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It seems like there are a lot of people who simply love Slackware. But my question is: what about it makes it so good? I've read around a bit and the only thing I found to separate it from other distros is that its installation is text-based and potentially a pain in the ass to install.
If you wouldn't mind clarifying this for me I would greatly appreciate it :D
Thanks,
mjk
Well, I barely work with it (only used it a few times in my life at my friend Ryan's house) but it's interface and overall performance is optimal and work's pretty good. Of course I prefer RedHat and OpenBSD to it, but hey :D
There are a lot of other distros that are text-based, including Debian and Gentoo, so Slackware is not unique in that respect.
Also, I've never had problems installing Slackware on any of my machines - it's always been Debian that's caused the problem.
If you're so scared of something not working right the first time then try CalculatorOS. It's text based to and does nothing but crunch numbers and spell funny words if turned sideways. It's also single user single tasking.
Hard to install? Read my tutorial.
It also prepairs you for work where UNIX is used, as Slackware uses .tgz files just like BSD and other UNIX OSs do. If you can't figure out Slackware you may not want to ever be an admin....Actually, if you use any key on your keyboard other than "D" to delete email, you're not an admin anyway.
Shouldn't this be in the OS forum?
Quote:
There are a lot of other distros that are text-based, including Debian and Gentoo
Linux itself is text based. It's Gnome, KDE, Blackbox, whatever that give it a GUI. (Of course Xfree86 usually helps...)
With the greatest respect, Moderators...............Operating Systems forum, please?
This one is interesting, to one or two of us at least.........hey no disrespect to the originator...............just please put it where we can "have it to ourselves"
:D
Dude, if this appears on the front page, it'll turn into a flame war, remember the firewall discussion?
It is fate.
I said in my post it should be in the OS forum. And it won't be put on the front page as it has dick to do with security.
Hey,
Sorry about posting in the wrong forum... :rolleyes:
But anyways, I've been looking around and I think I may download and try out Slackware when I get the chance. We have this old computer sitting in the garage that I want to install Linux on.
Thanks,
mjk
Hey Hey,
Before I get started, I have to get this off my chest... Spyder32... RH? EWWWW... Worst Linux distrobution ever. Nothing good has come from RedHat since 7.3.. I hear good things about RHEL, however RH8 and 9 were horrid operating systems, Windows was more reliable.
Now on to the question at hand. Even the text-based installs are simple to handle... there's really nothing to it.
Like D0pp139an93r said, all linux distrobutions are text-based... Linux is text-based and contains no GUI. Think of it like running DOS with Windows 3.1 on top of it. DOS is the operating system (Linux) and Windows 3.1 was a GUI interface (X11 (running Gnome, KDE, whichever). This only difference is that some distros (those designed for workstations) set the inittab to runlevel 5 (GUI) by default and those designed for servers set the inittab to runleve 3 (Console).
Like gore mentioned.. slackware will install .tgz files (using installpkg) which is a very handy way to do installs. There's a few ways that distrobutiosn install files..
BSD has it's ports system, which Gentoo has borrowed from to develop emerge.
RH, MDK and SuSE are RPM Distrobutions.
Debian has apt
and of course Slackware has installpkg.
The difference is that BSD, Gentoo and Debian will get the package off the net for you and install it automatically, saving you the work of finding it and manually compiling it. They've gotten to the point where on Gentoo you can now type emerge vmware and vmware workstation will download, compile and install.
Now there's been changes to these systems as well. Apt4RPM has been developped which works on all RPM based distrobutions and functions similar to Debians apt system. slapt-get has been developped for slackware and uses package indexes along with installpkg to mimic Debians apt. You also have swaret for Slackware which will update the distro, and download and install files for you.
SuSE comes with a really nice automatic update system (YOU -- YaST Online Update). Slackware, as I mentioned, can be updated using slapt-get or swaret, and Debian can be updated using apt-get. Any RPM based distrobution can use apt4RPM. Last I heard, RH was the only that charged for automatic update abilities.
Other changes in the operating systems are also evident. When using RedHat, SusE, MDK... you have /etc/rc.d which contains an rc. folder for each runleve (rc.1 rc.2. rc.3 etc).. each of these folders contain startup and kill scripts for the specific runlevels. On Slackware, which operates more similar to Unix (System V).. you have /etc/rd.d which contains scripts for each process, you chmod +x <script> to have it execute at boot and chmod -x <script> to not have it boot. Another difference you will notice is in your inet daemon. Slackware still uses inetd.conf (a single editable file, again like Unix), however other distros (RH, MDK, SuSE) use xinetd (a directory containing one file for each service.. considered to be a secure replacement for inetd.conf). There are many more config differences (/etc/sysconfig is another big one).
The ulitmate choice is up to you. I'd look at the speed of the CPU (I ran X on a P75, however I wouldn't recommend it :) hehe).. so if it's quite an old PC... then go with textmode. Then decide if you want to go hardcore into a server or not. You'll find most people prefer slack minimal or debian for servers. Trustix is very nice and hasn't been mentioned yet. It's a secure Trusted distrobution for use on servers.
Anyways, Good luck with your searches, hopefully you'll find an OS you enjoy,
Peace,
HT
www.distrowatch.org - Knock yourself out ... :p
Linux is like buying a car, pick whatever you find nice and comfortable ...
Cheers,
We're talking about installations here though - KDE, Gnome and Blackbox have nothing to do with that. It's things like anaconda and YaST 2 (which I'm sure Gore will be happy to tell you all about) that provide the installation GUI. Slackware 9.1 even comes with KDE 3.x and installed it perfectly on my machine, so you can use it with X.Quote:
Originally posted here by D0pp139an93r
Linux itself is text based. It's Gnome, KDE, Blackbox, whatever that give it a GUI. (Of course Xfree86 usually helps...)
Slackware really isn't that hard to install. With two weeks linux experience under my belt I installed Slackware with no problems at all. Configuring Slackware to do what I wanted was pretty difficult but it was a learning experience.
I'm sensing you had some bad experiences with RH8 and 9. I used RH9 for almost a year, and I found it very reliable. I used it as a web, ftp, and ssh server. only time it crashed was during power outages. I guess it depends on your hardware or something. I found slack to be really hard to get X working on. Of course I'm not one for documentation. I tried taking my XF86Config file from redhat and using it, but it was a no go. then i noticed some differences in the default conf provided on slack. Made some slight changes to the redhat one and i was up and running. I really don't find it that different so far for what I do. I know that for getting apache, php, and mysql up and running, it was not as easy as redhat for me. I tried once on my own and failed. Then I reinstalled and had those things install with the OS. even then I had to make all sorts of changes. I finally have slack running pretty nicely, but I kind of miss Redhat. One of the reasons I got rid of it was because i never updated it, and it was just old and probably vulnerable. If you ask me, anyone can use redhat, suse, and mandrake. I have installed all of those with no problems and I didn't have to touch any X configurations. That was really the only difference for me with slack. I have never messed with X config, so that was a bit of a challenge for me, but I finally got it. I pretty much like any linux distro I can install though.Quote:
Before I get started, I have to get this off my chest... Spyder32... RH? EWWWW... Worst Linux distrobution ever. Nothing good has come from RedHat since 7.3.. I hear good things about RHEL, however RH8 and 9 were horrid operating systems, Windows was more reliable.
I don't disagree with you with most things... however, I'll have to disagree with you on this.Quote:
Before I get started, I have to get this off my chest... Spyder32... RH? EWWWW... Worst Linux distrobution ever. Nothing good has come from RedHat since 7.3.. I hear good things about RHEL, however RH8 and 9 were horrid operating systems, Windows was more reliable.
I've been using RH for a while now and I really like RH. I know lots of people in the linux community hate RH now... but I still like them. I've had absolutely no problems with RH. Especially version 9. I'm using fedora too... and I have no problems with that. I've run it for several months without problems... an occasional reboot for a kernel upgrade. I can't say that for XP (or any version of Windows for that matter). (This is all personal experience.) And.. no, I'm not trying to turn this into a flame war.
I also really like the SuSE distro. Nice defualt interface and the YaST control panel is very nice.
But I like RH a bit better because thats what I learned linux on.
Guess it all depends on what you want to do with it. What do you want to learn?
I found RH to be very easy to learn. (along with the linux doc project and a couple of books)
Hey Hey,
Allow me to clarify my post a little. RedHat used to be my favourite linux distro, then at version 8, I tested it and MDK's latest release and found MDK to be a lot better, so I made the switch. As I surf the net these days and see RPMs half the time they have side notes "these may not work on RH 8". This causes me to see the OS as a POS. Next came RH 9.... we support RH 9 at the college because the programmers use it for C++. By default it doesn't recognize /dev/cd-rom as a valid device (at least not with Dell Systems). I have huge problems with the removed MP3 support. It lacks driver support for Dell Laptops (huge problem whtn this is your only PC and you're required to use it for class). The programming profs dislike teaching on it but use it because it's as close as you can get to an "industry standard" distrobution. The programmers do their c++ dev. in closed source software, which doesn't properly install in RH9. I can't remember how many days it took for them to get the software working, however once they did, they imaged it because they haven't succeeded in installing it again. Again these are all personal experiences, but combine that with hearsay and I've got a real hatred for RedHat.
Peace,
HT
I use Windows. I take a poop. See spot run.
I haven't really used RH 8 or 9 a whole lot to be able to tell you how I feel about it, but I have been using Red Hat 3.0 Enterprise Edition, and it has been very stable for us.
Still have yet to have a crash with it, and its ben up for 4 months so far.
After playing with RH (linuxconf was my guide)
SuSE (yast all the way and so bloated) and Mandrake (yep)
Slackware was a whole other thing..
It learned me patience, reading before typing (or pressing [Enter] for that matter) and loads more..
It's nice and small, easy to install and administrate..
And swaret takes a lot of the update chores out of your hands (if you want it to)
So all in all I think it's just my kind of linux distro
Also I agree with .: Shrekkie :. on this one..
Find out which distro you like and use it.. Don't start any my distro is bigger then yours wars.. there are religious zeelous madmen enough in this world..
Well my personal favourite is Debian, I love it a lot