At one point I wondered if there were any plans in the future for a live CD version of Slackware (Slax is not the same), either from Pat, himself, or from a dedicated third party. But then I realized that this just wouldn't make sense. With most of those liveCD distros you don't really have to do much after the install except user administration. On Slackware, however, you usually have to at least setup X (eg. xorgsetup, etc). Doing this and more auto-magically on a liveCD to me just isn't a true representation of what the system is, which defeats the point.

Also, I personally like the fact that I don't have to go though all the live cd bs before using the standard setup; It is much quicker.

Err ok. What do you want from us then? I still don't have any idea :/.

It is obvious from your comment that you have not played with Slackware for a long time, if at all.

Eric

My opinion is just the opposite.

For someone who wants to learn Linux, there is no better distro than Slackware. It is not hacked
because things don't work. If something needs configuring, there is a file to configure it and you
will have access to it. If you want to build software, then you have the kernel headers and all
other necessary software tools to do so. The kernels that ship with Slackware are vanilla, not
hacked and patched like Debian, *Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE, etc.

You can do no better than to make a full install of Slackware-12.1 and begin to learn Linux.
You will find everything lines up with the published Linux Standards, such as the Linux
File System Standard. If there is a problem with software that was missed by the Slackware
team, you can email them and it will be fixed.

Slackware is stable and simple, and provides you with an operating system capable of multi-tasking
unlike any other.

As for recommending Slackware to a beginner -- if you can't download an ISO image, burn a CD,
and complete an install -- you have no business trying to run a Linux operating system. You need
to find someone who can install, configure, and setup a computer so you the ignorant user can click
and have things happen.

Linux was never designed for users who don't read documentation and learn how to run the
system. That is the purpose of Windows, and that is why all versions of Microsoft
Windows are not capable of multi-tasking like Linux, are vulnerable to virus,
worms, trojans, etc., and generally require high maintenance or reinstallation after
a period of time to keep the system operating.

Au contraire....my comment is based on the fact that I have worked with Slackware quite a bit. It is the default distro on my current laptop, and it may very well be my next default on all machines.

My current default on the desktop (2 place) is a distro that I DO recommend to newbies: PCLOS. I recommend it because it is easy to install, because it defaults to KDE, and because it uses the Synaptic package manager. Reasons that I do NOT consider include speed, control over the details, etc. The average newbie could care less.

More about package managers: I am hoping that this aspect of Linux gets promoted more. Several times a month, I answer posts here with some variant of "use the package manager". The modern package manager is--IMHO--one of the major discriminators where I can unequivocally tell people that Linux is better than Windows. For many newbies, I fully expect that the following statement is only an annoyance:

"We really don't believe in dependency-checking package managers, but--if you feel you need one--here are a few you can try. (By the way, none of them are as good as Synaptic.)"

I see major advantages in Slackware and I am eager to learn more about how to manage it, but it is not for everyone, and I will not recommend it to anyone who has little or no experience setting up a system.

YMMV....

Hi,

my name is Carsten. I'm a member of the easys development team. If interested, please have a closer look at the website of the project:

http://easys.gnulinux.de/en/index.php/Main/Philosophy
http://easys.gnulinux.de/en/index.php/Main/News

easys is 100% Slackware compatible. it is intended to make the first steps with Slackware easier.
easys will not prevent a newbie from undergoing a steep learning curve ;-). On the contrary. Please have a look at our user docs:

http://easys.gnulinux.de/en/index.php/Main/Docs

We plan to release a demo Live-CD, but it's not yet ready.

Thank you for reading.

Best Regards,

Carsten

OK, I will no longer talk about parasites. Let me explain a bit better what I meant.

I had read the information about easys before of course.
- I was looking for the sources of the easys distribution (as required by the GPL too by the way) but was yet unable to find them. Will these sources and scripts that create the distro be made available? It is like with Vector and Zenwalk - they too use Slackware and create "a better Slackware" but fail do distribute their changes to the original Slackware as well as the source code of the packages.

Here lies the difference between a real fork and derivative distros like Easys. A fork will change over time to become a new distro with it's own qualities - look at SuSE (Slackware fork) and Ubuntu (Debian fork). In comparison, Easys takes the bulk of Slackware, adds some GUI tools, and re-brands it. On the next release of Slackware, the same process repeats itself. This is not what I call a fork. You let the Slackware developers do the 'hard work' to provide a stable base and then claim that your distro is stable. This is not an accomplishment of Easys though.

I hope that the future development of Easys will show that you are truely deviating from Slackware and become a distribution that stands on it's own feet. If not, my original opinion of Easys stands.

Eric

Hey easys fellows ...

While basically stealing another man's work, you should at the very least have a native English
speaker proof your website. Bad grammar is one problem, spelling and punctuation are others.
But what really made me laugh was:
This should be Keep It Simple Stupid ...

I'll let those who have studied English draw the obvious conclusion from that.

Hint: the world wide web has Google and Answers.com and Dictionary.com, etc.

Behalten Sie es einfach, dumm.

Thanks to translation.com

Hi,
After reading your take on this issue, I too will look a little deeper into the easYs source and GPL. They do present a GNU/Linux in their intro.

As I stated before this is not personal and I do think that a recommendation of forks can lead some to the Original.

Huh????!!!! If the development of Linux distros by branching off of existing work is "stealing", then there a whole bunch of criminals out there. Do you mean to imply that there any license infractions in the easys distro?

This is a major sticking point for me as well; it's a big part of the reason that I don't care for LinuxPackages.net either. The GPL obviously requires making complete sources available from the *same* place the binaries are obtained, but aside from that, it's just the polite thing to do. It's *very* frustrating that some projects don't seem to understand that.

Agreed.

Another sticking point for me is something that both they and Slax seem to be encouraging. According to my website stats, I'm getting a lot of hits from http://easys.gnulinux.de/en/index.ph...neRepositories and a post in the Slax forum. On one hand, I'm grateful for the exposure, so I'm not really complaining in that regard, but in the case of the Slax forum, there is a direct link to my OpenOffice.org package, which a lot of people are downloading and then making a slax module from it. Rather than raping bandwidth from me, it seems that the polite thing to do is for someone there to make a slax module from my package and then distribute that module directly (thereby using the bandwidth of someone affiliated with *them*). In my case, it's not as big a deal, but for Eric's repository, the "forks" who are recommending usage of it are causing more traffic on slackware.com from people who don't even use (or support) Slackware.

And always remember, folks, when you install any GNU/Linux distro or any free/open source software, you are depriving Microsoft of profits. Didn't Steve Ballmer refer to open source stuff as "a cancer"? Well, Steve, don't worry about the Linux community - they're all too wrapped up in distro rivalry to be a threat.

pixellany,

IMO stealing is taking something that belongs to someone else
without asking their permission. If you want to use open source
software and package it your own way into your own operating
system, that is one thing. But basically taking someone else's
hard, and continuing work, and just rebranding it is stealing ... plain and simple.

Using Robby's bandwidth is not stealing. He posts links on the
net and offers his stuff for free. If he doesn't want someone
leeching it, he is free to block their IP, netblock, or whatever
it takes.

There are many ways that easys is taking from Slackware without
paying for the efforts. They could start with asking Pat V. and
the Slackware core team if they agree to easys using what they
have worked very hard on (Slackware) and putting the easys name
on it.

The same thing applies to Slamd64 IMO. They don't even bother
to change the name from Slackware to Slamd64 in files they get
from Slackware. Lazy ...

brianL,

Nah, in checking out possible notebooks to replace my piece of junk
Toshiba, I've even looked at Macs. Today I saw a nice Mac Book Pro,
I think it is called. Only 24,000 yuan! Geez, my rent is only 15,000
yuan per year. Why would I pay that much for a mobile computer?

If Mickey$oft offered an OS that performed like Slackware, at even a
reasonable cost, I'd be willing to check it out. Do they?

What does "Behalten Sie es einfach, dumm" translate to in English?
Your "translation.com" site offered nothing at all.