1. There's no package management system.
Yes, you heard right, but hear me out...
Slackware has a package system. It's packages ending in .tgz Other package systems are .deb and .rpm. The package management system is Synaptic/apt-get for Debian, Yum for Red Hat, Urpmi for Mandriva, and so on. Slackware doesn't have a management interface for the packages, you have a couple of scripts to slap things in and then you're on your own.
Now, it's true that the package management interfaces on other systems are nice. But let me install about my twenty-fifth package and do my second upgrade, and the whole system is hosed up. Then I have to manually go in and fix stuff, except - oh, barnacles! - the system wasn't designed for mucking around in its guts! Slackware starts you out with you getting your hands dirty, but doing your own package management means you know exactly the why and how of everything down to the last byte. So once you've done it, you've done it right and never have to worry about it again.
2. Slackware isn't for slackers.
Slackware demands perfection. If there's a tiny little thing wrong anywhere, Slackware lets me know, and keeps nagging me until I have fixed it. It is consistent. Other systems try to do too much of the driving for me, which I wouldn't have a problem with if they never went wrong. But they do.
3. There are no clueless Slackware users.
Which means that when you need help, you can get it quickly. Post in a forum or chat where Slackware is the main topic and get an answer right away. "Anybody remember that Lisp predicate to have Emacs check whether it's running in the console or in X windows?" "(eq window-system 'x)!" "Thanks!" It's over that fast. Everybody knows they're on approximately the same level, so it just saves time.
4. Slackware is silly putty.
You can mold it and shape it from the ground up. This is actually true of any major Linux system, but with Slackware it's built with the assumption that you'll want to customize things your way, and then it gets out of your way and lets you do that.
5. Slackware has Dropline.
The Dropline Gnome project is an install for Slackware. When I first got Slackware 11.0, I was a little put off at Gnome not coming with it. But I am glad I stuck with it, because now that I've put in the latest kernel and put in Dropline, I've discovered that Dropline is one powerful package. It not only installs Gnome, but upgrades the whole system in one round shot. In the end, with just two stops, I ended up with the same setup that I would have had to dribble in one apt-get at a time for three months on Debian.
6. Slackware isn't destroying itself for the sake of converting five more Windows users.
What? I had to say that; give people something to flame about...
Slackware is unapologetic for being Linux. It is hardcore Linux with a sharp flavor of classic Unix and some BSD packages thrown in for good measure. Now, I know all the user-friendly minions are shambling to my gates to lob stones at me already, but I have just as much right to what I want as you do. I'm just as glad as anything that there is Ubuntu, Mandriva, and Knoppix for the new Linux user.
But sometimes, I would like a bike WITHOUT training wheels welded onto it, because I don't mind sacrificing a little safety for the sake of feeling the wind in my hair. Linux distros as they stand today are 90% dulled down so the new users don't hurt themselves. For experienced users we have about five distros left that haven't had the bad words bleeped out... the bloody scenes cut... the script and soundtrack remastered to appeal to the marketing department's favorite demographic... the story simplified and the punchy lines taken out of the dialog to shorten the running time to fit the limited attention span. That's it, about five distros that haven't been blended to a smooth puree. People really should try chewing their food again - it actually does taste better that way!
7. Slackware hovers at about the number 10 ranking in Distrowatch's popularity.
So when people like me say Slackware is their favorite, you know it isn't just somebody doing it to say "Me too." It's low enough in ranking to need a little rooting for the Underdog. And yet - it is, indeed, hovering! Steady. As opposed to some of the other distros, which bounce up and down like a NASDAQ stock the morning after a Silicon Valley arrest. It must be doing something right.
UPDATE: For those looking for links about Slackware (now that somebody asked):
The Slackware Home Page
Slackware tips
Slackware Essentials
Mad Penguin's Documentation project
Slackware Package Site
Handy archive of Slackbuild packages
My own review of Slackware 11.0 when I first got it, includes links to Dropline and a kernel-upgrade tutorial
UPDATE: Perhaps the best meta-link of all, Béranger has a flock of Slackware-related links, and a six-pack of Slackware-related opinions on the rest of the site to go with them. Flaws in Dropline are discussed elsewhere on the site, which don't impact me as I'm a Fluxbox-type who only needs the Gnome and KDE systems for package support.
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Comments:
My first Linu distrobution was Slackware, and it taught me how to use linux.
However, It did not(at the time of 10.1) have automount, and a normal user could not even read mounted cds....
Now of course I know there is a way to fix that "problem", but I want things to "just work" on this laptop, and so far Ubuntu has been the best at that.
I am hower going to try to switch to Sabayon(Gentoo) becuase of the power that'll give me over the system. Ubuntu has terrible control over boot-process, IMHO.
Any way,nice to see someone fighting for slackware, In a way it always suprisesme when I see Slackware in the Top Ten on Distrowatch.
And what's really killer hardcore -- go compile the whole thing up from sources without looking at the LFS book, and that'll be even more personal and fine-tuned than even Slackware! That's what I'm doing in my spare time, and so far (a week or so) it still won't INIT correctly :(.
Experiment, and good luck!
Well, let's get down to it, shall we? Am I the one screaming that Linux is too easy to use, that we should shut down Ubuntu and MEPIS? Am I begrudging other users the freedom of choice? No, in fact, I'm downright indulging. But, hello, elsewhere (other comments in other posts) outside the gates, here are whole mobs all scorning me for embracing the "elitism", using tools which I NEED - there is no other choice - to do my job. I use power tools to do powerful things or I starve - it's that simple.
250 distros for the Playskool crowd, five left for me. And many can't wait to shut those last five down. We'll see where they are in five years when the elitists aren't around to write more software.
It's about time someone said it... a distro for Linux users not windows/apple/{insert retard os here}. Been happily slacking since 3.1 and I don't think i'll be moving anywhere, love it...
I've only been using gnu/linux 9 months and wound up at Slackware and sticking with it.
I agree install 25 packages in debian,ubuntu they just break.
People claim it takes too long to set up a lan of slackware, that's hog wash.
All you do is install slackware and move over your premade packages into one folder, then "installpkg *.tgz" and walk away and it's done.
Don't have time to make your own packages you grab em' off of linuxpackes or slackbuilds.org It cannot be any easier than that.
In fact setting up slackware is easier than ubuntu IMO. A full install is done in 20 minutes or less, and the installpkg technique I mentioned above is done in no time. Setting up ubuntu, well 20 minutes to setup yea, but then you have to go thru the synaptic and wait for all the downloads, etc and it's dependency calculations. I always loved putting in ubuntu, their apt-get says your done, you reboot just to find the system broken.
SuSE...man I got tired of watching that clock spin.
And no matter what, every distro needs config file tweaking after it's installed, and it certainly can't be easier than slackware, you just copy over the few text files and perform the slight modifications you need an your done!
Long live our Divine Benevolent Dictator
All my servers run Linux, simply for the sake of performance. I have basically found it easier to tune a Slackware than any other dist.
My girlfriend still run Kubuntu though...
dependence problem most best is resolved by megapacks which each big prog put together with all necessary programs not present on the official slackware cds - nowadays its presumed that computers are so big that the whole official cds are installed - this f.ex. does slacky.it and is normal with comercial progs, or big progs - such like opera, Oo, mysql, flashplayer, vuescan
I recently was trying to help somebody get dialup working with Slackware on one of the forums and all he could do is complain about Slackware. I told him it wasn't newbie friendly and maybe he would be happier with a different distro. But he just kept complaining. Even went so far as to say it was Patrick Volkerding's duty to bow to the wishes of the masses as if this was some democratic process !
I haven't used Slackware yet, but I imagine it is in my future. At least to play around with it. Who know? Maybe fall in love with it!
http://www.linuxpackages.net
However, I have since moved onto FreeBSD 4.x on my handed-me-down P166 where I tuned it to do a lot of things.
However, I still have a package manager which makes things easy for me. Not the pkg (that's just about as crappy as the .deb or .rpm stuff), but the ports tree.
1. It is simple. What normally looks simple to the end-user actually more complex in structure, which means more things can go wrong. In slackware the likelyhood of things "going wrong" are much lower, due to its overall simplicity.
2. It is fast. Because of its being "no frills", it is considerably faster than, say SuSE (the distribution I used before I switched to Slackware)
3. It uses packages the way they are meant to be, with very few distribution-specific patches or changes. The kernel is the Linux kernel, so upgrading the kernel is very simple.
4. Slackware has BSD-style initialization files, which are simple and transparent. I use Slackware for the desktop, and OpenBSD for servers.
5. Slackware comes with lots of libraries, and there are no "development packages", so compiling your packages from sources is very easy. I use checkconfig to make my own slackware packages.
6. If you want some package management, there is slapt-get, which works like Debian's apt-get.
7. Although it is missing those easy-to-use setup programmes, once set up, Slackware doesn't need much attention. It just runs. And setting things up isn't as daunting a task as it might appear at first.
I recommend to people who want to learn and use Linux Server and Desktop.
For the packages I recommend swaret, it's a great tool.
PD: Beryl runs very well on Slackware, you have to try it.
I have 50+ distros, all of which have been installed at one time or another, but I only ever use Slackware. It was the first one I used almost a year ago, and I am very confident using it.
Other distros which have a package management sytem are easy to use, I just don't like having to google around to find the repository which contains the application you want.
Slackware's package management system is you, you are not relying on a program to make all the neccesary decisions, you do it yourself, it is more fun and you learn a lot too. Instead of looking for repositories, just go to the project page, download a tarball, compile it, make it into a package and install it, then you can keep the package somewhere just in case something terrible happens.
a very nice post, 100% agreed.
I too love to live on the edge without training wheels.
I'm also glad i can count on some things not to sell out to fit the cookie cutter mold.
I don't even use tgz packages, I usually go the old way configure && make && make install ... so far so good. Slack is more of a framework than a distro. It gives you a working environment so you can grow it. All the basics are there ... it just depends on you how far you want to go.
I agree it would be easier to mantain a set of systems with another distros (as stated earlier); For me slack is like having an experimental car where to test an learn, is my playgroun. But also since I'm so confortable with it, my distro is very fine tuned, so I can get lot of work done. Slack is one of the few distros that allows you to have your very own "distro". If something breaks you know where to fix it ... is the freedom of doing things yourself plus the flexibility and simplicity of everything around it what makes it son appealing.
I Like These Too But I Don't Have This Time To Do It :)
So Slacky Doughter Is Here :)
Opensuse
Keep up the good work,
Thanks
I'm planning to try again with Ver 11.0 of Slackware.
For a beginner coming to Slackware, are there any books or online guides you can recommend?