In a league of its own. Review on Slackware Linux

REVIEW ON SLACKWARE LINUX

Any review on Slackware is likely to be applicable to almost any version of Slackware. Slackware Linux is an old distro, circa 1994. It has been maintained by Patrick Volkerding. So far as business goes, Slackware Linux is a one-man business run by Patrick. If it is a company, how come Slackware can be downloaded for free and you end up getting what others get after paying USD 40.00? The answer is that those who like Slackware, trust it and want to support it by buying the official pack. But support has been so good that Pat can afford to give it away for free, he's satisfied by making a decent living off it. In a world of corporate greed, I don't know what to call him.

I am not trying to glorify Pat here, but I do like his approach towards building Slackware. Slackware tries to be a minimalistic distro that is aimed at stability and simplicity. Patrick takes different software and tries to integrate them (which is what Linux is really about) without making any customisations. Pat prefers a stable peice of software to a version that offers features at the expense of stability. This doesn't mean Slackware uses old software like Debian. Pat releases versions every 6 months or so. Similarly, there is no hand-holding when it comes to management, like user management, GUI config etc. You'll have to use the CLI. There is no package management. Yes, you read that right.

Here comes the review.

INSTALLATION

A lot of people complain that Slackware has an unfriendly installation setup. Not unfriendly, but simple. Be patient and you'll know what the installer is doing. Debian and NetBSD installers could stake claim to being unfriendly, not Slackware. The tricky parts are: to use the fdisk program, the first mount point is /. The on-screen instructions are for you to read. When it comes to package management, you will be on the safe side to install as many s/w as your HDD size can permit. You don't have to install KDE/GNOME though. That's why they are on the second disk. All that you need to get going are on the first disk - x.org, xine, xmms, window-maker, vim, apache among others. The second CD is for KDE/GNOME (which you can really do without), 2.6 kernel source and some other popular packages like checkinstall.

You can configure anything at all after the installation is done. Of course, this is true of any Linux distro.

LIVING WITH SLACKWARE

What you won't get with Slackware are the foll: OpenOffice, RealPlayer, Opera, FireFox & Adobe Reader which you'll have to install yourself. Mplayer is not included either, I don't know why. I only know it makes much more sense to have it over Xine, because you can convert between formats like WMA to MP3. (Did you know: Mplayer site changed its OS from Debian to Slackware).

While you'll get a sparse software selection, what you get are really stable. Only very stable softwares enter the testing (CURRENT) branch, not to mention the final release. So Slackware does not issue bug fixes very often. For eg. Kernel 2.4 is still the default kernel. Because 2.6 still has some gotchas, for example with cdrecord. Other distros like Mandrake do a work-around for this. Mandrake 10.1 uses 2.6.8 kernel and uses cdrecord, wherein you'll have to use cdrecord dev=/dev/hdc (instead of the usual /dev=0,0,1 notation). While this may seem limiting, it is possible to pick up about any software and compile it from source. You can download the latest kernel source and install it, without any workarounds. I wonder how many distros will let you do this, as each distro has a distro-specific way of doing things.

I used Slackware 9.1 and 10 and found it to be satisfactory. I do not do much work on Slackware, except listening to MP3s, writing an occasional doc and viewing text. I managed to live without GNOME and KDE (after a while I really needed a file manager - like windows explorer, so went to GNOME). If you want a distro that comes with lots of software like Debian does, Slackware is not it. You'll get into a dependency hell - packages can be installed without dependencies, but when you try to run it, you'll get a lib-something missing. So Slackware is best to be used by someone who has lots of patience, or someone who knows the dependency list or someone who is happy with what come with the CDs.

IMPRESSIONS

I do like slackware because there are no unpleasant surprises. Everything works as it should. Plus, despite Pat's health problems, this is one distro that will continue to churn out CDs regularly, for free. No other distro has managed to do that for the past 10 years. Not Mandrake (they will change their release schedule after the merger with Connectiva), RedHat, SuSE or Debian (guess when the next stable release will be). Besides, things will almost always work in newer SLackware they way they did in earlier releases. On the other hand, for eg, Mandrake this will not be true. Mandrake has started treating FireWire devices as ethernet devices.

SUPPORT

You get Slackware by downloading the CD ISOs or by getting it from your local LUG. https://linuxquestions.org is one place where you can ask questions. The site is biased towards Slackware. https://linuxpackages.net has Linux packages which can install some simple ones for you. For more complicated ones like MPlayer and Scribus, you are on your own.

My Slackware setup:

Digital PC5100. 200MHz, 96MB RAM, 6 GB HDD, 4MB PCI S3 Virge DX VGA card, ESS Maestro 1968 audio card. Slackware 10.0. WindowMaker. XMMS. GVIM. XINE.