I wonder if there are more people on this forum who don't use Slackware anymore but read the threads and follow the changelog regularly.

If you are in this category:

1. Why did you stop using Slackware?
   
2. Are you going to switch back again and why?
   
3. Which distribution did you switch to and why?

Not exactly stopped using it, but moving away for Debian in some use cases. Mainly for production E-mail and Web hosting servers.

In case of E-mail. Slackware is quite capable and has the benefit of using quite new Postfix from SlackBuilds.org. But it's hard for me to do a fully virtual setup (virtual users, multi virtual domains, etc) mostly because PAM is needed for this. Probably it will be different story when Slackware 15 rolls out. Will see.

In case of Web hosting. Slackware is again very capable and hard to beat. Still as a hoster I cannot impose my will on clients what libs or extra daemons or external agents should they use. Usually it is much easier to do apt-get for whatever they wish to have than to write SlackBuilds for not supported (on Slackware) stuff (New Relic and its obnoxious plugins would be one example and no easily available PHP7 another). There is hope for the next Slackware, but not much.

To be fair I do use Slackware with great success in other cases. For example my workhorse laptop, virtualization platform with libvirt and lxc, various backup, file and irc servers.

It's great simplicity and not over automation of things allow me to have a pleasing, orderly environment. Debian is quite a mess in comparison. However Slackware does have some quirks that Debian does not. RC scripts do not usually support /etc/rc.d/rc.someservice status or reload. If I want to modify the order of service startup, I have to manually edit rc.M or similar files, which would be acceptable, but not nice since technically this is an intrusion into default order of things and thus my changes can be overridden if I'm not careful. Debian is great in things like that, because like it or not, Systemd is very powerful (overkill most of the times tough).

Hope this helps!

4 members found this post helpful.

I wonder if I can speak on behalf of my brother here, who is a Unix expert and used Slackware for years. He was the reason I developed an interest in it after he introduced me to it in the early 2000s. He stopped using Slackware because, in the end, he wanted an OS that 'just works', as they say. After decades of working with all types of OSs he finally reached the conclusion that "all desktop operating systems are crap". He ended up switching to Windows, as well as OSX. Even though, to him, Windows/OSX are not by any means perfect, he reasoned that if he was going to have a crap desktop he might as well have one that runs Logic and GarageBand.

I find this is something of a trend among some of the seasoned experts. Debian forum member dasein [quoted in my sig], was also a highly experienced *nixer, who grew increasingly tired of Linux, saying that "if Windows 7 were still the offering out of Redmond, I would be VERY sorely tempted to [use it]".

Is my brother going to switch back? I doubt it. He doesn't do as much computer work [recreationally] as he used to. I don't think he much of an interest in going back to it.

1 members found this post helpful.

It sure helps. How do you manage with the rc.M updates usually? Maybe you could use git to track the changes and revert them easily.

1 members found this post helpful.

I can relate but I still think GNU/Linux is a better compromise in terms of function/flexibility. Good thing I don't need proprietary stuff. I pick my hardware carefully.

I got sick of arguing for so long about moving to the 2.6 kernels.
Dabbled a couple of times since, but no chance of a serious re-commitment.

1 members found this post helpful.

It's about the user experience and what values are important to the user. For instance, I have a pretty beefy gfx card but, because the proprietary ATI drivers don't work in 14.2 [and I haven't been that bothered to look into installing Radeons], I'm pretty much limited to pixel graphic games. This is fine for me, because I'm doing a PhD and I don't have time to get involved with gaming. For me, the only vital programs are Libre Office, Evince, Chromium etc.

I have happily made the compromise not to play games because Slackware and its community arguably give me more, and teach me more, than gaming could do. As well as this, my course involves a bit of a FOSS element so using *nix is contributory to my academic learning. But I think this idea of using an OS that 'just works' is quite common among people who make Linux their living. Like the Indian restaurant waiter who comes home and only wants fish and chips, I find it's quite normal for advanced Linux workers to come home and just want to throw on Windows. But again, it depends what you want to do with your OS and what ethical values you hold.

1 members found this post helpful.

May I know what GNU/Linux distro or proprietary OS have you chosen as a substitute and why?

Seems it is wrong forum. Here are people who actually use () Slackware. Probably the question is addressed to jumpers, switching from one distro to another - I used many distros but Slackware was always present. Very unique comparing to other distributions. Considered difficult because of relatively small amount of auto-magic - which means you should know what are you doing. This can be seen as disadvantage - because the first experience comes from mostly Windows. I was lucky - I just broken my first Windows system - so I started to dislike it very much. I feel little sad because now many Linux distros they just follow the line of user experience as Windows. If it is aimed at personal users - it have no sense at all. Why to switch from one system to another if they both offer almost the same? The is curiosity - which is turning very fast to disappointment. It is absolute paradox - people say: hey it doesn't look like Windows. But if it looks like Windows - it is disappointing. Linux should be read: "Linux is Life new use experience".

1 members found this post helpful.

In home, i have a desktop with a nvidia GPU and a dual monitor setup, it requires for me several hours to make this dual monitor setup works properly, basically because i lack of knowledge of configuration of the X server and Nvidia GPU's . Also i have now less time free to learn and test.

I did not stop using Slackware totally, i have two virtual machines and one laptop with Slackware64 14.2 installed in each . My dailly use is not Slackware anymeore, but to acess banking online i do preffer to use Slackware.

I have to use Windows 10 in my work, is not my machine and i cannot change the OS (but i have one VM installed on it :-) , in home i also use Windows 10, it's just one OS that i am used to use and my family too, so is the second choice after Slackware.

2 members found this post helpful.

I am specifically interested in replies of the users who still follow the development and are active on this forum. I have another thread going elsewhere with the same topic. But if the moderators think the thread should be moved I will not complain.

Besides, not all the users of this forum use Slackware. I don't use it anymore and apparently I am not the only one. I would like to know more about the motivations of these users.

Very interesting thread

I started using Slackware 8 because it was the first Linux distribution I got my hands into (got it from a CD in a magazine). I tried others over the years but I always got back to slackware for its "Windows-like" behavior, this is, at the time Windows was something you installed and then used other software on top of it, and there wasn't a big "always update" mindset, so Windows stayed there, working, not disturbing your work in other programs. That is what I liked about Slackware, I got really annoyed by the "hey, somelib got updated to .0.0 to .0.1, let's update 50 packages" situation in other distributions. I understand nowadays the "always update" is a must, but those were simpler times

At some point I realized the truth behind the "any os can do what 90% of the users need 90% of the time": what it truly means is that when you do need that additional 10%, maybe once in a year, Windows would have a tool to do the job, while Linux would have 10 semi-complete tools which worked only for what their authors believed was their use case. This has improved in recent years, but for some cases there is still no tool which can compete with the Windows counterpart (e.g. Movie Maker). In my case, the problem was video conference, back in the MSN Messenger times.

So after a couple of years of using Linux exclusively, I formatted my laptop and installed Windows 7 on it, keeping Slackware in a VM. I found myself at home and working efficiently in a Linux command line, and since then every desktop machine I have used has had a VM with Slackware, but linux on bare-metal has been relegated to machines acting as servers, of which I usually have at least 2 or 3.

2 members found this post helpful.

I understand this concept very well but in my case I have a windows virtual machine to cover those borderline cases and, as a web developer, for Internet Explorer support testing.

I wonder why you didn't keep Slackware as main machine and relegated Windows to the virtual machine?

Are you going to share your own responses to your questions in post #1 then?

I have never actually switched from Slackware, but I have toyed with the idea.
If you operate in a corporate network environment dominated by Microsoft operating systems, or have a need for rapid deployment across multiple computers, or have a need for a demonstrable support path, then other distros offer solutions out of the box.
Slackware is a niche distro, which I say as a compliment, as it fills a space that allows the user to grow in understanding. I appreciate the learning environment that Slackware supplies. The price for that is the time taken to conduct the learning, which a corporate environment may frown upon.
As a Slackware user, I had no problems (apart from seemingly endless symlinks) dealing with capturing the important information and archived reports from a legacy database running under CentOS, and ultimately converting to a virtual machine running under Windows.

1 members found this post helpful.