Slackware: "True Linux experience"?

schivmeister · 2010-06-11 15:36:47

People sometimes ask which distribution to try if they want to learn how Linux works. Common answers are Gentoo, Arch, or Debian. However, I disagree. Each of these distros teach users their particular brand of Linux. There's only one truly pure Linux, and that is Slackware.

From: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/spo … e-linux-13

I really don't get this. Not because I'm an Archer, but because I don't see how Slackware is any more of a true experience than Gentoo, Arch, or Debian. Judging from the final points, I assume the following are what contribute to this so-called experience:

* users get a vanilla kernel and default desktop configuration.

* comes with Web browsers, office applications, multimedia software, personal communication tools, image management, and more

* most hardware is automagically detected and configured.

* up-to-date and easy-to-use as any Linux distribution

And finally, the most important of all:

* neither resolves dependencies nor downloads from online repositories.

edit: forgot to add source url

Last edited by schivmeister (2010-06-11 18:35:50)

andresp · 2010-06-11 15:59:46

I'm not sure how to mention this and somehow tie it directly to the subject... but Slackware's broken build system relies on repeating the same long steps on every makefile (shell scripts) and are very prone to error.

Surely this is the complete oposite of the Unix mantra, because the '...and do it well' part is definately as important as restraint.

Cyrusm · 2010-06-11 16:01:17

what's your source for this? I'm curious, and I would kind of like to read the full article.

I don't really believe that Slack provides any better linux experience than any other distro. Of course that really depends on how
one defines "The Linux Experience" I personally prefer a nice smooth linux experience with good package management as opposed
to spending my time building from source and hunting down obscure dependencies.

Last edited by Cyrusm (2010-06-11 16:06:30)

Allan · 2010-06-11 16:06:44

Cyrusm wrote:

what's your source for this? I'm curious, and I would kind of like to read the full article.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/spo … e-linux-13

Cyrusm · 2010-06-11 16:17:24

thx Allan

Bralkein · 2010-06-11 16:31:38

IMO Linux is best defined by its breadth, versatility and hackability. Like how I can sit here on my red-blooded ATX quad-core Arch monster and telnet into my ADSL modem with its tiny 2MB embedded distro and yet still have a similar experience on both machines as I hack away. Looking at it from that perspective, I think it's hard to imagine how the essence of the "True Linux Experience" could really be captured in just a single distro on a single machine.

wonder · 2010-06-11 16:52:30

i guess the true experience is manually checking dependencies, doing ./configure && make && make install a lot.

sHyLoCk · 2010-06-11 17:45:22

Wrote an article about slack in a Linux mag for july. I guess slack is the oldest maintained and hence certain people are fascinated by the idea of using it rather than where it stands amidst the competition of ubuntu, arch or other distros. It is fun and a learning experience to manually resolve deps and compile packages from source, but for an extended daily usage I don't think it is fit as a "desktop Linux distro" anymore with so many other alternatives to decide from. At this day and age you would expect your package manager to be able to tell you what dependencies are needed and fetch them accordingly.

thedonvaughn · 2010-06-11 19:54:33

I used Slackware back when I still had to install an OS using floppy disks. This was around late 94, 95?

It was a great distro then; but slackware sure hasn't progressed much. It's a hobbyists toy with sentimental value - that's about it.

ataraxia · 2010-06-11 19:59:18

wonder wrote:

i guess the true experience is manually checking dependencies, doing ./configure && make && make install a lot.

I think that really is the opinion of many of those who consider Slackware the one true Linux. That, and Patrick's extreme conservatism in packaging.

ewaller · 2010-06-11 20:17:30

IMHO, Arch is a fine balance of Power user tinkering vs Easy of Install. I can bring up an entire system in a night.

If one _Really_ wants to learn the nuts and bolts of how Linux works, give LFS (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/) a try. I don't recommend it if you need to get anything accomplished anytime in a hurry. Everyone should try it once.

fsckd · 2010-06-11 21:38:49

There's only one truly pure Linux, and that is Slackware.

Where have I heard this before? Oh, that's right! There is but one Linux, Arch is its name, the devs are its prophets and the Wiki is its holy writ. Distros, not religions dammit.

kazuo · 2010-06-11 22:42:56

Slackware are my first distro. I liked it, helped me to learn how to use a computer (its is my first OS too). But all the good points Arch have too: kiss, vanilla, up to date (I used the current tree), not intrusive... But its dont have the bad points like a bad pkg management.

I remember, the Slackware time are a cool times, reading about the health of Pat at the changelog, his daughter....

But can't see I coming back to it.

Misfit138 · 2010-06-12 01:43:39

Slackware and Pat are very cool. I have nothing bad to say about any of it.
Arch just fits me better.

b9anders · 2010-06-12 02:07:26

Surely the only true linux is Linux From Scratch?

Imo, the notion of a 'pure linux' is a completely meaningless statement, since one of the strongest features of Linux is in fact it's versatility and many different ways of setting up a system.

Perhaps it made more sense in the 90s where the different approaches might still have been early branches of a more generic 'Linux' approach(?) which Slackware still adheres to, but there is no longer any standard method to be learned from doing things the Slackware way that can be applied to Linux in general. It's 'purity' is probably more of an historical artifac at this point.

toxygen · 2010-06-12 07:25:19

b9anders wrote:

Surely the only true linux is Linux From Scratch?
Imo, the notion of a 'pure linux' is a completely meaningless statement, since one of the strongest features of Linux is in fact it's versatility and many different ways of setting up a system.
Perhaps it made more sense in the 90s where the different approaches might still have been early branches of a more generic 'Linux' approach(?) which Slackware still adheres to, but there is no longer any standard method to be learned from doing things the Slackware way that can be applied to Linux in general. It's 'purity' is probably more of an historical artifac at this point.

well said. "pure linux" is a myth, or as richard stalman would say, 'linux is just the kernel people! GNU/Linux is the real thing!'

I think the article saying slack is "pure linux" is what you said, "purists" wanting to live in the past. i'm sure they will disagree.

Last edited by toxygen (2010-06-12 07:26:09)

schivmeister · 2010-06-12 14:52:27

Interestingly, I do agree with:

"Each of these distros teach users their particular brand of Linux."

All distros included - no exceptions.

Slackware is cool, no doubt. I have a lot of respect for it and Pat himself. I was just a little taken aback by the article because I thought LinuxJournal writers were professional enough to not be "fundamentalists".

Last edited by schivmeister (2010-06-12 15:03:02)

oli · 2010-06-13 09:02:27

sHyLoCk wrote:

Wrote an article about slack in a Linux mag for july. I guess slack is the oldest maintained and hence certain people are fascinated by the idea of using it rather than where it stands amidst the competition of ubuntu, arch or other distros. It is fun and a learning experience to manually resolve deps and compile packages from source, but for an extended daily usage I don't think it is fit as a "desktop Linux distro" anymore with so many other alternatives to decide from. At this day and age you would expect your package manager to be able to tell you what dependencies are needed and fetch them accordingly.
>but for an extended daily usage I don't think it is fit as a "desktop Linux distro"

I could say the same about a bleeding edge distro like Arch without any real base of security mechanisms. Slack delivers a complete system, which you can update for security fixes via slackpkg. Do you need more for a _productive_ environment or are you just counting version numbers? Most Slackers, as the name implies, have plenty of time. Time for doing different things than just updating a system by a daily routine and coping with once in a while occuring caveats.

sHyLoCk · 2010-06-13 11:41:09

oli wrote:

>but for an extended daily usage I don't think it is fit as a "desktop Linux distro"
I could say the same about a bleeding edge distro like Arch without any real base of security mechanisms. Slack delivers a complete system, which you can update for security fixes via slackpkg. Do you need more for a _productive_ environment or are you just counting version numbers? Most Slackers, as the name implies, have plenty of time. Time for doing different things than just updating a system by a daily routine and coping with once in a while occuring caveats.

Ummm Slackware is not really rock solid stable either thanks to KDE4. A lot of stuff doesn't work ootb. And I would rather choose what applications will be installed in my system than someone decide I should have 3 browsers, 3 email clients, 10-15 editors, a bunch of development tools that I'd never use. Your next argument would be, you can pick while installation what needs to be installed. My arguments: 1. Tedious. I don't like to touch my left ear with my right hand from around the back of my head, I'd rather use my left hand for that purpose. 2. Full install is recommended. In fact if you don't then you are bound to run into some missing library issue later.

It's so pitiful to see that most slackers have zero tolerance for a constructive criticism. Trust me. I am there in slack forum and I have seen the slackers in action. They have no problem to openly criticize ubuntu, arch, etc. but if someone writes something which opens a little negative side of slack they start trolling and abusing. [Like in this case my post was quoted out of context, please read my previous full post and decide if "oli's" comparison with Arch was really necessary. ]
I stand by what Isaid. If you have the time and patience then you can try slack. Saying something like "most slackers have the time" feels like such a poor defense attempt imho. It's like saying "I like compiling hours n hours and looking at scrolling text hence I use gentoo". Well isn't that obvious? You would obviously use something that fits you, that's not a logical argument imo.
The progress with slack has been very little or none since the last decade.

This thread is slowly turning into a slack vs arch thread. I'd request everyone to talk about slack here only and not to compare the distros.

Peace

Last edited by sHyLoCk (2010-06-13 11:43:52)

Misfit138 · 2010-06-13 13:07:16

oli wrote:

...Most Slackers, as the name implies, have plenty of time...

Let's not misapply an inaccurate meaning for the term 'slack' !

'Slack'..generally stands for the sense of freedom, independence, and original thinking that comes when you achieve your personal goals.

radiomist · 2010-06-13 15:22:51

just Linus Torvalds can say. " i have a true linux experience".

Slack sounds pendantic.

rasat · 2010-06-13 15:42:17

I don't see the logic here with Slackware. Maybe the oldest distribution but the first developments don't make it "pure". What if had been lousy distro.
In my opinion, the "purest" is the kernel itself and the distro having the simplest and smallest configure files become the measurement of "purity".

pseudonomous · 2010-06-14 19:44:37

I must agree that I don't really think there even can be a "true Linux experience". It's certainly true that when you move from distro to distro you will notice that many of the defaults and also the system architecture (init scripts, etc..) but I don't really think that there's anyway to discern what is common to "general purpose" linux distros and what is distro specific besides using a whole bunch of different distros.

And even then, you will only have some notion of what desktop/server linux is like, the kind of linux that runs on your router, your set-top box, or your phone is still going to be very different.

And it's also kind of a silly thing to look for, anyway. Users should look for software that fits their needs and wants, not software that fits someone's arbitrary definition of "the way things should be". I'm guessing that's the main reason most of us are here in the first place, instead of being solely Windows/OS X users.

I suppose it's also kind of silly to post about, but oh well.

Zeist · 2010-06-14 19:50:52

I love Slackware, but I won't use it on a desktop anymore. It still is the thing that runs my file server in my home.

I guess it is far "purer" Linux compared to something like Ubuntu which has a lot of custom things in it by default.

Ranguvar · 2010-06-16 03:44:16

Slackware is "pure" in the sense that it is very, very vanilla. Even more so than Arch.
It has been said that if you use Debian (or insert other distro here) for six months, you will learn Debian -- but if you use Slackware, you will learn GNU/Linux.
I find this actually pretty accurate.

There's very little in the installed OS that you can point to and say "that's Slackware".
The initscripts are very simple and well-used or customized by other distros. The package manager is basically an automated tarball extractor (not to say it's bad, it's not!). No configuration is done for you. Etc.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-06-11 15:36:47

Slackware: "True Linux experience"?

#2 2010-06-11 15:59:46

Re: Slackware: "True Linux experience"?

#3 2010-06-11 16:01:17

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