I came to Slackware to escape the systemd and, a bit more importantly, the ridiculousness of all the other "big" distros [Debian, RedHat, Fedora, 'Buntu] and their derivatives. I also came to Slackware because I finally built up the knowledge base of L/U-Nix to be able to successfully install, configure, and run it. And, PV seems like a legitimately neat human-being, which is not something I can say about the majority of my fellow humans. (I'm more or less a pessimist)

I'm staying for the stability and independence. And Studioware/Slackermedia [which I am so glad I found] and the really great community of users. I have not seen this level of cooperation in any other distros' userbase. A few derivatives, maybe, but not the parent projects.

I wish I had made it to Slackware sooner. I'd likely have twice the knowledge/expertise as I do now. But, you gotta start somewhere.

I'm currently running Slackware64 on one of 3 rigs. Crappy, awkward, HP Pavilion g series g4. This rig has given me nothing but problems running other distro's, Audio in particular. Installed Slackware and BAM! it just works. Not only that, but it runs faster, even using KDE (though I prefer xfce, KDE isnt exactly spry on this box). Even firefox is surprisingly snappy. And I was under the impression that you had to be fluent in no less than 5 programming languages and never leave the CLI in order to run slackware. Luckily, for me, the reputation of being "Legendary Difficulty" doesn't appear to be deserved.

Slackware is soon to be installed on all my other systems (a little Dell Mini netbook and an Alienware M17x). I'll be dual booting Win7Ultimate on the Alienware (still a handfull of games that I can't quite get to work under Linux).

I still plan on keeping tabs on tinyCore, Puppy, antiX/MX, LinuxBBQ (more of a community than a distro), and Void, but, I think I can finally stop hopping distros.

I'm almost bummed with how well put together Slackware is. I installed, rebooted, configured, updated, installed some slackbuilds (Studioware), and now I just have a fully functional system that seems to require little to no attention from me. That's an unfamiliar feeling LOL. Like, it just works now. Other distro's would have me updating, reconfiguring, reinstalling, etc. at least every couple days or so.

Oh, yeah, and the fact that slackware is a complete package, with all the development libraries/tools installed in a base install is pretty great. No installing additional software or libraries to start getting down with some programming. Its all just there. Waiting for me to learn how to use it.

I really just can't say how delighted I am to finally be with Slackware and the community. I hope to be able to contribute with more than just kind words in the future.

Long Live Slackware!

12 members found this post helpful.

My first proper intro to using Linux was Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. I had messed around with LiveCD's just a year before it's release. But this one i actually installed, and it was great at the time. I absolutely loved it. Although, i became to hate Ubuntu as months went by, as the release cycles usually caused broken updates, making you (recommending) you do a fresh install. So i started distro-hopping to find something different. After reinstalling a new distro pretty much every 3 weeks or so, i settled with Arch and FreeBSD on a dual boot. I really loved the simplicity in RC style configs to manage system daemons etc. Arch was ok, and i had a good experience with its KISS attitude to software, however systemd came along and i literally went and installed Slackware for permanent use.

I've always loved FreeBSD, and it would be my OS of choice -- but it does lack in some hardware support compared to Linux. After having used the ports system and the PKGBUILDS in Arch Linux, i immediately fell in love with Slackware slackbuild scripts. It's an almost identical concept. I've also come to love lack of dependency tracking.

I initially found it hard to manage, so i did run Salix for a while to help get into Slackware, and that was great too. I think i've been running Slack fulltime for almost 5 years now.

Slackware is definitely my favourite Linux distro. But i do feel i prefer FreeBSD in many ways, it just isn't as viable for modern hardware/desktop use in some areas. Why Slackware? Because it's Linux done right. It has so much in common with FreeBSD i feel, and that FreeBSD is a descendent of UNIX, Slackware must be the most UNIX like Linux distro out there.

6 members found this post helpful.

I started to use Slackware because I wanted to learn more how GNU/Linux worked. I now use Slackware because no other well supported distro will allow me as much freedom to have it my way. Most distros rather hold your hand and tell you what you can or can not do while Slackware won't complain if I want to break my system by removing glibc.

3 members found this post helpful.

Hi,

I contributed to this thread earlier and have followed to see fellow LQ members who find Slackware their OS. I wanted a stable, configurable and reliable UNIX-like OS that did not cost me an arm & leg or wasted time. Slackware has been my OS since PV's first release and will continue as long as PV maintains this great Gnu/Linux.

It does amaze me that some find Slackware difficult and will not recommend to a newbie. I say that with LQ Slackware forum and the great contributing LQ members anyone should be able to test drive via a Slackware64 Live ISO. If you want Slackware -current then use for 32 bit Slackware ISO

You can get loads of information for Slackware Live at; https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:liveslak?s

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

2 members found this post helpful.

I was running FreeBSD on my personal computers in the mid-90s, but I felt my choices in terms of hardware compatibility and software availability for common tasks were somewhat lacking (in comparison to Windows, which was why I didn't totally abandon Windows until sometime between XP and Vista, and have never looked back since). It was about this time I heard of this new OS called Linux. Tried other distros, but systemd wasn't around back then; other distro's System V init scripts turned me off. My choice of Slackware was because its init system was similar to FreeBSD's. Nevertheless, I stuck with Slackware over FreeBSD for much the same reason as you -- the hardware (and software!) support isn't where Linux's is.

I'm with you on Slackware being the most UNIX-like out there; it is indeed Linux done right. However, because of its steep learning curve, and its heavy reliance on the command line for even the simplest administration task, scares many a new user away, preferring other distros to do the work of configuration and maintenance for them. However, I find that Slackware is the best precisely because it places the responsibility of administering your system in your hands, so that you control what updates occur and when,and not entrusting it to some mega-corporation (not naming names!) which doesn't care in the least about the end user, and will do what it wants, when it wants, how it wants.

It's not like it's all that difficult to keep up with updates, anyway. I use an RSS feed program (QuiteRSS) to keep track of updates in the slackware64-current ChangeLog (which I follow), and then use the excellent slackpkg to do the updates. Couldn't be simpler, IMO.

Long live Slackware!

2 members found this post helpful.

THIS ^^

I have to add that I do recommend Slackware to beginners exactly because the net maintenance effort to have it run and keep running is so much less than so-called "user friendly" auto dependency resolving systems and so much more open and simple than systemd systems. BTW what, other than the very rare truly serious vulnerability, truly compels any updating? I can think of really only one - a major change in hardware such as going to a Skylake CPU where you need a newer kernel. 99% of systems require zero updates.

I'll say it again. If anything goes badly on my Slackware systems, I know where to look because I just did it. Period.

5 members found this post helpful.

I started using Linux when in graduate school. The department PC's were running a very unstable Windows 3.1 so I used to do my work in a Civil Engineering lab filled with Sun workstations. Then I came across Linux. I got a PC specifically to run Linux from SLS diskettes. Linux was rock solid and at the same level as the Sun OS.

I started using Slackware when SLS ended its operations and I have been using it since then. I never understood the RedHat package management tools (didn't have time for that I guess).

I would love to use a distribution with dependency based package management but I have appreciated over the years the freedom to install packages with custom parameters. Indeed, for many years I needed to install and run softwares coming from other research groups, sometimes those packages needed special versions of the Linux tools. Maybe some time in the future I will feel the need to simplify my management tasks and go for Ubuntu. But for now I am still with Slackware and SlackBuilds and sometimes LFS. That's a good way to keep up to date I guess.

1 members found this post helpful.

Most of the "convenience" distros "conveniently disable the root account and don't even have a runlevel for multi-user command line (no X). Thanks, but no thanks.

2 members found this post helpful.

I can remember a day my dad came home and one of his patients had given him a TRS-80. He had absolutely no interest in the thing at the time, but I knew about computers only because I was a pretty hard-core sci-fi kinda kid (I think this was the mid 70's IIRR, had to been as I graduated high school in '80).

I was pretty excited to try it out but didn't have a clue about how to go about it other than getting that big ol' floppy disk in correctly and starting the thing up. Other than that I piddled and piddled with it trying 'commands' that I'm sure had (and still don't, heh) no meaning whatsoever in the computer world. I guess I kept at it for about a week and finally gave up. My school had no such thing as computer classes, and I knew no one who had anything to do with computers.

When I was in the Navy ('80-'83) one of the guys in the section that ran the computers that controlled all our radar equipment I operated kept trying to get me to swith over to that group, but by this time I figured computers and learning programming would be way too difficult because of the sort of bad experience in earlier years.

Then in 1993 I decided to try it out after having seen a Mac vendor in the mall one day. I'd tried one of them out, but didn't like the mouse or the big lumpy machine. So one day after work I stopped again at the mall and went to Sears and they had computers, Packard-Bell's (ugh!). As far as I was concerned or knew, it was a top-of-the-line and I bought one.

It sucked! It had some really strange start screen that was inside something like a house with a few rooms - like a den and library and such. It was a strange OS and I ended up hating it with a passion and then one day I saw somewhere a package that contained MS '95 and it said I could install this in my computer. That was all I needed!

It sucked too, blue screens all the time, lock-ups, etc, etc, but it was still better than the garbage that came stock on my machine.

I then started to get into wanting to build my own systems. I was learning all about the hardware on the internet (another bad first experience starting out with AOHell) and what was what and so on. It was about a year later I finally got the gumption to build my own complete system and it was sure nice, for the time.

Eventually W98 and then W98SE came out, they weren't much better than W95, but I knew of nothing else except that ugly Mac and the inability to do with the hardware as I wanted on one like I could my own system. So, I used them, hated them and eventually loathed anything to do with MS and Bill Gates (I said it then and still say it - if Bill Gates came to my home and offered me a million dollars to swith back to using Windows, I'd beat him silly, tear up his check and sic my dogs on him!).

One day, I got sick and tired of the blue screens of death and all the other troubles W98 constantly gave. I realized I was constantly tense when sitting at my computer because I was constantly worrying when it would lock-up or something and screwup whatever I was doing at the time. I was also constantly worried about viruses and which anti-virus I should have and on and on. I was literally *hating* being on the computer anymore!

So I started a search for other OS's. Early in February of 2000 I came upon 'Linux' in my search. Found places I could download for free. This was a major hassle simply because all I had then was dial-up, but I didn't care...I was that sick of Windows.

I think I started with Mandrake, and it was sorta okay but it was clunky and wasn't very intuitive. Then I found Redhat. It was a little better, but still not quite doing it for me. i wasn't about to give up though because both of those distro's gave me hope still that there was something far better than windows out there. When I found 'Linux', and decided to start to try to use a distro, I *literally* went from Windows to Linux overnight. I dual-booted for maybe a month or so, but when I found I simply wasn't booting into the Windows partion I finally reinstalled SuSE over it and used the whole hdd.

I finally came upon SuSE 7.3 IIRR. It was easier to use than the other distro's I tried up to then, so I stuck it out (mostly because I was also tired of it taking three days to download each distro! lol). I liked the install thing, YaST. I was a good concept, but found that an rpm based distro is a real PITA when it came to dependencies (and again it also didn't help having only dial-up. Believe me, I learned all about patience during the years of 1995 through to 2012! The day I could finally afford and get satellite was almost a miracle to me!).

During the time I used SuSE and up through to the day they screwed up and said they were going to collaborate with MS and other deceitful entities, I'd tried out other distros here and there, only a few, but kept coming back to SuSE until their screwup. That's when I started my 'search' again for something I could use that was 'better'.

I finally came upon Slackware. I think it was in Distrowatch.com where I read up on it, so I finally was able to get it to try it without having to wait three days for it to download as I'd also found on Distrowatch the great folks of OSDisc.com that would download and put on a CD for you any distro you wanted for just a few dollars. This was fantastic for me and I jumped on it.

Got my first Slackware in the mail, I can't remember if it was 13.1 or 12.x. Anyway, I liked it so much, I stayed with it by then going to 13.37, etc and still with it now, it's *immensely* easier to build on/with, *immensely* easier when dealing with dependencies, and txz is just so much nicer than rpm's. Unfortunately I will more than likely not get anything after this version now that it's got that STD of pulse audio in it and screwing up anything and everything audio. I'll keep my 14.1 going for as long as I can, and I'll begin playing with a BSD (I now have Dragonfly on a virtual machine on my system) and if Slackware stays with this pulse audio abortion I'll simply install a BSD over this 14.2 ssd and move on I suppose, albeit unhappily and with mourning.

2 members found this post helpful.

Hi,

Memories of my TRS-80 days. I built my own design for a external interface since the cost for one was beyond my means at the time. Moved to CP/M and would use DOS when my employer needs required use of DOS. In 1993 PV released his first Slackware and I jumped on board to have a UNIX-Like OS. Never looked back when I installed on a new Zenith 8086 boxen. I still have a lot of hardware in storage. I wonder if any would boot, maybe try it in the near future.

My first experiences with computer were with IBM 360/20 and use Assembler among other languages. I was able to move to UNIX without much trouble since I used DEC hardware for a long time.
My days at the University LABS required UNIX use and I wanted a UNIX at my home LAB but too cheap to buy a off campus license so when I found Slackware it was a perfect fit for me.

This thread has awakened memories of years past with my computer uses or needs.

Have fun & enjoy!

1 members found this post helpful.

Have you actually tried it yourself? You can't judge 14.2's pulseaudio setup from reading this forum, because this is where people specifically gather when they have problems. And remember that this place has been knee-deep in problems with ALSA and HDMI for years.

5 members found this post helpful.

@ FTIO - If you saw a recent thread i authored "pulseaudio - love it or leave it" you probably know that I resisted pulseaudio since I haven't had problems with and actually like ALSA for many years now. If you stuck with that thread then you also know after dumping pulse and getting by with apulse, a few difficulties brought me to the same conclusion as PV - Like the Borg, resistance is futile, not because it's authoritarian (it is) but because it has helped more people than it's hurt. I still think it's like a lot of software LP authors - a solution seeking a problem - but at least pulse isn't too awful since it still isn't the base system and only manages what you already have.

It is now and will remain so for awhile still possible for most users to choose between 3 scenarios

1) uninstalling pulse and bluetooth with it and running alsa only
2) configuring an on-demand chooser
3) going default with ALSA managed by pulse

With those options on just one aspect of computing, even for me who runs my box as a DAW, I really can't allow for denying myself Slackware's Latest and Greatest. I've kept my 14.0 32 bit install as a multi-boot option but I find I go there less and less and that's likely a good thing. You can always just try it and choose for yourself from experience.

4 members found this post helpful.

It was 2003 and I had never owned a computer. A friend set me up with an old Compaq Wave running Windows 3.1 and left me to it. Right from the off I was intrigued. I had no internet connection so I just whiled my time digging around in the system files, trying to see what was what. Doing this I soon borked my Windows installation and ended up only being able to boot in to DOS. So I loaned a book on DOS, played with that for a short time.

The same friend came round and installed Windows 98 for me, leaving me the disc just in case. I found it *really* frustrating. It would grind and whir for about 15 minutes on login, becoming unusable. Even opening a folder was torture. I hated it.

I wandered in to WHSmith, a major UK newsagent, and headed for the computer magazines section. There was Linux magazine there with a disc on the front. It said RedHat 9, complete operating system. I was more than intrigued and rushed home with a copy and within 2 hours Windows was gone and I was revelling in Linux amazement. It was fantastic.

I bought more magazines, found Linux Questions and registered. I was reading everything I could about Linux which inevitably put Slackware on my radar. The internet said it was *the* one to go with if you wanted to learn Linux. A magazine had it on the their disc. I had by now heard of it and while RedHat was a real eye-opener it did have a lot of point/click. From what I had read I understood that Slackware was the one if you really wanted to learn. I went for it. It was the best thing ever! I absolutely loved it and I couldn't even start an x server!

14 years later I'm still here. I run TWM on top of the latest stable version and I can't really see me going anywhere else, ever.

A huge thanks to Pat for absolutely everything and of course to Eric, Robbie, Willy and everyone who's ever been involved in this, the greatest operating system on the planet.

And finally a huge thanks to all the folks here in the LQ Slackware Forum for all their help over the years, both directly and indirectly. For installing and running Slackware, for posting their experiences here, their help, their problems, their frustrations!

Long may it continue.

7 members found this post helpful.

Why do I use Slackware?

1. It's hands on and simplified.

2. It's easy to manage and use.

3. I learned Linux from Slackware (and even broke into FreeBSD, OpenIndiana, and other flavors of UNIX thanks to Slackware).

4. It's fun to watch the compiler when you use SBo (actually it's freaking addictive).

5. I know it's going to work and be dependable as my choice of a Linux system.

4 members found this post helpful.

I absolutely agree with this^^
Also, everything just seems to run so much faster than other distros that only offer binaries. KDE and Firefox being the most notable examples in my case. And you don't have to rely on anyone but yourself to make sure any extra features make it into the package you are using. FFMPEG being the best example I can think of for this.

2 members found this post helpful.