I think that we may draw some conclusions:

1. Arch is a clear winner. This is probably explained by their KISS approach, their knowledgeable community and extensive literature. In short: The Arch Way (I hate their bombastic catch-phrase).

2. Many would try an alternative OS to Linux. I must confess that I find this disturbing, but I hope that it merely represents a challenge Slackers would like to undertake rather than a reaction of the direction the OS is heading. I like to consider the BSD distributions as another guarantee that Open Source would survive rather than a necessary haven for UNIX geeks.

3. There seem little interest in the Slackware derived distributions. I think that we may assume that they would perish along Slackware or they are simply unappealing. Maybe both. And yet they there might be an emerging winner that picks up the momentum to lead the pack - who knows?

4. A few would simply give up on Open Source and move on to a proprietary solution. I'm afraid that Closed Source limits the power and versatility of an OS, but other users seem to disagree.

In any case when Slackware disappears one has to consider the prevailing conditions at that time, so the question cannot be properly addressed.

An interesting question - nonetheless.

How about the non listed "other" Linuxes? B)
The "dark stars", "out there"
Just like Porteus for example, just struggling to be born?

If only Slackware itself disappeared, but the derivatives remained, then I would run Salix.

I see where you are coming from because Salix does appear to be the closest to its parent judging by:

http://www.salixos.org/wiki/index.ph...from_Slackware

Indeed I think of Salix as Slackware with dependency tracking and a bit of extra polish here and there and hence I have little fear with recommending it to those who like Slackware but want these things. Basically Salix does to Slackware what Ubuntu tried (and in my eyes, failed because they deviated too much) to do with Debian.

To me this similarity with its parent is its greatest strength in many ways. However on the other hand, for the purposes of this discussion, it is its greatest weakness because being so close to Slackware proper also means that they are probably the most reliant on the Slackware teams' upstream work. This in turn would make it much harder for them if Slackware disappeared.

On the other hand those distros that have replaced a far bigger portion of Slackware are less reliant on PatV and the rest of the guys, hence would probably find it easier to live without the upstream work.

A distro such as Arch, which shares some of the same ideas about simplicity and avoiding over complication but doesn't depend on Slackware at all, is therefore likely a safer bet as fallback, particularly so for those who follow -current (given they are already comfortable with a 'rolling release' model).

It would be nice if there was an Arch derivative that had a good strong community and didn't follow the rolling release style of development (for those who don't want this). I suspect the difficulty in creating such a distro and trying to popularise it is that you end up competing with Slackware head on. However, if Slackware did somehow disappear such a distro might emerge fairly quickly to fill up this niche.

It'll never disappear, but I'll still use my Slack.
I want to give it a try to Solaris some day though ...

Don't.

That's all I have to say about that.

Slackware disappearing tomorrow? I don't really know.

I'd hope one of the "team" such as fred (Slamd fame) Robby or Eric would fork or continue the tradition, though none of us even remotely claim to be to the level of Volkerding.

If not, Mandriva (assuming they get their act together: they're actually very good, and almost a rival to Slackware), or Debian stable (even if it's old, my experience in a deployment to the Desert taught me one thing: stable > *. You don't always have internet to go grab an ISO and go for it.)

Not Linux Mint or a *buntu. My experience here was horrible.

Or I'd pay for SUSE or RedHat only because even though I'm not really a fan of how they do things, experience taught me that they're stable. Granted if I pay for it, I'd DEMAND that it work or else I'd quickly disown it.

I would not go with OpenSUSE. Experience taught me it's got major issues. I know I'm only one person but I'm pointing out that individual experience with a distribution usually dictates future actions (whether right or wrong).

Granted I'd probably install four distributions each to a separate partition and then do a "voting" system to see which one I prefer (i.e. which one is the most stable, least pain in the rear). So far I have Slackware 13.37 on one, Slackware64 13.37 on another (my main one I use), and Debian 6.0 on another. The fourth partition is looking for a home (I'm going to re-try OpenSUSE 11.4 this time from a pressed DVD that came with a Linux magazine).

Not a *BSD. No offense but the lack of ability to install it to an extended partition is absolutely retarded (in my opinion) and regardless of right or wrong, no thanks. With Acer and some other computer makers putting 3 primary partitions on the machine, the need for extended partition installs has increased, and PC extended partitioning has been around long enough that this problem with *BSD is laughable in my opinion. This and they do not support LVM+LUKS out of the box so I'd rather not move around half a terabyte just "because". I will give FreeBSD props though, as my website is on a FreeBSD server run by a FreeBSD fanatic, one who knows his stuff.

Factors I look at when testing and working with any distribution:
1) Stability. If it's management tools are GUI, they had better work. One failure and usually I'm angry. I prefer console admin, true, but it pisses me off if the distribution tries to make me use GUI tools and then those tools don't work. Mandriva and Debian stable so far win on this point. OpenSUSE was a fail for not being able to mount a LUKS+LVM that I told it about during install. I fixed it, but that to me is a fail.

2) Ability to harden it. Slackware rules in this regard at least in my opinion (aside from SELinux and other ultra-hardening stuff that I usually don't do, due to the pain in the rear it can become.) Mandriva is actually also very very good at this with graphical tools that WORK! OpenSUSE would be a win if not for #1 since it comes with AppArmor etc. Debian 6.0 is a win because it has a document all about this stuff. Linux Mint 10 was mostly a fail, especially for the default brain-dead firewall GUI tool it included (sorry, if I have to write my own iptables script because your GUI tool failed, you fail).

3) Ability to get stuff done. Slackware is now vastly improved in this area due to Slackbuilds.org, Eric, and Robby's package repositories. No offense but before these came online, adding software that I wanted was almost worse than Gentoo, but now it's far better, and Slackware does as it's told and works with the add-on software perfectly. Debian 6.0, while a bit old-feeling, also wins in this regard, and Mandriva. OpenSUSE was a fail for no official LILO support (granted, I prefer to use the lilo.conf in my Slackware64 as "master"). Linux Mint 10 was a HUGE fail (bought the 9 DVD repo only to find that apt-cdrom and apt-get are both broken for using such a 9 DVD repo, a fail especially if I had no internet in a deployed environment.)

4) Ability to, if necessary, "fully encrypt" with LUKS+LVM. Historically, Slackware was the first with official support to install in this manner. When I read about the mad scientist surgery you need to do with other distributions in order to get this done, I cringe, especially when I consider that they have graphical installers that ought to be able to or claim to be able to do this.

5) Ability to use Xfce. Sorry, I like Gnome but it can be a pain sometimes. I can survive using KDE but I prefer Xfce. Mandriva in the past was a fail (Xfce was from -contrib and was horribly old) but has since improved. Debian 6.0 Xfce works.

6) The ability to stay out of my way. There have been in the past distributions that I'd use their GUI tools to configure something only for the configuration to get overwritten again by the defaults. This is a fail. With Slackware and my own scripts and .desktop files I've created I'm very productive and stuff stays how I wanted it, even on -current. Slackware-current deserves a lot of props as being the only "rolling distribution" (even though it's not an official release) that works and is almost always stable (usually far more stable than many other distributions that claim a stable release!).

So life would suck without Slackware Linux, but that's the criteria I'd use to pick my next "home" distribution. I'm not trying to get in a discussion about other distributions so please don't reply about it, I'm just listing my experiences.

I could not fill in any of the above choices, because I'd keep running Slackware and -if necessary- update the packages myself.

Hi,

I agree!

Several machines still running older versions of Slackware. If it ain't broke don't fix it! Mentality does apply.

Sure future evolution would depend on 'WHO' takes charge if something should ever happen to PV.

fBSD

There are enough copies of Slackware lying around it will never die.

What worries me is that humans have been cornering themselves for decades. It only takes one tragedy to exploit the weaknesses in society. A natural disaster occurs and the tech gods fall like trees. The majority never invested in alternate skill sets such as survival. So too is the nature of system administrators. Redhat/Windows Server, not a clue about isolinux live environments.

I've always had a slack cd handy.
- I don't have to dpkg or ar -x my tools
- It has a pretty good span of tools on it for recovery

That's why I think it won't go away.

1 members found this post helpful.

I would commit suicide.

I hope you're joking. Seriously?
I would be sad if Slackware disappeared to be sure, but, your response is a tad extreme in my opinion.

As a non-Slackware user, some may say I shouldn't be here, but what do I care?

If Slackware went, I'd loose Salix, and that would be a shame. The poster who said Salix depends on Slackware didn't know the half of it. Apart from a few hundred extra programs (all of which can be safely installed in Slackware), the Salix repository contains only metapackages: they have the dependency data, but the files required are installed from the Slackware repository.

What surprises me is the vote for Arch. Why do users of a famously stable distro want to use a famously unstable one? Do they just want something to keep them happily tinkering?

rofl.
come on d00d seriously... Its Friday!