I hope so. The intelligent tools do enforce sane defaults, like upgrading aaa-elflibs and glibc, before moving on to the rest.
The knowledge of xorg.conf I gained I have used when implementing dual monitor setups.
Bus interface design and configuration is definitely easier. The days of setting interrupt switches and swapping slot positions, then rebooting, until you got a working setup are long gone. Switching a USB device from a USB3 to a USB2 port to get it to work is trivial by comparison.

Made me ,look back

https://github.com/NimbleX/nimblex

to see if still around. There used to be live builder site online where one could build their own live cd. Online. Then download your iso to use later. Kinda glad I checked.

I bought a "Learn Linux in 30 Days" book with a Red Hat 5.0 CD. Tried it and hated every minute of it. Fell back to Windows 95 to regroup.

Not sure of the version. Found a Slackware CD at Business Depot. Had to make floppy bootdisks to install (something the Slackware site alludes to but hasn't been done in years and years). What a sense of accomplishment when it booted up to my new Slackware OS. Since the computer was for the whole family dual-booting with Windows was my "normal" for many years.

Have been using Slackware as my daily driver since version 12

My first version of Linux was Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 in 2002. I ran it on a P166 MHz unit that had 32 MB RAM. Caldera later morphed into SCO that went after IBM and Linux.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Gr...Machines_Corp.

Yes.

• SlackBuilds.org
• sbotools
• slackpkg
• slackpkgplus
• networkmanager
• SlackDocs

They really wern't that bad. The problem was figuring out what you had to configure and how, especially if you didn't have Internet. I can remember spending a lot of time pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, editing the conf and trying again. And I did have an old CRT monitor, so there was a real possibility that I would fry my monitor by configuring something wrong

All in all, I'd say Slackware is a little easier to use now, mostly because hardware support is better. I don't need to deal with modems at all anymore, there's way less graphics card drivers to worry about, and everything boots with an SMP kernel. Everything also boots from USB too, which wasn't a guarantee when I started. I also think UEFI has made things easier, but I'm probably in the minority there. However, I never really did updates before slackpkg. I had dial-up back then and didn't really want to spend hours downloading updates, especially since I had a time limit before my ISP started charging extra

Now days, the worst thing I have to deal with is usually Steam and the games, and that's entirely by choice

And hardly ever necessary I think as USB is backward compatible right? Unless of course USB protocol that device uses is not standard compliant which is sometimes the case.

I'm aware of a couple of devices that don't like USB3 ports for some reason. I think it's usually a glitch in the firmware on the device

Don't Make it Easier!
 

I don't want it to be easier. Slackware's power comes from the user being forced to understand what she is doing. Not a bunch of pointy/clicky nonsense.
Amen
john

Agreed! There's enough pointy-clicky distros out there for the average user. :)

I started with Slackware 10.1. Yes, it is easier now, however software projects such as desktop environments are way more complicated.

I would say its definitely more convenient now. It was not difficult back then, but was more time consuming. You had to manually download and install the updates, not a problem, and SlackBuilds were on you, again not a problem.

PS: somewhere in storage is a box of old install floppies. Hunt for them I will. :)

Enjoy these videos:

Installing Linux from 1993 in 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VVNiBwZI0

Installing Slackware 3.0 (Linux distribution from 1990s)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EanGvOBhr9s

sigh, I had to point and click that I found this post helpful....:eek:

I hate pointing and clicking and I use this in firefox: https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl

:shake: Thank You! :enter-beer-emoji: