I moved from SuSE to Slack a month ago for the same reasons you mention - under SuSE you don't actually learn anything about Linux. I had a couple of problems installing but nothing major. The install isn't at all difficult, the documentation is good and the people at LQ are helpful. What more could you want? You won't want to go back when you start to understand how it actually hangs together.

Well I have been a big Fan of Redhat for a while, but on a whim I installed Slack on my Laptop, about two weeks ago, and I must say for workstation ease of installation SLACK IS THE BEST! I will always by putting Slack on my workstations from now and possibly going to think about putting it as my server.

Although I still like Redhat as a Server because thats what they wrote it for.

But seriously if you are thinking about Slack give it a try, if you have problems there are other Distro's out there

I love the quotes. I make sure that every xterm prints those out, it's great to open 20 terminals when you're bored and have some reading material.

slack is very VERY easy after you use it for a little bit. Sometimes front-ends are nice, such as LinNeighborhood. If you think something in slack is hard there is a front-end created by someone to configure it, most likely.

i just switched to Slackware and i'd recommend it to anyone who has used Linux for a little while and wants to get to know Linux. it isn't that hard to install and as long as you don't mind a little research, you'll learn how to configure it witout too many problems.

go for it!

..or you could just use one terminal and use the fortune command to check out quotes?

Slackware is definitely one of the best, but I live for speed and therefor I prefer gentoo. Gentoo is faster than slack. Of course slack is faster than almost every other distro. Also Slack is easier and less time consuming to install compared to gentoo, and you do have the ability to recompile just about every single part and get it up to speed. If slack had portage I would use slack.

Glad a gentoo user shows up every time to tell us how fast it is. Yes you can waste a few days installing and compiling it just to save a total of a few minutes a month . Then when you some how screw up your installation you're back installing and recompiling. No thanks.

i'm not sure i consider lfs and gentoo to be distros in the ordinary sense,which is certainly not a bad thing as they appear to be more of a guide to building a system which is pared down and specific to the user and his machine. can't say for sure because i haven't gotten around to installing either yet, but intend to do so at some point. i'd like to see slack come out in some version which has the user compiling and structuring the system patrick would put on his box.

If Slack had protage I'd go LFS :P



Cheers,
Tink

tincat. I suppose you could just get the versions that he uses and build them all from scratch. He has the build scripts on one of the discs so you can see what flags he uses and modify them if you want.

i have also just started using gentoo. with some slack background, moving to gentoo is not too diffcult. The initial waiting time is quite unconcerting, the very first waiting time you are going to face is the kernel compilation. it lasted 30 miniutes on my machine. soon after it's xfree, and other stuff. Some of them are in binary, most are source, so the installation is lengthy. I started the installation on last week Sat, only till last night then i have my xfree, opera running. I did these only a few hours a day, mostly after work.

Gentoo is fast, faster than Slackware. But if you ask me, is the time spent on gentoo worth it? In order to gain the faster response time, I have to spend hours on the installation. Worth it? I would say yes, it is worth it, because gentoo is fun to use. fun to set up, emerge is fun to use, portage is cool. But will i ever ditch Slackware and move totally to gentoo? i would say no, because these 2 are really gems, i want to learn both of them. They are both cool in their own rights. Just my 2 nc(newbie cents)

I started using linux august last year.. I went with redhat.. used it a hair still using windows.. Then by sept I moved to Mandrake, Nov I started using slack... I have no intentions of trying another distribution anytime soon. When I do switch it will be to BSD

What I meant by the portage comment is that I don't have to go and download the latest sources to update I can resync the portage and the in one long swoop completely update my system.

I guess saying that slackware was faster than every other distro but gentoo wasn't good enough. so here is what makes slack good in my opinion
1)Increadibly Stable
2)It is very easy to get it to work the way you want it to and not the way some far way programmer wanted it to work.
3)Absolutely no problems update 9.1 to the 2.6 kernel
4)Absolutely no problems update 9.1 to xfree 4.4
5)Increadibly stable.
6)It is probably the best distro to learn linux on as a beginner and then later on learn more advanced concepts.