Slashdot Mirror
Why Slackware Still Matters
An anonymous reader writes "In a rebuttal to the recent opinion column "Does Slackware still matter?" at Linux Watch, cRaig Forrester provides insight into Why Slackware DOES still matter--and not just to "hard-core group of hobbyists" or "highly professional" Linux server administrators--but desktop users and newcomers too."
I hate to rain on everyone's parade here, and I hate to sound like a troll, but. When you have to write an article about why your operating system matters, you've kind of set yourself up as looking like you don't matter at all, and are simply trying to advertise.
Slackware to me has always been a niche distro; to those people who really love Linux, the people who want to control every aspect of their machines, fine tune things, etc. The Gentoo of years past.
These days, we're starting to see distros like ye olde Slackware and Debian go the way of the pasture because there are so many projects now which have taken the original spirit of the older operating system, and have grown it. Take Ubuntu as an example; Ubuntu is everything that's good about Debian, and then some. And while Debian continues to exist and produce, it's slowly growing towards the irrelevant as stability and security is considered over practicality and the availability of new software.
This is also where Gentoo excels; it takes the original ideas of Slackware, but gives them a centralized way of downloading, compiling and installing the software packages. Add this with a lot of polish and you see why Slackware is slipping into irrelevance as well.
While Linux is all about choice, more people are making the right choices and going with newer distros simply because they are getting better, faster, and have more communities available to help them. And as more distros hop on a more standardized layout and functionality, I believe Linux is getting closer to being an accepted operating system.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Your attempt at sarcasm was too long is laudable but still too obvious.
"Piter, too, is dead."