There are tons of anti-Slackware threads out there - and they seem to be marching on in columns of ten.

We, the Slackers all know (or do we?) what got us here and keeps us using the best distro out there

So, here a few things (try be concise if you possibly can please):

1. Accessibility: The basic system configuration is kept in easy accessible and richly documented text files or has clearly documented procedures for most (all?) other cases (mail server). I for one find editing text files in either terminal or GUI environment a breeze.

2. Sanity: I am yet to see a release or patch/update rolled out for the sole sake of it - whatever comes from the Slackware team has always been pragmatical.

3. Community: whenever i turned for help here it was always non nonsense and correct to the point - the community is top notch - and I've seen a lot by now.

4. Containment: there seems to be a finite amount of knowledge to have total control over the Slackware OS - there are no spots or areas where the knowledge curve starts to explode skywards or otherwise "don't go there" places or areas on the system.

5. Versatility: supported architectures include: x86, x86-64, ARM (and i hope soon a64, as a community effort already exists)

6. Release cycle

1 members found this post helpful.

And to answer OP's question:

1. perfect
2. perfect
3. friendly and competent
4. fine
5. i am ok with 64bit

The deal-breaker for me is point 6.

2 members found this post helpful.

7. Third party software support. Build tools and headers already available. Large collection of maintained scripts.

4 members found this post helpful.

Relative newbie clueless end user here so take this with a pinch of salt...

8. System is loosely coupled. You have the freedom to compile/install software as you think fit.

[ For instance, if you don't like Calligra and prefer openoffice (as opposed to libreoffice) go for it. You won't suddenly find the package manager trying to uninstall most of your desktop because when you uninstalled Calligra a metapackage was automatically removed, and the metapackage has most of the desktop as dependencies ]

3 members found this post helpful.

you have to ask it elsewhere, not on a slackware forum. just to be able to get a relatively unbiased answer.

1 members found this post helpful.

I suppose. However a lot of us have used a variety of distributions (I've used everything you're running) so we do have a good frame of reference and can render an honest opinion on whether or not Slackware is right for me/you.
Speaking for myself Slackware is the sane choice for me. I agree with all of the observations made by the OP. When I do a clean install of Slackware I know what I'm getting. Everything just works as expected. I'm grateful for that.

9. Complete freedom with installation procedure

I've always loved the way I am free to choose packages from the total list, although I've learned to install the full set for best results. That in itself was a huge learning experience about how Linux works. Other distros I tried never gave me that choice and without a list, I never even knew what all was being installed. Plus, I value the tracking system of packages that lets me add/subtract packages without automatically changing the dependencies. I'm capable of figuring out a problem I made (with the help of the community), and enjoy learning by my mistakes. For me, it's Slackware forever!

2 members found this post helpful.

No need for another place to ask :-)

8. Is for sure what made me stick even of 6., and switch to current by the way.

But first of all is ease of use. Never found a distribution for which almost every documentation can be relevant if you know a bit how things work generaly speaking.

For me:
1) Very simple installation procedure.
2) Internal simplicity with no extra layers. If you want a program to work differently, you just edit its configuration file.
3) Packages are not split up into separately installable pieces.
4) Nice package management scripts. You can see exactly how they work.
5) No risk of losing multiple installed packages during an update.
6) No systemd.

3 members found this post helpful.

For me; it is just what I have been introduced to back in '99 - and it just works for me. I honestly don't care about you - use whatever you want.

I like Slackware because:
1. Programming ready to go out of the box.
2. No dependency hell thanks to everything being installed by default.
3. Init system is great, and reminds me of a bit of BSD.
4. The release cycle, I like static distributions, and I absolutely despise rolling release. Been burned way too many times by rolling release.
5. Slackbuilds, it's pretty much the AUR from arch.
6. Good multilib support with the multilib repo enabled. Essential for gaming.
7. Sane defaults for the most part.
8. Quick and Painless to install.

1 members found this post helpful.

+1


+1

Everything is clear and simple (not easy perhaps, but clear)

• Install procedure
• Init procedure
• Configuration
• Package management

Great for development, everything is there (compilers/interpreters, headers, libraries, manuals).

Large list of build scripts for extra packages (Slackbuilds, etc)

Nice community: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/

I would say that:

2 members found this post helpful.

In addition to the above:

Rock solid stability: Slackware is the Swiss watch of Linux distributions. I've had machines which I've powered up & forgotten about... when I went back to them, they were still ticking along, silently doing their jobs without issues. My experience shows that this is also true if you're running it in a VM.

Everything used to build it is included in the box: It even comes with all of the requisite scripts, not just the tools... This makes it infinitely flexible. You can easily tweak the scripts and rebuild libraries to add/remove any options you may or may not want. The build scripts are standardised, so you don't need to learn different ways of doing things.

1 members found this post helpful.