Lets recap.

Fedora. Nice distro but small release life doesn't fit my requirements. I'd like something with a bit more "growth" potential.

Slackware. I didn't find any disadvantages so far, the releases are not that frequent and I've seen that support for older versions is good.

Kanotix. Isn't this a live cd? I like the idea behind it, Debian plus fresh programs but it just doesn't seem mature enough for something permanent. I could be wrong however.

Arch. I've only read good stuff about it. Other than the lack of package signing, its great. Although I think its going to take some time before I make it completely usable due to the bare bones approach. That's not necessarily a bad thing if you have enough free time but I'm not so sure about that.

BSD. Don't know yet. The change might be a bit too radical for me at this point. On second thought I'd rather test it first in a VM to get the hang of it before using it as a main OS.

Okay, I think that between my original choices and Slackware, Slackware wins hands down. Anybody have any advice for me for using Slackware? I mean some general sort of advice, not anything specific.

Package signing is a bit of a sore point with Arch Linux. Many people want it, few seem bothered enough to actually do something about it. That being said, last I heard was a reasonable solution is being implemented and isn't far off being finished.

Slackware is a great distro, I've been using Linux for 7 years, 3 of which I spent with Slackware. The reason I moved away was for 64bit, but this post has me wondering if it's time to go back. The lack of dependency tracking can be a little inconvenient at times, and due to the relatively small repo size you will be rolling your own packages which means tracking security updates for a number of apps rather than waiting for the updates to be pushed into the distro's repo.

If you feel Arch is going to be too time consuming, then the *BSDs are out. And you may want to think twice about Slackware.

General advice about Slackware? Get a notebook and take notes of what you learn and how you set it up. Also, and this applies to anything you do, if you find yourself getting frustrated take a break and do something else for a while.

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This is good advice: although it probably applies to any distro. If you like, you can see a copy of my checklist (I just received my 13.37 DVD, so haven't got around to installing it yet; but I will update when I do - there shouldn't be too many differences though).

If most of your software needs are common, use slackbuilds.org as a starting point to search for software. Rarely do I need something that I can't find there. Installing is typically downloading the program and build script, unzipping the build script and moving the program archive into the unzipped directory, running ./programname.Slackbuild, and running "installpkg /tmp/programname.tgz". If there are any dependencies, they will be listed on the download page.
Other good sources are Alien BOB's repository and Robby Workman's Packages.

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Thanks for the advice. This thing about the lack of binaries is a bit intimidating but I always wanted to get used to compiling. Having to rely on repos just because I wasn't comfortable with compiling was too restrictive in the end. A lack of updates on the other hand is a bit more serious, but I assume that the repos do have updates for the really critical parts of the distro, right? I wouldn't mind compiling Firefox once in a while for example but tracking updates for iptables and various security programs could be a longterm problem.


Great list and advice, thanks. About the dependencies. Are they up on some repository or will I have to track down not only program source code but packages and libraries as well?

If you subscribe to the Slackware Security email list (see the slackware site or my checklist for subscription info) you will get an email for any security updates for programs included in the distro. Then it's a matter of downloading them from an FTP mirror and installing them (they will be already compiled .txz packages) which will be a matter of running "upgradepkg <package_name>.txz" for each one. You can even run "upgradepkg *.txz" from a directory with all the patches, but make sure to delete any older patches first. It's not a bad idea either to do an md5sum first on them to make sure they are the published patches and that the download was correct (same goes for installing programs from slackbuilds.org).

The only thing you have to track security updates for are programs that you install yourself on top of the main Slackware install. Programs like Firefox, iptables, etc. will be included in the binary patches from slackware-security.

Usually the dependencies are not a big deal. Most of the time they will already be installed if you do a stock full installation. When you do have to, Slackware's approach can help avoid dependency hell since you always have a good idea about what you are installing.

When there are dependencies they are listed on the download page: take filezilla for example (a most excellent FTP client BTW). In the notes you will see I prefer to install wxPython so I double-click on "wxPython" to highlight it, right click and choose "Search SlackBuilds.org for "wxPython"" (in Firefox: you can get the slackbuilds.org search from mycroft.mozdev.org). Then just install wxPython first and then filezilla.

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You can have this even simpler with slackpkg, which is installed by default. A simple will show you updated packages, download and then install them for you.

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Well, I kind of knew about slackpkg but I had never tried it until now: that does work great, thanks!

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I think mepis is a good choice with the softwares it provides and preferred KDE desktop..it never messed up in my pc dual booting with xp..and ofcourse it is stable...just have a look at it..

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Just to clear things up everything in the Slackware repos is kept up to date in terms of security fixes, and it's a trivial task to keep your software up to date in the respect.

However, any packages you roll, eg VirtualBox, OpenOffice, MPlayer, libdvdcss2, etc will not be tracked by slackware, thus these you'll have to track yourself.

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That's great then. It seems easy enough. Now all I have to do is try it for myself and see if it is as easy as it seems.

I checked out Mepis and I liked what I saw in reviews. There wasn't a mention of whether the programs become as stale as in Debian though so I don't know. It certainly seems close to my requirements so if Slackware doesn't work out for me it's going to be either Fedora or Mepis after a little bit of additional research. Thanks for the suggestion.

That's what I wanted to hear. Having to track every program sounded a bit improbable.

I finally decided on Slackware. Thanks to everyone that gave suggestions so now I have at least five choices instead of the original two and thanks for the clarification on specific questions on Slackware. I'm sure all the advice I got will come in very handy.

Glad to see you've chosen Slackware
The slackware LQ forum is one of the most helpful I've ever found, if you run into trouble that's the best place to look for help. Dependencies and software installation isn't that bad once you get your head around slackpkg, sbopkg, slackbuilds.org and things like src2pkg.

Good luck and have fun

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Thanks man I hope the slackware LQ forum remains helpful even after I flood them with noob questions. But joking aside, I'm currently reading the slackbook, some threads from the Slackware LQ forum and the links provided in this thread before I take the plunge. Wouldn't want to dislike a distro just because I didn't put in enough effort.

I would suggest Debian, for several reasons. Trying to be objective (as I admit I am a big fan of Debian), I will name the most important reasons here. Maybe I am risking to start a "distro flame war", but well, that's not my intention.

* Debian has a very good package management system. Aptitude / apt-get do a great job managing packages and keeping track of everything. Actually, rpm packaging can't be even compared to deb. I'll give an example. Suppose you want to install package A, which requires packages B and C, which, in turn, need packages D and E. Debian will tell you that packages B and C are needed, and will also maintain their dependencies, D and E. So it will do Fedora (or any other distro based on rpm). However, if you try to uninstall A later, Debian will tell you packages B, C, D, and E are not needed anymore, and it will uninstall them as well. Fedora will just uninstall package A, silently leaving useless packages B and C and their dependencies in your system. At least it was like that the last time I tried Fedora. I doubt they fixed that issue, but even if they did, I just refuse to wait for a feature to be implemented, while it already exists in Debian several years now.

* Debian comes with an impressive amount of packages, available for every architecture, including pure 64-bit systems (which are often poorly supported by other distributions). Even drivers usually not available for 64-bit systems are there, as well as full 64-bit multimedia support.

* Despite what people think, installing/configuring Debian is not difficult at all. Unless you have really "exotic" hardware, almost everything will be detected and configured automatically. As an example, I recently installed Debian on a netbook, and everything worked out-of-the-box, including touchpad, sound, card slots, and built-in camera. The only thing I needed to configure myself was mobile broadband internet connection (manufacturer says "works in Windows only"). Even for that, some searching in Debian forums and linuxquestions.org was enough to get it working perfectly.

* Although Debian has a very strict policy concerning what is "free and open source" and what's not, it gives you the option to install a huge amount of "non-free" software, directly available from Debian repositories (that is the reason Debian is not included in Free Software Foundation's list of "free" GNU/Linux distributions). "Free" alternatives are there as well, but you can still use the "non-free" versions. The list of "non-free" software directly available in Debian includes 3D acceleration drivers, Java, Flash, sound/video codecs, and virtually every "non-free" thing you might need.

* The widely adopted opinion that Debian includes outdated software is a myth. It is (partially) true only for Debian's "stable" release. However, one should keep in mind that Debian has a really tight policy concerning what is stable and what is not. This is because "stable" release is actually made with servers in mind, where stability is meant as "exaggerating stability". For that reason, the majority of Debian desktop users just install the "testing" release, which is actually very stable. As an example, I use Debian "testing" release for 7 years now, updating my system regularly. I had a minor issue once (3D acceleration was broken after an update, so I needed to just fall back to non-3D graphics drivers). Even then, workarounds where in Debian forums immediately, and the problem was officially fixed within a few days.

Some proposed Slackware. Yes, it is an old and respectful distribution, still developed today by a small community. However, it has way less packages available (if you need more packages you are on your own), and also provides a very simple packaging system. Packages are actually just tgz tarballs, and Slackware doesn't care about dependencies at all. You need to install package A, which needs packages B and C? The old-good Slackware will just install A, and of course it won't work until you figure out which packages are needed and install them manually. At least it was like that the last time I installed Slackware. It was not that hard to make a fully working system, but I wouldn't suggest Slackware to a beginner.

For those reasons (and other, less important ones), I would strongly suggest to go for Debian "testing" release. One could say Ubuntu is also an option, as it is based on Debian. However, I am very suspicious about that distribution, and besides I don't see why to use a copy of Debian instead of the real thing. Not to mention "Ubuntu" is actually an African word meaning "I can't configure Debian" , although like I said before configuring Debian is not hard at all.

As for the window manager / desktop environment, I would suggest to pick a lightweight one. Both KDE and Gnome are not an option, in my opinion. I am pretty sure some KDE/Gnome fans would start to argue here, but I don't mind. The fact is both KDE and Gnome are actually resource devourers. Just for the sake of (disputable) eye-candy features, they have huge memory footprints, and they are mimicking Windows in many unacceptable ways. All that just for the show. I wouldn't install them even in my "main" computer, which is pretty good and powerful. Gone are the days when KDE or Gnome were still lightweight. Their developers took their decisions years ago, going for the eye-candy, Windows-like, "idiot-proof" thing - and who cares about wasted resources.
Xfce is definitely lighter than KDE/Gnome, but I still prefer more lightweight environments, namely LXDE, Fluxbox, or even WindowMaker (other options are there as well).
LXDE is probably the most "balanced" option, having some eye-candy features, but still being on the really lightweight side. It is a relatively new desktop environment, so some things could definitely be better, and they probably will, as LXDE is still in rather early development. However, it is already very functional and lightweight. As an example, my netbook (or even my really old computers, with very limited resources) are able to load LXDE in an eye blink (same is true for Fluxbox, IceWM, WindowMaker, and others). This is just unthinkable if you are using KDE or Gnome.
The fact is, you can't escape from KDE/Gnome completely, as many good applications are written using QT/GTK and (unfortunately) they use several KDE/Gnome libraries: Gimp, Rosegarden, digiKam, and Hugin, to name a few... However, you can still run those applications in another desktop environment, limiting the KDE/Gnome libraries used to an absolute minimum. In any case, do not bloat your system with a full KDE/Gnome environment, even if you have a pretty modern and powerful system. There is no need to waste your system resources for nothing. Just install the necessary libraries to run the applications you really need, and skip the others. Avoid even KDE's and Gnome's graphical login managers, namely kdm and gdm, and go for a lightweight login manager (slim is a good option here).

P.S. In case someone disagrees with the above, you do well - but please, I don't need a "flame war", go your own way and respect the fact someone else may have different opinions than yours.

Arch's package manager (pacman) does that too, and its design is much simpler to understand and use.