Greetings,

I'm looking for some suggestions on the most beginner-friendly and easy-to-use versions of Slackware out there. I have never been a user of Slackware or any of it's derivatives. I've tried a few distros based on Slackware over the years that were supposed to be more beginner oriented, but I always found them to be very rough around the edges and in need of a lot work to make them more complete, easy-to-use and newbie friendly. I've been wondering if there has been any improvements recently in this area or is it much the same.

Thank you

Just use Slackware. All of the alleged user-friendly stuff requires you, the user, to learn something. It isn't that hard!

Hi punchy71,

to better answer your question we would need that you elaborate a bit.

Please tell us a little more about what makes you consider a Linux distribution complete, easy-to-use and newbie friendly.

PS Lot of documentation is available in SlackDocs to help beginners.

Slackware isn't meant to be 'for beginners', not really. If it was, then it'd be just another waste-of-space Ubuntu distro.

Who told you to try Slackware in the first place if you think it's just not 'going to be easy'? Go to distrowatch.com and find something "easy".

skack IS user friendly
it's just picky about who it makes friends with
slack has gotten one hell of LOT more newbie friendly than it was
you could try victor linux

2 members found this post helpful.

The only really daunting part of installing Slackware is partitioning your hard drive, but, there is ample documentation on how to do that.
I suggest that you read the documentation and then do a full installation of Slackware. Log in as root, create a user with the adduser command, follow the prompts and you will be good to go. Log in with your user account and type startx.

Linux -- any Linux (or Unix for that matter) -- has a learning curve. It's not terribly steep but it's there. Ya need to learn some stuff.

The real question is what do you want to do? Want to play games, get an X-Box. Want to do image manipulation; e.g., Photoshop, get a Mac (or learn to use GIMP on Linux, GIMP is a look-work alike). Want to write -- reports, letters, a novel -- use OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice.org on any platform known. Want to learn programming, well, there's where Linux and particularly Slackware starts to shine (because you have all the tools you'll ever need for doing software development).

Slackware provides you a complete platform for whatever you want to do with a computer, pretty much full-boat, everything you'll need, not much that you won't need. But, it's up to you to spend some time and effort learning the in's and out's, the what's and the why's and once you have done so, you have what I (and a whole lot of other folks) consider the best of the breed.

There is a Wiki (start with http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ct-4175422561/) that's written by Slackware users that offers instructions for pretty much anything you'll need to know. If you order the DVD from the Slackware store, it comes with a guide that contains pretty much everything you need to know from installation through customization. Thing is, you need to give it a read (along with the README files on the DVD) if for no other reason than maybe getting some ideas of what you can do with Slackware.

All that said, though, a complete installation of Slackware is pretty easy. You need a 32- or 64-bit box (and the appropriate Slackware release, either 32- or 64-bit), you need to partition the disk drive (you can read about that in the Slackware Book or the Wiki), you need to know the address of your modem, router or switch (to set up your network connection) and you're pretty much ready to install.

It really helps if you know how to use a text editor, but, other than that you're pretty much good to go from there.

By default, Slackware does not come up in a graphic window manager -- that is not a bad thing. You can pick from a bunch of window manager (KDE, Xfce, etc.). You have control, you have choice, you have the ability to do what fits your needs. That ain't all bad.

Hope this helps some.

3 members found this post helpful.

Hi and welcome to Slackware. Here's three suggestions:

1. Take a look around this page: http://docs.slackware.com/

2. Read at least the following document: http://docs.slackware.com/slackware:install

3. Eventually, give this a try: http://www.microlinux.fr/mled.php

Cheers,

Niki

2 members found this post helpful.

... you mean "Vector Linux" don't you?

"What's the vector, Victor?"

1 members found this post helpful.

I believe he does, yes.

Micro Linux sounds interesting and more approachable. I may have to try it.

Just bare, plain vanilla Slackware itself still seems daunting to me... I may have to work my way up to it..

The last time I considered trying out Slackware I think it was missing any documentation at all, or the documentation was scattered all over the place and not neatly orginized in one single location which made me even more apprehensive to trying it out. But now it seems like that deficit has been greatly improved.

It isn't that hard, you just might need to read a lot of stuff

Here is a link to the slackbook:

http://www.slackbook.org/

There are also lots of documents that ship with your Slackware DVD. Check out the links that onebuck mentioned a few posts back. Yes. Microlinux would be a great place to start.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi punchy71,

If you computer is capable enough (which should be the case for almost any computer bought in the last 5-6 years) why don't you try Slackware or the other alternatives on a virtual system (Virtualbox, VMWare etc.)? Try Slackware and see with your own eyes that it is not that scary to install and configure it.