The best version of Slackware, ever, bar none.
And in this person’s not very humble opinion, the best distro going.
;D
Slackware … isn’t that that new unproven distro that’s Ubuntu based ?
Trol-alol-alol 
That’s fighting talk where I come from…
Hehehe … Seriously though, what in your opinion has improved that makes it better than previous Slackware versions, or other distros … just curious as I haven’t really tried it
They’ve finally embraced the 3.x kernel.
KDE 4.8 is better than KDE 4.5
I installed it on my laptop and everything worked out of the box (except the touchpad, which worked but was not configurable without the kcm_touchpad package). Functionality out of the box is a reasonable test (also tried Mint, Fedora and SalixOS, but Slackware suits me best of all).
Slackware lacks all those nasty bloated config wizards, it doesn’t come already setup for you, you make of it what you will. It requires thought and some skill, not just point and click your way to ease. Either you know how to edit the right config files or you don’t get to use it.
And whatever infuriating nonsense that was causing 13.37 to crash on me repeatedly has gone.
What can I say? I’m not technical enough to explain it properly. I know when I’m using quality and Slackware 14 is quality. (Remember Mandrake 9 & 10? That was quality. Redhat 9 was quality. Etc).
Also, I enjoy it when people look confused and say “wtf is slackware?”
I find myself more and more drawn to bare distros that you tune to your needs, so I may give Slackware 14 a proper “test in anger” 
[EDIT]
What can I say? I'm not technical enough to explain it properly. I know when I'm using quality and Slackware 14 is quality. (Remember Mandrake 9 & 10? That was quality. Redhat 9 was quality. Etc).
I think that was clear enough, and rather eloquently put
Also, I enjoy it when people look confused and say "wtf is slackware?"
;D
OK, quick question if you’d be so kind …
As I absolutely can’t get on with KDE4, and I’m reading that getting Gnome to work isn’t a walk in the park … are other DE options such as LXDE and/or Xfce available during the install process, or am I going to be shoehorning them in later ?
Slackware comes with KDE, xfce, fluxbox, blackbox, wmaker, fvwm2 and twm.
To switch, open a terminal and type ‘xwmconfig’, choose the one you want (ncurses interface), log out and back in and you’re sorted.
Gnome - there is a build of Gnome 3 for 13.37, not sure if it’s been upgraded to 14 yet though (seemingly not - check out http://gnomeslackbuild.org/ ).
SalixOS is built on Slackware so SalixOS 13.37 has a Mate edition, a KDE edition, an XFCE edition etc. Their site talks of the Beta for the XFCE version built on Slack14 (XFCE is their default version) but no mention as of yet of a Mate build.
http://www.salixos.org/wiki/index.php/Announcements
As an aside, SalixOS installs faster than any other OS. I had installing SalixOS Mate and the post install addition of Compiz, Opera, webcore fonts etc down to about 10-12 minutes. In the amount of time it took to install Salix, configure it and boot into a fully operational desktop, Fedora was still “examining packages to be installed”.
Then there’s ZenLinux. Also built on slackware. Their community seems to be quite small and since the release of the Zenwalk Gnome edition (Gnome 2.x) little seems to have occurred on the Gnome front, although they did release a new version of the xfce version a few days ago. It’s an interesting distro though, they focus on security more than most so you get IceWeasel with various addons (noscript, do not track etc) which mean that 99% of websites don’t work properly (indicating just how much of the web now relies upon what might be considered as intrusive behaviour requiring monitoring of your useage and potentially insecure scripts to be run. All this can be turned off of course). It’s an education if nothing else.
If you haven’t used slackware before, on first boot it drops you to a command prompt and you must edit /etc/inittab by hand or use ‘init 4’ (slackware’s graphic runlevel is 4 not 5), add a user by hand and then use the old startx command. The other gotcha is that during the install, one is offered the choice of network configurations and you can choose either dhcpd, manual or Network Manager. Choose the last one - Network Manager - or you’ll be wondering, like I was, why the GUI was telling me there were no network connections available on a box with 2 NIC’s, one of which was connected. If you rattle through the installer and forget that,
‘chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.networkmanager && /etc/rc.d/rc.networkmanager start’ - should sort it out.
If I’m going to try one, it may as well be the daddy (I’m not really looking for a new distro, just interested in seeing Slackware in action … maybe for future consideration) … the little “gotcha’s” are half the fun, so are unlikely to put me off … I’m a stubborn old git that enjoys the challenge then savors the victory
Cheers for the hints though
I have only used Salix 13.37 LXDE edition, but I am convinced that Slack14 is a great distribution.
Will upgrade as soon it is available from Salix.
There is a good set of documentation here to get you started on Slackware
Cheers SeZo
Forgot to mention…
Slackware64 is pure 64bit and as such there are no 32bit compat libraries present. It can be made into a multilib OS (most other 64bit OS’s are made so prior to release) by following Alien Bob’s how-to here.
http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=slackware:multilib
Well I was thinking of going 32bit (only 2GB RAM on target system), but sod it, let’s create some more problems for myself and go multiarch (sorry multilib in slackspeak)
Cheers for the link.
Is Slackware a distro that uses a pae kernal or not as want to try it on a old ibm laptop
http://www.tomas-m.com/blog/18497-Disabling-PAE-for-32bit-version.html
To be honest, until reading that I didn’t even know what PAE was. The blog quoted was written 33 days ago so I’m guessing it refers to Slackware 14.
i can’t wait for the update’s to roll into the new vector linux when it’s launched one of the kids i like more than it’s dad
KDE 4.9.3 available for Slackware 14 from here…
WTF is Slackware?
No, seriously. You say it works straight out of the box but then say you like the way you have to configure it all.
Me no comprende.
“It works straight out of the box” means “I didn’t have to go hunting for extra drivers, like wireless drivers, or graphics card drivers, in order to get it to work properly.” It doesn’t mean that on first boot I am presented with an all singing, all dancing, all codecs present and correct, desktop that needs no further modification.
To me, the less I have to do to make it mine, the quicker I become bored. So the fact that I had to run slackbuild scripts to create the packages to provide flash, mp3 support, multimedia playback and so on is not a drawback, it’s a plus. It means that I now have a folder full of packages ready to be installed on any subsequent reinstall, all of which were compiled on my system against the packages I added. The installation of which can be achieved with a single line command and all of which I know will work perfectly.
The installer works quickly (usually quicker than most other distros, with the possible exception of SalixOS) and I am not reliant upon an internet connection in order to get things sorted out as I have the compiled packages stored locally.
Slackware tends to lag behind the curve when it comes to bleeding edge software. This is not a bad thing, quite the contrary. It means what you get is well tested and very stable.
Updates for considerably earlier versions of slackware are still being released so there’s none of this “end of the line, go get a newer version” nonsense imposed on me.
I do get some semblance of pleasure when people say “wtf is Slackware?” And I’m not in the least bit ashamed of that that feeling.
Further explanations would sound kind of synaesthesic.
Now I know about slackware. Thanks.