LinuxQuestions.org - Why do you use Slackware?

- Slackware (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/)

- - Why do you use Slackware? (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/why-do-you-use-slackware-4175608156/)

Quote:

Originally Posted by SCerovec (Post 5772556)

:hattip:
Sir, you made my day :D

Slackware:
"Because You can see the ground while looking into the engine compartment"

...could just be my new sig ;)

Thanks! Glad I could help!

How I started with Slackware

Hello, folks!!

I started with Slackware in 2002 or 2003 i dont remember very well... i had 21 years old then and i wanted so bad to enter the Linux world.... i tryied a couple of distros in the lab of my University and i started liking Linux, for what i have readed in some places, Linux had much more power than Windows. SO, one day i was in the store buying some books and magazines and i saw one that included a CD with Slackware Linux "Perhaps the best distributions of Linux in the world" and i buyed that Magazine without thinking more about it. I dont know if was the name that was cool or the quote about Slack, but was inevitable!

Couple of days later i was trying to install Slackware in my machine from that CD... i managed to do the things with my MsDos knowledge... i managed to use fdisk aplying some common sense and voila, system was installed. but was sad for me to see that X windows doesnt launch in my machine, perhaps due to the processor or ram (P1 and 2 SIMM modules, total of 32 MB!). I never managed to do X run in that box but I installed Slackware several times for practice. and used the basic commands too, not too much, because i didnt realize the full potential of what Linux can do, only cp, rm, ls, man, and such things. In 2004 or 2005 i managed to install Slack with X in other machine (PIII) and started to learn more... to go more deep into Linux: to edit apache conf files, to compile kernels, adding and disableng functions, to move more confidently in bash and directory structure. to install some software from tgz, gz, etc..... Networking.... Samba, etc. etc.

and since then i was System Administrator with windows and used Linux sometimes for testing and for other general things linux can do very well, I distrohopped a LOT to learn more about things, but i just cannot forget about Slackware. What i felt when i saw that black CD included in that Magazine. What it feels installing Slack for the first time. The colors of the directories! in that time was quite impressive. And now being tested almost any distro and xBSD's i must say: Slackware is the best in the world. Yes, may be a little difficult, but all what i learned in Slack can be applyied into any distro and is posible to get results (i did it). Sometimes i feel more confident than others Linux users and maybe is because i know Slack. Plus system is very quick and very solid! heck i managed to install OS/2 Warp 4, perhaps the other OS i love the most!

Now i want use Slack as a primary distro and for my wokstations and servers. I think 2019 will be my final switch of OS.

Sad thing is a great percentage of the Linux community doesnt care about Slackware and is a shame. Because is a very rare Jewel. I came into here to read about Slackware opinions and i see so much people love Slack. in OsDisc.com people share very good opinions about Slack too. I hope Patrick Volkerding read all that good opinions about his system and i know it must know this, but i say to him that he created something very special, with a real and own spirit, and that thing is priceless. Chapeau, Mr. P.V.

oh! another thing: from this thread we can get so many quotes to add to fortunes!! Slackware is so cool system and so it is his community!

greetings to all!

It was early 1990's, and Microsoft was threatening to force a switch to their GUI style user experience, having been blindsided by the Apple Lisa. But I was an accomplished touch typist (>90 wpm at times) and taking my hand off the keyboard to move a mouse was anathema. I had used the NorthStar OS and Eunice (NCR's Unix), and was very comfortable with CP/M and PCDOS, having used them to automate test equipment for product life tests. So about the time MS-Windows 3.0 was released and shown to be almost usable, I began casting around for alternatives. MINIX was interesting, but Dr. Tannenbaum's determination to limit it to the teaching environment promised to be a problem. XINU was cute, but lacked the IO libraries and drivers needed to be usable. I did get to use it a decade later in a couple of terminals, but they had a much improved collection of drivers by that time. Unfortunately, those libraries were proprietary and only licensed to the terminal vendors.

Then I happened upon Soft Landing Systems, and their set of freely downloadable diskette files. I downloaded version 1.02 (kernel 0.99 PL 12) in the spring of '92, via a 2400 bps dial-up connection. I had purchased an Everex Step-386 box, and it installed and ran flawlessly. Unfortunately SLS folded their tents later that year, but the next summer I found that Slackware was a clean fork of the SLS system. Once again it installed and ran with no issues. I have been using it ever since. I also watched in disgust as Red Hat, Mandriva and others created the "Linux Standard Base" travesty, then drove it further and further away from the true Unix environment. Those boutique distributions have grabbed all the press and a lot of developers, but they can't compete with the clean setup and maintenance on a Slackware system. If Slackware dies and I have to switch, I will most likely go to FreeBSD, which is the next best thing to Slackware.

Yes, I obviously use X-Windows more now that arthritis has slowed down my fingers a bit, but most of the actual work is done in terminal windows or via SSH. Joe is still my favorite editor, since those key sequences have been burned in since 1984, when I first got WordStar for CP/M. But even ED is better than the card punches I used for the Fortran IV course at Drexel in '68.

... because Patrick Volkerding is the last sane human on the planet, that's why :-)

I was only going to say that I voted for #1 Slackbuild/building from source but I am invigorated and inspired by so many great stories, so I will expand some. I easily coulkd have chosen every possible voting option but I would add "because I can configure it to do exactly what I ask, with nothing 'behind my back', no more no less, and only when I initiate and/or approve it".

I "grew up" on DOS and OS/2 and before I sadly had to move on from OS/2 v5 WSeB, I had installed emx runtimes which allowed me to run numerous Linux apps and have Enlightenment replace the default Presentation Manager. At around the same time as Warp 3, I begrudgingly bought Win95 just to stay current with more clients. When I bought my first mobo with AGP, which worked perfectly in Warp 4 and 5, I was dismayed that it didn't work in Win95 and discovered it needed a single file of less than 100KB, called usbsupp.dll, iirc. I searched around the web and could not find it anywhere so I called Microsoft. They informed me it was not freely available but that I could purchase it for $50.00 USD while adding that if I was really smart I could add $30.00 USD and upgrade to Win98. Having experienced 20+ service packs of many orders of magnitude larger and more important than a lousy ~50KB given freely by IBM and realizing each one of the 20+ updates would have qualified as a whole new system with M$, I never again bought anything from M$ with the single exception of a mouse.

With my very limited experience with Linux under OS/2 I started looking for a usable Linux and found that many on TeamOS2 were doing the same. One fellow recommended Mandrake mostly based on it's i686 specificity. It wasn't altogether a bad experience until an "automated system upgrade" via the RPM package manager all but bricked the system. Thankfully I could still get to multiuser cli and with BitchX was still in contact with my favorite elitist IRC channel for Linux. I asked what everyone was using and the handful of most respected guys on there (shoutout to Alphageek and UfodZiner wherever you are) said "Slackware".

When I asked why, these guys that had tested 10s of distros downloaded for days on modems they most replied something like, "Stuff just compiles right on it". With such a crude yet revealing statement that told me almost everything I needed to know I downloaded v7 Slackware which was followed in a very short time by v9 and it has been my main ever since.

Over time I learned that Pat V was actually particularly and uniquely wise in that he obviously knows that things are good because they work which has nothing to necessarily to do with whether they are Old or New. That's an entirely separate issue. There have been refinements but no replacements for The Wheel. Slackware still doesn't assume anything beyond being a massive, integrated toolkit that just does stuff right What more can one ask for?

I was very tempted to check "everything", as I consider them all to be positive characteristics, but decided to go with "it just works" - even though that's probably more the result of the others --

Because it just works.

Slack was my first Linux distro back in the 90s and while I have tried just about every distro coming and going since then I have always found Slack to be the most stable, least buggy (for me) distro available. New and shiny can be fun for a bit, but stable and reliable is comforting when you're not in the mood for bug chasing and problem solving.

I've mostly run the stable release until this newest laptop wouldn't play nice with the 14.2 installer so I'm now running -current and it's more reliable and stable than many of the "stable" release distros I have tried.

I started using Linux in 1997. My first Linux distribution was Red Hat 4.2 running AfterStep and then Window Maker.

Three years later – in 2000 – after Red Hat 6.1 disappointed me I knew that just two Linux distributions could meet my needs: Slackware and Debian. I tried Slackware 7.0 and I was more than happy so I started using it at work and at home.

In 2006 my machines were compromised so I escaped from Slackware 10.2 to Debian 3.1 for a few weeks in order to make hacking harder and then I came back to newly released Slackware 11.0. Debian was – and perhaps is – a nice distribution but Slackware was – and still is – simply cool.

After six years with Slackware – from 2000 to 2006 – my system configuration became so complicated that I had to spend a few days installing and configuring the system. In order to make that simpler I wrote a set of scripts for system configuration reducing the required time from a few days to one minute or so.

I still improve my configuration scripts making my Slackware Linux configuration more and more sophisticated.

***

As for Debian and its derivatives such as Ubuntu or Mint I cannot grasp the idea standing behind the procedures such as:

Code:

sudo look_left

sudo look_right

sudo go_ahead

When I run Linux Mint for the first time I run these two commands just once:

Code:

sudo su -

passwd

Then it is enough to use command:

Code:

su -

and then run:

Code:

look_left

look_right

go_ahead

I suppose that Debian users prefer to use these multiple “sudo” commands because of their religious beliefs. I am not a believer. I prefer to use “su -” and then work as root. It saves the time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by w1k0 (Post 6005423)

I am not a believer. I prefer to use “su -” and then work as root. It saves the time.

I have used both su - and sudo, but I mostly use sudo on Linux and the BSDs. Any time that I don't need to enter the root password is a good thing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hitest (Post 6005440)

Any time that I don't need to enter the root password is a good thing.

Why you avoid to enter root password? Because someone is standing behind your back or because some more profound reasons?

Quote:

Originally Posted by w1k0 (Post 6005442)

Why you avoid to enter root password? Because someone is standing behind your back or because some more profound reasons?

Well if your machine has multiple user accounts on it then you'd need to share the root password with all of the users if you want them to be able to do administrative tasks, not a good idea. Whereas if you set-up sudo then the system account is not used. Also you can set-up sudo such that users are allowed to do set administrative tasks.
If you're the only one using your machine then su - is fine. Each to his/her own.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hitest (Post 6005445)

If you're the only one using your machine then su - is fine. Each to his/her own.

I am the only one. Thank you for honest reply.

I confess to using both when I need a root shell :-)

$ sudo su -
#

Since my user entry is marked NOPASSWD: in /etc/sudoers, no need to enter a root password, and "su -" sets up an as-root login environment all nice and proper.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hitest (Post 6005445)

IMHO a User's only responsibility AND permission for Administration can and needs to be limited to his own $HOME. That's all the Admin he/she needs if the PC or Network belongs to me. If family members or trusted friends want root access I'll give them a partition to install their own system. All a User needs to do is install uncommon or specific apps not originally included or simply preferred to be separate is to install in their /home directory

Quote:

Originally Posted by enorbet (Post 6005469)

[snip] uncommon or specific apps not originally included or simply preferred [snip]

in short games :D
(but not necessarily limited to only games)