Dear all ,
As I see on this forum , the number of Slackware users is larger than SuSE (RedHat , Fedora too) .
So I wonder what are core diffences between Slackware and others - not only advantages but also disadvantages .

Thanks alot .

Slackware
1+Its optimized/fast
2+tgz / source based package installation (no more dependency hell)
3+It works
4+More modular/cleaner init tree structure
5+Stable

1-its a used linux before system
2-steep leaning curve
3-its a do it yourself distro
4-lots of manual tweaking to get recent hardware to work
5-can't think of anymore disadv.

You may find some nice reading here: http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major
and some reviews here: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slackware
but it's even better to install and try it for yourself, you may never go back to any of your old distros, you've been warned

You can get Slackware to do what you want, not like the "simple" distro's that you do what they want.

Could any one compare Slackware with remain distributions (SuSE , FC ,RedHat)in more details . I see that the advantages of Slackware said above always available on others .

Thanks all .

I am new to slack too but it's definitly more DIY than other distros. force you to learn a lot of linux basics, too.

Advantages/disadvantages for who? In what situation?

It is all dependent on the context. If you have to deploy a server tomorrow, and all you know is SUSE, Slack is a bad choice. If you want to learn GNU/Linux, and have enough time to invest, Slackware is a good choice.

In case you (GlowGlow and others) know both Slackware and SuSE , which you choose ? Why ?

I've used both, but not much though. I like slackware for I can do just what I want and I know what the system does at all times.

SuSE is nice but it doesn't tell you much what it is doing behind all the eye-candy. Same goes for Fedora Core and others.

RedHat/Fedora/Suse/Mandriva, etc all customize certain things (including the kernel), to suit their own needs. This makes the user dependent on their updates, and learns to do things the way they prescribe.

Slackware is simple raw Linux. The maintainer, Pat Volkerding does not modify the source code from the programmer's vision.

There is an old saying around these parts -- "If you learn RedHat/Fedora/Suse/Mandriva, you know RedHat/Fedora/Suse/Mandriva. If you learn Slackware you know Linux"

Mandriva et al are easy in the sense that you can auto-install their packages, and the set-up is automatic.

Slackware requires some manual configuration to begin with (although it will go), but is very logically set up, comes with all the basic software you will need, far more than a basic Mandriva install, gives you the opportunity to do many different things with ease, and teaches you how it all works. If you use Slackware you will have a very stable distro, and will get to know a lot about Linux and your system. Using Mandriva will give you something that will auto-configure it all, and make life easy.

Well the main advantage of Slackware (for me ) that this distro is free from all those rpm shit, wizards, graphical configuration and other mess which is intented to make Linux as LAMER-FRIENDLY as windos xp. This is why Slackware became my favorite distro.

Slackware is an excellent choice when you want to spend time tweaking rather than actually getting real work done.

Not the number of users, the number of confused users with questions. Very manual distro... But, you won't be tempted to add a bunch of stuff you may not get a lot of use out of - compiling takes time.

I use both Slackware and SuSE.

I put slack on my old PII 455Mhz to upgrade from Windows 95. I chose slack for this precisely because of the DIY nature. It also felt the most like Unix which is what I had been using for over 10 years at work.

I chose SuSE for a new laptop from work because I wanted the hardware to basically work without much tweaking. SuSE had a good reputation in that area. Besides some ACPI stuff (common with laptops) it has worked just fine.

One really nice feature in SuSE is a profile manager which allows you to boot under very different configurations (eg. network settings).

In the end, both are good and the choice depends on what you want to do. It has been said before, and I can attest to it from my experience, "If you want to learn distro X, use distro X, but if you want to learn Linux, use Slackware."

Just my