Seems like kind of an odd statement to make.

How can you possibly judge something you haven't even tried? Install Slackware, give it a thorough testing for a couple of weeks, and then come back and give us a more reasoned criticism.

This is a very strange post, rickh:-)
I am both a Debian user and a Slackware user so I can make a statement about the superiority of Slackware based on my experience using both operating systems.
I've also used FreeBSD, NetBSD, and all of the buntu derivatives.

but with slackware, most those are weeded out before they even get that far

Re: Whoa! I can't have a good understanding of the technical and philosophical advantages of the various distros without actually trying them? I started with RedHat6, stayed there until FC4, then moved to Debian, and now my distro-hopping adventures are over.

I have read lots of opinions on the various strengths and weaknesses of the Linux alternatives though, and I don't think my observations are uninformed. I also don't believe there is any significant difference between the efficiency, speed, or construction of my Debian systems as opposed to any of your Slackware systems. I will admit that the average Slackware installation is probably superior to the average Debian installation, simply because Debian has made it easy for fools to rush in.

Good system design, though, is not something that is inherent to one distribution over others. I'm quite confident that (with plenty of extra work) I could set up a fast and stable Ubuntu system, but I'm not going to. It's just not something I feel is necessary to prove.

Sure. You can say that Debian is superior to Slackware without actually trying Slackware. But, your opinion will be an informed one if you have actually tried out the package-management system of both OSs, and tested the stability, durability of each. I use both and that is why I think that Slackware is better.
However, I know you are an experienced user. I respect your opinion. I just respectfully disagree with you.

They're all Linux. The real question is what they are designed to do. Debian is designed with one set of goals, and Slackware with a completely different set of goals. Wonderful how Linux works.

For some tasks I prefer Debian. For others I prefer Slackware. There is no way to rank the two, only compare them.

So you haven't used it, you're not willing to try it, and you base your opinion on the opinion of others. I've tried Debian, it's a good distro, but I prefer Slackware. That's a subjective opinion. Just like yours, but based on actual experience of the two.

It's probably because I've worked in IT for a very long time, but I've come to judge systems not by how well they run, but by how much trouble they are to get working again when they break. When a box is flat on its back wiggling its legs in the air and you've got some manager hovering around you making noises about how many millions of pounds per hour he's losing because his warehouse is at a standstill, you want the cleanest most understandable system you can possibly get. That's the biggest difference I see between Slackware and Debian.

One prime example of this is that dpkg -reconfigure stuff that debian uses all over the place. I know its trying to help people by autoconfiguring things, but it hides what's actually being done.

Another example: the debian update-grub thingy where you have to change comments in the menu.lst file which then get generated into the real statements. The last thing you want when you're up against it, is to be second guessing whether those comments really are comments or whether they're meta-statements that are magically going to be parsed and turned into real statements behind the scenes.

TEMPFS /lib/modules/volatile mountpoint thingy? What is that about? Can't they just use a directory for /lib/modules like everyone else?

Now, I'm sure that debian does have valid reasons for doing things the way they do, even if they're not obvious (to me at any rate), however, whatever those reasons, the additional complexity introduced has to be taken into consideration. Just because you can come up with some clever way to automate something, doesn't mean you should.

In contrast, in Slackware you get exactly what you see. To me, that one thing alone out-weighs all other concerns and more than compensates for all the manual setup and maintenance you have to put in.


As for the politics of debian. I have no time for it. There was a controversy a year or so back about a change being necessary to the Timezone package to fix a problem with daylight savings changing on the wrong week for folk in New-Zealand(if I remember rightly). But, despite it being a trivial, yet vital fix (for anyone in, or dealing with the NZ timezone), as it wasn't strictly speaking a "security fix", the security team wouldn't allow it to go in the critical updates repository. That sort of jobs-worth attitude helps no one and debian lost a good deal of credibility at the time in professional circles.

And most recently the somewhat unfortunate OpenSSL security cock-up, which was caused by the package maintainer taking it into his head to go and change some security critical code without understanding what he was doing and, worse still, not sense-checking it with upstream.

More trivially, there's all that firefox/iceweasel renaming nonsense. It's not really worth mentioning, but all the same, its just another example of change for change's sake.

If you like debian, then more power to you.... but as you can tell, I *really* don't like it.

i learned on freesco, red hat, slackware, openwrt, and mandrake. once you learn how to use a repository and satisfy dependencies your set. i found really good repositories on openwrt, and then just recently found slapt-get. slapt-get makes slackware run like a charm =D

Did I ever say that I prefer Slackware arse-kissing to Debian arse-kissing? If you actually read my post, I stated both were equally pointless. If anyone wants to have a full discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of any distro, I suppose that's fine, but there's always a religious aspect of it that bothers me. You seem to have a very negative tone in every post I've read, and that's why you stand out to me as annoying -- arguing for the sake of arguing. I would *always* prefer pointing out a distro's strengths and weaknesses flat out than the one-sided arguing that always accompanies these threads, and that's why I get frustrated with these threads and your posts. I know I can just ignore these threads, but there's always the chance that something intelligent and insightful actually gets posted so I feel it necessary to read through them.
Point taken. I will just take this opportunity to point out a few other threads outlining the advantages and/or disadvantages of Slackware.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...debian-610985/
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...bian+slackware
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...bian+slackware
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...bian+slackware
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...bian+slackware
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...bian+slackware
Some of those are a little older, but I tried to only pick newer threads. As you can see, this is a very popular topic.

[edit]I should add that I won't return to this thread, and that I apologize to introuble and unSpawn. I'll let the moderators do their work.[/edit]

The biggest problem I have with Slackware right now is boredom. I'm not trying to be cute or funny either. My machine is incredibly stable for the first time in it's life, all the software I need for school is loaded and runs perfectly, I haven't rebooted in days, no error messages in sight, nothing left to figure out. It just sits here staring at me all day like I should actually be using it for something constructive. Yikes! Don't like the sound of that.

Let's all go on the Debian forum and whatever question is posted reply: "You wouldn't have this problem if you installed Slackware."
( Sometimes I get these really puerile ideas.)

I think that's probably a really really bad idea. LoL.

Isn't it scary! I remember when this happened to me many years ago. Later I now appreciate this unique feature of slackware. I now have a family and very busy job. So spending every second of my time on useless distro's is not much of an option. Now I need something that I only have to spend an hour of time installing and configuring.(I also save all my configuration files and have a couple little scripts setup to get things just how I like them). And slackware fits that requirement very well. Plus, I only reinstall slack every 2 years or so. I mostly run it on my server. It runs on a 2gb CF card (just upgraded from 512mb).

As I've said in previous discussions. Slack just lets me get things done. It makes itself transparent to me. It gives me the right tools for the right jobs. It doesn't hide anything from me. Slackware is perfect to me. Simplicity and Reliability will always win. These two things slackware has mastered.

Although I do use my macbook(yeah i know) most exclusively. Slackware has in previous years been everything from laptop, desktop, and server.