I use slack simply because I use Linux on my laptop. Ive tried allmost all the distros and have found many of them to be buggy on older laptops.

Currently I am running mandrake 8.2 because i needed to help a friend get his system configured.

As soon as Slack 8.1 comes out i will be installing it and then doing an LFS build so i can optimize slackware even further for my system.

I dont use KDE, Gnome or any of the other shiny fluff GUI's. I use blackbox for speed and a nice clean desk top. I use lots of command line because it is much less resorce sucking.

under Mandrake or RH you must fight the GUI to use commandline. In some cases you must fight the OS to install the apps you want Or remove the extra junk from the system. This sort of difficulty is absolutly unacceptable on a lap top with the changeing demands I place on it in many other enviroments.
With slackware i do not have this problem unless i am remiss in my configuration.

Sides I love the look on a sysads face when i sit down with my laptop and plug it into his net work, get my reading, call up a text editor and suddenly i am on the system. I tried this with Mandrake and it failed miserably.

Please forgive my spelling.

To answer your question what's so good about Slackware: VERY LITTLE!

I'm sick and tired of command line fanatics (no names given :D) who for some reason don't even want to have the option of using GUI setup tools. The command line is a truly great tool to have available from time to time, but you have that in whatever Linux distro you use. What is so freakin' bad about being able to choose??? In Red Hat and Mandrake you can choose, in Slackware you can't, that's the end of the story.

If you for some reason need a very slimmed down distro, then Slackware does serve a purpose, point taken, but otherwise there's nothing good about it.

I have had Slackware installed for some months now, and here are some negative remarks I have:

* Slackware uses BSD type configuration as opposed to System V configuration which is the common Linux distro standard. So, remember, whatever you've learned by configuring Slackware may not automatically apply to the rest of the Linux world. Is that the best way of learning Linux?

* As a direct result, you'll have a lot of trouble installing some programs on Slackware cause certain configuration directories and/or files will simply be missing.

* The required use of boot and root disks during install feels very ancient and really deters me from installing it ever again. However, I'll admit that the install process itself is very good for being text-only.

* Sound detection! Want Slackware to detect your sound card? Forget it! You'll have to do it yourself! And they don't include any Red Hat like command line tool for that purpose if you expected to have any help. That's I guess part of the "learning process", but I'm the type of guy who wants to learn things by using and exploring the OS, not by force or necessity before I even get started. First getting all to work, THEN exploring the system. You can do that in Red Hat or Mandrake, not however in Slackware cause you get stuck right away in the start...

But for everyone up for a challenge, and still thinking about Slackware, why not try FreeBSD instead? It's not "Unix/BSD-like" like the Slackware author calls his distribution, it IS Unix/BSD, the original itself and apart from the BSD kernel (as opposed to the Linux kernel) most things are the same (same shells, although different default shell, same desktops and window managers, etc). You even got Linux binary compatibility for running Linux programs on BSD. The installation is somewhat messier than for Slackware, but then you don't need any boot or root disks and it's SO easy to install additional packages from the net during install...

Oh, and I forgot to mention the ultra-cool little red FreeBSD daemon which Slackware doesn't have :D

Although I do miss the true SysV init scripts that provide a standardized method of starting and stoping services, I've had very little trouble finding my way through Slackware's init scripts.

I do think that Slackware (and most everyone else) needs to move towards complying with the Linux-Standards-Base, which includes SysV init.

Funny, I actually have more trouble with this sort of thing with other distros. Of course this is another case for the Linux-Standards-Base compliance.

The CDROM image IS bootable. What other ways do you want? It is true that Slackware doesn't have a MS Windows installer mode (like Caldera) but this sort of thing just seems morally wrong to me.

Granted I tend to have odd sound cards, but it is very rare when RedHat's "sndconfig" actually configures my cards correctly, Just last night it mis-configured an old Cardinal DSP 16.

(Side note: Last night I tried out the latest "Virtual Linux", It's a version of Mandrake 8.1 that runs entirely from a CDROM. Since Virtual Linux has moved to compressed file systems on both the CDROM and the Ramdisks, it really speeds things up where it is not much slower than running on a real hard drive, as long as you have a decent amount of memory. It was a very usable system once I dealt how the sound, video, and keyboard got mis configured by the installer. You know, all the kind of things that brought me over to Slackware in the first place)

Nothing wrong with FreeBSD except the kernel is less versatile, and you have to compile a lot of the apps yourself. Installation is not really much of a challenge either, you just have to find and read the docs. Which is pretty much what you have to do with Slackware.

Of course the beauty of this opensource world is that nobody is trying to force you to use Slackware. If you would rather use Redhat, go for it. Based on your complaints, I would recommend SuSe and Mandrake and LycOS/Desktop (formally Redmond Linux) as well.

GIVE ME A FREAKIN' BREAK!!!!

Ok, so you've installed Slackware to see what it's all about and found out that it's "different" from most of the others out there! Oh no, what to do? Well, if you were to research a little bit, Slack is the only distro outside of a BSD to still comply with the TRUE linux standard that originated from the BSD kernel. So you say why not try a BSD? Slack is very BSD-like. OK that's the first contradiction. You say that Slack doesn't use standards that make it harder to install programs, yet you suggest using BSD in which you need to compile most things yourself. There's the second contradiction. I'm guessing you've used RedHat religiously and when you tried something different, you didn't know what to do. Calling Slack worthless and good for nothing is one of the most childlike, un-thought out responses i've ever heard. I can do everything and better in Slack than Redhat or mandrake. Yes I DO use a GUI and no i'm NOT a commandline freak. But then again, that is where things originated. If you want something to configure your sound for you, detect all of your hardware, then sit like a paralized monkey on your desk, go buy Windows. I suggest a little more research and depth of understanding before making such statments.

I agree that that those comments were somewhat out of line taz.devil, but you know everyone has an opinion which isn't always well thought out.

I don't know how much you know about linux linuxfreak but unless you use Mandrake, RedHat, or some similar distribution you will have to do alot of manual configuration. With that said, it is IMO that reason alone is what draws perhaps 80% or more users into using linux or bsd, configurability and control are two must have things that windows has a lack of and linux/bsd has in abundance.

I say to you use Redhat and enjoy it, but for lack of knowledge please don't post a bad review.

Oh and one last thing, if you want linux that runs from cd try knoppix, I really enjoy using it when I'm away from home plus it has an auto-configuration that is simply amazing. I put the disk in, boot it up, type in knoppix screen=1280x1024 and in about 2 minutes or less I'm looking at a fully functional debian woody kde desktop where the only thing I have to do is modprobe my nic driver which elude's auto-detection for some reason.

Thats it!!
you have convinced me to put Slackware on my main computer.
right now i have slackware on my old computer alongside windows. I have FreeBSD and RedHat on my main computer, but i'm sure there is room for two more OS's (i'm gonna add linux from scratch too.)

I guess my error was to post a lengthy reply to a previous post. I keep forgetting that kids nowadays don't have a long enough attention span to completely read it! Because I'm an old fart that is stuck in his ways, I'll make the same mistake again:

Let's see if we can clear some things up:

1) I (wartstew) am a Slackware user, for all the reasons pointed out by "Autobot" and more.

2) I was responding to a previous post by "linuxfreak" who brought up some valid points about Slackware even if most of us in this group don't agree with them.

3) "linuxfreak" carefully explained his issues he had with Slackware, without breaking down into a childish rant like the one displayed by the aptly named "taz-devil".

4) I don't believe that "linuxfreak's" FreeBSD recommendation is a contradiction. I believe he was suggesting that if you want a completely manually configured, command line OS, why not "go all the way" and go with BSD. I don't completely agree, but at least I understand the point. It was my point (not "linuxfreak's") that you often have to compile apps yourself in BSD. This is not from a lack of standarization, but from a lack of precompiled binarys, besides compiling source code is traditional in the multi-architectural world of Unix/BSD.

5) Slackware is NOT BSD-like except in its non fancy and non graphical install and its BSD like init script structure. If you don't believe me, try making a statement like that on a BSD news group and see what happens to you! Also there is NO Linux standard! It was never designed to be strictly based on BSD. This lack of standardization is one the criticisms of Gnu/Linux distributions, and why my statement about the "Linux Standards Base" group which is attempting to set some standards (Yes I know their choices are are controversial. It seems they mostly patterned it after RedHat because of it's popularity), at least it's something. The BSD people are very proud that their OSes are based on standards and often fight among themselves about it.

6) In "linuxfreak's" case, it seems he prefers BSD for his "hand tuned" OS, but wants a painless point-and-shoot installer for what ever he is going to use Linux for. This is fine, I hope he finds what he is looking for. I have mostly given up on these fancy installers (for now) and use Slackware instead. And yes, learning Slackware has helped me fix those failed installs from those other Linux distro's.

7) Thanks "Autobot" for the tip on knoppix. I briefly looked at it some time ago. They are the ones the modified loopfs to do compression. It seems to work great especially on slow storage media like Zip disks and CDROMS. I didn't realize the current distribution was as up-to-date to be based on Debian's "Woody". I'll definitely have to give it a try. (I hope I don't need to know German to learn how to use it!)

8) Oh, and as far as mascots, I do like the FreeBSD Devil. I also like the unofficial Slackware penguin smoking a pipe in the BoB Dobbs, "Church of the Creative Subgenuous" fame. Where do you think the term "Slack" came from anyway?

I'm very sorry wartstew, I edited my above post as it wasn't directed at you but linuxfreak.......oooops :D

SideNote: knoppix is in english now wartstew so you can check it out without need for translating.

SideSideNote: I hope this post made sense as I'm about to pass out from lack of sleep....Night-Night

I've said it before and I'll say it again....the good thing about being a slacker is being a slacker. Call me shallow if you will but I'll still be a slacker :D

Autobot's apology is graciously accepted. I am sorry about my terse comments as well.

Hopefully we can return to helping others with Slackware, which is really what us "Slackers" are famous for anyway.

As I have no idear where the thread has gone since I posted, i'm just gonna sit back and wonder. I feel the need to explain my post, yet it seems as though it was clear enough to understand. Wartstew: none of that was directed towards you i hope you see and that linuxfreak is whom I was replying (my lack of quoting error). I can see other viewpoints fine and I see his. Anyone can use what they want, i don't care, I just like to see posts that have more depth behind them than "I can't configure it without a GUI." crap ... I'm not usually a harsh or forcefull person so, but then again my name reflects my being, so go figure that one. Childish? May have been, but I defend what I believe, and that is, as Aussie said: P.S. Only as an informational sidenote to a posted statment about Slackware being not BSD-like other than init, i believe you will find that the tree structure differs from all of the other distros also and more closely resemble BSD.

Yes, my comment about this was mostly directed at Autobot, whom hopefully I've made peace with.

I guess Linuxfreak, was somehow expecting a GUI install, I sure that idea did NOT come from any of us.

Closer yes, but it is still a ways from being like BSD, IMHO.

Another side note: I think the official Docs to FreeBSD are wonderfully written! (OpenBSD's Docs are pretty good too.) They carefully explain what to do and why you should do it. If we had docs like that for Slackware, maybe there would be less complaints about Slackware being too hard to install and configure.

Anyway, Thanks for the reply and happy Slacking!

I can't really say much here that hasn't been already said. It's good to read about how much people appreciate slackware. There was a time when everyone I knew thought "linux" and "redhat" were synonyms. Slackware is by far the most "UNIX like" distro which in itself gives it a more hardcore feel. I started with slackware and I never switched even though I have checked out some other distros mostly on the job or on other peoples machines. I use X but I absolutely despise graphical configuration utilities, which is one reason I love slackware. In my experience, Slackware is also great in a server environment. I like how when you use slackware for a server, you don't have to worry too much about stability. You might not have the latest versions of things, but you know it is rock solid. I remember other linux users making fun of me for using slackware back when glibc 2 was coming out. Slackware was the last distro that I know of to make the switch and I was still using libc 5. That is cool in itself. Let the users of other distros have problems, fix them, and then slackware will adopt the code. I have had slackware machines pushing 300 days uptime and the only reason they were rebooted was for long overdue upgrades. SLACKWARE IS THE BEST. I rely on its stability in corporate environments and I have been using slackware exclusively since version 2.3.

i always go for anything that seems harder. I love to learn new stuff, and the only way to do that is by getting dirty. I first went into Linux to learn about it w/ RedHat, but after about a month of RedHat, i got Slackware cuz i thought i would learn a lot more about how linux works, and i have :D