Lets Up Slackware on DW?

Most days, once a day, I use distrowatch as a way of ending up here at linuxquestions.org.
I travel over to DistroWatch, click on the Slackware link (currently #31) on the right side of the page and then on the "alternative users forums" link.

PCLinuxOS is a good distribution for new Linux users.
http://www.pclinuxos.com/

Originally Posted by fatmac Debian doesn't install a lot of necessary drivers, they have to be downloaded & installed from 'non free'. A distro I often recommend is MX Linux, it's a mid weight distro running XFCE, debian based, lots of newcomers seem to like it. (For myself, I like a lightweight distro called AntiX, no systemd, Debian based.) P.S. I used to run Salix (basic) for a while, so I'm not anti Slack.

Thanks for the recommendation. My relative was able to try XFCE, GNOME 3, and Plasma 5. They really like Plasma 5. Maybe it is because they are used to it. If they want to try something else I'll give MX Linux & PCLinuxOS a shot. I'm just surprised that a GTX 960 wasn't picked up by Debian out of the box with nouveau (I suppose they have that). I was too lazy to look into it to try and get it to work. I honestly thought things would have gone smoother for me in 2020.

Originally Posted by fatmac Not many people need compilers & other stuff, that gets installed with the 'easiest' way to install from your disks.

On distros that have binary repos, this is absolutely true. But unless Eric or a few other smaller repos have all the software you'd need, you'd most likely need compilers on Slackware to use something like SBo.

Slackware is not intended to be everyone's distro, but it is the best distro for some people, just as Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, Mint, Anti-X, Gentoo, LFS, etc are the best distro for others.

I don't worry about the ranking on DW. It has long been considered a pointless metric. I will occasionally go to DW to see how -current's packages stack up to the latest releases of software (although, I suppose I could start using repology, since I'm pretty sure that tracks it too, and then I can forget about DW completely).

Originally Posted by JWJones I'd be willing to bet that Ubuntu is still the most-used Linux distro.

I'd say Android.

Participating in a poll is easy and does exactly nothing but if someone wants to do it just to feel better it's also harmless. The thing is that Slackware has a very poor marketing in general and random clicks won't help. What can be done:

- create an official Vagrant image to let people try Slackware without installing it and hence without going through the installation process

- create an official Docker image - I'm not sure if anybody would use that for any serious work though

- update slackware.com. I don't mean add more Javascript but update News section - it's really not good that the last article was added in 2016. It makes people think that Slackware is dead and it's not a surprise. It would be good to post new Changelog entries there for example.

> The thing is that Slackware has a very poor marketing in general

This is a very questionable and subjective statement, but I really don't want to go into details, because the thread is already degenerating into yet another holy war.

It is as simple as "if it suits you - use it".

Originally Posted by average_user I'd say Android.

Good point. I guess I should have specified DESKTOP distro.

Originally Posted by FlinchX > The thing is that Slackware has a very poor marketing in general This is a very questionable and subjective statement, but I really don't want to go into details, because the thread is already degenerating into yet another holy war.

Of course you can have your own opinions but I have met people who didn't know what Slackware is although they used Ubuntu and heard about Gentoo or Arch or people who asked me why am I using an abandoned system. As long as Slackware works and does not lag behind today's world its poor marketing is surely not my biggest concern but it could get better.

From DistroWatch:

"The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more."

Slackware Professional Linux may have poor marketing, but I found it. It's technical support is unbeatable and second to none. In an age when lots of stuff just plain sucks, Slackware doesn't suck. Slackware does what it ought to do. Slackware just works.

Originally Posted by Franklin A stable release would work the best TBH. I'd even throw in a couple rolls of toilet paper along with my purchase.

Agreed, a stable release would gain my vote, however I'm keeping my toilet paper. That stuff is like gold.

Originally Posted by fpetrucio Hi everyone. I'd like to invite you all to Up Slackware position by clicking the 'Slackware' entry on Distrowatch.com. Why? This way more people can see how live is the Slackware Distro and community and that can end up helping Slackware and Patrick. That's my opinion. What do you think? Let's try it?

It's been long rumoured that other distros have done this...foolish path to travel IMO. When a distro needs to "boost its numbers" bigger problems lie beneath. Reminds me of the commercial in the US when you sign up for some new credit monitoring service and you automatically get a boost to your credit score, that's some BS scheme there.

Originally Posted by wolfslacker Agreed, a stable release would gain my vote, however I'm keeping my toilet paper. That stuff is like gold.

if it is gold thread it may have antiseptic properties.

When Slackware was doing well in Distrowatch's rankings, Caitlyn Martin said the ranking was irrelevant.