Ive been using Mandrake for awhile and have noticed how much bigger the forums are for Slackware. Is this because its harder to use and there are much more questions? Or is slackware better? Any examples would be much appreciated.

Slackware in resume:

Your car have problem?... All things under the hood are easily "spottable"... You're not sure of what's doing "that"?... Ask the people owning the same "car"... You want to fine-tune the motor to get the car as fast as it could do... No problemo, hints are printed under the hood... You want to drive the car... Just press the button. (Bootup)

Mandrake in resume:

Your car have problem?... Blinkings lights comes-up, you open the hood but there's a big "spaghetti" over-there... You try to fine-tune the engine... Oops... something act strangly...... You want to drive the car... Wait until all the check-routine is done before the engine start after pressing the button...

So is slackware faster because there are less menus?

As far as I know, and saw on many forums, Slackware has "ALMOST" the speed of a "source" distribution... (Like Gentoo, SourgeMage, etc...)

And it's way faster than any other "GENERIC/BLOATED" distro... which includes Mandrake/RedHat... THEY MUST BE like this because they want their products to be COMPLETELY AUTOMATED (for running, detecting hardware and installing them). So the kernel and many boot-up scripts are much slower than Slackware... (And we haven't coun't the services which runs in the background while using the desktop!)

When you try Slack, you don't have the choice of getting a little bit "closer" to the command-line (or terminal)... Because you can fine-tune everything from it and get it working as fast as your machine can... (BUT NOT as fast as source distribution like I talked above)

Once you've installed and configured everyting, Just use the Graphical desktop.......

After that, you'll learn to install packages and dependancies...

basically, the difference is "how much do you want to be able to confiure?" if you answer everything then slackware or vector linux (among others) is the answer. if you answer "nothing, i want the distro to configure everything or have nice graphics that hold my hand during configuration" then mandrake or red hat (fedora now) or even suse.

if you want to learn how linux works and how you can make programs work and install hardware and software, then get slackware. if you want a windows replacement that will let you surf the web, read email and create documents and stuff like that, get mandrake.

That's not exactly accurate. The tools that are included with Mandrake aren't the ONLY way to do things. Anything you can configure by hand in Slackware you can configure in Mandrake...just don't use the GUI tools.

As for learning how linux works, it all depends on how you like learning. For example, I learned a lot by using slackware on my old laptop (before I got my current one) but my gf however prefers having a platform that's all set up for her to begin with while she "tests the waters".

Linux is linux...and there is rarely one way to do things..and there is rarely something you can do in one distro that you absolutely can't do in another distro.

thanks for pointing that out tcaptain. you are right, just because mandrake comes pre setup with a gui out of the box, doesnt mean you have to use it, you can always configure your box to boot to the cli and work from there to startx or whatever.

i also agree completely that linux is linux, doesnt matter what you throw on top if it. its kind of like dos and win3.x, you booted a computer to dos and then you loaded windows if you wanted. same thing kinda with linux, you can boot to the cli (dos) and then run startx (windows) to get the graphical interface. this can be done on any distro. i just meant that some distros make it easier to not see what is under the hood so to speak.

But then one has to say that I find the
way slack handles configuration files
and specifically the
/etc/rc.d
structure way more transparent than
the other distro's ;)

It's so easy to get lost in the jungle
of /etc/rc.c/init.d and co, or
/etc/sysconfig :)

Cheers,
Tink

I have used Mandrake for years, ever since 8.0 came out.

Now, I use slackware 9.1, and WOW, its a huge difference. For the first time I can actually say that I enjoy using linux more than windows.

Briefly, you can do the same things in Mandrake that you can do in Slackware. You can configure Mandrake just as much as you can configure Slackware by hand. You can customize Mandrake to boot up as fast as Slackware. Technically, they are both still linux so dont be fooled when people tell you that you can customize and configure slackware better than you can do such in Mandrake. Dont be fooled into thinking that slackware is inherently faster than mandrake, its just lighter and usually has less stuff to load up at boot time. You CAN get Mandrake to do these things.

The problem with Mandrake is their gui. Not that they have a gui, but that as a distro that prides themselves in their gui, their gui is buggy. The config tools seldom work perfectly, and sometimes dont even work the same way twice. Some things are a real pain to get working in Mandrake if it doesnt get auto-configured correctly. Even when you configure it by hand, sometimes, things just dont work right. (>Insert your, "because Mandrake is French" slam here<)

With Slackware, things seem to work correctly and reliably. They havent put work into an extensive "Slacware KDE" or other gui, so there arent any slackware inserted bugs to deal with in that regard. For example, I could never get Mandrake 9.1 to reliably connect to the internet. And it took me days of fidding to get it to work. I used their gui config tools which was just an embarrassment to mandrake as the tools themselves messed up my config files. Fixing them by hand resulted only in Mandrake connecting to the net 1 out of 5 or 6 attempts. Also, I couldnt get the Nvidia graphics drivers to install in Mandrake correctly. When I switched to slack, all these things and more worked immediately and on the first attempt. When I set something up in slackware, it works as it should, there is no fuss, no begging, no pleading with it as I had to do with Mandrake.

A lot of people feel the same way about mandrake as I do. It can be a real pain because they release their new versions only after like 6 months of development. They dont put the time in and do a quality code job with extensive bug testing like one should do when trying to create an intelligent and sophisticated gui environment. Slackware just uses the standard KDE, they let the kde people sort out their bugs, while the slackware people make sure that their core distro is as bug free as possible.

A lot of people feel intimidated about trying slackware, mostly because they hear from people that you have to configure everything by hand blah blah blah. Its really easy to install slackware, there is tons of help. Configure is really easy too, everything is well commented and slackware even publishes a reference manual (its online too) that helps you to configure your slackware. Finally, I find that the slackware forums tend to host more helpful and friendly people who give solid advice that more often than not, works.

Well, thats my 2 cents

Getting back to your original question. You gotta learn to run Slack and besides howto's man pages and google there's lists. This one and others. If you stick with it and I'd say most do then there's the sense of community that keeps people around to one degree or another.

Probably other reasons. Someone at that meeting said among other things " when I booted up mandrake I didn,t really feel good but when I boot up Slackware I do" Interesting comment but I didn't feel like biting at that moment so I didn't ask for an elaboration. I was getting ready to do a little presentation on Slackware in 2003.

Oh yeah. There was also a presentation on Mdk which probably has the greatest market share in our LUG.

This is why I also stopped using Mandrake a long time ago and went back to Slackware. I have not regretted it even once.

I would agree, mostly. The install works seamlessly, and most especially if you just 'install everything', like I just did with 9.1

The thing that is most frustrating to me, is getting X configured correctly, specifically WRT fonts. It is not obvious what to do (even for a seasoned old dog like me). Of course, I haven't been a big fan of X in the past either, and the knowledge I gained from older X distros *doesn't* help much with the new stuff :-(

But overall, Slackware 9.1 is an *excellent* distro, easy to install and setup and "just work". Much easier to get what you *intend* to happen, than what Mandrake was last I used it (7 or so).