This wouldn't be the first negative review of Slackware ... there are many more I've seen ... all quite similar really. I say think for yourself ... try it and see.

Really, I can't think of a single accurate review of anything that I've ever read ... not games, not news, nothing ...

Eric, the advisory (the only one) that was measured in the review was CVE-2006-1861. The Slackware version was 11.

I read the review. I don't know about the advisory, but I think the lack of any firewall available at installation and the open ports is probably a fair criticism.
Slackware did well in the performance stakes.
I agree with Slackdaemon's comment, ie stability wasn't even mentioned.
Many of the other categories were irrelevant to me, such as how many software packages in a default install, or popularity as ranked on distrowatch. The main thrust of the review seemed to be aimed at appeal to new linux users, and Ubuntu was (unsurprisingly) the winner.

I subscribe to the magazine here in the uk, and many of the articles are interesting, but I take all "Distro Showdowns" with a pinch of salt.

tobyl

Hi,

Most things that people don't understand are easily criticized. Therefore I would tend to weigh what is said negatively about Slackware. A lot of people want to have their hand held and are either too lazy or just not concerned with how something should be done to resolve a problem/issue.

Sure, some people just don't have intuitive reasoning or the means to look for the solution to a problem be it for a OS or a simple machine.

Most reviews are generally biased. The author tends to lean towards the positive if he/she is familiar to the reviewed subject therefore most reviews are not really open minded reviews! The opposite is true if the writer is not familiar with the subject then the review tends to be negative or not complete.

Sure, I like Slackware but there are things that could be done differently but PV is the author not me. But the way he sets things up makes it a lot easier for me to set things the way I want them.

Yes, You should think for yourself! But a lot of people must be led by someone, no matter what.

FYI, patches issued for this CVE-2006-1861:

Ubuntu: june 8
SuSE: june 27
Gentoo: july 9
Redhat: july 18
Slackware: july 26

Quite spread out, Slackware is not the only one lagging, and the issue was not a serious one either.

Eric

Not really when using gentoo you emerge and it compiles to a script, is that any different to using slackbuilds or src2pkg. Also when using gentoo you can download pre-compiled packages for speed, that sounds like slackware's .tgz, so not much difference between the two.

Gentoo uses dependency tracking, so if you don't have a required component it downloads and installs it. With Slackware you have to choose to install it. This may be semantics but I would say that makes you more in charge when you use Slackware.

Samac

Yes, with the installation of Slackware 11 on a several units here in my office, there is /etc/ppp/firewall-masq and firewall-standalone. These iptables scripts were put in there by Pat, and I have used them.

They work well enough, although anyone can modify to their liking. So, there is indeed a firewall included with Slackware. Pat must have confidence in our knowledge to think we know how to make them work.

Long live Pat V.

To add a bit to Eric's answer, if you look at the actual CVE entry:
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=2006-1861
You notice that it's not even formally accepted - it's just a candidate even at this point.

I wish it didn't have to be that way ...

Bad review for Slak that isn't even on the web? I think you just hit the nail on the head.

If you rate the distros based on how easy to use they are for inexperienced users switching from Windows then yes, Slackware wouldn't rank very high for an average user. Most users want to be able to set up their boxes with minimal effort and they don't care about having full control or getting the most out of their boxes. That's why they like Ubuntu-type distros. Slack is more on the geeks' side.

Having mentioned Ubuntu: Kinda OT, but today I read an interview with M. Shuttleworth (founder of Ubuntu):
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...intsrc=kc_feat
It appears that he too was "enlightened" by our dear Slackware:

Hi,

Just read your referenced article. Good view point by Shuttleworth. I'm not really a fan, but I think that Ubuntu has a place in the distro wars.

Yes, Slackware can be intimidating to the average user. Most people really don't want to spend time to learn the OS, just turnkey and use it. I really don't look at MS Windows users as average 'Linux' users, just users that have been indoctrinated by a OS that cannot meet the needs of everybody. Even though MS wants everyone to think that MS is meeting their needs.

Sure, I've used MS since it's inception. In fact I met Billy boy back when he first worked on his 'Basic'. Little guy at the time. Wish I had the insight to invest at the time. My BIG lose!

But MS has tried to meet the needs for the ma$$e$. Now it is Linux that will truly meet those needs. Look at the open source community as a whole and see the gains that have come about. Linux will freely provide the world with a stable OS and desktop needs.

Slackware will still be one of the stable Linux OS that will fit for the needs of the community. Looking at Current (pre-release) ChangeLog for Intel, we are seeing the future. PV has been doing a lot to date! I can't wait until we get the next release. Still using current on a development system. Looks promising!

I'm still waiting for the link to the 'bad review' since I have yet to see it, and want a good laugh. Honestly I like the direction Slackware is taking, and actually I started out with Slackware, and yes it was intimidating, but you know what? So is higher level math courses, like Pre-cal and cal, Nobody is born with that kind of knowledge anyways, all you have to do is study. Same with Slackware. I had no clue how to do anything in Slackware Linux, until I gritted my teeth, read through some stuff, and whatever stuff I still had trouble with, I asked for help.

I see where you're coming from but I guess its a matter of perspective. Netfilter does come with Slackware by default. You are referring to preconfigured iptables rules that most distos come with. Whereas Slackware leaves the default policy of all chains to ACCEPT. The actual firewall software is still running behind the scenes.
I'm not saying I agree with leaving everything open, but from observation, most people new to Linux tend to flush all default rules anyway when they figure out that iptables is blocking one of their services. On the other hand a mature user will either heavily modify or create their own script from scratch.

I started investigating Linux for use in our company about ten years ago, and 8 years ago, rolled out the first Linux servers and workstations there. This argument was going on then, and it hasn't really changed, other than the distro names in some cases.

And it's not a particularly useful debate. It merely underscores the fact that no two people have the same needs, whether it is in an enterprise/business setting or home/hobby use. And there is no "best" or "worst" distribution, only distributions that meet different people's specific needs and or desires.

In general, Slackware meets my business needs better than the plethera of distributions I have evaluated and continue to evaluate. That doesn't mean Slackware is better...it means Slackware is better for me.

I also believe the nature of GNU/Linux causes people to gravitate toward what works best for them, based on how they use it. An Ubuntu advocate is unlikely to be satisfied with Slackware, just as a Slackware proponent is likely to be frustrated with Ubuntu, or SuSE, or whatever.

In other words, those who will prefer Slackware, will find Slackware, just as those who will prefer Linspire will find Linspire over time and there's no need to worry about these comparison reviews -- which are not aimed at the sort of user or administrator who would appreciate Slackware anyway.

Having said that, I did recently have an amusing experience comparing two distributions to see how the state of the art is developing: For grins I loaded CentOS 5 on a dual PPro with 256 MB I was using to experiment with dual CPUs. Back in the 90's, the idea that a dual Pentium Pro with that much ram and scsi raid would soon be regarded as feeble would have floored me...but the CentOS installer complained and I never could run the box in their runlevel 5 and log in except remotely through ssh, because it would just lock...and performance was sluggish in runlevel 3 because of all the utilities that run by default in CentOS and its predecessor, RHEL.

Slackware 11, on the other hand, with the optional 2.6 SMP kernel from /extra did a decent job as a gui work station even with KDE, and without running X, spewed web pages like greased lightning on that old, obsolete, hardware.

And so, as I was looking at my essentially non-existant budget for new hardware at work, I once again concluded I could live without all the "must have" tools bundled with RHEL and its derivatives, because the difference in the two distributions seems to amount to the difference between several hundred dollars worth of processor speed and additional ram...and if I have to go in and turn off all the administrative utilities in order to get comparable performance out of CentOS or RHEL (and lose the benefits these utilities are claimed to provide) then I might as well continue to run Slackware instead...which I'm going to do...and I've decided (barring hardware failure in the mean time) to wait until the next release with a default 2.6 kernel (Slackware 12?) to upgrade hardware and OS across the board from machines running everything from Slackware 3.5 to 10.2.

Because that meets my needs, and it doesn't matter if Ubuntu meets someone else's needs better.

It seems unlikely that we're going to get a link to the review, but there's something I'd like to know: what, exactly, constitutes a 'default' install? The 'full' option? The 'menu' option and you just accept what's already selected?

It's been ages since I did a Slackware install (yay stability), but even then, the only services listening to the network were sendmail (port 25) and CUPS (port 631), IIRC.