SlackwareThis Forum is for the discussion of Slackware Linux.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
I like SalixOS and occasionally use some of its packages, however last time I had it installed a security fix came several weeks after the Slackware update. This made me realise that whatever distribution I chose, I would always compare it with Slackware, so I am now 8 years with Slackware.
SO I VOTE : 2
samac
Click here to see the post LQ members have rated as the most helpful post in this thread.
I put my 18 year old son (with no linux skills to speak of) in front of my laptop over the weekend (so he could write an essay for school and create a powerpoint) he proceeds to dig around a bit and finds KWord and KPresenter and goes about creating his essay and his powerpoint.
My point being is someone who is familiar with computers and is not intimidated by them will figure out any OS in a short amount of time, Slackware is no more difficult to learn and admin than the 900 versions of Windows software available (after having been an admin on windows and solaris platforms i can speak from experience), i have had to "re-learn" windows several times, all I have ever had to do on linux is learn additional items, the core never changed...
Thank you everyone for your replies. I must say, I am a little surprised. I expected most Slackers to cringe at the idea of an OS like Salix. In addition to my own experience, what Slackware users think is valuable knowledge. It will help me when giving advice on other fora. If someone is afraid to try Slackware, I shall not be afraid to suggest Salix as a stepping stone.
For the record, in terms of Slackware versus Salix, if I ever decide to switch distributions, my preference would be Slackware, even if I had to learn a little more before installing it. Salix is nice, but like a few respondents, I am generally not a fan of derivatives.
I think it is hard for someone who has never used Linux or only used Ubuntu to switch to Slackware directly. I don't know of too many cases of this. Usually, you need to get some background in other distros, and then consider trying Slackware, before actually trying it, and even then it may be difficult.
Straight from Windows to Slackware 11.0 here. My administration skills were not particularly good in the early days but I haven't managed to mess up a Slackware system yet. It's not an impossible task if you're willing to read and really learn the system (and bash/GNU/Linux).
As for the poll...I haven't tried Salix and I'm not particularly interested in it (so invisible option 5, as mentioned earlier). I'm sure it's a nice system but in the end I use Slackware because I like its design philosophies (and implementation of those philosophies).
Not really sure. Manual dependency tracking is a skill I can wholly thank slackware for, and its a skill that has allowed me to be more successful with various UNIX projects than I could have been before becoming a slacker. I've used nothing else since 12.1, and can't see changing ever. Even if slackware *god forbid* ever went under, I think the skills I have gained from using it would enable me to at least keep the system updated and functional without having to switch or install a new distro. I can't imagine a derivative intending to "make it easy" for the end-user providing that kind of training.
On the other hand, slackware is also, without-a-doubt the most stable OS I have ever used. Never have I had a problem that I couldn't fix with a bit of elbow grease (and it often turned out that the problem was due to my own tinkering anyway). I can see no harm in helping expose the end-user to the stability and straightforwardness of slackware. Its a great system, and as long as Salix doesn't introduce new problems (i.e. broken dependencies, altered functionality) I think its great that people are getting introduced to the glory that is slack.
So while personally, I don't have much use for it, I can see how it has well deserved place in the distro market. I suppose I'd be inbetween a 1 and a 2. While I'm not jumping around screaming Salix's praises, I can certainly see the benefit of its existence, and wish it well as it continues to make slackware available to those with less patience than myself.
Last edited by trademark91; 03-13-2012 at 06:37 PM.
Just to clarify, I was not comparing Salix and Slackware. Salix is not perfect and has its own set of problems, but it is a useful step for newbies I think.
I love slackware, wouldn't like to use anything else - but! - Salix is fantastic for my eee laptop with it's little 700mhz processor and 4gb ssd. When I am using this at work on the move and suddenly want a program quickly, tracking deps and installing from source using slackbuilds is way to time consuming. Salix and it's extra repo packages solve this for me. If it wasn't for salix my little netbook would be running Arch. So thanks Salix, thanks for keeping Salix Slackware compatible and making a easy to use distro that doesn't rip the heart out of everything that makes Slackware the great distro it is.
Salix is fantastic for my eee laptop with it's little 700mhz processor and 4gb ssd
I found Porteus quicker all around on my acer aspire one 751h than Salix albeit I use Salix on my primary box as I'm lazy these days and prefer a sparse install based on xfce with my own compiles, and slackbuilds to fill in whatever else
That being said I always have Slack installed somewhere as a reality check and used it from 8.0 to 13.0 almost exclusively. I learned linux on it and I configure Porteus and Salix based on what I learned and used on Slackware. I've a Raspberrypi on order and am looking forward to using slack or a derivitive on it. I've tried the raspberry debian image using qemu and find debian rather alien to me (sorry bob if your listening).
Last edited by justwantin; 03-17-2012 at 08:01 PM.
I do make one mod to Salix, that is I run the default kernel from Zenwalk on my eee (uses the BFS scheduler and I really can't be bothered to compile one). I find this improves flash and other video viewing. On my desktop Slackware machines I just use the generic-smp kernel.
Personally, I prefer a full install of Slackware. It might be easier to install than Slackware, but I've never found Slackware difficult to install.
^^^^
Having trouble partitioning during install? What method are you using? It really doesn't get much more straight-forward than cfdisk. At least in my case, it's always seemed pretty easy.
I've been using slackware since Red Hat decided no more "Red Hat", only Fedora and RHEL. I guess that was round 2002.
Where Salix fits in for me is friends and family.
Prior to Salix, when a friend of family member wanted me to set them up a "guest room" system, or a "kids system", or any kind of system, which was secondary to their windows machine, that would always provide web and email functionality, regardless of how hacked the windows machine became, it used to be Ubuntu that I would throw on their spare PC.
But now I do Salix for those situations. I get the quick and dirty install, I get access to a lot of packages, and wicd comes ready out of the box. It's an attractive default desktop. So it's GTG.
All my personal systems are slackware, and I implement slackware as a server for my close business clients.
So Salix is my new go to OS for quick deploy on friends/families secondary (and sometimes primary) computers. Ubuntu has been jettisoned.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.