I've been using Slackware, off and on, since 1995, and I like the fact it is "homegrown," i.e., Mr. Volkerding just lives down the road, so I'm reluctant to say this, but......

My son recently put Kubuntu on a older 1.2 GHz laptop that was running XP, and was extremely impressed. In his words, "It was like putting a turbo charger on a four banger."

As a result of his enthusiasm I've been playing with Ubuntu 7.10 i386, and Kubuntu 7.04 amd64, as time allows, for the last week or so and the more I use it, the more I like it.

It automatically installs graphic acceleration, even for ATi cards, and finds your Internet connection.

Amazing to me that they have made it so easy. It really is easier to setup than Windows.

I know you "shade tree mechanics" won't like this, but that apt-get utility is outstanding, from a end users point of view.

Almost exactly a year ago I was pulling hair for a couple of weeks trying to get a fax program to work in Slackware. Just a few minutes ago (running Ubuntu in a VMware Server console, inside of Slackware 12) I told apt-get to install efax and then the gui for it and then all I had to do was tell efax where to find the modem.

I installed Opera 9.25 on it just for chuckles and apt-get found a tweak for it, for Ubuntu, and installed that.

I had it install VLC and MPlayer. VLC ran immediately, no adjustments necessary. MPlayer took a little longer as I had to go through the list (in the MPlayer preferences) of the various video codecs until I found one that work. Other than that, no long list of dependencies, etc., and no long involved tweaking to get it to work.

I also installed, in Ubuntu, Gwenview, Scribus, and Digikam, and they all ran perfectly. Even installed Kmail and Kopete.

In this day and age, in the evolution of the personal computer, Kubuntu is the best I've seen.

There is no reason to have to jump through the hoops that Windows puts in the user's way, and there is absolutely no reason that a end user should have to compile and/or have to hunt down and install one by one the dependencies to make a program work.

I hate to turn my back on Slackware after all these years, but Kubuntu is making more and more sense by the minute for those who don't have the time and/or the inclination to keep crawling under the hood every time they make a change or add a program.

I'll wait for the next Slackware distribution and see what they have to offer. If they don't come out with a 64bit version or anything else substantial, it maybe time to the switch to Kubuntu.

since Mr.Volkerding is your neighbour, why don't you discuss with him the problem you faced in using his distro :-)

Never had the honor of meeting the man, but he doesn't live too far way.

I've tried Kubuntu, everything works very well. But, why not try the distro that Kubuntu is based on? Debian is much faster than Kubuntu. Debian invented apt-get; the distro is rock-steady, it never fails.
Slackware will always be my favourite:-)

well Kubutu is a good distro but wait till apt-get gets ahold of it after you have done some cool stuff to it. as far as slack being slow is because you never configured your xorg and it is using a generic module. slack is desighned to let you have the control as what the vanila flavor should taste like.

Well, you're demonstrating an important difference between Windows/Mac and Linux. We have freedom to choose, can change our minds and be as subjective as we like.

Hi,
For what it's worth then PV lives up the road from me! Mighty long road but up the road. By the way it's 'Volkerding'.

So, what is the point ? I don't get it. You mean I should switch to Ubuntu. Well, no way man, in fact, I never will. If anything I'll switch to LFS or BSD or cook up my own version of Slackware. Ubuntu is too much like Window$, it hides things from you, gives you annoying pop-ups, "A new update is available, click here", and IMO it's quite cumbersome to use. Of course, after using Slackware, nearly every other major distro is cumbersome to use, because they do everything for you even if that's not what you want. I want absolute control over my PC, very few distros offer that (and most certainly neither Window$ nor Mac offers this).

Slackware for ppl who want to use linux, whatever else for those who just go with the flow...

Thats the whole point ....

tell me really , how many times do you have to install software ?

after the initial 2-3 days, where you install all the software you need, there is nothing else ever needed in most of the cases, imho.

In real everyday use, slack is simply more usable and easier to live with. Kubuntu is too annoying.

I don't decide a distro's usability based on how easy it is to install things. Usability is just that .. how usable is it? Install time really counts for a small portion of the actual net time spent on the computer.

at first instant we feel a lot different, i got excited by ubuntus, someitme mandriva and suse 10.3 they all do the job, installation, some configuration everything will be nice, later after sometime playing with that we feel the exact difference b/w slack and these OSes. (we dont know where it screwed up)

i had been playing with gentoo for more than 7 months i liked it very much. may be i wil say gentoo better than ubuntu/kubuntu.

ubuntu/kubuntu have lot of support and is a project, so there configuration and way of installation may be more advanced, but is not rock stable as the base linuxus. tht is what i felt

regards rkrishna

I can't argue with how easy it is to setup and use, but so much automation makes it too Windows-like IMO.

I don't know about the other "shade tree mechanics", but I like to mess with stuff, break it and then have to figure out how to fix it. I actually *want* as much manual control and configuration as possible.

The hoops in Windows are often oddly-shaped and either on fire or covered in thorns. You just about have to sign your soul over to MS in order to legally use Vista.

I often use a shopping list of dependencies as a factor to decide whether I really need program X or if I should seek an alternative. Ubuntu will/should show what dependencies a program requires and you just say "yes, get them" without much thought/consideration. I don't like having to install 20MB of dependencies in order to run a 5MB program. I know disk space is cheap these days, but it's the principle of the thing.

I guess distros like Slackware and Debian are for users who like to control their computer, while Ubuntu and other Windows-like distro are for users who let their computer control them.

If you've actually tried to install Window$, you'll find that Slackware is much easier to install than Window$, and of course Ubuntu is much much easier to install ...

I quit running Ubuntu/Kubuntu as I found them a bit buggy when compared to Debian.
Slack rules all:-)

I dost see the point of this post at all. Anyway thanks for keeping us informed.