LinuxQuestions.org has an in-depth interview with Patrick Volkerding. “The goal back when the project was started was to make it easy, and to keep things simple. But to paraphrase Einstein, you want to make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. There’s a point of diminishing return when adding additional layers and interfaces, especially when it comes to system configuration. I’ve seen automated configuration do things like strip out all the comments in a config file, or worse just completely rewrite the thing because you had the nerve to try editing it outside of the approved system. And I do feel like Slackware has been shafted in some of the reviews over the years, largely because there’s a tendency to review only the installer and not the system itself. There is certainly a learning curve, but that’s true for all versions of Linux. We’ve never tried to make things hard, but perhaps we also haven’t tried to prevent people from shooting themselves in the foot. Things like aliasing rm to ‘rm -i’ don’t help the user learn to be careful.” Patrick gets it.
I thought this was a really good interview with Volkerding. Though I almost never run Slackware myself, I did spend some time learning on it in my early Linux days and I appreciate its lightweight and clean approach. Volkerding has a clear and practical way of looking at things (which really comes out in this interview) and I’m glad he was willing to provide his insight into various aspects of the Linux ecosystem.
Slackware has been my only favorite linux distro. The main point has been also highlighted in the interview – What I learned about Slack back in 98 is still pretty much valid today. The system hasn’t changed a lot, only packages have newer versions. One point I did an overview of Slackware package history and over the 10 years I investigated, it was very stable list. Slackware never shows the rush towards the bleeding edge bt bets on proven technology. That is the thing I like about it. The supreme stability in both software and kernel level and more over, the perfect knowledge reuse which is stil valid after many years.
That of course does not mean that Slackware has olld software on it. The latest and the greatest packages are available.
And the package manager without _any_ dependency management is a dream come true for someone who wants to setup everything by hand and knows exactly what is and whats is not installed in the system.
Edited 2012-06-08 06:44 UTC
After Yggdrasil, Slackware was the next Linux distro I used at home (coming from Xenix at work and MS-DOS, OS/2 and Amiga at home).
It was the most UNIX-like Linux I’ve ever used and it taught me a lot. Not easy, but very simple and orderly.
I moved to Redhat in 95-ish and SuSE in 98 but nowadays I use Kubuntu because I can’t be arsed fannying about with the OS anymore.
Long live Slackware though!
…but I still check out the site every now and again and reminisce.
I started using Slack at version 9.0 and still using it today. For me… she’s always reliable and stable. I to feel that the complaint about Slackware not having a package manager that handles dependencies is very miniscule at best. Slackware as an operating systems is just SOLID! I’ve stated a couple of years ago… ” Other than BSD which I also use, I couldn’t live without SLACKWARE “. So PAT don’t go anywhere and keep SLACKIN’.
-Bradley
Slackware has a sweet spot on my heart, as it was my first distribution back in 1995 summer.
Nowadays private life makes sure that I only use distributions that ‘just work’, as I don’t have time to fiddle with the system any longer.
Nice to see Slackware still alive.