http://www.osnews.com/story/9823/Short_Slackware_10_1_Review Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sun, 26 May 2013 01:33:18 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Now, I'm all for reviews of Slackware, but there is NO point in producing screenshots of this distro. Its power is in its reliability and rock solid stability. There simply IS nothing to show off in a screenshot that differentiates it from any other distro, except for the lack of gui configuration tools and distro-specific utilities. Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Finally someone has proven with out a shadow of a doubt that Slackware acually runs KDE:) Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Finally someone has proven with out a shadow of a doubt that Slackware acually runs KDE:)

Proven? This could just as well be Solaris running KDE. :-)

Just kidding, but I just wanted to say that there is indeed nothing "Slackware" about these screenshots. It's just vanilla KDE. Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have installed KDE as the default a few times now on mulitple flavors of Linux. I just can not get used to the look. I tried for Slack's sake. Slackware was my first real attempt at getting to understand linux. I trust Pat to make me happy with the solid distro. This will be the first time I can remember disagreeing with his choices. I will use Dropline I guess, but it hurts to dismantle Slack. Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Love SlackWare, and lovin' it more everytime it gets upgraded. As far as KDE/Dropline, I prefer neither, FluxBox alla way baby. (All though my wife prefers XFCE, and my son is the KDE user). Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? a vanilla KDE is one of things i like best about Slackware, Pat Volkerding lets KDE be what the KDE developer team intended it to be, i hate the way Fedora as thier build of KDE it just don't look like KDE to me, and Mandrake gotta go messing with the menu till it has submenus inside other submenus making KDE in to a mandrake kludge, one of the things i want if i have both KDE & Gnome installed is i dont want a bunch of Gnome apps in KDE and visa versa, if i want to add something i can add it manually...

a cleaner menu without clutter is better...

i currently do not even have Gnome-2.x installed and when Slackware-11 comes out i hope Gnome is removed from it IMO Gnome-1.4 was the last good Gnome to be released... Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? This review didn't answer any of the questions that I would have when trying out a Linux distro. The review said nothing about:

- number of seconds until you have to re-compile the kernel
- number of seconds until you have to edit some obscure text file
- number of seconds until you have to beg for help on the internet
- how much of a smug and elitist bastard can you be while boasting about it on the internet
- does all of the incomprehensible documentation use the proper "GNU/Linux" or "GNU+Linux" or "GNU on Linux" term (as opposed to the anti-social "Linux" term)
- how easy is it for me to brainwash myself into totally ignoring its many glaring and obvious flaws Sat, 26 Feb 2005 01:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree 100%, Cheapskate. ;-) Sat, 26 Feb 2005 01:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? run menudrake. select 'action -> modify menu style -> original menu'. done. Sat, 26 Feb 2005 04:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I don't use slack anymore so this is really dumb to say, but...

The last good KDE release was KDE 1.x Since then, I never used KDE again...altogether with Qt libs. (I don't even install qt libs!!!) Sat, 26 Feb 2005 05:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Good point. In Mandrake, it takes three clicks and you get a vanilla KDE menu.

But why someone would want to go from a sensible, logical, easy menu organization (Mandrake's default) to the sloppy, disorganized mess that is the vanilla KDE menu organization, is beyond me.

And this is not a rant against KDE, as I use KDE about %70 of the time (it is my favorite DE).

BTW - if I had the time to go through learning how to install Slack, and edit config files in the command line, I'd try Slack, as it seems a pinnacle in stability and speed. But alas, I don't have that kind of time, so I'm quite happy with Mandrake and Mepis. Sat, 26 Feb 2005 05:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? 1 - number of seconds until you have to re-compile the kernel
2 - number of seconds until you have to edit some obscure text file
3 - number of seconds until you have to beg for help on the internet
4 - how much of a smug and elitist bastard can you be while boasting about it on the internet
5 - does all of the incomprehensible documentation use the proper "GNU/Linux" or "GNU+Linux" or "GNU on Linux" term (as opposed to the anti-social "Linux" term)
6 - how easy is it for me to brainwash myself into totally ignoring its many glaring and obvious flaws

Here's my 2 chinyins

Before 1 month
1- 10800 seconds give or take
2- ~ 500 seconds
3- ~ 300 seconds (god damn, LQ's good though)
4- bah.. granged :p
5- To my suprise, not that much really..

After 1 month of installation
1- 0
2- 0
3- 0
4- granted :p
5- hardly, once everything's set up.

and that's including using swaret btw! Sat, 26 Feb 2005 07:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Slackware has a really nice community in linuxquestions.org, check it out, and read jetblackz.cjb.net, along with a few other recommended tutorials from LQ, and you'll be on your feet in no time. TBH i don't find the slack installation hard, just confusing at first, being not GUI. The disadvantage is that I've tried other distros, but ever since slack 9.0, i was hooked.. (even LFS couldnt tare me away from it) Sat, 26 Feb 2005 07:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The way slackware works is just right.
All the packages are plain vanilla, meaning getting help from the developpers of the applications itself is possible, meaning compiling your own programs works always, meaning making things work the way you want really works.
I've been running the -current tree for some time now, and having my system up to date with out hastle has been an other plus. My desktop is a 400Mhz 320Mb ram machine, runs slackware with the 2.6.10 kernel and kde without problem, same for my laptop wich is a 500Mhz 256Mb ram machine.
Some of my friends who don't really care what there machine runs have slackware installed by me, all have rediscovered the internet. They can now again use email, combined with a spamfilter, browse the internet with konqueror and have no popups, and trust IM again with kopete. I install slackware, configure their system, show them applications like Juk, kimdaba, kmymoney2, knode, k3b. A week later I go again to fix whatever problems they still have.
One girlfriend that is a secretary has found out herself that she can run office, wich she still likes to have on her pc at home, if she installs codeweaver. She downloaded the free preview and installed it herself, she won't have a problem paying for the full version.
A friend is now using blender to make his own 3D video or something. And an other one is using quanta to update the site of the model making club his in.
What has amazed me about this all, is that once there slackware system is installed, they find out thereself what to do. And what's more, they have found back their trust in computing and internet. Things just work, don't crash, don't slowdown, don't start to act strange after a while.
The fackt that slackware's administration and configuring is all in basic text files has been a help in stead of a hinderance. I can put the good configurations on an usb stick that I cary around. I can change stuff over ssh. I don't need to start X to do the configuration. Once you know how the system works, seting up a new box is fast, extremely fast.
Slackware can be trust, that's the nice thing about it! Sat, 26 Feb 2005 09:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Slack seems pretty tied to Pat. I know several Slackware users who dropped Slackware when Pat was very sick. Steve Jobs kept his pancreatic cancer a secret until they knew it was benign. Sat, 26 Feb 2005 10:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? So Pat has pancreatic cancer ? That sounds really bad... Sat, 26 Feb 2005 11:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "It's just vanilla KDE."

^^^ There is nothing sweet about KDE, actually it tastes like a shit compared to XFCE. See for yourself and you WILL see the difference. Sat, 26 Feb 2005 11:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Darn. I thought this would be a review of Minislack. http://shweps.free.fr/minislack/screenshots.html
But it was just a mini-review of Slack. Meh. Sat, 26 Feb 2005 12:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Although suffering from the results of some nasty infections, Pat does not have pancreatic cancer. He is pretty worn down from the ordeal he has been through, though. I hope everyone will join me in wishing Pat a complete recovery. Sat, 26 Feb 2005 21:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments