This is my way to Slackware...

JWJones · 04-18-2013, 07:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by esteeven

My problem is that I am lucky enough to have more than one computer. I don't have a "main" workstation and I often wipe a partition and install a different distro on a whim (I removed Slackware the other day and installed Crunchbang - just because I wanted to see how fast it installed! It was very fast and very efficient) - safe in the knowledge that I have access to at least one other stable computer.

I know that I do not need to do this to test a different distro but I hate having more than a single distro on a computer (don't ask. I know --- it's odd. I've given up trying to work out why and I just go with this personality flaw

)

Some say I waste too much time doing this but I say that I am always learning and have reached the happy state where I am distro neutral and the most important thing is that I can do my work.

Having said this, I have not installed a version of Windows on one of my own computers for at quite a number of years and I am being drawn to another Slackware install. I can hear the install DVD calling me. I'm not sure I can fight it.

I'm much in the same boat as you: abundant hardware to mess around with, and I also don't like having more than one OS on a system at a time. But I do have a dedicated Slackware desktop, and another that fills the task of distro-hopping/testing. I have found, though, that if it is not either Slackware or Debian based, I am usually disappointed. And I appreciate returning to the rock-solid Slack desktop and continuing to learn the Slackware way.

psionl0 · 04-18-2013, 11:32 AM

My first experience with Slackware was with zipslack from version 3.3. I successfully ported it to its own hard drive and even added X to it. My first full installation was version 7.1 and later 10.1.

Although this was great fun, my hardware at the time didn't really allow me to do anything useful with it.

The first time I went exclusively to slackware was with version 13.1 a couple of years ago. I have never looked back.

honeybadger · 04-18-2013, 11:56 AM

As far as my story goes: I was given a seconh hand computer that had windows98 on it. After some time (read days) it was infected. A friend agreed to give me a winxp cd but then for some reasons he did not (I am happy it worked that way).
Then another friend gave me knoppix - it was a miracle - but somehow something was missing.
Started disrtohopping -- Knoppix, Ubuntu, Debian and endless (almost all on distrowatch) variants.
Then installed slackware 12 - gasped in horror when the system booted to runlevel 3

After weeks of looking at the way slackware handled itself and its beauty of simplicity (still cannot belive that everything can actually be so simple) I am still stuck here

God knows when I am going to move on

343 Guilty Spark · 04-18-2013, 12:42 PM

My story of Slackware mostly started because of a wallpaper I found during/after my Windows server 2003 class. http://www.phombo.com/wallpapers/var...s/112842/full/

Before that I was just learning Linux with suse 9.1 and around 2007 I was using Ubuntu as my primary desktop. But one day I got serious, and found the readme/setup instructions file that answered all my questions: setting up graphics driver, networking, fundamental commands. I was even compiling software (mostly MPlayer) from source (if necessary). My ultimate goal was to get away from windows and without Slackware, I doubt I would've fulfilled that goal. On some occasions I would even visit the past with releases as far back as 8.0. I use other distros like CentOS, Debian, Mageia, and even Ubuntu, but Slackware will always be #1 on my chart.

And of course I never would've been able to get as far as I have without hardware donations in exchange for my services. ( I even converted some users to Linux).

Philip Lacroix · 04-18-2013, 03:23 PM

I started with Debian and stuck to it for several years because it did the job very well. I also tried Ubuntu and Fedora but dropped them soon.

I still wanted another distribution based on a different approach, with less changes to the upstream developers' work, and not so tightly bound to a package management system like apt. Besides, I wanted it to be (at least) as good, solid and stable as Debian is - though "good" is largely a matter of personal taste.

After a quick search on distrowatch.org I decided that Slackware might be worth a try - and it definitely did, and now I'm using it (almost) all the time

Thanks a lot to PV and team for their great work!

Philip