I’m not entirely sure how to link to this properly, but what we have here is a simple, to-the-point text file describing some of the benefits of Slackware, the oldest still maintained Linux distribution. It’s still run by Patrick Volkerding, and focuses on conservative choices and simplicity over ease. I doubt I have to explain the benefits of Slackware to the average OSNews reader, but this simple little text file does serve as a great marketing tool.
The fact it’s a simple little text file is so very Slackware. I love it.
Slackware was my first Linux distribution in high school. I did not know what I was getting into, and it required a book to actually install and start using it.
Anyway, yes, the simplicity helps. But you essentially need to install and manage all the packages from source. Basically a “Gentoo” without the advantage or “portage” system. Make a mistake? hope you still have kept the sources as “make uninstall” is your best bet.
Over time it got better though. It had its own package / configuration system. A very basic, curses based one. And someone build a very useful checkinstall script that would register the “make install” packages in Slackware’s database.
At the time “deb” was archaic, and RedHat required a license. This meant the only viable choice was Slackware (or SuSE if you are lucky). So I continued to use it for many years.
Though this is all nostalgia. Today, I would probably drop in Ubuntu (or more realistically Rasbian, as Raspberry PI is my current Linux machine).
I’m not sure what time frame you’re talking about.
RedHat Linux never required a license, so this might be 2003, when RedHat shut down RedHat Linux in favor of RedHat Enterprise Linux, and it was not clear whether Fedora Core would be able to take over.
But by then, Debian wasn’t archaic at all. At least Slink, Potato and Woody had been very successful releases.
On the contrary, Slackware, while still widely respected, had already become a niche distro.
Also I don’t remember Slackware being difficult to install when I used it in the mid 90’s (except of course for the lack of dependency management), but I was already at the university then, and the previous year students would help us get started with Linux.
“Slackware was my first Linux distribution in high school”
Same here 🙂 1993, good times 🙂 There have been only 2 other distros that I ever really liked (debian & gentoo) but it still feels so great to boot a slack every now and then.
W.r.t “What Makes Slackware Different?”, my absolute favorite points:
– Simplicity Over Ease
– No systemd
Yes, please!
“No Automatic Dependency Management”
It sounds great to say that you “install the whole system” to avoid dependency management. But then you start installing even more stuff on top of that and it all falls apart. I consider the expectation of package management that provides dependency resolution to be perhaps the single greatest contribution that Linux has brought to the software world. I could never go back.
Other than that, Slackware is great.
Looking at the list, those are a lot of the things that I love about Chimera Linux as well. Other than a proper package manager, the biggest difference would be that “conservative software choices” becomes choosing software that is well-engineered vs software that is popular.
On Dependency Management, I note that SalixOS is based on Slackware 15, and has dependency management, probably for a subset of packages. So the biggest barrier to my using Slackware proper could have been removed. Maybe it just presented Volkerding with too great a challenge.
The original problem with dependency checking – remember “Dependency Hell”?
Package 1 requires Package 2, but Package 2 requires Package 1
It took many years to get that straightened out.
(I know – static compiling would fix that, but then you lose the strength of shared libs)
I’d argue that bluntly taking those “benefits” as a fact is a fallacy… those may work for some…
For me Slackware (and gentoo) always felt like distributions for people that have way to much free time on their hands…
I am glad slackware exists, but some of these are not advantages imo. dependency management vs HD space? using a simple text file to track packages? i’ll stick with Debian and FreeBSD.
Slackware(-current, the dev branch) is my home.
Slackware doesn’t pretend to be for everyone, it is very much Patrick’s own OS that he shares publicly. I just happen to have a shared mindset about what I want as my OS.
When I see my colleagues around every Ubuntu release, I remember why I use Slackware. I can mold it to my desires while trusting Patrick to maintain a rock-solid OS.