Oh, BTW, redwall I think went to using Gentoo as its base from which to build the redwall.

Long time ago redwall was (not gentoo) redhat upstream based.

m h a u s e r at last url of my previous post is creater of redwall. Multiple forums exist for redwall, one of which might (searched) already on gentoo and/or said creator might engage into interesting/relevant discussion.

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Alan.

Good stuff fella, I have not doubt the you will find Slack well suited for purpose. I'm looking forward to your masterpiece !

Hi Alan, yes, smoothwall is a great product too. I use most of the packages it uses, mainly the shorewall firewall package. However, I've added things like squid, dansguardian, and other misc utilities I like to use. I found that making my own is better, because not only do you learn the stuff better, but you have absolute control over features too.

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words. No promises yet, but so far, slackware is looking pretty good. We'll see.

A part of what I know about why Slackware users prefer Slackware . . .

Tends to be on the conservative side ie stability and security has priority over cutting edge. But also does not have real old packages.

Has (appears to me) a rather towards if not huge user base or amount of users world wide. (who, many, appears to me, somehow do not get into or be sourced for the distrowatch ratings.

(appears to me again) a rather sizeable portion of those users also are expert programers who also share their expertise in

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The huge support community.

***A big, huge, thank you, right here, to all of those who contribute to Slackware***

I contribute in forums at my level of expertise. Upon a new Slackware release, my box is bittorrent ON 24 hrs a day for near a week uploading at up to 400 DSL upload speed.

My friends will soon contribute to the Slackware store; they're very impressed, I just put 12.2 on/as a very nice desktop box for them with a single interface firewall.
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Lends itself well to customization. (Thus I get to) Make it into what I want it to be. (I made very nice, and secure, desktop boxes, so far).

The most Unix like of the Linux distro's. IOW, Learn Slack helps me learn at least some principles of, say, FreeBSD

Things (open source apps, etc.) are in their non altered locations.

So, with Slackware, you do not need to look in or find where is the "distro specific location" for ______ library, as my ____ won't compile, because it and me can't find the library -- oh, *finally* I found the library -- can point to so now compile can happen. I had it happen to me *until* I switched to Slackware -- and it has never happened since the switch.

I like to build lots my own packages. And have those same packages not break at later time because of security updates.

Not everyone uses apps that are other than "strictly and only of the open source model of licensing" type of applications. But, if you do, some distro then, later, due their updates, do things that break an onboard/installed (the other than said model) app. Slackware does not.

Simple principle. KISS

My experience tells me also as to the "I'm not a dummy" principle -- I, for some time, got to roll up my sleeves and learn and to do so has been a very rewarding experience for me. It has more than been worth the effort that I put into it.

I get to use creativity, create your own (how I get Slack updated -- how I get configured, etc. etc.)

I myself, for long time, use

http://www.darklinux.net/slackupdate/

I also have some my own Perl scripts for some things and for some config.

And, many config I (you'll never guess) use an editor.

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Alan.

Good news!

It looks like shorewall loves slackware. It installs perfectly. The shorewall author added support for slackware in the installer script.

For those of you who don't know, shorewall is NOT a program you compile and install. It is a collection of perl scripts, that give you an incredibly advanced configuration tool for building robust firewalls.

To install shorewall, just download the latest common and perl packages, unpack, and run the ./install.sh routine. That's it. Good to go. You should grab the html/xml docs too, but not required.

It should be super easy to make a SlackBuild package for shorewall (if even necessary). Since I'm new to slackware, I'll hold off on that for now. Maybe I can talk RW into it I see your handy work all over the wiki's (great job btw)