[CLUE-Talk] This close to moving to Slackware, Jeff

[Lynn Danielson]

Kevin Cullis wrote:
> 
> I was talking with a gentleman yesterday and he told me about
> Slackware.  I'm about this close, |  |, to move to it and dump SuSe.
> Any comments?

FOOL!  SuSE RULES!

Just kidding.  While I no longer break out in cold sweats when I 
think about my past experience with Slackware I'm still not a big fan
of it either.  The last time I looked at it, it seemed much the same.
It does have virtues, stability, and a butt load of stock boot images
(I'll let Jeff extol the rest), but handholding is not one of them. 

To upgrade to a new version I think you still pretty much have to 
start from scratch.  You have to carry over any data and configuration
files from your previous version.  Maybe this has changed with recent
versions.

Slackware also doesn't use an administration tool like SuSE's.  Yast 
with a minimal amount of information will tweak all of your necessary
configuration files.  If you, like Jeff, believe that automated 
configuration tools are for the weak and timid ;-) and that real Linux
users should learn which configuration files they need to edit, by all
means use Slackware.  It will force you to learn.  You could install
webmin or linuxconf.

I also dislike it's BSD style runlevel scripts.

Lately I've been a little annoyed by SuSE's marketing/packaging/
pricing changes, they still bundle more software together for the 
money than any other distribution.  This is great for those of us 
who still suffer with low bandwith net connections.  I've also been 
impressed with the binary packages I've under SuSE which work as
advertised. 

Just my two cents.  

If I may ask, in what ways have you been dissapointed with SuSE 
that you're considering Slackware?  If you become a convert, keep
us posted.


Lynn Danielson