Poignant remarks. We're not getting any younger: "Erik "alphageek" Jan Tromp passed away in 2020 after a long illness. He was a long-time member of the Slackware core team doing a ton of stuff behind the scenes and a master of lesser-known programming languages like Tcl. :-) For a long time he lived closer to me geographically than anyone else on the core team, but unfortunately with an international border between u…
Slackware 15.0
51–60 of 182 posts
Re: Slackware 15.0
#52I used and loved Slackware for many years. I moved away because of the slow 15.0 release cycle and the near absence of communication from the BDFL, but I do miss it.
Re: Slackware 15.0
#53Slackware was my first linux distribution, and one that I used continuously before moving to Arch. As it happens, I think Arch embodies many of the original Slackware principles, but its focus on more modern hardware led to it growing a larger community - one that includes great documentation.
These days I don't know what they're doing, but Void is basically Arch without the bullshit (and with runit instead of systemd, thank goodness).
Re: Slackware 15.0
#54I’ve already seen countless comments about Slackware being a lot of folks first Linux distro. For someone like me who didn’t get into programming until the last 5 years or so, can you guys explain what was it about Slackware, that was so appealing or inviting to new users? As a primarily Ubuntu user in my time, was part of it that the Linux landscape was much less mature back then? Was it the principals/ ethos that t…
Slackware is a no frills distro and arguably the baseline for all linux distros. It’s appealing because of the lack of magic or distro specific customizations. If you want a distro that just lets you do what you need to do without getting in the way, it’s very appealing. If you want a distro that prevents you from shooting yourself in the foot, look elsewhere.
I remember having to re-run the installation many times, from selecting the wrong options during installation.
Re: Slackware 15.0
#55I think I'm going to give this a whirl for old times sake.
Re: Slackware 15.0
#56Re: Slackware 15.0
#57I’ve already seen countless comments about Slackware being a lot of folks first Linux distro. For someone like me who didn’t get into programming until the last 5 years or so, can you guys explain what was it about Slackware, that was so appealing or inviting to new users? As a primarily Ubuntu user in my time, was part of it that the Linux landscape was much less mature back then? Was it the principals/ ethos that t…
Initially, back in the early 1990's I think it was the only "distribution" of Linux out there. It was either download Slackware to 3.5" floppies, or else hand-roll your own distribution completely from scratch. I think RedHat came along in the mid to late 90's. I jumped ship and never looked back, because RPM packages were so much more convenient then Slackware's hodgepodge of configure scripts and makefiles. Ubuntu…
IBM bought Red Hat only three years ago.
Re: Slackware 15.0
#58I gave up a weekend of beer to get it up and running on some random motherboard and pilfering some known good compatible bits from our spares store such as an actual NE2000 NIC :) Within a few days I was doing kernel rebuilds to get a sound card working properly or some such thing. That was a lot of fun.
Due to a career change I ended up running RedHat (then CentOS) mostly, but dipped back into Slackware now and again. It's nice to see what was one of the OG distros still getting releases.
Re: Slackware 15.0
#59I'll be downloading this when I get home from work! The time I've spent on 14.2 has been too d&mn long.
Re: Slackware 15.0
#60I’ve already seen countless comments about Slackware being a lot of folks first Linux distro. For someone like me who didn’t get into programming until the last 5 years or so, can you guys explain what was it about Slackware, that was so appealing or inviting to new users? As a primarily Ubuntu user in my time, was part of it that the Linux landscape was much less mature back then? Was it the principals/ ethos that t…