HA! If Slackware is Noah's Ark, which one of us is the donkey?!

As for the rest of the thread... The beauty of Slackware is that it can be used any way you want to use it. It doesn't get in the way. When I was a field tech I used to tell people "If a tool can't be used for more than one purpose, I don't have room for it on my truck." That's Slackware to a T.

I just did a little googling for "linux server popular" and on every list Slackware was right there with Red Hat. It was also listed as being a base for many other distributions. It makes sense that companies would use a distribution put out by a company that has large support staff and offers support contracts when they have hundreds of servers to support with a large IT staff. That has absolutely nothing to do with the technical worth of the distribution, it has to do with the business model of the parent company.

Slackware is an EXCELLENT distribution. How Pat chooses to organize his business is entirely up to him. I for one am glad that he has gone the route he has. Not because it would bother me if Slackware was the most popular, highest earning Linux out there. I think Pat deserves to be a very wealthy man. But the choices he has made, have made Slackware what it is, and what it is is simply awesome.

How many distributions have come and gone, forked, split, died, or just gone to hell all because of competing agendas or chasing money? Slackware is still here, still moving along, still being developed, and still supporting old versions (Slackware 8.1 was last updated June 14, 2012 and was released June 19, 2002). Let's face it, Pat is obviously motivated by something other than simply making as much money as possible. The analogy of Slackware being the old lazy man is simply ridiculous. If you think that is laziness then I suggest you go build Linux From Scratch and maintain it for security and bug fixes while making sure to include just about anything anyone could need in a system. Being Pat and having to work with upstream developers that are developing based around what Red Hat is doing for better or worse has to be quite frustrating at times.

To make any statements regarding what Slackware is or isn't or what it's guiding principles are without the obvious understanding that Slackware is what Pat thinks it should be regardless of the influence of corporate behemoths or maximum profit is silly. At the end of the day Pat and Slackware by extension are guided by Pat's vision and integrity. And that is simply amazing and the world would be better if there were more of that in the world. As for Slackware's future, who's to say? Linux is surely becoming the dominant operating system on the planet. As more computing moves to servers, phones, and tablets Linux will only continue to grow.

I enjoyed your reply till the last 2 paragraphs that i found offensive. When I wrote about Slack being the "lazy old wise man" i did not mean it in the context you wrote it. I don't know why but it seems that anytime someone leaves a critique or a slight remark about Slackware it seems that is taken as an insult to the slackware community. In my case I don't think I even critiqued it as much as I complemented in this post. I personally find it "over protective and unnecessary" for a Solid Distro that speaks for its self.

In all reality the reasons I might compare/critique or talk about slackware is simply to attain more info and clarity on the subject matter. The only way I can do this is to first give my impression of what I think Slackware is so I can attain responses that can change the way I think into a more accurate point of view. I find it silly when you make a statement saying nobody but Patrick can comment on what Slackware is. I'm sure Patrick himself would not agree with that comment. Why the hell would I bring down a Distro that I love? Have some common sense please. I have nothing against Slackware in fact it is the only distro on my other laptop... Not that it should even matter for this conversations sake.

Edit----
By the way: This is my exact words you put out of context.:"Slack is like the old wise man. He is lazy but smart and patient." Most of the Linux Kernel Work is done by Redhat, you can't deny this. Slackware focuses on simplicity and UNIX Philosophy. In otherwords Slackware has worked mostly for itself and to keep itself simple, robust and vanilla. This is what I meant by lazy. It kept things simple to do instead of complex. Now is that type of lazy a bad thing? In my opinion no it is not. Simplicity brings efficiency.

I understand you meant this. And I'm not trying to protect Slackware like it's the one true religion. I do find 2 threads in the Slackware forum discussing the seeming dominance of Red Hat and implications made by some in this thread that Red Hat's success is somehow a mark against Slackware to be silly. Even when using colorful language and analogies it is still important to be accurate and concise with your language. To liken Slackware to a lazy old man who is smart enough to wait or be patient while Red Hat does the heavy lifting is rather misguided.

Red Hat and several other companies do contribute lots of code to the kernel and Slackware and it's devs probably contribute none, but comparing that to laziness is like saying I'm not a dedicated teacher because Mrs. Smith gets to class at 6 am and leaves at 6pm when in fact I'm not even a teacher, I'm the crossing guard or to say that OSX is a nice Linux distribution because Apple sponsors CUPS. Red Hat and Slackware are two very different entities. What I see in this thread is people's inability to seperate the distributions from the companies that produce those distributions and more than anything that is what I was responding to.

You can still "learn" from an old wise and lazy teacher can you not? Good... then shutup and keep slackin and stop arguing for argument's sake. And stop distorting and twisting my point of view by quoting me out of context.

Again, choose your words better. At no point did I speak to you directly until you decided to be offended. Secondly I didn't quote you out of context. I didn't quote you at all. I said the analogy was ridiculous. And it is. I didn't misrepresent anything you said. I disagreed with it and explained why. That wasn't arguing. It was discussion. It became an argument when you became offended by someone disagreeing with you and told me to shut up. Have a good day, and carry on.

Slackware is more of a minimalist system that promotes itself towards system administrators who favor non-automated systems where the administrator has more control than the system does, but can be customized to be a system that can be for everyone and anyone.

Red Hat is more of a complete system that caters to big businesses and has active support systems that produce code, patches, and tools as a sort of manufacturer. Bad analogy it may be but, think of Red Hat as the Microsoft of Linux in terms of customer support vectors and product maintainability over long periods.

Red Hat is a major developer likewise to Debian, Ubuntu, and various other corporate backed and funded Linux distributions. Slackware is a sort of distribution that tends to favor stable back to basics code with as few patches as possible from the upstream unless the patches are something that can be very beneficial like a kernel patch to fix suspend/sleep/hibernation modes. otherwise everything is minimal and as vanilla as possible.

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Do not let this happen again.

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Excuse me but did you click on the offensive video he posted as a response towards my opinons?

[EDIT]
Have you even read the offensive things he wrote to me in the beginning? So calling me "silly" and posting a video about "f***ing cows" is ok but telling him to "shutup" is not. I find this very biased.

Thanks, and agreed. Might I add it gives more flexibility for a Developer then Redhat and user centric as opposed to system centric like redhat.

Say to somebody that something he did was silly is not the same as calling him silly. I do happen to make silly things but don't consider me as a silly individual -- though I might be wrong

And about the video I guess that damgar didn't intend to offense anybody, this was only a (maybe not so good, that's a matter of opinion) joke.

So maybe I was joking when I told him to shutup then? If thats how you can get away with it. Coming from your sense of logic.

No, but the real reason I said shutup is because he was not contributing anything to the discussion but targeting me and my opinions. What benefit will it give to argue about my character, personality to the forum instead of something more productive like debating a topic related to slackware and my comparison to other distro like Redhat... Common' lets just stop all this biased attacks towards me and focus on the subject matter. I didn't know becoming a slackware enthusiast would be like joining a gang.

{Edit}
In that case just as he has told me: Perhaps he should choose his words better for example instead of calling what I said "silly" he could simply say "incorrect" or "in-concise" or even "unlogical"

Mercury305,

Greetings! A word of advice. If you receive a warning from a moderator I suggest that you listen and move on. Arguing with unSpawn is not a good idea. Just my

If that is the case that would defeat the purpose of the forum. Who would want to be a part of such a biased forum if you get kicked out for not agreeing with someone? But I understand where you are comming from. Maybe I should just leave this forum alone and not contribute my ideas if so many people find it so offensive to compare to redhat and ask questions. Maybe this could also be a reason why so many people chose Redhat over Slack? Anyways, its not good for Slackware Community to treat people that way. I personally will continue using Slackware but if the community acts this way (and I don't speak in the name of everyone here because there are great members). Then that will no longer be a plus for Slackware but a minus. People will start b****ing about how slackware community is. I chose Slackware because I like the Distro, I had no idea I would have to deal with bigotry just over simple comparison of 2 distros.

All I did was try to compare the 2 distros to come up with a clear answer. Instead of talking about the 2 I spent more time defending myself LOL.

Ironically I found the best advice from the distribution owner Patrick himself with a few
words that enlightened me and helped me decide.

So what was the end result of all this debate? I still prefer Slack as my main linux distro. However, I realized that the Slack Community forum has some biased and fanatic members.

Try to find a Linux community without.

Really??? This is the Super Nintendo vs. Sega Genesis fanaticism of my childhood all over again and frankly I'm shocked. Its an operating system and its a good one at that but it hardly (or any other OS for that matter) justifies this kind of behavior.

Do any of you really think that Slackware could even exist at all without its sibling Linux distributions all contributing together. I can almost understand a Linux vs. Mac or Linux vs. Windows debates getting heated and bitter but I absolutely cannot understand a Linux vs. Linux debate.