Heh-heh

Q: If Slackware disappeared tomorrow, what would you run?

A: Away. Away to join the circus or live as a rain forest hermit, hoping to never see a computer again.

A different OS.

This is a stupid question. I wish it would stop popping up on the LQ spy.

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Hehehe ...

This may very well be a stupid question, but it keeps inciting the need in people to reply, one year later.

I like Arch but it doesn't have stable releases, so I would probably try Frugalware. If that is not okay for my I'd go with FreeBSD

Since this resurrected... Possibly Slackware - at least for quite a while. Nearly everything is there for me to keep it working for quite a while, especially since I dont use KDE

I would do a whirlwind tour of distros as I do regularly, lose patience with just about everyone. I suspect I might go the other extreme - since I wont be able to find a distribution that gets out of my way, that I can figure out and fix without days of work, and that works on all my machines.

Slitaz and BSD would be my first tries

It's a hypothetical question about Slackware going away. I get that. But we have the sources and the build scripts for each package. Those are not hidden from us. That's one of the big reasons why a lot of us use Slackware. Slackware will never go away because we have these important scripts. It's like insurance against the future or being held hostage by circumstances beyond Pat's control.

So a bunch of us will take these builds scripts, start updating the software, and we'll still have our Slackware. That's why Linux will never go away. That's why Slackware will never go away. Source is king.

A more realistic question is what would you do if Windows went away tomorrow? I don't use Windows and I know a lot of people here don't use it, but it is a much more plausible scenario. Slackware has less of a chance of going away than Windows because we have the sources and we have transparency.

I would stay with the most recent -Current and take a shot at maintaining it myself with the slackbuilds in /source.
Just another learning curve, so what.

I aint given up my Slack!

Hi to everyone! I am using this thread as some sort of "themed" introduction.

This question may sound stupid, but since my "adoption" of Slackware (2006 or so, can't remember) I have been looking for a second system to switch to - in the emergency case of SW going away. The (potential!) problem with Slackware is obvious: It's not a one-man-show, as we all know, yet it would not be the same without Patrick Volkerding. But for instance, if a Debian leader or maintainer or whatever leaves the projects (being only one out of a billion) it's rather different than the absence of Patrick Volkerding. So the question isn't too absurd. Just look what happened to other distros. How many of the founders are still there? It's downright amazing that PV still is. After all, there is never a guarantee for any distro, not even for unix on the whole. But, being optimistic I expect to be using SW for at least the next 10-15 years to come :-)

Anyway, it's been impossible for me to find a save fallback system in all those years. Slackware is a strange addiction: it makes you look for slackness in every new alternative you try. For some reason I don't like Debian, it is a great OS, but somehow the system is too complicated.

I tried Fedora lately to check those great novelties, but after a bit of fussing around I gave up. A system that boots you into a GUI can't be right anyway ;-)

Arch seems to be promising, from what I read about it. Strangely, my 1st attempt to install it gave me a crash - something I never experienced with SW. So, umm.

I would vote FreeBSD. Even though I still don't feel completely at home with it; there's too much complexity with it, in my view. But apart from that it is the most impressive OS I have ever used.

I will stop using computers that day. There is no computer-life after that.

*EDIT: No, that day, I will build my own Slackware.

I'd grab a copy of 13.37's DVD and sources, upload them to an FTP, and just keep using Slackware with custom built packages until I could form a team of people to help maintain it and continue on the greatness of Slackware.

What other option is there?

FreBSD would probably be my second choice... but I'd be very leery of it.

If slackware disappeared tomorrow, what would you run?

That's easy. Once we determined it had really just disappeared,
i.e. that the slack team had not just stolen slack and the treasures
of Europe, and were escaping on the Slack nuclear submarine,
but had just really disappeared....
We would then resurrect "International Communism," and the
workers would perceive the situation, and spontaneously come
together to solve the problem...to build a new Slackware.
Wait...wasn't it "International Communism" that didn't work
out? Didn't they always form a police state and kill
anyone who disagreed with them? Well, that's not very nice.
For certain, that's not what we're looking for. Back to the
think tank, or is it the salt mine? Sorry for wasting your time.

Best,
Ferrel

It's the ant, not the antennae.

Slackers of the World, unite!

YES!!! United we stand, divided we fall (and if we have too much to drink, as well).
We should have a Slackware Anthem. Any songwriters out there?

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Its not possible for Slackware to disappear, like others have said the whole point of open source is that we have the source, build scripts etc. and can continue to develop slackware as we use it. Though I am not a programer or os guru I learn as i use slackware about customizing it and rebuilding it to fit applications i keep learning to use. For example taking minimal install components to build any type of server you want. I went from windows98 to Dualboot with slackware as my first linux distro. I trust the slackware community and stability and flexibility of this OS. While I am able to enjoy other distros. Slackware is my foundation, the standard by which I compare all other distros to. Slackware is not something I use, it's an experience of partnership with utility, something to grow with it. Thanks to the slackware community