I've noticed these comments too. Remember, this is the internet: I can't read your mind. I refuse to install mindmeld-2.34. It doesn't fit in with my philosophy. But anyway, you may mean well when you tell a newbie to perhaps try something "easier", but I can't tell. Mostly, it sounds elitist: "Slackware is only for the really intelligent."

Perhaps there's a better way to put it? Compare and contrast?

Hi,
Yours help? I have responded to this thread along with other intelligent responders. You seem to tag this thread as you do others with your own tone.

That's a big misconception...and bad way to put it


I've never seen here anyone saying that slackware is just for the smartest people, I think that you're misunderstanding things like "You have to get your hands dirty with config files" or "slackware is for people who want to learn how the system work"

There are lazy. Slackware (and several other distros) aren't for the lazy people, and that's true, however, not because someone prefer to use some gui-point-click-done tool, isn't smart, is just lazy or simple don't want to spend hours reading in how to configure something.

I don't see myself smarter just because I know how to configure the fstab, or the xorg.conf, or some pam file, or whatever...

The user doesn't need to be a genius to write an udev rule, just have to read about it, if the user doesn't want to spend time reading, won't be less smart for that, just lazy.




Regards

I'm an idiot. I use slackware. Enough said.

While I agree with you on not installing the mindmeld app, your choice to install online-empath-2.1 may have been ill-advised.

ive posted in this forum quite a few times now (not under this nick), and ive had alot of good help, even from the guys who are very experienced with slackware, and i ask what must seem like real noob questions to them. what we also have to remember is that the people on this board are from diffeerent parts of the world and may have different ways of saying things which could seem odd or dismissive to us. internet forums are notorious for miscommunication.

personally i find the slackware board a friendly place.

So say I.

I use Slackware mostly as an image manipulation machine including several printers, a scanner, my cam and my cell phone with a cam - all this together with color management and highly internationalized, because I'm german and I'm learning japanese and chinese. Not to mention that I watch movies with mplayer or xine.

I also do like the full web 2.0 javascript rounded corners dropped shadows web experience, so I use firefox with flash and all the nifty, useless, glossy stuff on top of all that. In addition to FF 3, flock and all XUL application based on Mozilla I can get my hands on. I've got a fully fledged Gnome, a KDE 3 and a KDE 4 and an Xfce - even though I usally stick with classic fvwm (with rounded corners, of course.. ).

All this on a notebook, because I hate desktop PCs and with wlan, because I hate all kinds of cables. And yes, it does run with compiz - and with ALL available technologies - simply because I've got such an old, crappy ATI radeon, that everything from aiglx to flglx to xgl and xegl is experimentally supported on that chip...

And that's exactly what I'm supporting as good as I can, but I can't blindly post some "well, noone asked this question, but I have to tell you - under Slackware color management is configured this way..." Well, possibly I could, but answering what people actually ask seems to be more fruitful right now.

I don't think that someone ever really said Slackware is only capable of serving as a dusty fileserver, on the contrary it's rather well prepared for many possible tasks a Linux machine can serve.

My . . .

I have had this issue, as well. Personally, I think it stems from the fact that the person answering gets up on the wrong side of the bed.

Still, I use Slackware. I can't wait for the next release, since I'm on dialup and can't download "-current." I've asked a few questions, here and there, and usually read, read, read a lot. I have to do that, to do what I want.

However - that's me. If I weren't a reading type, then Slackware would be a royal pain for me and I would not get as much fun and enjoyment from my computer. Slackware appeals to a certain type of person, just as Ubuntu, Damn Small, Gentoo, Sabayon (), Debian, Arch, and a whole host of other appeal to their respective magnetized users. It is a matter of personal choice.

On that note, since you can't expect a Linux user to neatly fit into the mold of "one distro to rule them all," you also can't expect the same helpful disposition from everyone. For some, being cranky or snide or unhelpful or lazy is simply par for the course.

I just blow it off, and go ask someone else.

Good day to all!

Bah. Ya'll get yer panties in a wad to easy.... I remember back when Slackware was considered a distro for "smart people" and the "average joe" could not figure it out. I also remember the first time that I installed Slack.... ahhhh it seems like yesterday.... having to "hand configure" EVERYTHING!! That is were Slack gets its reputation from. Personally I am glad that Pat did such a great job of making it difficult in the beginning... otherwise you would have a commercialized version that came completed bloated and had the one click install of the majority of the "coasters" that I get in the mail.

You know out of the majority of the distros that I have sampled over the years.... Slackware is the only one that still has the feel of being able to completely customize it... the directories haven't changed.... alot of my scripts from "back-n-the-day" still work and it still "FEELS" the same. I personally have always encouraged people to try Slackware (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...distro-167852/) and have never told them that "Maybe Slackware is not right for you" but sometimes you have to face the facts.... Just like everyone is not good at math, some people are better at literature, etc. Some people are just not able to comprehend Slackware. These are the people that are not interested in the architecture itself but more of "what can it do for me" when in reality you can make it do whatever you want. This is where the 10% rule comes into effect. "You have to be 10% smarter than the equipment you are trying to operate" otherwise, failure is imminent.

So, ladies and gentlemen, you have to stop and ask yourself.... "Do I feel 10% smarter than Slackware?" if so continue using it... otherwise, you might want to go get that 37 cd set of RedHat Super-Mega Enterprise. But just remember one thing. They are 10% smarter than you because you paid for something that you could have for free.

-s

I don't know what to say... by myself, just now I try to do something more complicated then to become immortal... believe or not, but I want to access the floppy under 12.1. Of course I already gave up with DVDs under Hal X Everything-in-computer-world-after-my-old-Atari_ST-2600 . But I'd like to be able, at least, of open a floppy. I use to do that 20 years ago, you know... And I don't want to open it in my Kubuntu or my windows... but I'd NEVER say to a newbie to go use another distro... after all or after HAL?) we compare slack with anything (or anything I ever so after the 80's).

My bad everybody... I just posted (right before reading this) "...if you expect it to 'work out of the box' you probably shouldn't be using slackware..." I am removing the offending comment now and making it more constructive...

...

OK, good... made it much better...

Now...

I like slackware for the challenges if learning how to do things properly. I find that most people that get flamed are posting a non constructive message that actually doesn't help anybody. Including them self. However, I often see people give helpful tips on how to get whatever they are complaining about working. Or at least give them enough information to look it up.

Knowledge can not be given. It must be learned. Demanding something will never yield results.

The tone of a message is very important.

If somebody says "I can't get this to work so I'm doing this instead." it is often an admission of failure. These people tend to want the simple solution. Offering them advice on a better distro, in this case, actually is the best advice one can give.

If somebody, on the other hand, ASKS "I need help figuring this out. I have tried this and this. Here is the out put of this where I think my problem is. Does anybody have any information on where to go next?" is a person that has given it an honest try and needs to understand something that they may have missed. This is a better environment to offer advice to fix the problem that they are having.

As for gnome (the only gui that users really have problems installing on slackware) I always see recommendations to the various gnome projects and advisories as to what exactly they are doing and what may happen. Along with this advice is often a suggestion to use another distro. Don't take this as an insult! I would say this is very slack like because gnome is just so damn complicated that if you really want it, you either slack somewhere else or you keep slacking and don't bother with it any more.

Does anybody know if there is a comic strip spoofing the smerfs using slack?

"I really slacked that slack last slack. But then I found slack also slacked and I was like WHAT THE SLACK?! you didn't Slack! Slack YOU! then I slacked and we were all slack again. That was so slack."

And we are unearthing this bizarre thread from 10 months ago WHY????

--edit, all text removed--

Oops.

Please discuss in recent threads only. Discussing things in recent threads in the most relevant forum will make things easier for all of us. This thread is being closed because it is stale and I see some members just waiting to wedge in a reply regardless.