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Having cut my teeth on ATT System 3 (and being overjoyed when SVR4 finally included sockets), I find the Slackware init, shells, and directory structure more palatable than the Berkeleyish flavors of Linux. This is, of course, a personal preference and can't really find fault with Gentoo or any other distro. Slackware suits me well, better than others I've tried -- but I have tried them, so I'm in agreement with some of the others above... try other distros and I'm sure you will find at least one to which you will keep returning. For me, that is Slackware.
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I have run various versions of Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, DSL, Knoppix and *NIX-based OSes such as BeOS and QNX. What I have found with Slackware is that it keeps your mind and your skills fresh. I am always learning with Slackware. In an age when most distros provide you only with environments, such as KDE or }gasp{ GNOME, Slackware offers Window Managers (does anyone remember those?) and a selection of them, too. The reason that I mention this is that Slackware is a Linux OS that gives you the chance of actually trying things for yourself. You can use an environment and stay within your comfort zone, or you can try using a wndow manager, like Fluxbox or FVWM and go through the experience of customizing your graphical experience through text editors. If it sounds scary, that's good. How else do we grow, but through new experiences? If you can alter the TWM menu to your liking, maybe you can expand your experiences through programming with PERL or kernel hacking. Using Slackware as opposed to using some of the other distros is like living in your own home on your own land versus living in a condominium. If you want a Linux distro that is always easy to use, go with Ubuntu. If you want a Linux distro that offers the easy use of environments, but also the alternative to experiment and learn, then go with Slackware.
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gentoo is a great distro,
i learned a lot from gentoo 2007.1, nice howtos, lot of information, portage - great !! but not a good community i installed gentoo on to a laptop, i suggest everyone to try gentoo too, pretty good like slackware!! everything works in gentoo too but this time they struggled a lot to release gentoo 2008.0 still slack is my first choice ;) regards |
I installed FreeBSD 7.0 on a free partition on one of my Slackware 12.1 boxes today. Slackware is my favourite OS, but, FreeBSD is fun too:-)
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...t/freebsd7.jpg |
Going from Slackware to Gentoo seems a bit odd to me, as they have very different philosophies. Slackware aims to be very stable and well tested. It has maybe 1-2 releases each year, and has a very restrictive policy concerning versions of packages it offers. Gentoo on the other hand will never be stable, because its a rolling release distribution. This will also make you run the risk of system breakdown, since major changes might be only a «port-upgrade» away. Gentoo offers rather the newest of the newest than proven stable packages. You can also ask yourself what benefits do you have of compiling and tweaking every single package, while in Slackware you can tweak and compile those you want to, using the buildscripts provided by Pat.
Some people are concerned what will happen to the Slackware project, if anything happens to Pat. Gentoo on the other hand is criticized of the arguing/infighting developers between, and lack of directions after Gentoo's founder resigned from the project. Some of the positive points with Gentoo are the excellent online documentation (I often use them myself to solve puzzles on my favorite distribution), large repository and a better (at least more feature-rich) package manager. Like the other guys says: the most important thing is to make up your own opinion, find what suits you best. We have all our different needs, unequal priorities and different tastes. I guess Slackwares small repository and none-dependency-solving package manager are making you look elsewhere for a better alternative? |
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But also try gentoo, crux is great too. If you get bored with portage give Paludis a try, so much faster than portage. And if you're really feeling adventurous, exherbo may provide some fun. Whatever you do, have fun, all distros are basically the same anyway :P |
Interesting that this thread was started on the same day:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-703581.html |
I don't believe in persuasion or convincing, I say, use what you want to use and what suits you best. So, go with Gentoo if you want or go with Slackware, it doesn't personally affect me one bit.. ;)
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I like them all. I use them all, ok you caught me I use a couple of them.
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Slackware has built-in "gentoo"
I've just "discovered" SlackBuild and, after looking at the source packets in the Slackware source, I've come to the conclusion that there is no need to go to Gentoo - one can use the slack sources to build one's "own" system.
The source packages are SlackBuild packages. I, too, was thinking of trying out Gentoo or even LFS, but now I am more excited about the possibilities of SlackBuild and have already started building my own SlackBuild packages. The advantages are obvious - one already has one's own Slackware system as a reference. By the way - many, MANY, thanks to the people at SlackBuild - I think the project is great! |
BTW, Synesthesia, I too have just upgraded from 10 (10.1) to 12.1 - hence I wasn't up to speed on how much SlackBuild had developed - and consequently I didn't understand that it is really the system upon which Slackware is based.
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After years of distro-hopping, and settling on Debian for a while, I have fallen for Slackware. It's wonderful - it's as easy, or difficult, as you want it to be.
That being said, Gentoo is also very good (my third choice of distribution) but the only thing I have against it is it can take forever for something to build and install. Granted, what else would anyone expect from a source-based distribution? It's true, though, "once you go Slack, you never go back." |
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Dependency resolution can be a chore to maintain if you want to install a lot of third-party software or need somethings not found in the official Slackware distribution. On Debian more than 18,000 packages are just an apt-get away. On Slackware you need to compile from source on many occasions and even then some packages might require quirky configuration/compilation parameters to work. Some odd pieces of software simply refuse to compile no matter how you try. Unfortunately, whatever Slackware users might say, dependencies are tedious, boring and require a considerable amount of time to resolve manually, especially for larger applications. I don't consider it "educational" beyond the first or second time I do it. I liked Gentoo at one point too, but the "download from source and compile every single thing" methodology was beginning to eat way too much into time spent working. Also portage can and occasionally does give compilation errors. All said and done, Slackware is great if you agree with Patrick's philosophies and preferences, because after all, it is Patrick's distribution. I don't happen to agree on some issues, so I stopped using it. So I went "Slack" but I did come back. In favour of Slackware: + Strong sense of community and a helpful user-base + Users are usually knowledgeable + Configuration of the system is logical and well organized + More UNIX-like than any other Linux distribution (I use the term UNIX-like in a very general sense) + Very easy to install and use a Slackware box without an active internet connection (meaning it's a totally self-contained installation). |
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