Star Arch Linux Vs Slackware: The Best of All Worlds
Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Wed 3rd Nov 2004 07:07 UTC
Talk, Rumors, X Versus Y To paraphrase one of the best "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episodes, "Best of Both Worlds", both Arch Linux and Slackware represent the best of all the OS worlds: the power of traditional Unix, the elegance of BSD and the ease of mind of Mac OS X. This is an article outlining the differences between --what I believe-- are the two best Linux distros around today. Mind you though, "best" doesn't always mean "easy".
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I do get it
by Raoul on Wed 3rd Nov 2004 11:38 UTC

While I look like SuSE (9.1 Professional) a lot, I am aware that are problems with using such a distribution.

For one thing I am starting to seriously think about developing some Gnome application and using an outdated Gnome 2.4 desktop just is not good enough for me. I know you can download a more recent version of Gnome (afaik at least 2.6) but I would rather start with a clean slate and the other option of installing from tarball just is painful.

One thing I find is that you can easily break things especially when you start compiling your own libraries from source and replacing the original (perhaps a dumb thing to do). Maybe the average new user is less concerned about compiling apps/libraries from source but many of them have a need to have the lastest cutting edge software.

These distributions (Arch and slackware) can be very useful for even the layman Linux user because of (in my own words):
PS Eugenia have mentioned all of these points in her article

*more minimal hardware requirements
*Speed & Optimizations (they probably are considerably faster than SuSE or even MDK). I know my SuSE system takes about 2 minutes to get to GDM login on quite a decent system.
*security updates: These distributions are perhaps even better than Redhat/SuSE/MDK at releasing such updates.

You can add many more reasons, but why would I, as Eugenia's article makes it clear what the good points and advantages of using Arch and Slackware are. It is important to remember that people who decides to use Linux can have vastly different needs and in my opinion it is better to give them the information of what is available so they can make up their own minds.

PSS
Any flaws in my logic or factual errors are mine and I own up to them ;)