I've since grown lazy after using Slackware & Debian a few years ago. Now I run Mandriva & Fedora.

If Slack was to discontinue being active then I would choose Mandriva, Fedora & Debian.

What a coincidence!
If mandriva, fedora and debian would disappear i would still choose Slackware too!

A Debian based distro - it may be Debian itself. The distro where you can learn something.

I threw Fedora13 on a spare partition to try to see if the other man's grass is indeed greener as everyone who is not a slacker tends to tell us.

My experience went something like this.

Completely clean install.
Apply software updates - FAIL! (broken dependencies)

Great first impression! (NOT)

Needless to say, this hasn't exactly won me over to the automatic dependency tracking camp and only reinforces my belief in the Slackware way.

Does this happen often with Fedora? or was I just unlucky?

"Anacondas are large, nonvenomous boas of the genus Eunectes. They are found in tropical South America.
All species are aquatic snakes that prey on other aquatic animals, including fish, river fowl, caiman, and capybaras. Some accounts exist of anacondas preying on domestic animals such as goats and ponies that venture too close to the water" - from Wikipedia

It should explain everything. Yeah, I suppose.

Hi,

If for some reason Slackware would stop then I would continue with my Stable Slackware version 13.1. Maintain as long as possible, I've still got working systems with version 8 that are functional. Several other machines with different versions. So I guess Slackware and I will continue as long as possible. That's the thing about Slackware, once you have learned to maintain and utilize then the version jumping is not always necessary unless you absolutely need to get newer apps. But even then we are able to upgrade or add as we see fit to do. Sure, some work but well worth any effort.

So Slack On, no Slack off!

A snake ate my goat?

I guess the underlying question then is: statistically, what's the life expectancy of a riverside dwelling goat?

Hard to say. Some RHivers are more dangerous than others..

It really does, and it gets worse yonder... I have used RedHat/Fedora since their beginning and all I can tell you: "stay away... it bites".

I'd go for Arch, I've used arch before and I enjoyed it. Very similar to Slackware a lot of respects.

Haven't been into the hardcore CLI interface for some time, so for about a year now I've been using Linux Mint, just as the family day-to-day use machine (I think you can see why Slackware wouldn't be useful in that case) and it's worked well. I somewhat miss the control, but I simply don't have the time to relearn everything...

It would be an intensely sad and frustrating moment if Slackware went away. 15 years on Slackware for me. I've punished myself on other distros before. But I've always come back to Slackware.

I voted Arch but Debian would be a strong second. I tend to go for stability or server oriented systems, even on laptops because I hate bugs and crashes.

I seriously can't imagine not having Slackware available. I don't think there are any other distros that do it all. Slackware is a great laptop, desktop and server distro. I'd probably end up running 2 different distros to get the same pseudo usability of Slackware.

Fortunately there are enough die hard Slackers out there that it will never die, no matter what. I step forward on that label.

Absolute Linux is a Slackware variant. I love that it comes with Gnome, and KDE is not included. I love that CUPS is installed and pre-configured...just connect your printer and select it in CUPS. I don't like that you lose some of the ways to go through the install process (such as "menu/expert").

Oh, I wish I had the time. I would love to do LFS!

I agree with you 100%. I hate my desktop now because I hate KDE 4! I think after reading this that I should check to see if there's a new Absolute Linux with a newer kernel with Intel wifi built into the kernel...

I just recently switched to Dolphin as it came with Slack 13, and I love it. (Couldn't stand Thunar.)