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It depends.

1. As for Hardware, most hardware is very easy to install by now. For example to switch a NVidia Graphicscard just take out your old one and insert your new model. Done. Same with most CD-Burners, USB-Sticks, Keyboards, Digicams, and so on. Of course this depends on your own configuration a bit but you get the idea. I woulndt say its much harder than WinXP in this segment, though.

2. In the unlikely event that a distribution like SuSE or Debian does not contain the piece of software out of box you are looking for you can still grab a nice rpm or deb and run with it. I use Slackware with swaret and Dropline-Gnome and I always receive the latest software automatically. It is MUCH easier than keeping track with Windows. If I really need a package I can use Slacks easy package installer. No Problem here.

Conclusion: Both issues are well adressed by now but since Linux is different from Windows there are some users who "feel" that it is harder, while it is not necesserly.

cu,
Lispy

I haven't looked at slapt-get yet, but swaret is great, and the dropline installer gives you the most kickass Gnome desktop available. (Although, at the moment I'm experimenting with a combination of the development version of Fluxbox and the ROX file manager.)

I also recommend giving the Slackware Live CD a go. Hmm, it appears to have been renamed SLAX. It's my rescue/utility CD of choice, primarily because it fits on a mini (185MB) CD-R. It's a nice balance somewhere between tomsrtbt and Knoppix

Go Slackware!

It appears so. I got mine with Dropline Gnome for Slackware 9.0, but several of my coworkers use Fedora (which I believe also uses GTk'd Moz).

Hmm, there's no GTK+ for Windows? Or for Macintosh? I guess these pages are just jokes then.

Qt may indeed be a more mature development environment than Gnome, but now that there are native GTK+ ports to both Windows and MacOS, it should be relatively trivial to get any gnome app working on either - More so MacOSX than Windows, which is already known to run all that stuff; the only new piece is the native GTK+.

Dropline Gnome is quite good too...

Swaret is now included in Slack 9.1. swaret --update, swaret --upgrade. Done.

So I read through the comments people have already given you, and found that for once, there actually might be something I can add.

I've actually had a problem similar to yours. I have one a laptop with a crusoe chip. When I installed mandrake on it, I could not believe how slow it was. I mean, it was horrible, especially in gnome. Eventually, I found an RPM I couldn't upgrade because the old version was dependent on itself, so I installed slackware.

It's been like night and day. My computer is faster in throttled mode 333Mhz in slack than it was in fullspeed, 933Mhz on mandrake. I really can't explain it, but some friends have had similar experiences.

So maybe you just need a less bloated version of linux. Drop-line for slack dropline is really good too. I didn't drop my dual boots till I started using slack. Beware thought, X setup may prove to be a little tricky.

Also, I find it helps on slower computers to just run a windowmanager, without the desktop environments. Enlightenment is my personal choice, but there is no reason why others shouldn't work. This tends to save some resources. Also, this prevents gtk bugs from bringing your whole X session down.

Hope this helps make your linux experience more pleasant!

Throw in Dropline-Gnome and you're set.
The best Desktop Linux I've ever seen. And I've seen way too many...

Err...yeah, maybe. But still, I don't see where all the space goes. Using a full Slackware install including Dropline requires a measly 2GB over here with ALL the apps and officesuites I could ever want. I just don't see why it HAS to be that big... It doesn't even use the new 3D rendering engine for the Desktop yet.

Strange.

cu,
Lispy

ever looked into portupgrade ? ( /usr/ports/sysutils/portupgrade )

updating linux has never been easier...

• LinuxPackages (formerly LinuxMafia), for user-contributed binaries not in the base distribution
• UserLocal is a 100% lynx compatible user community for Slackware.
• LinuxQuestions has a Slackware forum.
• Dropline Gnome, which packages GNOME stuff for Slackware. For a while, this was because Pat didn't include any GNOME 2 stuff. Now Dropline's packages are a replacement for the base Slack GNOME. Sometimes they're more up to date.

Get your Patched BIND for Slackware here:

The more ISPs that use this, the more uncommon the SiteFinder 'service' becomes---the less users expect it.

Remember when popups where not expected? After using mozilla for a while I simply cannot stand them now!
---

Check out this If you use Slackware, don't like verisign's sitefinder, and run DNS.

Well, 2.4 will probably take a couple weeks to make it to it, but Dropline Gnome is a very nice GNOME system for Slackware that has an installer and everything.

Or alternatively, you could just install Dropline in a few days time if you happen to run Slackware. Dropline is by far the slickest distribution of Gnome I have come across.

dropline will supply users with 2.4 soon!!

Sort of like Dropline Gnome

http://www.dropline.net/gtk/.

GTK in one nice bundle.
Make sure you let developers of GTK applications for windows know that you want them to build against a shared GTK and save you from having to install multiple copies. Pan and Gaim already do this.

An ideal installer for Gnumeric would do something like what the GIMP does and bundle GIMP+GTK into one .exe and install GTK if necessary.
(for users who already have GTK for windows then smaller installer without GTK might be made available).

Never mind, I just remembered I posted it in this forum a few months ago, so there you go. Free, gratis and for nothing. Look about 1/2 way down the page.

Looks like the Dropline-server dropped the line.
Its slashdotted right now...please try again later. ;-)

For those portage/apt-get/ports fans I suggest taking a look at Swaret which fetches and installs (and upgrades) packages straight from your favourite slack-mirrors...

Sorry, but this has not been my experience at all. Have you ever tried Dropline Gnome for Slack? It's perfect (or as close to it as anything I've seen recently) and Todd does an amazing job at keeping pkgs up to date for the installer to handle. Try it out. A non DT based option would be Autoslack

as for

Gentoo, my other favorite distrobution suffers from the same problem...

I really have to disagree with you. I run ~x86 on 3 boxes, and 1 x86 (stable) and haven't had any issue updating. emerge -uD world and all is new. I use etc-update to update my settings and all is good. Pehaps it's not perfect (sometimes ebuilds are broken) but it's the easiest distro to 'fix' if you ask me. I've done my time with RH/MDK/Deb/F-bsd and now only run Slack/Gentoo.

P

Slackware does have a package management system, but it is (deliberately) kept very simple. It's great if you compile a lot of software from source (by which I don't mean a src.rpm). You almost never run into the dependency hell common on other systems.

A lot of people like Slack simply because of the nice BSD-style init scripts which are easier to read and quicker to tweak than sysvinit.

As for other "more recent" distros, the latest version of Slack was released on 2003-03-19, so it's not that old, and Pat keeps it very current. Also, the folks at Dropline package by far the best and most current distribution of Gnome I've seen on any distro.

there is a great Gnome-Project wich adapts pretty fast to new Mozilla releases and ships with antialiased fonts (I didnÂt like them in the beginning but am an addict now ;-) called Dropline-Gnome. I keep installing this for my newbies along with Slackware wich I prefer as a Newbie-Distro for itÂs clear structure. From this day on I stopped worrying about fonts in Mozilla. Most Gnome Apps use these fonts so it provides a consistent look&feel, too.

But last time I tried Firebird I realised the problem was still there. The defaults are ok...but not a beauty. Well, if for non-slackware users I guess Ximian-Gnome ships with antialiased fonts as well...

Well, slackware has dropline gnome, which is specially optimised for slack.

GIMP 1.3 looks very cute with the GTK2 UI, but there are still some issues with scripting (amongst other things) which have caused some distributions of Gnome (e.g. Dropline) to back it out.

It's not particularly low on resources compared to blackbox or whatever, but Gnome 2.2 still stacks up well compared to 1.4. I don't have exact figures to hand re. memory footprints, but it is definitely more responsive.

Can't say much about Ximian's implementation, though; since I abandoned RH and mdk distros some time ago and went back to Slackware, I've been using all these goodies in the excellent Dropline distribution of Gnome for a long time now.

That's what Dropline is for. A new release of Dropline's Gnome just came out a few days ago. It's very nice. The installer is ncurses and web-based over sourceforge, and uses standard Slackware packages for installation. It even checks and removes old packages before installing the new ones. It's basically the Gnome 2.2 desktop with some added features and extra tools.

Check it out at:

http://dropline.net/

Great - now my BSD box can catch up with my Slackware machines. Yippee! Dropline has done such a great job of packaging up Gnome on Slack that I've missed it on BSD. And yes, I know I could always build it myself, but I don't have the time to get it right.

Dunno about Ximian any more since I no longer run any RH boxes, but Dropline Gnome is now my distribution of choice (for Slackware). It tends to be kept very current, and is very stable.

I agree. But I disagree on the GUI part. Not everyone wants to use one, sure. But with the latest XFree86 and KDE Slack is more than ready for primtetime. Personally I must say that with dropline-gnome there is probably the best (and easiest to maintain) GUI available I have seen for a Linux Desktop so far...check it out!

cu,
Lispy

And of course, don't forget to checkout Dropline GNOME for Slackware. It's a GNOME-based desktop, similar to Ximian GNOME--instead of the plain GNOME packages shipped with slackware, you get an interface that has been tweaked to near-perfection and tons of extras (such as PAM support, allowing normal users to perform "root" tasks such as setting the time and date, and FAM, making Nautilus show up-to-date view of your file system) to make your desktop truely usable. You can learn more at www.dropline.net/gnome.

(And yes, I'm the main Dropline developer, so this is a bit of a plug and should be interpreted as such...)

Also be sure to check out the latest release of Dropline GNOME--it now works with CollegeLinux and adds a beautiful GNOME 2.2-based desktop and XFree86 4.3 to a great base system. Details and downloads can be found at www.dropline.net/gnome.

Just to let you know, Dropline Systems will be releasing Dropline GNOME 2.2.1 on Saturday, March 1st. This will include XFree86 4.3 precompiled for Slackware Linux and Slackware-derived systems such as Vector Linux. Check it out at http://www.dropline.net/gnome.

Slackware users: Todd, of http://www.dropline.net announced on the message boards that this would be available this weekend.

If you use Slackware 8.1, and haven't tried Dropline, then I suggest that you give it a shot. It's a simple, ncurses-based installation, that uses wget to download precompiled Slackware Gnome 2.x packages from Sourceforge. I use it at home, and work. And a friend (that used to run Windows) is hooked on it too. It's very well done.

Slackware users should check out Dropline Gnome.
The maintainer Todd Kulesza has done an awesome job with it. It is installed as easily as any other Slackware package.
Updates are easy as cheese too.
Highly recommended for Slackers.

See, I'm talking about a full-screen boot logo. I know there are some out there who would consider this to be nancy, but I think it looks slick. I used this patch here and then adapted this image to a white 1024x768 canvas, with the image centered. If you want to see all the Slackware logos check out the propaganda link on the Slackware page. I also got dropline-gnome, a series of packages which contain Gnome 2.0, compiled on Slackware. While I don't use Gnome, I do like the new GDM greeter,so I created a cool Slack theme for it (well, I think it's cool). If anyone is interested in it, post a reply and I'll submit it to freshmeat or something.

I agree. And excellent add-ons like Dropline Gnome (Gnome 2 for Slackware 8.1) make it all the better. By Slackware 8.1 install is a solid as a rock. Slackware is still the most practical and reliable desktop Linux distribution, in my opinion.

I learned to use Linux on Slackware. I found it easier to configure, than having to use the non-standard tools that other distributions have. Plus, with Slackware, you have the benefit of learning how to use Linux. It's a lot different than learning how to use Red Hat or Suse. Some distributions really pull you far away from the basics, and actually make things more difficult.

Using fdisk (or cfdisk), configuring sound and video, and learning a few basics of rc.files are really all there is to Slackware. After that, it's smooth sailing. Once you learn how it works, you can rasonably set up a Slackware box in less than an hour or two.

Dropline installer from dropline gnome will get you a full Gnome 2 desktop w/o the need to compile anything! Farmiliar installer too.
I suggest you try it out.