Slackware appreciation thread

Originally Posted by MQMan And if you appreciate it that much, I'll assume you have bought a subscription at the store to ensure that Pat continues to maintain Slack. Cheers.

A subscription? No I don't have that but I did buy some stuff (hat, cd, bumper stickers) recently from the store. Ill have to look into this subscription thing.

I have just returned to slack once again. I did this by way of absolute Linux that is based on slack 12.0. Slack was one of my first linux distributions that I installed. Slack 3.5, it was 2 disks and the book. I had to read the book 3 times to understand everything I needed to know to get it installed. That was a great learning experience for me. It was fun learning linux and dos back in those days. I did run 10.0 for a short while, but as I was young and stupid I kept breaking the system doing stupid things on my part and could never find the solutions.

I have used a great many Linux distro's over the years and am now back to Slackware. I am starting to like kde for the first time, im kind of surprised as I always preferred gnome. I will have to admit that I am really impressed with icewm. Icewm is what Absolute uses by default.

I just wanted to add my prases for Slackware. It is so simple thats it ingenious.

Kelean

Hey Kelean, that's cool that you use(s) Absolute Slackware. I didn't realize however that it ises IceWM. Is that a new thing with a new version of Alsolute?
I have here Absolute 11.0.5 on CD, but as I recall there was corruption in my ISO or my burned disc and I had some errors during install. Later I removed the Installation, and now (as you can see in my sidebar) I stick to Slackware, Slax, and EasYs, but your post brought back to mind how I did like Absolute. I hadn't thought about it in quite some time.
Also, I *thought* it was using KDE or XFCE in my version of Absolute, but I could easily be wrong: This was all back when I VERY FIRST started poking at Linux, so there's a good chance I had absolutely (no pun intended) no idea at all what I may have been talking about regarding which WM I was using

Cheers, anyhow!
--Sasha

GrapefruiTgirl, I started using Abs with 12.01. It has had icewm with every version I have installed. It has fluxbox as an alternative. I think that ABS is a far better distro for my machines than vector, slax, or zenwalk. Here is a link to there forum.

http://www.pcbypaul.com/absolute/forum/index.php

I really like Abs. It very clean, has lots of documentation, and a lot of scripts to do small tasks. Abs with icewm runs very fast on my old machine with 128 megs of ram.

Abs is running on two machines and I installed the full 12.0 version of slackware on my faster machine. I am really getting into slack again. I am going to check out icewm for my slackbox. Im getting use to kde, I was a gnome guy. But kde, the way its supposed to be, not how the other distros want to package it is kind of cool. But I still want to install icewm on here when I get some time.

Kelean

Without a doubt Slackware 12 is the best release to date for me. What still scares the poop out of me is converting the last of my servers from 11.2 to 12.0. Of course it's my web server and the thought of moving from Linux 2.4.33 to 2.6.21.5, Apache 1.37 to 2.2.4, PHP 4.4.7 to 5.2.4 is almost too much for my feeble mind. That is an all day Saturday project if I ever saw one!

Cool thanks for that info, Kelean. In two weeks or so (28k dialup connection), I'll be having a look at the latest Absolute, and maybe replace my EasYs installation with it, or maybe just add it to my list LOL I really like EasYs too, and it also is very fast for some reason; Maybe it's the DE? Not sure..

Originally Posted by dracolich I started about 5 years ago with 9.1 and it does indeed get better with each new version. While hating the WinXP Home edition that my laptop came with I reminisced about the days of DOS when I actually had some respect for Microsoft. My quest for the most UNIX-like Linux with emphasis on the commandline and editing config files by hand (yes, I actually wanted that) brought me to Slackware. Thanks to Slackware I haven't had to buy a new computer in 6 years and I haven't felt held back by using an operating system that holds my hand like a mother walking her 6-year old across the street. Thank you, Slackware!

Same same!!

Only difference is that I started with version 7.0 in 1999.

I always had a disliking for Windows. It was heavy, bloated and slow. Using it was of no real benefit over DOS until Windows 95 was released. Windows 95 changed the course of computing. It also tempered my enthusiasm for computers. So much so, that I found a new hobby. I still owned a computer, but using it was no longer fun.

Using Slackware for the first time felt like I was home. I was back in control of my PC again. Slackware put the fun back into computing for me.

Distro hopped till I found Slackware (four years ago). Still looking but found nothing better. Need I say more?

I got two old pcs to play with and it wasn't worth buying an OS for them. I decided to try *nix and haven't looked back, although I have been a distro whore, looking for the "best" one. I have tried Mandrake, Suse, Solaris, FreeBSD, Gentoo, Debian, and Slackware - always keeping one machine safely up and one in flux...

The result has been Slackware on one machine, Debian on the other - Slack is definitely my preference, but I still use Debian to see what's out there, software-wise. Every distro has its hassles, and in the end to get everything the way I want it I have to dig in and use the console - Slackware is the most transparent and easiest to configure, in my opinion, once you decide there is no easy gui way to get certain things right.

Now my 'good' machine runs Slack and my 'old' machine runs Debian - both are faster than the new winxP box I use at work.

I'm kinda new to posting here, but not new to Slackware... I've been using it on-and-off since Slackware 96 (version 3.1). I still have 4.0 running on a 486 machine and Slackware 12 on several desktops.
Since I am from the old days (started working with computers in 1978...) I like to be 'in control', and that's the feeling Slackware gives me. I still do almost everything from the terminal window :-)
For some time, due to influence from my job, changed to Red Hat, but that was not for me... Unfortunately I still have to have a second partition with Windows om my notebook, but try to avoid using it whenever possible.

Kudos to Patrick and everybody contributing to this fine distribution!

Originally Posted by niels.horn I'm kinda new to posting here, but not new to Slackware...

Welcome to LQ!

Kudos to Patrick and everybody contributing to this fine distribution!

It's nice to see threads like this -- all too often, we all get so bogged down in posts about problems that it's very refreshing to see a post saying "it just works" and such. Thanks to everyone for the kind words about Slackware!