That makes a lot more sense.

this +1

and

Stable, consistent, boring, gets the job done.

https://imgur.com/a/WT34fiN

Haha, here you go sir.

So one sort of eccentricity is permissible over another? As you must know, creativity and eccentricity of various sorts go hand-in-hand. In fact, the best kinds of creative output are executed by those whose lifestyle choices are unusual or controversial. One of my best friends in the US is a gun-carrying civil war buff. At one stage he had a confederate flag on display in his living room. He's a great guy and a music expert but his choices with regard to what he does in his free time are not necessarily my own. I don't judge him for that - we all are a result of different societal and cultural influences and, as long as he's not harming anyone, I don't see the problem. Axl Rose and Dave Mustaine are absolute idiots but they make great music. Salvador Dali used to do questionable things to his models but his art was ground-breaking. Andy Warhol was an obsessive hoarder.

The point is that there is a difference between the creator and the created. Art [of which one can count software, to an extent] is a individual's way of trying to heal or interpret issues in the world. And for many, the necessity of doing so comes from an internal need for expression, catharsis or to solve a practical concern. I can think of one or two LQ forum members right off the bat here who are eccentric, I could even include myself. If some of my likes and interests were known, I imagine I could be labelled a freak too - but I'd rather be that than be an unproductive conformist. Maybe Slackware is made by a band of oddballs, but maybe that's why it's so good.

Hi, I am new here and am a very newbie Linux user. I first started with Linux back in 2001 with a boxed set of Mandrake Linux 7.1. I was LOST! But I really liked the concept of Linux and the whole free software attitude. So I joined a board (since defunct) and I was banned for asking newbie questions, and daring to claim that if Linux made it "easier" for the new user, then more people would get into it. The worst offenders were the Debian users who claimed that APT was the ultimate weapon in the Linux wars, and then the Red Hat users who were less rude, but more "Hey Noob!, RTFM!" Even back in the day, the Slackware users were just chill (as my kids say), and they were like: "Dude, get some books, we can answer the questions, and join us". But I was so put off and intimidated that I left Linux for almost 15 years. I am back with Mint, and it works for me, but back in the recesses of my mind, I still recall the Slackware users, and that seductive call of: "Come on, give it a try, you know you want to, just one little installation...." Maybe one day when I am confident in my terminal use, but for now, I am just a lowly user.

I'm glad you don't put me in the *buntuverse. Though I did at one time use Dapper Drake. It was actually my second Linux. My first was Red Hat 6. That shows you how far I go back! After Dapper, I distro-hopped a bit, tried Gentoo and Arch but didn't like either. Then someone recommended Crux and I loved it. But when Crux stopped supporting 32-bit, I switched to Debian. Then I got my present 64-bit machine and decided to run Crux and Debian in parallel, adding LFS in due course.

I wouldn't want to use any of the *buntus now. They have all the complexity of Debian without the stability. And if you mess up your sudoers file, you are sunk unless you boot from something like SystemRescue. Universal sudo is quite nice for day-to-day working but I do like a root account as a backstop. Also Ubuntu holds your hand much too much. Lovely for newbies, just irritating for me.

AntiX I respect in its field. It's wonderful for old or eccentric hardware. I use it on my laptop, which has only 1 GB of core and a Via Chrome graphics chip, and it's the only Linux distro I've ever used on that machine which allows the screen to wake up gracefully from sleep. But I'm not sufficiently taken with it to have it on my main machine.

So I'm still leaning towards Slackware.

Slackware will straighten you out post-haste - there's very little lean left with a full install.

I've also made good on my donation "threat": because of this thread, even if you forgo slackware, someone will adopt it.

cheers,

C'mon Hazel. I'm rooting for ya. At least just burn a Live Slack CD or USB stick and check it out in an hour. Reading about someone elses views is no substitute for your own. Or... better... just go ahead and do a Full Install. It'll cost you maybe 30GB of hard drive real estate and for a vet like you an hour tops to get it installed. Try it for a month and if you don't like it, format the partition in what? 30 seconds? Doesn't that seem potentially a small investment with high likelihood of substantial gain?

BTW as an aside, it isn't wise to discount the importance of Rednecks and Hillbillies. According to a growing number of finds and DNA studies every branch of our evolutionary background tree includes "cousin f*ckers" ;) - https://www.ancient-origins.net/huma...s-today-004151

LMAO...Ahem, most of the Royal families still do that.

Thank You, going to use that for wallpaper and lilo. ;)

Great post man. Well done. Agree on all points.

Slackware users are a broad cross section of society, united mainly by our choice of operating system. There are no guns or tobacco in my house... but I do have scotch, an American V8 engine in my car, and a bicycle or two.

The flexibility of Slackware is what caught me early on. After using it, nothing else made sense. The non-conformist in me hated every other distro I tried. They all want you to do things their way. Slackware makes no demands. You can do things whichever way you like. In some cases, Pat goes to great lengths to ensure that this can happen. The pure-alsa packages are the perfect example of this. I'm sure there are other examples.
Mine too! You have my sympathies. But I only used Red Hat for a few weeks before someone in an online user group suggested Slackware. That was in 1999. I have tried many other distros since then, but none have ever been able to supplant Slackware as my daily driver.
My advice would be to try it in a VM. It's very easy to do these days.

I started my Linux adventure with a long dead distro called Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 in 2002. I moved to Red Hat 9 after that. I'd like to thank Red Hat for killing off their free versions and moving to RHEL. This prompted me to move to Slackware and I started with 10.0 in 2004. Like you I tinkered with a lot of distros. No other distro compares to Slackware.

"Stable, consistent, boring, gets the job done." +1

"No other distro compares to Slackware." +1

Also, it's fast, light on resource usage, and has sane defaults.

There's a slogan which says something similar to "Once you Slack, you'll never go back". Sounds far-fetched but it's actually true.
Slackware is a great tool; in the best case it adapts to you like a second skin, and it can accommodate an enormous variety of workflows.

Moreover, it mostly stays under the radar. You don't notice it (it's like second skin/second nature). But when you have to use anything else, oh boy. You will experience sever withdrawal symmptoms ;).

Anyway... I wish you the best with whatever distribution you choose. But you should try Slackware, and you have a community of friendly experts here (I'm not one of them, I'm just a simple user) who will try to help you in case of need (but RTFM :D).

Another remark on the community: Here you will find all kinds of people, but the Slackware Crew including The Man himself (PV) usually checks this forum and contributes to it. They are approachable and humble. PV's demeanor (and that of most Slackware gurus) are a brilliant example that humility is a mark of true greatness.

I already see I have a big problem. The Slackware installation dvd is 2.6 GB. That's pretty close to my 3 GB monthly download limit. Add a month's normal browsing, email and software updates and I'd be in trouble.

You might ask why I have such a low limit. That's because it's a low-cost deal. I pay 13.87 GBP per month (without VAT) where most people pay twice that. The only other person I know who pays as little as me has a special package only offered to people on benefits. And normally 3 GB/month is ample for my requirements.

I wonder if I could build Slackware up gradually over several months. It's unorthodox but I think I have the know-how to do it and I would learn a lot in the process. Sort of "Slackware from Scratch". I have a spare partition I could use. The first packages in the "a" set I would have to unpack by hand, but once I had enough of a system to chroot into, I could use the proper tools to reinstall those packages properly, then install the rest.