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 ;).

That and the fact that many Linux users from other distributions like to do "minimal installations." For Linux users coming from .deb or .rpm distributions this is quite complicated to figure out without automatic dependency handling. After having done it myself, I realize it isn't all that complicated, but for Slackware newbies it's a bit daunting.

As an example:

A while back I made a "minimal" installation of Slackware 14.1 on an Asus EEE PC 2G Surf, which has a 2 GB internal hard disk. Obviously a full installation of Slackware is not feasible in this case. It took a lot of understanding of application dependencies in order to have a functional system while still stripping out as many unneeded packages as possible. It was a very educational and fun process. This system is now being used as a makeshift wireless IDS with GPS tracking.

On a development side bar: it'd be far more work on the team since even if you mapped every dependency against every package (which can't be fully automated, since it's more complex than checking which libraries link - some packages contain for example python scripts, which then links to something else), the packages tend to pick up new dependencies are they're developed: e.g. I occasionally get reports that the -current mini root file systems for ARM don't work properly because one of the existing packages now depends on something that isn't included.

I am just curious, my first and second installations were Slackware 7 and OpenBSD; after that, i tried Debian Testing (Sarge 2000 year because i could not install Potato), but for me it was very simple and clear installers. Why the people say that Slackware is difficult to install, and administer it? Is it a myth?

Could be because the vast majority of users that moved to Linux or gave it a try, were used to GUI installers that took all of the learning away from them and were scared to read documentation, didn't want to spend the time or more.
Everything is expected to be "easy", so the level of deep knowledge and skill in the general populous decreases.

I doubt Slackware was "difficult to install" back in the 90's - I just followed the instructions as you did when I first installed it. It's only by comparison that it's supposedly difficult.

Possibly because the majority of people using computers today have done so only for about 15 to 20 years. All they have ever seen is GUI booting and desktops. In the 1990s the command line was common. In the 1990s through the turn of the century, desktop computers transformed rapidly from MS-DOS to Windows 95, Windows 98, NT4, Windows 2000, and then XP. Unlike previous desktop systems, preinstalled operating systems took off with XP. Outside of Amigas and Macs, before that most people using computers had to manually install an operating system.

Desktop computers did not become popular until the combination of XP and the world wide web. The web did not become popular until the late 1990s.

Then along came smart phones. Swipes and taps replaced pointy-clicky.

Linux based systems survived this rapid expansion but most users were (and are) inclined toward the old user interface methods of the command line. The majority of people using computers today look at the terminal, are horrified, step back, and mutter something like "WTF." ;)

Structurally, Slackware has changed little throughout this period. Possibly then a cause of the alleged reputation. Yet I suspect most people using Slackware would say, "Yup, this is exactly how things should be." :)

That's not how I remember it. The first PCs had DOS preinstalled. And I'm sure I remember PCs being sold with Windows 95/98, though the people I knew installed those over DOS, which they already had.
I had the impression that it was Win95 that was the game-changer. I got my first 2nd-hand computer in 2000 and I remember the seller asking me if I wanted Windows 3 or Windows 95. No Internet access, but that was quite usual then.
That makes me smile. People like me who worked in offices and libraries in the 80s and 90s were very familiar with the command line. It was my first experience of Windows that horrified me! Finding Linux was like coming home.

In essense, you and upnort are both correct. When you bought your first computer North America accounted for 9/10 of all internet traffic. At that time most "connected" computers in Europe and Japan where at universities. So it is understandable for people in different parts of the world to have different memories.

Yes, perhaps my memory is fuzzy. :) I'm sure some retailers were preinstalling DOS or Windows 3/95. I was trying to emphasize that the majority of users back then were DIY folks. I was an early adopter of computers and a DIY user. I did not buy computers then through retailers. Overall usage in the general populace was increasing with Windows 95 but the market seemed to explode, so to speak, with XP.

I had become somewhat a subject matter expert with Windows 3.11 and INI files. I still have all of the original dead tree documentation on the shelves. I remember when I installed NT4. All GUI. I was seriously frustrated. I could not separate the "base" OS from the "desktop." When I found the terminal launcher I changed the window title to "Good Ol' DOS!" My NT4 VM remains configured that way. A few years later I installed my first Linux distro. The system booted to a command prompt. I thought that was so sane. :)

Yes, it makes sense!
Additionally, the first personal computer, that i used superficially, was an HP-86 1980-85; i never knew what OS it used!

Maybe because there were no OS at all :)... I guess it was a ROM basic by default, and "bootable" programs for everything "serious".

Indeed, they were. It was during this time frame of the late run of Windows 3.1 and the early years of the transition to '95 that those desiring a computer preloaded with OS/2 or even just MS-DOS 6.x were very frustrated. It was at the same time that People chaffed at the idea of getting MS Word/Office for "free" and then having to buy Word Perfect separately. These were the years--'92 through '96 or thereabouts--that fueled the anti-trust action against Microsoft.

I came to Linux in the late summer of 1996 so my reference begins then. I seem to recall that it was around late '97 through '99 that those who wanted a preloaded Linux distribution, or at least not having to pay the "Microsoft Tax" on a new computer gained traction.

True, though by '92 or '93 computers with Windows 3.0/3.1 preinstalled were quite common, if not a majority of the market share. There were quite a few vendor branded copies of Windows 3.x that I saw.

Most of this is from my recollection of Computer Shopper advertising.

Myself as well, though I didn't get my first PC clone until the summer of 1989. Prior to that I had a Color Computer 2 since late 1983.

XP did have a lot of uptake by new computer users but it was also the next logical upgrade from '95/'98 as the prior versions of the NT series were too much oriented toward business/enterprise. I actually evaluated buying windows '95 or the the new NT 4 in the summer of 1997. I went with '95 and then six months later switched to using Slackware full time in early 1998.

Shudder. Me too...

I dumped all of that stuff years ago. :)

My first encounter with NT 4 was here at work. Almost all of my prior working knowledge was instantly obsolete. Its adoption enabled the company to more centrally administer the desktops which continues through today and Windows 7/10. I can do a limited number of things but am mostly a box changer these days, but I digress.

I was always frustrated by COMMAND.COM and remember what a revelation finding 4DOS was--I had not prior experience with the Unix shell, etc. Later, 4DOS was bought/licensed by Symantec and released with Norton Utilities as ndos. That experience made the transition to Bash easier, though I still preferred the GUI and got X working a few months after the initital Slackware '96 install (mostly due to needing more disk space). These days I spend as much time in the shell as with anything else. Go figure. :D

Win95 was indeed a game-changer for home users, in that it integrated the OS and the GUI into one package. It made Windows easy to use for computer-illiterate (or maybe more accurately, computer-inexperienced) point-and-click home users.

I remember running a BBS for my employer with PCBboard on OS/2 in the mid-90s. Actually, I did it for me, but I convinced my employer that I was doing it for them.

They had had an old BBS program of some description on DR-DOS that had become hopelessly out-dated; it was used mainly for file transfers from field to HQ. Whatever it was, it was more primitive that Spitfire.

I really didn't know much of anything back then, but, oh, my heavens, that was fun!

Member response
 

Hi,

I think the slanderous issues started early on with Slackware. You had to download and create the disk sets. Normal users did not want to do all that work to create their Gnu/Linux. So Slackware got the tag with being difficult to use. Back in '93' it was a must to to create the disk set from downloads and then rawrite to a diskette. I saw some issues from users using cheap media and then blame Slackware for their errors.

I remember hearing Slackware does not have management all the time but those people did not realize 'pkgtool' or just ignored it. Plus the use of cli was not clean for the uninformed. You need to use 'man command' and that required the user to read for understanding. Too much of a thought process for some users.

Why do you think the turn key Gnu/Linux evolved? Hide and you did not have to look behind the curtain. You became the wizard by just getting a copy and booting the installer. Real Gnu/Linux users question things and dig into the inner workings to allow understanding so customization/diagnosis can be done. Slackware Gnu/Linux meets those needs for people who wish to use their computers instead of point an click Gnu/Linux.

This post is not intended to slander lazy Gnu/Linux users but to state that real users will want to know what's under the hood so one can get real work out of their systems.

Slackware is the best UNIX-Like Gnu/Linux!

Slackware users do acquire working knowledge;
If Slackware was available at Beecher's time then;
Uninformed turn key users meet this;
Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip: