thelinuxlink.net

"Slackware is the most venerable of Linux distributions, loved and trusted by hordes of users, sysadmins and programmers around the world for its solidity and closeness to the ground. Slackware comes from an earlier time when Linux users were almost exclusively hackers who walked the command line without fear or prejudice, scorned the world of point and click, and never went out overdressed."

http://www.tuxdeluxe.org/node/110
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Get_Slack

This guy speaks the truth.

why do you praise slackware, which i agree is a great linux distro but bitch about freebsd and openbsd? slackware took the sys v style init scripts from BSD.

With slackware any software that is not included , you have to manually compile, in other words you have to do all the dependencies yourself, whereas with any of the *BSDs that's all done for you.


I am not meaning to be mean but slackware is harder to use than any BSD IMO.

For me, Slackware is easier to use than *BSD, mostly because I'm more comfortable with Linux and a GNU userland. Slackware also requires less work to make into a desktop system than most *BSDs, since KDE and a variety of window managers are included with a full installation, and sound drivers are loaded automatically upon boot up. I also personally don't find compiling from source on Slackware to be that difficult, since it includes many development tools and libraries installed by default. In most cases, dependencies are already there, and it is usually pretty easy to create a Slackware package from vanilla source code, and have it just work. Easier than on any other Linux distro or Unix operating system since I don't have to fark around with distro-specific patches or complicated configure flags. Ports and pkgsrc are nice, but they are a bit too time-consuming for me.

That being said, I haven't run Slackware in a couple months, mostly because I've been using the latest Ubuntu/Debian releases, and I'm spoiled by the ease of apt-get.

Wally Balljacker wrote:Slackware also requires less work to make into a desktop system than most *BSDs, since KDE and a variety of window managers are included with a full installation, and sound drivers are loaded automatically upon boot up.

A variety of desktops and window managers are out-of-the-box on Freebsd at least, if you select if from the package selection on installation.
From my understanding the reason sound drivers are not loaded by default is a licence issues than laziness.

Wally Balljacker wrote: I also personally don't find compiling from source on Slackware to be that difficult, since it includes many development tools and libraries installed by default. In most cases, dependencies are already there, and it is usually pretty easy to create a Slackware package from vanilla source code, and have it just work.

I guess you did not spend too much time with FreeBSD as you did with slackware, as its as easy as portinstall bzflag .

If you want to know how easy openbsd is ask Troels

allix wrote:I guess you did not spend too much time with FreeBSD as you did with slackware, as its as easy as portinstall bzflag .

If you want to know how easy openbsd is ask Troels

Theoretically, it is as easy as that, although when I was running FreeBSD 6.2, there were occasionally applications that would fail to compile. Using Ports is also very time-consuming, and what do you do when you want a program that isn't included in Ports, or you want a different version than what is available? Sure you could download vanilla source code, attempt to patch it for FreeBSD, and install it with 'make install', but then you have no way of tracking that, and your all-powerful Ports system isn't aware that it exists, which can cause all kinds of problems.

It's all personal preference, I guess. I just find using checkinstall on Slackware for 3rd-party applications to be less involving and less complicated than using a ports system.

Wally Balljacker wrote: Using Ports is also very time-consuming, and what do you do when you want a program that isn't included in Ports, or you want a different version than what is available? Sure you could download vanilla source code, attempt to patch it for FreeBSD, and install it with 'make install', but then you have no way of tracking that, and your all-powerful Ports system isn't aware that it exists, which can cause all kinds of problems.

However you compile applications, its time consuming.
The FreeBSD Porter's Handbook explains how to compile a package so the ports system is aware of it encase you want to remove it or track it.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO885 ... index.html


One thing that is internationally known about the *BSD's notably FreeBSD is that their documentation is second to none. The reason linux largely gets away with it is because of forums and word of mouth. If you take a look at gentoo, there documentation is very good and there sorta based there system on FreeBSD especially there fake ports system called portage.

That's good to know. I agree that compiling in any fashion takes time, but at least with Slackware, 99% of the system is tracked through slackpkg, with official binary updates. I don't have to compile Xorg, or KDE, or Firefox, or any other essential application. I only have to compile extra stuff when I want to, which is nice. Don't get me wrong, FreeBSD is a great OS, but I find that Slackware takes less time to administer.

Wally Balljacker wrote:That's good to know. I agree that compiling in any fashion takes time, but at least with Slackware, 99% of the system is tracked through slackpkg, with official binary updates. I don't have to compile Xorg, or KDE, or Firefox, or any other essential application. I only have to compile extra stuff when I want to, which is nice. Don't get me wrong, FreeBSD is a great OS, but I find that Slackware takes less time to administer.

FreeBSD has binary updates , xorg, kde and firefox are all available as binaries.
As you said before

It's all personal preference

Which i agree with

allix wrote:FreeBSD has binary updates , xorg, kde and firefox are all available as binaries.
As you said before

So you don't have to compile newer versions of those to stay secure? Can I get a binary of Firefox 2.0.0.3 right now?

Wally Balljacker wrote:

allix wrote:FreeBSD has binary updates , xorg, kde and firefox are all available as binaries.
As you said before

So you don't have to compile newer versions of those to stay secure? Can I get a binary of Firefox 2.0.0.3 right now?

yep its there ,