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

Originally Posted by Harishankar The question is, should every programmer be forced to do assembly/machine level coding?

the answer comes with another question: would he/she like to be a good programmer?

Originally Posted by Harishankar I don't think there's anything universal about the Slackware package management system. I should think DEBs and RPMs are more popular.

Though, a lot of linux users don't know how to install software from source (i.e. tar.gz packages), mainly because they hadn't need to so far. I dropped Debian and Red Hat because of their difficult, clunky and absolutely not-user-friendly package managers.

Originally Posted by cwwilson721 That is why I like Slack. I can easily 'get under the hood'. On some other distro's, you get the feeling that is forbidden....

that's the very nice thing about Slackware. You can always 'get under the hood' with any other distro, though on Slack is more natural

the answer comes with another question: would he/she like to be a good programmer?

All good programmers need not know assemby. What an assumption you make!

I dropped Debian and Red Hat because of their difficult, clunky and absolutely not-user-friendly package managers.

That's purely your opinion. There are thousands of users of Debian who will disagree...

Another thing. I will repeat once again. There is nothing sacrosant about any distro. It's elitist to say that you learn Linux when you use Slackware while you learn <distro> while you use <distro>.

That's the only point I wish to make. Praise Slackware all you want, you're entitled to be positive. But I hope that people won't automatically start denigrating other distros because they use Slackware and feel that they're cool dudes for that reason... the worst aspect of this is that they wouldn't have used any other distro, but feel free to denigrate them as they please using a kind of elitist argument that I mentioned.

rickh mentioned My own 'truism' would be that if you want to learn Linux, get Slack ... If you want to learn to use Linux productively, get Debian.

That's so true and hits the nail on the head. Thumbs up to you!

Elitist again. I am productive in Slackware,Windows XP, 2000, 2003, ME, 98,95, Mepis, and OSX.

It all depends on what you want to do.

Elitist Debian snobs,now.

Maybe it's time to stop this thread.

I think that everybody has made his point very clear, that nobody is about to change his mind, and that the current discussion has nothing to do with the OP's statement.

Originally Posted by rickh Just a quick comment on the thread. The eagerness of slackware people to help out others on this forum is obvious, and that's a good thing. In my own observations, Debian and Slack have by far the best support community here. One of the reasons I switched from Redhat/Fedora was exactly that.

Exactly

Originally Posted by rickh I would caution you all, tho, to be cautious about encouraging newbies to use Slack because, that way they'll really learn Linux. The conversion from Windows to Linux is pretty overwhelming anyway, and by the looks of some questions I see, quite a number of people bite off more than they can chew trying to dive directly onto that deep water.

You rarely ever see anyone from this community saying to 'Start with Slackware', mostly for the reason you stated: It is a bugger.

Originally Posted by rickh My own 'truism' would be that if you want to learn Linux, get Slack ... If you want to learn to use Linux productively, get Debian.

Short answer to that load of bull puckies: You're an elist Debian ass.

You can be 'productive' in ANY os, be it Windows (All flavors), Slackware, Mepis, Fedora, or Debian It all depends on the tools you have available, and what you wish to accomplish.

Originally Posted by Harishankar All good programmers need not know assemby. What an assumption you make!

I make the assumption that the good programmer shall learn assembler if he/she needs to

I wanted to develop on Java, so I needed to learn C/C++, so I learnt assembler, turbo assembler and pascal first, among other "things"

I wanted to develop on PHP, so I needed to learn HTML (which isn't a programming language), so I needed to understand ASP, C++, javascript, et cetera

Originally Posted by rickh My own 'truism' would be that if you want to learn Linux, get Slack ... If you want to learn to use Linux productively, get Debian. There are, however, lots of reasons for people to choose other distros; some of them are even GOOD reasons. Anyway, a nod of approval to the the Slackers from me, but ... Debian Rules!

This makes no sense what so ever.

How is using Gnumeric, AbiWord, Scribus, OpenOffice - you name it - ANY different
on Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, Fedora ....

I don't use my OS to be productive, I use programs to be productive. I'm an end-user. If I worked as an admin for a network, then your statement would have more validity. Perhaps that's your perspective and that's what you meant.

To me, if I have a stable box and programs that work I can be productive. I have 4 operating systems on my desktop. Windows 2000 pro because I spend 12 hours a day as a financial analyst and I need to have Microsoft Office and a handfull of other windows-only applications. Slackware with 2.4.32, Slackware with 2.6.15.6, and Debian Etch are my 3 Linux flavors of choice. My server runs Slackware and used to run SuSE 8.2. I use linux exclusively at home unless I need to bring work home. I have work to do later on a spreadsheet with 42,000+ rows of data. Gnumeric "might" be able to open it, but I doubt it. I won't even try OpenOffice or Koffice. For this type of thing, the most "productive" OS is windows.

This thread, and my earlier comment was regarding why the knowledge of config files "might" make a slackware user able to apply some knowledge to problems on other distros whereas users of other distros "might" be limited if they are only familiar with their distro's configuration tools. Additionally, more slackware users have used linux longer. This does not make them more knowledgable, nor does it make slackware better, it just means there are a smaller percentage of linux newbies using slack than say Ubuntu. That also means that although I might be a slackware user now, I bring to the table knowledge of RedHat, SuSE, Debian, because I used them before using slackware. The above could really be applied to ANY linux user that has invested the time and effort to learn linux regardless of what distro they use now.

These other comparisons seem like fan-boy bull to me.

Slackware is a pretty good distro, but I'd seriously challenge the statement "I'm learning Linux now" because I would like somebody to define what "Linux" is. To me, every distro is as much Linux as Slackware and there's nobody who can define what they mean by this term "Slackware is Linux". I mean, that comes across as very elitist to me when many Slackers use that on forums.

Another thing is that, having used Debian and Slackware I have to ask: why bother with Slackware? I mean if manual dependency resolution is supposed to be good, I don't see why something that takes a few minutes on Debian should take hours of compiling on Slackware. I mean, there's no inherent learning involved in issuing ./configure make and make install. Hunting down dependencies manually is a pain and a bore after a while and I seriously need to ask "what is the learning involved in that"?

As an example, take audacity. If I need to install audacity on Debian, I'd issue:

apt-get install audacity

and stay cool after that. Whereas with Slackware, I'd have to hunt down wxGTK and then compile that and then downloaded and compile audacity. Just getting the right version of wxWidgets took some figuring out. Yeah, I wasted a lot of time in that. The problem with Slackware is that, its official packages are far fewer in number and the moment you need program X which depends on program Y which is not available on the main distro, you either need linuxpackages or compile from source, neither of which are guaranteed to work without serious work.

Sorry to come across as a bit anti-Slackware, but actually I'm not. I'm pro-Linux and you should know that. But some of the "learning" that takes place when using Slackware is actually of dubious nature I feel and not really of much use.

After all, what do I gain out of learning how to install dependencies or learning how to issue "./configure make make install" etc. etc.

Elitist Debian snobs,now

See, this is exactly the problem with you people. The smallest criticism of Slackware sends you into a frenzy of hatred. The moment I said that Debian might be more productive, you see red and accuse me of elitism.

I never accused all Slackers of being elitist. I only said that the particular quote: "You learn Linux when you use Slackware" as being elitist because I have an objection to the basis of that statement.

I'm pretty sure that Slackware is a great distro suiting a certain section of the community. But to say that nobody learns Linux with other distros is a pretty negative and elitist statement.

That's all my objection was about. Please don't read between the lines. I reiterate that I have nothing against Slackware and if one uses its stock installation, it's pretty easy to use. I only think that moulding Slackware to your very specific or exotic needs might need a lot more work than people might wish to bother...

How is using Gnumeric, AbiWord, Scribus, OpenOffice - you name it - ANY different on Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, Fedora ....

Using these programs are not difficult. However, it might be another thing to get some of these programs to compile or run on Slackware without hunting down a lot of dependencies manually. Particularly those programs which require gnome and those libraries aren't on the main distro.

This thread, and my earlier comment was regarding why the knowledge of config files "might" make a slackware user able to apply some knowledge to problems on other distros whereas users of other distros "might" be limited if they are only familiar with their distro's configuration tools.

Even on the question of config files, knowing the way Slackware handles it config files is no guarantee that it'll work on other Linux distributions. Most distributions have different config file locations and sometimes even different formats of config files. Tell me, which would you consider to be "Linux" as such?

Take the ethernet configuration. Slackware has the settings in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf or similar file. Debian has it in /etc/network/interfaces. Some distros have it in /etc/rc.conf. RedHat uses it own scripts and config files. The question is "which is more Linux and which is less"?

OK, enough now and thanks for the debate. I enjoy it.

Everybody,

My original intention was to simply say "thank you" for the assistance I have received in this forum, not to start a war. I like Linux, and I am glad that I have chosen it as my operating system for my work and education. I regret mentioning a particular distro at all. I should have simply voiced my gratitude for the help I have received while I am learning.

If possible, wrap this one up. I could still use a little help every now and then and I don't to be blacklisted because I said something I intended to be a compliment.

Thanks,

Bob

If possible, wrap this one up. I could still use a little help every now and then and I don't to be blacklisted because I said something I intended to be a compliment.

Why? I mean it's not your fault... Every discussion has a natural progression and there's nothing wrong with the discussion going on at the moment. If you feel you're done and dusted with this thread, fine. You can always ignore it. But being the topic-starter doesn't mean you'll have to feel responsible for everything that goes on in a thread.

Regards.

I mention it because, reading some of these posts, I don't get the sense of "community" like I usually do here. In parts, it doesn't read as a discussion, it reads like biting competition about who's distro is better. And, soon after, I wrote another thread requesting help for something I thought would be fairly simple for an advanced user and I have gotten no response. Maybe the two events are not related, but as I said, I still need some help. I don't absord well from books but do catch on quickly when someone is able to relate their experience with a subject.

But, you are right. I can ignore the thread now. Said what I wanted to say.

Bob

But, you are right. I can ignore the thread now. Said what I wanted to say.

I can understand that. Sometimes we all need to lighten up a little (and that goes for me too).

There is no fighting. I am pro-Linux just as you are. What I meant to say is that no distro can claim a special status in this community. We all enjoy a little debate like this once it a while.

The reason I use so many distros is to constantly upgrade myself as a Linux user. No single distro (Slackware and Debian included) can teach a person everything about Linux. That's exactly my point. To learn Linux you need to learn as many distros as you can.

If you are a Slackware or Debian user and you need to administer a RedHat server, you still need to learn something different all the time. All Slackware skills aren't transferable to RedHat or SUSE or Fedora or Debian... This goes for Debian as well. An expert Debian user still has to learn other distros to use them properly. Every distro is still Linux, though each have different ways of doing things.

Moral? No single distro can claim to be the sole representative of Linux. Which is what is implied in that quote "If you want to learn <distro> use <distro>. If you want to learn Linux, use Slackware." And that's why I object to that quote so vehemently.

That, in a nutshell, is my point. And I hope that makes it clear.

Same and same questions again irritate even the most patient person.

I for one appreciate the easy questions. Thats how I get my post count up

Oh. This thread is growing up with each day. It would be interesting if some Gentoo users appeared here.

Originally Posted by /bin/bash I for one appreciate the easy questions. Thats how I get my post count up

Maybe I need some bot which could answer easy questions quicker than you.