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LinuxQuestions Users Choose Their Favorite Distro: Slackware (zdnet.com)
ZDNet summarizes some of the surprises in this year's poll on LinuxQuestions, "one of the largest Linux groups with 550,000 member". An anonymous reader quotes their report:
The winner for the most popular desktop distribution? Slackware...! Yes, one of the oldest of Linux distributions won with just over 16% of the vote. If that sounds a little odd, it is. On DistroWatch, a site that covers Linux distributions like paint, the top Linux desktop distros are Mint, Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Manjaro. Slackware comes in 28th place... With more than double the votes for any category, it appears there was vote-stuffing by Slackware fans... The mobile operating system race was a runaway for Android, with over 68% of the vote. Second place went to CyanogenMod, an Android clone, which recently went out of business...
Linux users love to debate about desktop environments. KDE Plasma Desktop took first by a hair's breadth over the popular lightweight Xfce desktop. Other well-regarded desktop environments, such as Cinnamon and MATE, got surprisingly few votes. The once popular GNOME still hasn't recovered from the blowback from its disliked design change from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3.
Firefox may struggle as a web browser in the larger world, but on Linux it's still popular. Firefox took first place with 51.7 percent of the vote. Chrome came in a distant second place, with the rest of the vote being divided between a multitude of obscure browsers.
LibreOffice won a whopping 89.6% of the vote for "best office suite" -- and Vim beat Emacs.
Linux users love to debate about desktop environments. KDE Plasma Desktop took first by a hair's breadth over the popular lightweight Xfce desktop. Other well-regarded desktop environments, such as Cinnamon and MATE, got surprisingly few votes. The once popular GNOME still hasn't recovered from the blowback from its disliked design change from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3.
Firefox may struggle as a web browser in the larger world, but on Linux it's still popular. Firefox took first place with 51.7 percent of the vote. Chrome came in a distant second place, with the rest of the vote being divided between a multitude of obscure browsers.
LibreOffice won a whopping 89.6% of the vote for "best office suite" -- and Vim beat Emacs.
Do these users pay for it? No. Red Hat makes money and reinvests in Linux. Red Hat matters most, Canonical matters second, SuSE matters least. All others are just freeloaders whose opinions and usage don't matter. Proof: SystemD.
Is very popular. That doesn't mean it's any good.
That's unfair. You might run Vim within Emacs.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
It does seem sispicious to me. I download and try lots of distros (well, a few of the top 10, and occasionally some others), so I'm contributing to the numbers on Distrowatch. I don't keep using most of them, but FWIW I like vanilla Debian/KDE.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
Go Slackware!
Yes we all know that on-line polls are so reliable. This is why Mt. Dew will be naming their new flavor either "Hitler did nothing Wrong" or "Diabeetus". The people never stuff polls. The reason Vim won is simple, all those unemployed people have a lot of time on their hands, like the Slackware slackers.
LibreOffice by the way blows chow. It's sole stated goal is to have the look and feel of Microsoft Word. Such an aspiration.
BY the way, is there any linux product that has the look and feel of Apple's Keynote. Now that's something to aspire to.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'm assuming you're a mIRC user with the large trout reference. +10 nerd points for actually knowing what IRC is, -20 for not using a real OS and using BitchX or ircII.
Slackware performs better on Linuxquestions polls in general because it's essentially the home forum for Slackware users. Ubuntu, Arch, Debian, and all the other major distros that are highly ranked on Distrowatch have their own forums, and they are usually very populous. The users have less reason to visit Linuxquestions. So in general, Slackware users will be over-represented.
I don't recall poll results from previous years, but unless there's a large skew, I would think that vote manipulation would be jumping to conclusions.
-inf points for you for not understanding that a ksirc user like me can read any /me action created by a Winblows mIRC user.
I know it's linux, but it has now been almost 15 years later, and to be honest, I didn't really see much improvement in libreoffice/openoffice in comparison with microsoft office 2003. I tried libreoffice writer a few times, I can work with it, it has a few features on more logic positions than msword, but it feels older than word 2003. Powerpoint 2003 alternative Impress, could use a lot of love, animations still look terrible, I even was hoping on a few nice animations, by using pixelshaders or so. But only really primitive animations, not any nice alternatives.
The best game was Tux Racer with 27% of the vote.
VIM users couldn't figure out how to exit the polling mode and just kept voting.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh! Look, a TempleOS user
A group whose business plan was, "don't bother us, if one of us feels like supporting a device we will, and if we decide to stop supporting it at a whim, we will... and did we mention? Don't bother us to ask us to support anything, we will if we feel like it." Unfortunately the reason many open source products suck. And I LIKE Linux. But only groups that understand that the software isn't the reason for the business, the people who use the software and their business requirements are. Redhat, Canonical (and derivatives), Suse, Open/Libre Office, Apache Foundation, PostgreSQL, etc. THEY get it. Your users are why you are in business, not your personal whims.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
So Slackware is Trump - the president who couldnt run in the primaries and did, couldn't win the primaries and couldnt win the presidency and then with 20x less TV money he did win. When fake new like Washington Post said he had a solid 2% of winning.
BTW I habe no problem with the comparison. Ive been a Slackware user myself. Its hardly an OS that delives in terms of frills but in terms of content - delivery, doing what an OS is supposed to do - it just works, and works better than anything else I used. Its super reliable. It does what it promises to do.
KDE Plasma Desktop took first by a hair's breadth over the popular lightweight Xfce desktop
If you want a lightweight desktop, you might also have a peek at LXQt. Like Xfce it is very lightweight, but it is based on the Qt toolkit and you can mix and match KDE apps as you like, without all the KDE overhead. Works well on older or smaller machines.
I use KDE most of the time on higher end rigs, but I prefer LXQt to Xfce for older laptops and the like.
Am i the only one using screen + irssi?
Ppl using Ubuntu are too noob to know a linux site. Ppl using redhat have jobs.
This computer has no restrictions it is my oldest and favourite computer. There is no place like home.
A long time ago it used to have a paid for system called TurboLinux on it the company was from San Francisco U.S.A.
the company went bankrupt and I received a very sarcastic rude notification from one of their employees.
The computer was a job-related working computer at that time. I upgraded the processor and gradually used parts from HP systems.
it then switched to a Linux system run by a French company that was known for their excellence with multilingual capabilities.
I used their power pack Linux version paid for and the company suddenly went bankrupt but treated me good and gave me plenty of notification.
At that stage my computer was officially a geriatric. I purchased a bankrupt companies HP systems servers
and rebuilt the computer again this one.
Computer:
Operating System Version
Kernel Linux 3.13.0-37-generic (x86_64)
Compiled #64-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 22 21:28:38 UTC 2014
Default C Compiler GNU C Compiler version 4.8.4 (Ubuntu 4.8.4-2ubuntu1~14.04.3)
Distribution Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca.
Computer Name xxxxx-xxx-xxxxx-xxxxxx
Desktop Environment X-Cinnamon (default)
Uptime 11 days, 6 hours and 28 minutes
Load Average 0.12, 0.09, 0.09
Display Resolution 1920x1080 pixels
Vendor The X.Org Foundation
Version 1.15.1
Monitors
Monitor 0 1920x1080 pixels
Processors
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1265L V2 @ 2.50GHz 2128.00MHz
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1265L V2 @ 2.50GHz 2128.00MHz
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1265L V2 @ 2.50GHz 2128.00MHz
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1265L V2 @ 2.50GHz 2128.00MHz
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1265L V2 @ 2.50GHz 2128.00MHz
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1265L V2 @ 2.50GHz 2200.00MHz
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1265L V2 @ 2.50GHz 2128.00MHz
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1265L V2 @ 2.50GHz 2128.00MHz
Memory
Total Memory 16263388 kB
Free Memory 13911788 kB
Buffers 152872 kB
Cached 1010920 kB
Cached Swap 0 kB
Filter error: Lameness filter encountered
I switched to KVIrc years and years and years ago.
I installed slackware 14 last year after trying ubuntu and fedora live disks and it was the only one of the 3 in which everything worked first time (apart from some minor printer issues which I discovered later).
Ok, hardly a representational survey and YMMV, but just saying. Oh, and there's no systemd. Win!
not the only one i still find its the best console irc client
LQ is one of the oldest forums - and have always been a bit of a goto place for slackware users, it may be the only place on the net where slackers outnumber other distros. This would also partly explain why vim would handily beat emacs. Emacs was never all that popular among slackware users, a mere text editor that took up an entire software category by itself (the (E) series) - and which, if installed, could easily double the size of your setup all by itself was not going to go down well with those who clung to slackware for it's extremely flexibility and tiny footprint after the big rise-of-redhat and domination-of-debian in the late 1990s. These days, of course, that's hardly true anymore - the (X) and (xapps) series alone could match (e) and that's without installing KDE (which is the only desktop slackware ships anymore and has been for quite some time). I remember it was big news on /. when slackware stopped including Gnome in the base distro - when was that ? Could be 10 years already...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I have to wonder if they got confused. I've been a linux user since the late 1990s yet I'd forgotten all about slack the distro.
To me, this is slack...
https://slack.com/
No. They are both great, particularly screen. Start a job, detach, log out, log in somewhere else, reattach and check the results (or lack of progress. :-( )
First of all, people are going to answer Slackware even if they don't use it, because the Linux community is pervaded by a bunch of neck-bearded hipsters who liked Slackware before Slackware was cool. The reality is that they all run RedHat but are just desperate to look cool and unique.
I'm an example in this sample where I run loads of rpm-based and deb-based distros at work and at home. I might have one single VM with slackware running which I do not use much, but slackware's easily my favorite distro.
Slackware is what weaned us into Linux two decades ago (Infomagic CDs). Slackware was easy to open and understand every layer of the OS, and even make packages for. It's also 'cleaner' for purists and still comes with sysv init system. If you're considering installbase as being equal to favorite distro, you're disregarding the enormous goodwill slackware still has from people who hardly use it anymore.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
At Google Plus, which is actually a good nerd social network (Linus post content often), number of users in communities: Ubuntu 279,044, Arch 51,344, openSUSE 29,849, Mint 24,378, Fedora 19,694, RedHat 12,244, CentOS 9,924, Slackware 3,075.
I started with Linux in 1995 when a housemate put Slackware on my computer for me. I'm glad he chose SW; back then almost nothing 'just worked' and you had to configure everything by hand, from the network card and the moden to X and Samba. I learned so much from that. In 2005 I was fed up with Linux and bought a Mac but I still use the knowledge I gathered in my Linux years to make the Mac do what I want. In the land of OSes Unix is emperor.
-- Cheers!
Eh, LinuxQuestions.org is the de facto Slackware support forum, it just doesn't bear Slackware in the name. I mean, strictly speaking it's a multi-distro forum, but look at the number of posts in each subforum here.
It would be like asking bbs.archlinux.org or www.ubuntuforums.org what their favorite distro is.
Slackware was the first Linux distro I used but creating all those floppies disks was a such a pain so I switched to Red Hat which could installed directly from CD. Now days I don't own a single working computer with a CD drive but I can still read floppies via a floppy to USB adapter. That was back in the 90s, I wonder how Slackware stacks up compare with Mint and Cent OS I use these days?
I am a long time Slackware lover. I first installed it in 1994 on a 486 DX50, had no real idea what Linux was yet and after finally getting X to startx, TWM loaded and I gave a up for a couple months. Anyway, if you are a Slackware fan, give Porteus a try. It's a lightweight Slack derivate meant for portability via USB stick buts it's easy to lay down on an SSD. It works really well.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
... pretty know their way around Linux pretty well. I'm sometimes surprised by the sort of questions that self-proclaimed newbies ask there. It's not too strange, IMO, to find that the majority of its users would like Slackware.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
You know you have the correct Slashdot editor when he would headline with Vim BEATS EMACS in nationwide poll. In a perfect world.
But Slackware, man. Patrick is one frood dude that knows where his towel is.
modern editors around (with masses of extensibility and customisation potential) of which Emacs is just one
You misspelled "the". There is no other editor (believe me I have looked) that is as extensible or customizable as Emacs.
If, instead, you prefer to modify your text by applying functions to it - with visual feedback and interaction playing second fiddle - then VIM/vi is the only game in town.
No, Emacs is VASTLY superior for that purpose. Like beyond vastly really... I have used Emacs quite heavily, but also VI quite a lot as well because vi is always everywhere in a way Emacs may not be. There simply is no comparison, Emacs is not just easier but way more powerful for programmatically altering text.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
nobody's listening anymore. nobody cares. you are very sad. that is all.
Russian hackers at it again?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!
tmux+irssi
I switched to tmux mostly just to get easy vertical splits. The RPM based distros (fedora, centos) didn't have a patched version of screen so it was just easier to deal with. Also mouse control so you can easily drag around splits. You can also check out byobu which adds some really nice features on top of tmux.
A lot of people have also ditched irssi for weechat but I just haven't invested the energy because irssi works fine for me.