SlackwareThis Forum is for the discussion of Slackware Linux.
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I've used Slackware current for not so long (about 4 months in a row). It's safe to say I've learned a lot new stuff about how linux works on admin level. A good reason I guess. As an extra bonus Slackware is lightweight thanks to multiple standalone WMs, init and only necessary services enabled by default. There are some downsides like multiple package managers if you need packages from slackbuilds, alien or rlworkman repos, but you get used to it in no time. They are simple to operate.
It's worth saying Slackware stands out among massive amount of linux distros. Slackware doesn't blindly goes for new shiny things. It's more conservative than other mainstream distros. I like it. Feels like you use something thoughtful, reliable and oldschool.
TBH most of day-to-day soft that comes with default installation is crap. Mplayer that hangs every time I open file more than 20 Gb and that can't properly render custom fonts in subs. XPDF that can search only in english and has no button to rotate/move through pages. No office. No office, Carl. In 2020. No office suit.
MPlayer, Xine, and XMMS have their uses for me. I use them to quickly open files to check them out. I use Strawberry for music (Quodlibet has issues with length 0:00 files), QMPlay2 (CUDA slices through bluray sized rips easily), and VLC plays dvds/blurays just fine. There is an office suite called Calligra included with Slackware, it is overlooked because it isn't trying to be MS Office, but it works just fine. I use the repackaged Libreoffice which takes less than a minute to install. I use Okular for PDFs, I never tried to search for anything other than English.
Slackware provides a stable base for people to do what they want with it. It isn't for everyone. It installs and loads X which is more than I can say for several distros I've installed recently for a relative on 4+ year old hardware. Ubuntu derived distros kernel panicked, Debian couldn't load X, Fedora froze when tabbing in the terminal and their Chrome was too old my relative complained, and then a java based program they use was slow on Manjaro to our dismay. They are trying OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (their choice) since they want something Windowzy to maintain themselves. They are liking OpenSUSE but I don't think they'll give up Slackware which I maintain for them. Many of those issues could have been just that PC since Linux Mint Live loaded to just fine for me on my machine. We've both found new appreciation for Slackware.
The best KDE3 ui responsivenes on an ancient machine was the main reason i settled on slackware in 2005. Next, as early windows convert i had no idea howto set up compiling environment to install apps not in repositories, and slackware already had this set up + checkinstall and slackwares sane dep management made compiling a software accessible to me.
Later, again slackware had excellent performance for running Winxp on a virtualbox for work. I think, exactly, the lack of 'abstraction layers' are what appeals to me. Slackware machine mostly stays as i have set it up, without sudden surprises.
1. Simple,
2. Reliable,
3. Flexible,
4. A platform.
1. Slackware is simple. This means I can look under the hood and figure out what does what. It means I can troubleshoot problems (which are usually caused by me; Slackware as it ships is tight). It means there are fewer moving parts which can break.
2. Slackware is reliable. Patrick takes a very conservative approach to maintaining the distribution -- new packages are added to -current only when they are needed, they are tested together with the rest of the system (all officially supported packages), and if problems arise they are either fixed or the package gets reverted to the last-known-good version. When everything seems really solid for a while, a new stable release is born. Stable releases by and large only get bugfixes and security updates for their ten year support cycle. This reduces churn, helps guarantee that any given package will be problem-free, and helps guarantee that packages which depend on each other are not incompatible.
You say you use -current, which is somewhat more stable than most Linux distributions, but is far more prone to problems than a stable Slackware release. Slackware's reliability might not be evident to you until you have used a stable release.
3. Slackware is flexible. Slackware's package management system is non-constraining. Slackware's init system is easy to modify (init scripts are well-structured and organized, and require only bash skills to understand, troubleshoot, write or adjust). Slackware lacks mandatory automation which locks the user into managing the network in a specific way, or their filesystems, or their graphical environment, or any other thing in Slackware. It provides a solid base on which you can make any kind of system you want.
This also implies that Slackware will let you shoot yourself in the foot in any way you like. Fortunately, per "Slackware is simple" it's also relatively easy to figure out what went wrong and sew your foot back on.
4. Slackware is a platform. By this, I mean Slackware provides a comprehensive foundation of official libraries and services. To port an application to Slackware, that application might need to be adapted to accept the versions of libraries and services used in Slackware, but once it has been ported, it benefits from the stability of using proven, known-good libraries and services.
This is in sharp contrast with the chaotic, formless free-for-all approach embraced by most other Linux distributions, where an application's dependencies are installed alongside system components, despite never having been well-tested for compatibility with those system components, nor necessarily well-tested by the wider community for their suitability of use. Maybe the upstream developers tested those dependencies on that distribution, maybe they didn't, but they certainly didn't test them as well as the packages in a Slackware stable release.
This has given rise to the phenomenon of "dependency hell", and is a predictable consequence of abandoning traditional release management practices. Proper platforms do not suffer from "dependency hell".
Slackware mostly avoids "dependency hell" by making sure all of the dependencies are well-behaved together to begin with. I say "mostly" because installing third-party packages from unofficial repositories can still lead to "dependency hell". Everyone can name their favorite-to-hate sbo package which depends on other sbo packages which depend on other sbo packages etc, which can lead to quite a mess.
Porting a package to Slackware requires more effort up-front by maintainers (here's looking at you, Alien Bob!), but avoids putting the burden of assuring correctness on the shoulders of end-users.
A cross-cutting concern that touches on points 1, 2 and 3 is the init system. The init system which shall not be named would negatively impact Slackware's simplicity, reliability and flexibility. Slackware does not use that init system, and I hope it never does. This makes Slackware a bastion of sanity in an industry gone mad, and for this reason alone I will cling to Slackware for as long as I am able.
Your priorities might be different from mine, but by my priorities, Slackware is awesome!
Using Slackware "since" SLS-1.0.3 (or 1.0.1 don't remember but kernel was 0.99pl09), this is just for history and i like surfing LQ on my old P4 (2.4 Ghz 2Go ram) throught vncviewer (bcauze that machine is too old to run firefox properly) connected on an old dual-core machine running vncserver! And this is cool :P
1. Simple,
2. Reliable,
3. Flexible,
4. A platform.
1. Slackware is simple. This means I can look under the hood and figure out what does what. It means I can troubleshoot problems (which are usually caused by me; Slackware as it ships is tight). It means there are fewer moving parts which can break.
2. Slackware is reliable. Patrick takes a very conservative approach to maintaining the distribution -- new packages are added to -current only when they are needed, they are tested together with the rest of the system (all officially supported packages), and if problems arise they are either fixed or the package gets reverted to the last-known-good version. When everything seems really solid for a while, a new stable release is born. Stable releases by and large only get bugfixes and security updates for their ten year support cycle. This reduces churn, helps guarantee that any given package will be problem-free, and helps guarantee that packages which depend on each other are not incompatible.
You say you use -current, which is somewhat more stable than most Linux distributions, but is far more prone to problems than a stable Slackware release. Slackware's reliability might not be evident to you until you have used a stable release.
3. Slackware is flexible. Slackware's package management system is non-constraining. Slackware's init system is easy to modify (init scripts are well-structured and organized, and require only bash skills to understand, troubleshoot, write or adjust). Slackware lacks mandatory automation which locks the user into managing the network in a specific way, or their filesystems, or their graphical environment, or any other thing in Slackware. It provides a solid base on which you can make any kind of system you want.
This also implies that Slackware will let you shoot yourself in the foot in any way you like. Fortunately, per "Slackware is simple" it's also relatively easy to figure out what went wrong and sew your foot back on.
4. Slackware is a platform. By this, I mean Slackware provides a comprehensive foundation of official libraries and services. To port an application to Slackware, that application might need to be adapted to accept the versions of libraries and services used in Slackware, but once it has been ported, it benefits from the stability of using proven, known-good libraries and services.
This is in sharp contrast with the chaotic, formless free-for-all approach embraced by most other Linux distributions, where an application's dependencies are installed alongside system components, despite never having been well-tested for compatibility with those system components, nor necessarily well-tested by the wider community for their suitability of use. Maybe the upstream developers tested those dependencies on that distribution, maybe they didn't, but they certainly didn't test them as well as the packages in a Slackware stable release.
This has given rise to the phenomenon of "dependency hell", and is a predictable consequence of abandoning traditional release management practices. Proper platforms do not suffer from "dependency hell".
Slackware mostly avoids "dependency hell" by making sure all of the dependencies are well-behaved together to begin with. I say "mostly" because installing third-party packages from unofficial repositories can still lead to "dependency hell". Everyone can name their favorite-to-hate sbo package which depends on other sbo packages which depend on other sbo packages etc, which can lead to quite a mess.
Porting a package to Slackware requires more effort up-front by maintainers (here's looking at you, Alien Bob!), but avoids putting the burden of assuring correctness on the shoulders of end-users.
A cross-cutting concern that touches on points 1, 2 and 3 is the init system. The init system which shall not be named would negatively impact Slackware's simplicity, reliability and flexibility. Slackware does not use that init system, and I hope it never does. This makes Slackware a bastion of sanity in an industry gone mad, and for this reason alone I will cling to Slackware for as long as I am able.
Your priorities might be different from mine, but by my priorities, Slackware is awesome!
WOW! That was a megalodon[1] bite!
[1] A prehistorical shark species, with dimensions like today's blue whale.
Last edited by LuckyCyborg; 05-23-2020 at 09:08 PM.
Heh :-) I've never left left, but I've made sojourns with other distributions.
From about 1997 to 1998 I was using RedHat Linux (pre-RHEL/Fedora) to make my DEC Alpha Multia go. It was pretty good, very Slackware-like in those days. My x86's were all Slackware though.
From about 1999 to 2002'ish I used a lot of FreeBSD because its kernel was more stable under heavy load than Linux's. Not Slackware's fault at all. The Linux kernel was just problematic. It got a bit better with 2.2.x, and much better with 2.4.x (Slackware 8.1 eventually replaced FreeBSD on the servers). My workstations and personal computers were all Slackware.
In 2008 I was hired by a CentOS shop, and I installed CentOS on my workstation, which was horrible. I reverted it to Fedora Core, which lasted for a while but was too unstable for my liking. Eventually I gave up, installed Slackware on my workstation, and tested my software on a rarely-used CentOS production server as needed before deploying it to production "for real".
In 2011 I was hired by an Ubuntu shop, and I installed Ubuntu on my workstation so that I would be developing/testing software in the same environment as the one used in production. I came to regret that decision horribly, moved the Ubuntu disk to an old beater PC to use as a personal dev server, and installed Slackware on my workstation.
In 2013 I was hired by another CentOS shop, and decided to install CentOS 6 on my workstation again, because surely it was better by then. It was not. Again, I found an old beater PC, transferred the CentOS-booting drive to it and used it as a personal dev server while running Slackware on my workstation with a new hard drive. Now that we've migrated to CentOS 7, I've retired the underpowered dev server and run my tests on CentOS 7 VM instances under Vagrant/vbox on my Slackware workstation.
Today I have a CentOS 6 box at home for running software on my Xeon Phi coprocessor card, but I'm trying to figure out how to make that work under Slackware. The rest of my personal systems are all Slackware, and at this point I'm pretty sure that's not going to change.
Been using it for 19 years ... it can do anything I want it to .... and I don't have to deal with what other people decide I want. I run and configure as I want things be it GUI, CLI or headless SSH or UART.
That being said, I recently set up a 'Pi Zero with Rasbian Lite for a project. I have virtually no experience with Debian, however, I believe with the knowledge and experience gained from my years with Slackware, getting things up and configured to my needs was a simple matter.
Besides that I'm a deadhead from way back ... even attended some concerts back in the seventies .... lost a few brain cells there.
Last edited by justwantin; 05-25-2020 at 07:39 PM.
Reason: tyop
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