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Slackware Turns 10
Sir_Stinksalot writes "DistroWatch is reporting that Slackware is 10. 'Yes folks, it is exactly 10 years today since the release of Slackware Linux 1.0, complete with a brand new Linux kernel 0.99pl11 Alpha, XFree86 1.3 and even a PS/2 mouse support!' Let's all say happy birthday to Slackware."
In spite of some serious competiton by Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE and other very good distributions, a lot of people still prefer Slackware as their distro of choice. That's a nice 10-year birthday present.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
For me Slackware is the best Linux distribution period. It's the first one I tried back in 1995 and I've yet to find one that's better. Slackware is compact yet comprehesive, stable, simple ans user friendly. If you're an old-timer like me and you don't mind a non-GUI installer, Slackware rules.
Stick Men
On a serious note... that's kind of the point. Slackware has NEVER been geared towards being 'better' or 'faster' than anything else. It just tries to be as stable and trustworthy as it can. I know of someone that runs a very large mud (about 400-500 people on all the time) on slackware. Been running it for several years now and has never upgraded his base system. No need to.
Not Free(as in beer). Free(as in "I'm free to beat you over the head for being a dumbass")
I think he meant the original Slackware distro, though I could be wrong...
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
For a quick rebuttal of the normal arguments RedHat users and their brethren use against Slackware, you can refer to my handy-dandy already composed never-sent reply to this message I found on Google. To sum it up: If you don't think Slackware is a serious distro, you probably don't have the ability to properly maintain a Slackware system. You'll just have to sacrifice the serious Slackware advantage for a.. less serious distribution.
I hope that he at least applies patches. Otherwise, his machine is probably spamming the world right now.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Having used Slackware almost exclusively for a year or two, and then switching amongst various OS' afterwards, I found it hard to go back to "old school" ways of Slack, esp. in recent times.
Regardless, Slackware is a great distribution, and contributed to my general understanding of Linux and how things operate within it. It's always a good idea to try other distros (or other OS') and increase your breadth of knowledge.
As they say in ebay: RECOMMENDED! A++++++0x!!!
a freshly cleaned diskette drive, and six hours of downloads at 2400 baud. them were the days.
When you got X up and running on your monitor, you really HAD something. FAQ entries were a woundrous archive of arcane material that made you want to call up the author and say "Thanks, man!" Motherboards that topped out at 64 MB.
Wow.
I STILL remember comparing it to the SCO I had at work, and kept comparing the man pages to the IBM XENIX manuals I had stashed away.
Thanks for the memories, Slakware!
darkstar login
:wq
Bollocks.
This is what they mean by "non-GUI" installer. Instead of pretty windows and shiny icons shaped like big-eyed penguins, you get something that looks like this:
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Here is our completely and utterly incomprehensible non-gui installation screen:
[ ] I can't stand it, help! What? Where are my shoes? Stupid Slack!
[ ] I think my mouse is broke... stupid Slack!
[ ] Hmmm... I think I may have to use the keyboard... Stupid me!
[ ] Hey, I found the space, arrow, and tab keys! Yay me!
[X] This is pretty easy!
[ OK ] [ Cancel ] [ Back to other Distro ]_ _
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*That's* "Non-GUI?" The way people bitched, kvetched, and whined, I thought when I put in the CD, I'd get a flashing cursor, waiting for me to do some "pull out of the air" command like LOAD"$",8 and enter in the hex value of the primary IDE boot sector address or something. Dude, that may not be mouse-enabled or have fancy anti-aliasing, but it's "GUI" to me because:
- It is graphical (it has lines and colors!)
- It is a user interface (it's for me!)
- It's how I have been installing Red Hat via Serial interface/low RAM anyway - Back when I started computing, the only GUI we had was a menu system like that...
There he goes again... "back in the day" man...
I think Slackware is a pretty tight distro, I wouldn't call it non user-friendly. I'd say it's friendlier than Debian! [not to knock Debian, it also has great uses and noble goals]
I'd say anyone who knows Liunx/UNIX, and has an i386 box should give this a try at least.
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www.punkwalrus.com - They'll only take away my gun when they pry my cold dead fingers off Logitech gamepad
I just wanted to say thank you to Patrick and all the other fine slackware developers. You got me started with Linux. It has been a hobby, a passion and now a career. Thank you.
Trey