I suppose you have a point there, life has to go on, sad but true

Really?? I had no clue, really good to hear, thanks

HAHA... really enjoyed that comment

OUCH!!.... did you really have to stab me like that?? I guess then there is nothing I can do to convince you how much I adroe this disto.

OUCH!!..again; I suppose you are really enjoying this.

Well... you got me, I have to admit that I was kind of worried, the rate at which new distros are conquering grounds, but after all the reasurence from you guys (especially the young), I am quite relived.

But can you actually blame me?? after being spoiled by Slackware's relative stability for quite awhile, the thougt of it's possible extinction was really heart breaking.


REALLY?? I didn't know poeple could use PCs at that age!! let alone with Slackware!! REALLY impressed, especially now that you have declared your allegiance.

My whole hearted Thanks to EVERYONE for your time

i am a total; linux and slack newbie
i first installed avery old copy of RH7 i founmd on the inside cover of a libery book when i firts decided to give linux a go (that was about 6 mounths ago)
i got fed up with the out of datenness so i downloaded ubuntu....
this diddnt work propally and i couldent see how to do anything.
i then truied slack 10.2 i am using it more and more. and have just changed to using xfce. (kde was too bloated and meant my computer was only as fast as my hard drive swap space!!!)
still got to configure it a bit more but i am learning all the time...
slack is the best distro i have found sofar but as soon as i get it installed on a doffernt machine of mine with better specs then i will experiment on my old slow machine with differt distros. 9 i have mandrake and suse lined up...

i forgotr to mention that i firts hear about slack form a freind who is now away at uni,
he still uses slack 1.0 and has never installed a GUI
he wrtes all his corse-work essays in vi or emacs!

Regarding the subject of this thread: I hope not!

How large is the user base? Nobody knows. But this holds for any distribution.
You can count or know
- downloads
- number of sold packages/CD's/DVD'd
- Internet servers running Slackware, if they disclose their OS
- use the figures at http://counter.li.org
- count the number of user names on the Slackware LQ forum
but not
- the number of users on each machine, as Linux is a multi-user system (there are most likely many more people depending on Slackware than there are installations)
- the number of corporate installations
- the average age and other personal data of users
and so on.

I don't think, success would spoil Slackware. Slackware IS successful. It is popular and has always been, so it is not part of the current Linux hype. I also don't see why commercial support should be bad. SAP's commitment to Linux has boosted the acceptance of Linux as a business platform, that can carry mission critical applications. Several kernel enhancements and some applications are only as good as they are, because someone sponsored them. I think this is to the benefit of all users.

Remember this: SuSE Linux wouldn't even exist without Slackware. The first SuSE versions were actually localized versions of Slackware with some additions. The experiment was successful, and allowed SuSE to pay several important developments. All KDE users, on any distro including Slackware, eg, benefit from the fact that SuSE has some KDE developers on its payroll.

Is Slackware lagging behind in user friendliness? Difficult to say. I like SuSE's YaST, but many things can be done with KDE's control center application, too. So the investments of SuSE help to make Slackware user friendly. And as along as KDE (and Gnome) come with some admin tools, Slackware will keep pace.

What will happen when Patrick Volkerding retires? I think he has identified a small bunch of people who will continue Slackware. I hope it won't happen anytime, soon, though, as I am not sure, if anybody else has the same great talent to assemble a consistent and stable system. Pat V. somehow seems to know exactly when the time has come to make a release version of Slackware from a current build.

Have fun!

gargamel

I feel that there will always be a place for Slackware. I chose Slackware because I want to learn Linux. I think that when people switching to Linux really want to know how it works they will switch to Slackware. I tried Mepis, Mandrake and a couple others, but they basically set everything up for you. What fun is that?

from what i have heard though...
if you want a distro that you have to set up when you install choose gentoo.

after all slack has teh option to more or less auto configure in teh installer... gento AFAIK is only avalable in source code for starters

Hello,
I don't think slack will be leaving us any time soon. For a start it is used in all the computer science labs at The University of York here in England, and a number of other universities too. And its not that hard to install or use. My mum manages with it very well.

I do worry a little about the large companies that are pushing linux now. Will we start seeing more non open source versions in the vain of MacOS X? Will suse go this way in the end now that opensuse has appeared? The next few years will be very interesting I think.

Phil

LOL!!

and I thought I was weird ...

I think he meant it's here, and won't go anywhere

I still don't understand why people do this kind of threads... that deserves a

Slackware won't die, too many people will want to (and will) keep it alive. Including me.

I've only been using Slackware since 10.1 but I've learned loads from it, yeah every now and again I have an urge for some graphical distro when I can't figure something out, but I eventually do figure it out, and thats mainly through the people on LQ.org.

Slackware is my main distro and it always will be, I agree not much newbies will use it but when they have used Linux for a while, they will probably try Slackware. And when lots of newbies do that, there will be more Slackware users.

Also Slackware just works, theres plenty of distros that have the latest applications but these can be buggy whereas Slackware stays behind to be stable and powerful, and for you to use to to your needs. Slackware doesn't patch things to death, it keeps it fairly normal, and most source code works with Slackware anyway. Though configuration can be hard Slackwares stability and power makes up for that.

There are many other reasons for using Slackware, but the point is, people won't leave it to die, there is already a small team around Slackware who will keep it to Patrick's view, and there will always be people like us to do that aswell.

--
Vampirite

I think one thing that might help avoiding such speculation moving forwards would be if Pat or another member of the Slackware dev-team put out a small slackware.com/blog where they posted future plans, progress etc. Not to waste their time writing small essays about what to do rather than actually doing it, but posting short notices such as "Don't expect any updates to -current for 30-40 days as we're currently undergoing this and that major change" or "on vacation - no news in 14 days" or "considering dropping gnome" - whatever...

Just my .02 ...

-Y1

Isn't that called a ChangeLog?

A ChangeLog is a log of what has changed... in the past Pat has put a couple of blog-like posts in the ChangeLog but I would not call that standard entries in the Slackware ChangeLog.txt.

Eric

Lol somthing like that