Why aren't all the Distro forums like this one?

Hi everybody,

Just a comment. I run three distros at home (Ubuntu, FC4 & 5, Mepis, and Slack). I occassionally seek advice and ask questions on all of these forums. Some of my questions are very novice in content and others do stir some interest. On many occassions, I receive ZERO answers on the Ubuntu and FC forums. But, no matter how novice the content or mundane the question for the advanced user, I HAVE ALWAYS RECEIVED HELP IN THE SLACKWARE FORUM. Why is that? Are the Slack users just more into helping others or are there just more advanced users available at any given time? Today is a perfect example. I asked a relatively newbie question and within 30 minutes had three replies. And, this has always been my experience in the Slackware forum. No one has chastised me for asking a silly question; no "go look for yourself" answers unless there were directions to the answer I needed.

Who knows. I am just pleased and thankful that I am a member of this forum. I look forward to the time I can offer the same help to others that the people here have provided me.

Thanks to all who read this.

Bob

That's ok, not a problem. But you could as anybody else do a search before asking questions. Same and same questions again irritate even the most patient person.
Slackware is much more than a simple distro, it's like having a hobby so your possibility to get help here is much higher.

Yep, the key is to do your own homework. If you're stumped and phrase your question correctly, and clearly with examples of output, we'll answer everytime.

As this forum is the main (official?) forum for Slackware there are many Slackware uses that lurk around here, whereas with say ubuntu there the official forum is over at ubuntu.org. Having multiple forums for the same distribution will scatter people about so there will be less people at any one particular forum. I don't have any real data to back this up, it just sounds like a plausible explanation.

And to add to what the others say, don't abuse people's willingness to help, at one point people do get sick and tired of answering the same mundane, novice questions whereby an answer can be found by reading an FAQ or documentation

If you want answers for most distro specific problems you are usually better off asking here and on the distros official forums. For example, the fedoraforum.org and ubuntuforums.org are very good resources for distro specific questions.

I might also suggest that many slackware users have been with linux for a while. I personally do not believe that slack is that hard a distro, but there are many that do and so distros like ubuntu have (I imagine) a higher percentage of new linux users than slackware. Also, other distros have unique ways of performing basic configuration routines. Slackware is a bit closer to the metal and so a slacker will generally know which config file to look at and edit regardless of the distro - though this is not always true. These things combine to create a user base on the forums that may be more willing to answer questions not specifically slackware related.

Then again I may be completely full of it.

my two cents:

i have slackware (and linux!!!) for less than month, i am very grateful to this forum because it helped me to get started. i find at least 90% of my messages very stupid now (after month of using slackware) and i still have stupid questions to ask.
i found that 99% or even much more answers can be found in this fine manuals (also i am still sometimes too lazy to sit and read them all; i ask questions)
my friends had experience on linux.org.ru forums - they say that the search engine is f?ck?d up there and the local guru are always eager to say that you suck :-)
people sometimes create a bad image of linux lovers out there

Franklin makes a good point. I have used Mandrake, Red Hat, Gentoo, Slack, and Debian. I didn't understand really anything until I started using slack. I recommend it to newbies because it really makes you learn how linux works. Besides, the package management in my opnion is one of the best.

Originally Posted by BobNutfield [snip] On many occassions, I receive ZERO answers on the Ubuntu and FC forums.[snip]

Being a Fedora lurker, I was curious about this statement of yours, so I did a search of all the posts you've made and discovered that there is only one thread in which you've made a post with zero replies. That was a thread you started in the "General" forum.

Now it's entirely possible that any replies you received were "less than useful," but I still think someone usually responded.

To PTrenholm...thank you for your comment, and this is true (I checked before I made the comment), but the I was not only speaking of the forums on this site, but of some other distro dedicated sites as well, particularly Ubuntu's forum. However, I have been greatful for whatever help I received in FC forum whenever it did actually help. Having reread what I have posted, I believe I should have worded it differently. I want to state empatically that FC is my "home" distro, the one I began with and will stick with from here on out (as well as Slack.) If I have offended any of the users of the other distros, I trully regret it. I installed Slackware because I happened to have it available and I was teaching myself partitioning and the grub configuration files, and I had heard the Slack "forces" you to learn a little more about Linux than some other didstros (no hand holding). But, when I installed it I quite simply fell in love with it. And, I just seemed to be getting more help in this forum to things I wanted to learn than I did in the other forums.

In any case, I have been using Linux long enough now and waded my way through enough of the other distros to know that I now will stay with FC and Slack (though Ubuntu will stay on my wife's machine, I won't be trying to learn anymore about it.) So, my sincere apologies to anyone who took exception to my comments. I really to love both distros.

Bob

My 2 cents: Slackware is one of the oldest distros around, and generally speaking its users are pretty rabid (myself included - if I could only choose one distro to use for the rest of my life, it would be Slack. To be honest, if it weren't for Slack, I probably wouldn't have bothered with Linux. Thanks to Slack though, I wouldn't trade it for the world.)

This is not to say that other distros are inferior (again, speaking for myself I am also a pretty big fan of SuSE) but at the end of the day, the old saying always proves to be true:

"If you want to learn <distro>, then install <distro>. If you want to learn Linux, install Slackware."

Taking things together, if it seems that questions posted in the Slack forum get more/better responses, I would say that it is probably because the regular visitors to this forum take Slack pretty seriously, and want to promote Slack. All distros are worthy of respect (after all, they are all Linux) but I think that for many penguins Slack occupies a special place in their heart

I have posted before that I think the Slackware forum here at LQ is top-notch. The mods and veterans are extremely helpful and friendly, and all the Slack users here really seem to want to help each other out.

Originally Posted by J.W. All distros are worthy of respect (after all, they are all Linux) but I think that for many penguins Slack occupies a special place in their heart

Well said and this is exactly how I feel.

"If you want to learn <distro>, then install <distro>. If you want to learn Linux, install Slackware."

From what I've used of Slackware and other distros this is not true. It's a very elitist way to put it.

I would amend that and say: All distros are Linux and each one is configured differently. Slackware is no expection.

By the way, you cannot flame me now because I'm currently posting this from DesktopBSD and not Linux

On the original question. I can answer it in three words (for this particular distro subforum at LQ): Strength in numbers - this is the official Slackware forum and that might be the reason why.

Originally Posted by Harishankar On the original question. I can answer it in three words (for this particular distro subforum at LQ): Strength in numbers - this is the official Slackware forum and that might be the reason why.

I've seen some other "official" forums with numbers that I would not put on the same level as the environment here, so I really don't think this holds much measure. To me it is nothing more complex than my longstanding observation that you have an incredibly knowledgeable group of individuals in this LQ section who will go to great lengths to assist and advise those who have a desire to learn. Also, they are in general extremely tolerant of other distros, OS's, and alternate methods of accomplishing tasks, and will not hesitate to make an equal effort to help anyone even if they are not running Slack.

I've seen some other "official" forums with numbers that I would not put on the same level as the environment here,

While LQ in general is a very good forum, we have a *lot* of Slackware users here. Yes, it's nice to have knowledgeable people, but the more people you have, the more expertise there is to go around.

It also helps that Slackware users at LQ are quite toned down and friendly compared to other places I've seen on the net where they were quite elitist and arrogant and flame other distros quite freely and without restraint.