Since the start of the new year I have been struggling trying to find a new distro. There is nothing wrong with Slackware, I just wanted something new. I've been a Slackware user for about 4 years (since I started high school) and I really loved it, but I was starting to get lazy and I couldn’t get my DeskJet 722c to work so I decided to take a look at some new distro. My collection of distro that I choose were Suse Linux 10, Ubuntu 5.10, and Fedora Core 4.

Ubuntu 5.10
This was a very easy to install, it had very good hardware support, but the whole Debian thing really didn’t get me. Sure it had more a massive amount of packages, but other then that it didn’t offer me anything else. This is a nice distro, and I would recommend it to anyone who owns a computer, but it really isn’t my thing.

Fedora Core 4
I don’t have much to say about this one, other then it was really good. It didn’t make it up to Red Hats standard, but it was getting there. Even fixing all the removed content from the distro was easy, that being because of slackware, and me knowing how things worked, I had kde installed and that was moving really fast, it even upgraded kernels automatically. I was about to settle on this distro until a kernel update came out that did something unspeakable. Support for closed drivers was removed from the kernel, the only module I used was the nvidia one, but with that I backed up files, removed the disk from my desk and smashed it.

Suse Linux 10
This I would have to say is the best distro out there. Has a powerful admin tool, amazing hardware detection, it even found and set up my printer, and it is easy to tweak. I spend a good 2 months on this distro. I had full codec support and even got mplayer-plugin to work, I was on the apple web site watching there commercials, and had the nvidia driver working beautiful. With the release of 10.1 they also included support for non-open source programs. It even looked good which was a huge plus.

These distro were all great but they didn’t include the most important thing, Choose. With slackware I get to choose every single package that is installed on my computer, I can remove random packages and compile them from source and not need to deal with dep hell, that comes with Debian and Red Hat.

Lastly, I just want to say that I hate Pat, and all the other people that have made slackware what is today, thanks for setting the standard so high. Thats all I’m going to say before I install my slackware system once again.


~Andrew *a happy slackware user since 8.1*~

LOL!
Actually you could try VMware or QEMU and create virtual machines so you can run all those distros together without rebooting from one to the other (and run Slackware as the "host" to all those guests of course).

Cheers, Eric

I really don't understand your "hate" here? What did Pat or anyone who made slack what it is today do to you? They gave you expectations! Slack works, has very simple logic, lets you get your hands dirty, is stable, has a great community. Why hate this? Because you feel that you are comparing everything to slack? That is because you KNOW it works, you expect what you get to work like slack. Slack sets the higher standard, nothing to hate, I love it!

...........

Try archlinux.

Slackware simplicity and configurability. Great package management. A base install is probably the lightest install of any distro. Doesnt even have ssh, cups, etc. From there you can either build all your own packages from scratch with ABS or use pacman and only get what you need. All packages are completely up to date. All love it.


Soule

There, we've cut the fluff out of Andrew's post.

What he's trying to say is, Slackware is the BEST Linux distro, and once you use it and learn Linux you just can't get away from it.

Hear, hear.

Anti-MS- I think he was speaking tongue in cheek....

I also tried many different distros over the years and always returned to Slackware. I did learn that I was happier keeping Slack all of the time, setting up another partition or 2 to play with other distros. I would second giving Archlinux a whirl. Of course you have to give the BSDs a whirl at some point as well. Maybe even do linux from scratch if you get really bored.

If you are just bored try the 3 BSDs, lots of fun! I would'nt bother with the suse,ubuntu,mandriva,fedora types if you've been a slacker. Try crux,gentoo,lfs,DIY-Linux types. I'd also listen to Alien Bob comments. Funny post, great title, have fun!

Yep, been there, done that. Once you get Slack in your blood you're hooked for life.

Well here it is. The last time I'll boot into Windows (on my machine anyways). I think I'll never be satisfied with anything else but Slackware, so Windows is finally going bye bye. Hardly used it anyways this last year. Why did he have to give us COMPLETE control of EVERYTHING. WHY... Thanks alot Pat, thanks for nothing

Time to go swap my Motherboard out.

MagicMan

P.S. I'm really gonna miss reactivating Windows every couple of months

I think I'll crawl in a hole now *walks away slowly*. No really, I realized that about 4 hours after I wrote it. Longgg night! Sorry

actually, arch linux is pretty sweet...it'll never replace my slackware, but it's a nice challenge to learn, and i even found a support group of slack users in the #archlinux room on freenode....lol. i'd suggest arch as something "different" if you're looking....

*realizing of course whatever else you find, you'll always be back to slack....yup yup...

I know virtually nothing about linux, but Slackware is awesome. I tried Ubuntu and Debian on my laptop, but they were weird and foreign to me. I installed Slackware on it (I was scared it would be too hard to use wtih my laptop) and got it working. I love it.

I'm in the same boat, friend. Anything I try just doesn't compare to Slackware.

Personally, I've been Slackin' since a few weeks after 7.0 was released. Coming from RH6.0, I have extremely fond memories of the first time I installed Slackware. It was like a complete sense of liberation. My system did what I wanted it to, when I wanted it to - for the first time ever!!

My only regret is that I didn't discover Slackware earlier.