Because the so called Linux community has long associated Linux with those crappy and buggy monsters like Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva, etc.

So the trend is: ah, Linux, the cheap alternative to windows 98, eh?

And the rest of the press: yeah, cool!

99% of my fellow LUG attendants are ready to swear that Slackware had no user interface, whatever that means. I have met a relevant Debian developer saying this: "How can you use a distro that has no user interface in 2008?"

What a bunch of idiots!

You obviously are not a fan but no way is Red Hat or Fedora "crappy and buggy". I don't care for Ubuntu but I find Fedora offers a quality OS. To each his own.

I don't run Ubuntu, but, I do run Debian. Ubuntu is based on Debian and has apt-get, a very reliable package-management system. Slackware is my favourite distro, but, other distros have interesting, good features.
Each to his own:-)

I know what you mean! Where I work, in a college computer lab, IT recently upgraded our MS Office from 2003 to 2007 (whether we wanted it or not) because a lot of students had 2007 at home and were trying to open .docx files. I don't know how many different ways I tried to explain that '07 uses a new default format for saving documents that's not compatible with older versions of Office. Oh, and then there's the explanation of how to use Save as... to solve the problem. Half the time I might as well have been talking to a department store mannequin. These same people are the ones that say "I'm using Windows 20007 at home." Or when you ask them what version of IE they use, it's "I dunno."

Do you think people like that, if they saw the name Slackware, or any other Linux distro, in a headline, would know or care enough to read the article? The press knows this so they don't bother wasting resources. I have had a few ask me what Ubuntu is because they heard about it from a friend. When I say it's a Linux distribution the conversation goes like this: "Whoa! What's that?"..."An alternative to Windows."..."So, do I use it in Windows?"..."Um, no, you use it *instead* of Windows. You download and burn the CD, boot from your new disc, and it runs entirely from the CD without affecting your Windows files."..."That sounds too complicated. I'll keep Windows."

Businesses are different. If someone in IT is fortunate enough to make decisions they might choose Slackware. Managers, who most often make the decisions, tend to be attracted to buzzwords like enterprise and license and support. And they tend to suffer from tunnel vision so they only see RHEL or SLES. Especially SLES now that the buzzword Microsoft appears. And they tend to have problems with ear wax accumulation so they don't hear when someone offers other possibilities. If they saw something with the name Slackware in the headline they won't care enough to read it. The press knows this so they don't bother wasting resources.

This is very true. Having an "Easy button" where you can always call on some IT hotline is appealing to businesses whether they would really need it or not. Sadly, I've found that I sometimes knew more about the Commercial product than the people on the IT help hotline. Perhaps people just like having a place to put the blame if something breaks and if you install Slackware at your business you blame the IT person who suggested that instead of the fallible company who you're waiting on for support.

All in all, I'm fine with Slackware not being one of the "mainstream distros" because our community does fine without the press. I think trying to be mainstream would go against the beliefs of Pat and Slackware.

But, Slackware is one of the mainstream distros (at least according to distrowatch):
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

And I think they do give a pretty fair review of it there.

I think of "mainstream distros" as the top 4 in that list: Ubuntu, Red Hat/Fedora, Debian, Suse. It is for these distros that generally get the most software support from software developers.

I thought the review was OK. It said a lot of good things and caught the heart of the Slackeare philosophy. However, it leaves the reader with the impression that Slackware is not a complete distro in itself but rather a small unuseful core. It talks about the conservative selection of software but fails to mention that it contains most of the libraries you would ever need right out of the box. Perhaps the review has not been updated for Slackware 12, because I certainly think that it is a good distro for desktops and does not require that "much manual post-installation work before it can be tuned into a modern desktop system."

You are, of course, right, that this is yet another valid reason for the large number of available books about Windows.

What always surprises me: People, who are totally horrified if they even hear the word "command line" buy tons of books in order to learn really scary things like Windows batch and VBA programming...
I'll never get that...

gargamel

Check out distrowatch, have a look at the distros above Slackware in popularity ... now do you see?

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I've been using Slackware for about 8 years and have just switched to Ubuntu7.10 (64). I've even trialled gnome for a week ... it's not gone too well though: loved the eye candy (via compiz) and great for doing simple things, neat layout etc.. Found it impossible to get anything complex done though OOo wouldn't work, no tabs in nautilus, can't create links even, kwallet alternative was a complete mystery. Automated network widget kept screwing with my default route.

Even Dolphin is better than Nautilus, and that's saying something.

Ooo, rant over.