Try Slackware Linux?

Carlwill · 2011-09-14 16:41:53

I've never tried Slackware Linux and was wondering what everyone thought about throwing it up on a virtual machine to try it. Slackware and Gentoo are the two big named distributions I've yet to try. I was wondering if there is any worth in giving it a shot. A lot of comments I read indicate it's a very dated distribution and usually people who cut their teeth on Slackware back in the day still continue to use it. Any thoughts and or comments about trying Slackware Linux?

hellomynameisphil · 2011-09-14 16:48:50

I think I can predict what most people will say: yes, you should try it. What do you have to lose?

You do know, however, that the native package manager has no dependency resolution, right? That has been the thing which has prevented me from wanting to have anything to do with Slackware, and it mystifies me how anyone could *want* that. I've heard the arguments in favour of it, but it still makes no sense to me; ah well, to each their own.

There are third-party package managers with dependency resolution, but I'm not sure how well-supported or actively developed they are.

ewaller · 2011-09-14 16:53:40

Slackware was the second distribution I ever used (after a brief stint with Fedora and rpm hell). It is extremely stable. It is extremely conservative. It is always behind the cutting edge.

I would use it as a production server. In the olden days (the middle of last decade), Slackware users had the reputation of really understanding their systems who could easily adapt to and manage other distributions. Give it a shot, it won't hurt.

On the other hand, If you want to try Gentoo, do yourself a favor and run it on real hardware. It takes about a week to bring up a Gentoo system poking away at it in the evenings and using your sleep and work hours for compiling. I tried it on a VM once -- I killed the compile of KDE in the third day.

Carlwill · 2011-09-14 17:04:51

I've honestly never had any desire to try Gentoo Linux. I know it's extremely optimized for your system but I seriously don't have that kind of time to maintain a system. I've heard of stage installations taking 5+ days and so on. I guess it's my ignorance right now since I've never tried it but I really don't see the point.

davidgurvich · 2011-09-14 17:45:09

Gentoo can be good in certain cases but is not for most. Gentoo takes a long time to install, configure, and maintain. Compiling from source can, seemingly, take forever.

Slackware tries to stay very close to upstream and can be as bleeding edge as you like. Just keep in mind that bleeding edge is not stable and can hose your system. Slackware doesn't install services that you don't want or need and can be very fast. If you like stability then Slackware is very good.

Arch also tries to stay close to upstream but is a rolling release. That means breakage becomes more common. Recent example concerns hfs+ ipods. The kernel was upgraded from 2.6 to 3.0 and the hfs+ filesystem no longer works with ipods on Arch.

lifeafter2am · 2011-09-14 17:51:37

Carlwill wrote:

I've honestly never had any desire to try Gentoo Linux. I know it's extremely optimized for your system but I seriously don't have that kind of time to maintain a system. I've heard of stage installations taking 5+ days and so on. I guess it's my ignorance right now since I've never tried it but I really don't see the point.

I used Gentoo for around 6 years, starting back in the day when you used to do Stage 1 installs. I did an install not too long ago and it took me about 4-5 solid hours to get my system back up to speed (base, X, browser, window manager, etc.). This was on a Core2Quad @ 2.67. These days a Gentoo install does take longer than an Arch install, but not as long as they used to; as I do remember back in the day spending a few days getting a system up and running.

Last edited by lifeafter2am (2011-09-14 17:52:24)

Leonid.I · 2011-09-14 19:34:37

Carlwill wrote:

I've honestly never had any desire to try Gentoo Linux. I know it's extremely optimized for your system ...

I think this is a misconception and a huge placebo effect. Look at gentoo's optimization flags. They are -O2 and perhaps -march=native for newer gcc and are essentially the same as the flags used in other distros, including arch. The -march option will enable all cpu-specific instructions, but your program has to know how to use them. Plus, kernel and other system processes don't work in real time (as your computing job would), so even if you get a 2% performance improvement, it will be unobservable.

karol · 2011-09-14 19:37:41

Leonid.I wrote:

Carlwill wrote:
I've honestly never had any desire to try Gentoo Linux. I know it's extremely optimized for your system ...
I think this is a misconception and a huge placebo effect. Look at gentoo's optimization flags. They are -O2 and perhaps -march=native for newer gcc and are essentially the same as the flags used in other distros, including arch. The -march option will enable all cpu-specific instructions, but your program has to know how to use them. Plus, kernel and other system processes don't work in real time (as your computing job would), so even if you get a 2% performance improvement, it will be unobservable.

I've heard that gentoo let's you customize more and thus you can leave much of the bloat out - you can call it extra-compiler optimization :-)

Gullible Jones · 2011-09-14 19:52:18

At the price of spending hours and hours waiting for stuff to compile. IMHO it's not worth it.

Re Slackware: By all means, try it. It's a good distro. But I don't think it'll teach you anything that Arch hasn't, really; and in some ways it's a real pain. For instance, no LibreOffice in the main repository = annoying to use as a desktop.

Leonid.I · 2011-09-14 20:05:41

karol wrote:

I've heard that gentoo let's you customize more and thus you can leave much of the bloat out - you can call it extra-compiler optimization :-)

True, but then there are makedeps (intltool for evince, for instance). These are really never used, but will be present on your system...

davidgurvich · 2011-09-14 20:32:15

Changing Gentoo compiler flags does little or nothing for speed and actually introduces bugs that may be difficult to find. There are a few pieces of software that changing from the defaults produces a positive result but I don't know what these are.

A good example might be Meego which uses some interesting optimizations for netbooks vs Arch on the same machine. There's no speed advantage for either. Meego does suspend and powersaving much better. Too much better, the audio sleeps all the time, so I installed Arch .

lifeafter2am · 2011-09-14 20:40:10

It was never the compile flags that I necessarily cared about, but the USE flags. Heck, people wanting specific use flags is like half the packages in the AUR (exaggerating, but you get my point). For instance, it still kind of annoys me how much stuff pulls in bluez and other bluetooth packages when I don't have bluetooth on my desktop.

But, IMO, worth it to have a few extra packages for the sanity that I keep using Arch vs Gentoo; which is why I have been on Arch for a few years now.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-09-14 16:41:53

Try Slackware Linux?

#2 2011-09-14 16:48:50

Re: Try Slackware Linux?

#3 2011-09-14 16:53:40

Re: Try Slackware Linux?

#4 2011-09-14 17:04:51

Re: Try Slackware Linux?

#5 2011-09-14 17:45:09

Re: Try Slackware Linux?

#6 2011-09-14 17:51:37

Re: Try Slackware Linux?

#7 2011-09-14 19:34:37

Re: Try Slackware Linux?

#8 2011-09-14 19:37:41

Re: Try Slackware Linux?

#9 2011-09-14 19:52:18

Re: Try Slackware Linux?

#10 2011-09-14 20:05:41

Re: Try Slackware Linux?

#11 2011-09-14 20:32:15

Re: Try Slackware Linux?

#12 2011-09-14 20:40:10

Re: Try Slackware Linux?

Board footer