware, they are doing more by hand, where is Redhat, they may be using a GUI or may not be.

Not that there's anything wrong with GUIs, but being able to do things by hand is a nice skill.


And the truth is, that most Redhat users use it because its the most popular, not because its "the best". In fact, most newbs start out with it. Whats that mean? More new users use Redhat than Slackware. Its a fact, im not insulting you.

no offence but there are more redhat users in the world as compared to slackware..what do you think that means?

Redhat unfairly controls the market.


Obviously thats not the only reason, but they do have a lot of the "vender lockin" problems that Microsoft has.

Like using "special" versions of GCC, Glibc, KDE, kernel, etc.

It prevents compatability, and since Redhat is the most popular, people HAVE TO conform to redhat, instead of the standards.

And dont get me started on Version inflating.


And remember, Slackware is Redhats Senior (by a lot).

Slackware has never been commercial, and thats the difference. Its understandable that big companies need support, and little old Patrick cant do that by himself.

Ok, hopefully none of this comes off as personal attacks..

Jatt: no offence but there are more redhat users in the world as compared to slackware..what do you think that means?

He already commented on that. That means that more newbies use it due to it's popularity, not because "it's the best". However, a good indication that it is (at the very least) good is that Linus is said to use it as his main distro.

Strike: You just hate RAW SysV Bundle the right tools with it and it's just as easy as BSD, only more powerful.

A bit more on this later, but in a nutshell, why use a "bundle of tools" to do something you can do with raw BSD scripts in Slack? Do I need a pit crew to change my oil in my daily driver? Probably not, because I can do it all by myself.

Jatt: I never experienced those problems either(with redhat) and yes I do things myself. You have the option of using gui or commandline..so what makes u think that redhat users dont do anything themselves?

Options are wonderful things. But given a gui tool against a command line equivilent, I'd take the CLI 9 times out of 10. Why? Not because I don't know how to use a gui (I am sure I graduated elementary) but because I have power, speed, and verbosity in the CLI that most of your gui apps lack. Those that have it are a waste of time anyway, you have the lag from all the "crap" surrounding the only necessary tool.
Lucky for all the distros mentioned (and any I think?) you can use GUI/CLI so this isn't distro specific Just a CLI vs GUI bit.

Jatt: Seems to me that slackware users take pride in their distro being non-usr friendly..I find it amusing

Yeah, sorta true. But not really "pride in being unfriendly" but rather pride in doing things a standard way, universal on ALL distros, and works everytime hands down (no intermediate "tool" to have to troubleshoot through). It's pride in simplicity and pride in knowledge.

I tried slack, I dont see any difference in speeds of slack and redhat on my system. It took me a lot longer to get the basic services running. Different people have different choices and mine is redhat. I installed it in under 1Gig and is easy to configure.

That's too bad you didn't see the difference. But I'm glad you at least gave it a shot. That's more than most people can say when critisizing distros. I'm happy you have a distro you can hold to such a hot flame and not feel threatened. Seriously, that's a good thing.

Strike: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...828#post417828

That's a link to your "Why I love Debian" above. Sounds good to me. I am sure that because those are very important to you that you use them at every chance you get, and have found that on more than 1 occasion it has made up for the horrible installer Debian uses. There's bad parts about every distro, and there's great things about a few. All things being equal, that's a very nice feature of the Debian 'culture'.

Strike: Show me a study that proves this and I'll show you one that says that Debian outperforms a custom-compiled Gentoo.

I've flown around the world conducting tests in every atmosphere, on every type of computer, and with every distro known to man. Personally, on my very own systems, I've seen definite speed improvements using Gentoo. I'm not doubting Debian, but I'm doubting that Debian vs Gentoo on a 'standard' basic setup that Debian would pull ahead. Gentoo is just as good as Debian, but because it's optimized from the very beginning for the specific hardware it's on, it's going to win. I don't have graphs or a PowerPoint lecture on this, but sit back, blur the distro name, think about it, and I hope that in the end it makes sense

Strike: I'm quite sure that Debian is more widely used than what you see by people's nicks here. It's definitely widely-used. See here for a very partial list of places that do use it.

Definitely. Debian has a huge user base. Possibly/probably more than Slackware. Does that mean it's better? What determines "better"? Is it user friendliness, largest dissemination, closest resembling Unix, package management, or 'what MasterC uses'? Nah. It's a combo of all (except the MasterC bit ) and a whole lot more. Better is also a subjective term, if you tell me "Debian is better" that is: Debian is better, to YOU. However, Slackware is better, to ME. Throw me some hard corps numbers, I don't care, since it's subjective, in the end, I'll stick with Slack. It's better.



Ok, now for my bit on package management:

I love package management, when it's done right, it's the best thing for a system that is devised as most linux distros are. It's a huge hurdle to jump when dependencies jump in the way as they do for a while on too many systems. A good package manager is one that resolves those dependencies without hiding what it's doing from me. I wanna know exactly what it's installing and where. More so, I want control over where those packages are going and how they are compiled. Gentoo has definitely given all these abilities to me and more. Apt is surely up there as well, this paragraph is not a "portage vs apt" thing, I think apt is great. It's rather an "RPM's suck" rant I know there are things like urpmi (mandrake) and apt4rpm (redhat) but even then you don't get the full package. I have to go through and single out each package that I want the 'headers' (read -devel) for and install them seperate from the package of the same name. If I am installing something, I don't wanna have to wonder if the whole thing is there or not, or if the part of the package I need/want is there. No, when I install something, I expect ALL of it to be installed, OR at the very least, give me the choice on what is and what isn't. RPM has yet to give this ability to me.

As for all the great "Debian tools". I don't need em. I don't want em. I don't need to clutter my system with em, and more importantly, why would I? As has been said on several occasions "install only the packages you are going to use right now". Debian tools are probably worth while for those who don't know how to install something by source, it's a nice helping hand for those afraid to attack their init scripts (and why wouldn't they be with anything but BSD style..) and it's probably good for those who don't care what they do with their packages as long as it just works.



All distros have their place, just seems that slacks happens to be at the front of the line.

Cool

Actually, in his latest interview, Linus said that he uses Suse as his main distro.

So we should all use Suse.