Hi,
Actually I´m running Mandrake 9.2 and I want to change to Slackware, just to give it a try because many people told me its the best distro.
But I don´t want to download to 600MB and burn it on a CD every two weeks until I find my favorite distro.
So please tell me wich is better: Slackware 9.1 or 10 or should I even wait for the 10.1?? When will it be available, more or less? And how many CDs are 9.1 and 10?
Thank you!!

there ain't much different between slack 9.1 and 10, they pretty much work exactly the same way but slack 10 has newest packages, if you are going to download get slack 10 because its the latest, don't wait for slack 10.1 because slack 10 was just released a while ago.

Slack 9.1 and 10 are only 2 cds each, however IMO its really a waste to download the second cd because it only has KDE and GNOME.

If you are not a completely new linux user download only the first slackware 10 cd, and later download the KDE/Gnome packages you really want without all the useless packages that come in the second cd.

fonts in slackware 10 are broken, so if you want good fonts get 9.1 and then compile xfree or xorg manually (it's not hard, just unzip the packages and run make World && make install).

however, with slack 9.1 you'll be stuck with older versions of programs, like mozilla 1.4 and the older gimp, unless you recompile those yourself (which can be problematic, esp. with the gimp). i could not get good fonts recompiling mozilla by hand in 9.1 even with the xft version, and i could never get galeon, epiphany, or other gnome apps to work again after that, either.

so it's a trade off of whether you want good fonts, or up to date programs. it's not going to be easy to get both.

I still don't understand what people are going on about when they talk about the broken fonts in Slackware 10 - they seem fine to me :)

Could somebody post some screen shots of these "broken fonts" so I know what they're talking about :P?

But anyway, yes as Necronomicom said, don't wait for 10.1 since 10 only just came about. 9.1 and 10 are fairly similar, if you have 9.1 disks lying around, just use a tool to upgrade to 10 or current and you'll be fine ;).

Huh?!? Broken Fonts?!? Who?!? How?!? Where?!? When?!?

'Tain't no broken fonts, here.....(One: Slack 10, 2.4.26, Radeon 9500, Two: Slack 10, 2.6.7, Radeon 9500, Standard install on both and no additional fonts installed)

most people have gotten so used to the bad fonts, they don't even realize they're broken.

bitstream, slack 9.1:
http://synaptical.dyndns.org/fontcon..._bitstream.png
bitstream, slack 10 (broken):
http://synaptical.dyndns.org/fontcon...streamvera.png

luxi sans, slack 9.1:
http://synaptical.dyndns.org/fontcon...k_luxisans.png
slack 10 (broken):
http://synaptical.dyndns.org/fontcon...h_luxisans.png

verdana, slack 9.1:
http://synaptical.dyndns.org/fontcon...ck_verdana.png
verdana, slack 10 (broken):
http://synaptical.dyndns.org/fontcon...ch_verdana.png

can you post a screenshot with your actual fonts of this thread please ? (because I can't compare my fonts to yours as the yahoo page has changed) I want to see the benefit of a self xorg compile

Synaptical, your screen shots do indeed show that you slack 10 fonts look bad, my slack 10 fonts do not.
I guess i was just lucky. (I'm using firefox btw)

I wouldn´t wait for 10.1... It´s not even close to release, there hasn´t been that many changes to current yet. Btw, you can always use microsofts fonts in slackware, they work great.

no, when you have the problem, ms fonts look very bad, much worse than bitstream.

MykilX, what window manager do you use? can you provide a shot? they can sometimes be tweaked in gnome and maybe dropline gnome, but otherwise i have not found any way to fix them. many people are reporting the same thing, and no one anywhere including the freetype people know what's wrong.

sorry, i can't make current shots b/c i no longer have slack 9.1 installed. things to look for with bitstream vera sans are the ascenders on letters like l and k that go up too high over the x-height, fading on diagonal portions of the x and k, and generally uneven weight distribution along with a "cramped" and "spindly" look. italic fonts on the web might also appear bolded when they shouldn't be. just compare the text in the screenshots with the same characters in the thread, or you could even make an html page yourself to view locally.

or here's another shot i came across today that someone else posted about another problem -- you could do what i did which is go to sourceforge.net and do a search for mysql to compare:

http://www.madcarters.com/images/wtf.png

as you can see, they're the bad fonts (the same ones as in the slack10 bitstream shot) and the person doesn't even know it. it's too bad, but i suspect it's the case for most people. if the bitstream fonts weren't so d@mn good to allow us to just barely "get away with it," most of us would be in big trouble.

mmm...broken fonts? I looked at all those pics but I couldn´t notice any difference! But doesn´t metter, I will go with Slack 10 even with "broken" fonts. I´m sure there will be some updates soon.
2 CDs would be great but on http://www.slackware.com/torrents/index.html
it says CD 1 + 2 = Installation ISO CD and CD 3+ 4 = Sources, extras, book) do I need that? What do they mean with sources? Can I download them later?
I will download it tomorrow I think. 2 CDs would be fast...I will burn them on a DVD-RW first.
Thank you all

I´m not really convenced about Slackware. There aren´t much packages, for example OpenOffice seems to not be included and much other things I need. The homepage isn´t very good too, I think. Sorry....
But I will give it a try because its only 2 CDs big and so many people told me about it. I think its also faster and with more options than other distros. I will try it...

you should try Arch, http://www.archlinux.org. imho it's more modern than slackware with its pacman package management system. it's also optimized for i686, so it's very fast. only 1 cd, too.

fedivh, if you want precompiled packages you can find a lot in: http://www.linuxpackages.net
OpenOffice doesn't have a package but it comes with a graphical installer (Just click next next Agree next finish :P) so it's not hard to install.

I would feel strange when to install a package I have to do :

pacman <package name>

just kidding