To play the Devil's advocate - I am a Redhat and Debian user. One of the main points I see being raised in this thread, is learning the internals of Linux.
I started out on RH4, and in those days, you still needed to know some internals. But using RPMs and a little mucking about, I installed a base system (non-bloated, which I might add is how I do all my installs) and then added RPMs as necessary. If I need to know whats in the package, I use rpm to tell me where it went and what it modified. My point to this email - one advantage I've found, is that when I work on clients systems, the majority use RH or Debian, I still know my internals as well as these distro's. IMHO - the cake and eating it too. Hiding behind my sandbags, in preparation for the flames, Stephan -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Karl Clements Sent: Saturday, 5 January 2002 10:43 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SLUG] Slackware anybody? I have been using slackware on my gateway/firewall machne for the better part of a yer i think, it originated as rh5 then slack 4 now slack8, its good it stays up for days/weeks/months on end (subject to power outages). I had no problem getting it going at all on my gateway I also use slack8 on my workstation, i didn't want to have a bloated install so i installed mostly the base packages then downloaded and compiled them, there are advantages to downloading and compiling over a packagemanagment tool a) you know where it will end up b) you can optimise it for your system c) you configure it with options you want I did have some trouble getting X going on my workstation but that was primarily because my video card and monitor suck, but after spending 20-30mins reading the XF86Config man file i was able to write my own config that worked. I think slack is a good distro because it doesn't have the bloat of others, and it is very easy to install. As for your questions,video is a kernel thing, slack8 does have isdn packages (plus the kernel aspect) it comes with kde2.1.1 -- Karl Clements "Everyone is stupid, its just the degree that varies" <reply who="gnudev" date="Fri, 4 Jan 2002 23:16:50 +1000"> > I am looking at taking up Slackware. After being a RedHat devotee > until they > decided to frequently release bloatware, and the risky GCC 2.96, I started > looking at Debian. Now I am looking more closely at Slackware 8.0 and I think > this is the Linux for me. > > I would like to know some things about Slack, like if it has a package > manager, can I adjust my video text mode (I like 100x40), can I use an ISDN > connection with it, is it stable with the 2.4 kernel option, will the > installer ask me if I want XFree 4.1 (even in newbie install mode? I can't > remember if I saw there was a 'newbie' installation mode), does it come with > the drivers for the GeForce II MX cards (or can I compile them after taking > them down from nVidia's site), is the KDE distro on it complete like that > with RedHat, and generally, are there any major high points of Slack over > others? > > Thanks, > James > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ > More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
