I learned Linux back in the days when the most well known distros were Debian, Redhat, and Slackware - when Yggdrasil was still alive and Mandrake, Suse, Corel, etc... did not exist yet. I ended up choosing Slackware over Redhat after some bad experiences using rpm. Since then, I've tried Mandrake, Stampede (now defunct), Redhat, Caldera, and Gentoo. Slackware is still the one I use to this day.
The last distro I tried was Gentoo because its advocacy claimed that it would appeal to Slackware users. But I fell back to using Slackware after trying out 8.1 which is better than ever. For some reason, I never really got to try out Debian (I've heard that dselect is a real pain to use). There's not much I would want to change with Slackware. I'm very comfortable with it. There's very little to no bloat in it. I don't need fancy and complex stuff like Gentoo's Portage or apt-get. I find that once you know how to do stuff, these things actually often get in the way. Once you know how to use its packaging system, you will appreciate how unobtrusive and easy it is to work with. Check out my earlier post in this forum "A short and sweet Slackware package tutorial" for tips. I consider this knowledge *essential* to maintain a clean Slackware system and would have appreciated having known it early in the game. Any Slackware book that does not teach this simple, yet important procedure properly or give a tip on how to browse the installed packages info in /var/adm/packages using grep is simply not doing its job. There's a reason the Slackware package system hasn't changed much over the years (people might call it 'primitive' but I find it's actually better the way it is) and that's because once you understand how it works you really don't need much more. I don't need or want automated dependency-checking - in my experience, it's a _lot_ more trouble than it's worth. Slackware for me reflects the original Linux philosophy of a simple, clean design much better than its more heavily marketed competitors. Now that I understand the guts of Linux system better, I can see that Slackware adds virtually no additional baggage to the core whereas other distros pile on a lot of useless makeup. It also has been able to remain modern and up to date in the packages it makes available. > From: Dean Michael Berris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > oh, i overlooked that. i guess there arent many slackware users here > (and generally speaking) because mainly of its lack of popularity... > From: Jimmy Lim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > i guess not, since slacware is one of the oldest distribution, some of > the pioneer here in PLUG starts playing with it and in fact slackware is > the first distribution I saw here in the Manila, remember the Que's > Using Linux, with Slackware 3.1? _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fully Searchable Archives With Friendly Web Interface at http://marc.free.net.ph To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
