Slackware, a legend!
 

Day off, just took a shower, lots of mindspace!

Not too long ago discussed acquiring a raspberyy pi. With a young casual at work.

When I told him I had at one time several raspberry pi's up running Slackwarearm he gave me a double take and said "That's the most difficult linux system there is!".

I smiled and told him that I didn't think so..... and that was all I ran on anything..... nothing more.

I have been involved in similar exchanges before. As I move on in life I find I am not inclined to defend Slackware or my use thereof.

I came out of the shower thinking ... yeah! if Slackware has the reputaion of being sooooo.... hard and.... so difficult, then I'm not using some linux OS, I'm running a "legend"

So from now on if anyone asks I'll tell them that I am running a "Legend". If they ask for an explanation (probably will) I will explain... if not... no bother at all.

This runs off an exchange several last week ago, with mind mind elsewhere, I replied to an enquirer that I was "one of the few, the proud, the Slackers"

Should there be anyone out there who takes offense at that last quote, I'm USMC 1967-70.

I survived the German Autobahn.

The Slacker's dilemma - do I bask in unearned glory or do I explain how anticlimactially easy it really is?

That fellow had obviously never heard of Arch or Gentoo! But yes, Slack does have the reputation of being an experts' system, probably because of its "no-frills" philosophy.

Bask in the glory, my friend, bask in the glory! Only a few years ago I was visiting a local radio ham (and, therefore, a serious hacker, at least to this wannabe electronics nerd :p ), and he didn't seem able to fathom why I'd run something as difficult as Linux without at least dual-booting Windows. After all, you know, Mandriva was soooo hard...

That's very sad and a real disadvantage for Slackware, you know... ;)

I rarely discuss Linux with normal computer users unless they ask me about my black t-shirt. "What's Slackware Linux?"
I'll mumble something about Slackware being a unix-like operating system, and the normal user will give me a glassy-eyed stare. :)

How did Slackware get such a reputation? Bad memories from the 90's? Propaganda from other distributions? Or are people really that allergic to the command-line?

You have to remember that the average computer user (even the average Linux user) has no desire to learn anything about how to use their computer other than the bare minimum required to run their applications. Not that there's anything wrong with that; after all, I think most of us are Linux hobbyists here in some sense. But yes, that kind of user has absolutely been trained to be allergic to the command line and other simple, no-frills interfaces through the last couple decades of personal computing trends.

As a long time Slackware user, and a former FMF Corpsman (heck you're never a former Corpsman lol). Legend is a good title, bravo and oorah.

Not sad, its a hidden blessing, keeps the looky lous and kiddies away. Kind of like having a "beware of dog sign" or a "forget the dog, beware of armed owner" sign on your property.

I think mainly 2 & 3 (Propaganda and people growing up on GUI), heck soon they will demand voice integrated programs, because typing is just so last millennia. No offense to visually impaired. ;)

My recollection is that is was a combination of the three but I think it mainly came from Microsoft which wanted to bury any notion of using MS-DOS once Win95 hit the shelves. Until Win95 one had to know and use MS-DOS as well as know how to set up drivers and the memory manager in CONFIG.SYS and do some other setup in AUTOEXEC.BAT. As Linux began to become a viable alternative with Corel, Mandrake/Mandriva, KNOPPIX, and Ubuntu touting themselves as mostly self configuring and with their emphasis on remaining in the GUI, the meme continued. Slackware, Debian, and various others became "too hard for newbies" even though I, as a rank Unix newbie, had no issue installing Slackware '96 21 years ago this month. I was used to reading documentation and read aplenty before starting the install.

The funny (odd) thing is that whether a person is using a GUI, TUI, or command line, much of the interaction with a computer involves reading and typing, even on a smart phone! I spend 99% of my time in a GUI desktop but use TUI and command line applications a good percentage of that time.

I do have a quite precise theory on this.

I believe it's because Slackware does not offer to automatically partition the target drive(s).

I was familiar with DOS fdisk, so cfdisk came easily to me.

Do you mean like this one ?

I regularly take a ride on it... Always a good mix with the terminal mood ;).