It warms my hear to see such a busy forum for an old friend. I started using Slack back in the 90's. Here recently, I read some articles explaining it was a less relevant distro today. Given the number of posts here, that's clearly not the case. Some of it appears to be collateral damage from hasty decision making in other distributions, that's okay though... More people will just see why Slack is near and dear to a lot Linux users.

Anyone who remembers 1.x Kernel days.

I didn't use Linux in the 90s so can't comment on any changes in Slackware relevance back then and now but I agree that the forum is very active. Bear in mind, though, that, unlike with some other major distros, Slackware has no dedicated forum outside of LinuxQuestions.org.

Kernel 1.x? Unfortunately I started with Linux as late as 2005 so for me it was 2.x.

I started with Slackware in 2004(version 10.0). Slackware is my favourite OS. Praise Bob.

I can't think of a Linux more fun than Slackware

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Back in my teenager years, Slackware was my first GNU/Linux and UNIX experience around 1995, so I must have jumped on the bandwagon around 3.0, in which case I indeed was using Linux 1.2.13. I have a visual memory of playing with a terminal (xterm?) in a simple window manager (fvwm?). Riveting stuff. After coming back to version 12, I am very disappointed at myself for wasting so many years with clearly inferior operating systems, at least for what I like to do.

I don't even know where to begin on the "relevance" of distributions. Let's just say, the relative "relevance" metrics are completely irrelevant to me personally, since Slackware is by far the best OS for me, and it has an amazing community support, so I couldn't care less if it makes any impact beyond simply working for people who use it.

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I still have my "Slackware 96 4 Disc Set" signed by some guy named Patrick Volkerding on the CD case insert! Kernel 2.0.

But I settled on SuSe 6 as my first productive GNU/Linux for reasons now gone from my diminishing memory capacity, probably combination of hardware and ease of installation. Then from about 1999 to 2005/6 I was a very happy Mandrake/Mandriva user. During the Mandrake 7.2 period I converted virtually all freinds, family and business associates to GNU/Linux and got my own skills up to a reasonably competent level - great early distro!

With Mandriva's early adoption of KDE 4 I hit a huge brick wall, especially with regard to the suddenly huge amount of support I had to provide to previously happy campers... so I methodically searched for a new way forward. That effort ended with a re-introduction to Slackware and life has been good ever since!

The combination of Slackware's uber-intelligent design, Slackbuilds.org's amazing people and resources and the always helpful, friendly and knowledgable community of Slackware users here at LQ is absolutely unbeatable!

Praise Bob and Pat and Robby and Eric and everyone else who has contributed!

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Oh, you mean that modern kernel? I go back to 0.99 patch level 13 packaged with Slackware version 1.1 during the era of a.out (before ELF) and still fire up that version from November 1993 from time to time. Search this forum for my remarks about those trips down memory lane and Patrick's interesting choice of user names in /etc/passwd.

I just born when in 90s, so i don't know much about computer. But now when i had computer, slackware its in my computer man

Ahhhh - beaten to it! I can only claim 1996 (January to be exact) - and yes, I believe it was 1.2-something ...
Went from there to redhat-4.1? (long-term memory is getting bad here ... never mind short-term, even worse). Unfortuneately, didnt reconnect with slackware again until slack-3-something - been on it more or less faithfully ever since

Don't remember the exact year but it was early to mid nineties.
Enrolled in a computer science course at college and got an exemption on a lot of the first year subjects because of previous experience. Turned up at my first class and discovered I had to use vi on a AIX system. A bit of a shock when you've never used unix before.
Bought the 'The Linux Bible' book and installed Slackware from the cd that came with it. If I recall correctly it also had yggdrasil.
Slackware installed without a problem so I chose to use it.
I remember thinking X was the most brain dead thing I had ever seen. I would start a program in it then have to search outside the boundaries of the screen to find where it put it. As we only used consoles at college I left figuring out this strange windowing system for another time.
Have very briefly tried a couple of other distros but Slackware is the one for me.

Mandrake was a nice distribution. It was no Slackware, Gentoo, or LFS, but it was one of the nicer quality distributions of GNU/Linux you could get your hands on for it's time. Very modernized and customizable.

Yggdrasil... Wow... Now that's old school Linux. I didn't use Linux until Mandrake 7.3's era but I had read books on Yggdrasil Linux beforehand.

Shame none of the older distributions have ever been revived. I still remember tinkering with a devfs.conf file and manually assigning mount points for hardware devices.

Old slackers coming back! This is going to be another good year.

Regards.

Well, people surely is a bit tired of my rants, but I insist because everyday someone gives a proof that I'm right.

I bought my first computer on 2005, a pentium III laptop with Windows 98 installed. First I installed XP. Six months later, following the advice of a friend of mine I removed XP and installed Mandriva. I guess my friend advised me to use Mandriva because it was the "friendly" distro at that time, I remember myself using KDE and configuring my network interface from Mandriva Control Center. One day I noticed the alternative window managers that appeared in the graphical login. I started icewm, I came to life! I discovered the rute Linux book and learned the basics, more late I changed to gentoo. I understood that that first year using Mandriva I had still been using Windows.

That's why, each time a friend of mine ask me about Linux and I know he's not the kind of person that will invest time and interest in learning Unix basics I prefer to shut up to not fooling him.

And to not fooling myself. Because there doesn't end the mistake. Exists a side effect. All those friends that you "converted" sure of helping the Linux cause more or late complain "Hey, I hadn't this problem with Windows" for example when in their pseudo explore.exe it appears a pop up telling "no enough permissions" when trying to mount a usb memory. They think that's a bug. So to keep all them happy Linux developers have been investing all this years their effort in fixing all that Ken Thompson bad design. You know, MSWindows developers were men ahead of their time.

So what initially was just a friendly interface (a prosthesis) lately became modifications in the base system, the init system and the kernel.

Today your friends surely prefer Windows 8, and you cry for that old good times when Linux was a real Unix-like OS.

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I came to Linux, Slackware specifically, from Unix/Solaris on the advice of a network admin I worked with. This is where "Unix" means System 3 to System V (SVR4) and "Solaris" means Sun Solaris based on SVR4. I am not real sure precisely when this was or what Slackware release it was but it did come on CD-ROMs, not floppies.

I had a Dell Celeron Win95 box (that I hated) and my friend recommended doing a dual-boot install. OK, did that. Voila! a crappy computer running a SVR4 look-work alike! Wow, zowie. Well, not quite, but close enough. Ran circles around Windows (duh!). Already knew how to use everything (well, pretty much -- there are differences here and there) and all my existing programs ported quick and easy from a Motorola VME box and from Solaris (C mostly, some AWK, lots of KornShell, oh how nice it is to have a real operating system).

Never have looked back. Doofed around with SUSE (for about a day), Ubuntu (for about a week), took longer to download the ISOs than I actually used 'em. I've gotten a lot of miles out of Slackware, don't even bother with others. I could develop software on Slackware and port it to Solaris (and vice-versa) quick-and-easy. I could install the big-time DBMS used at work, copy down a schema or two, copy down some test data, and have at it at home instead of driving 30 miles to work. Life is good and they give you money.

I've converted a few Windows Weenies to Linux (yeah, Slackware) and they're all happy campers.

I can see no reason whatsoever to dabble with other distributions.