Slackware 12.0 released [LWN.net]

Slackware 12.0 released

Posted Jul 4, 2007 5:40 UTC (Wed) by juhl (subscriber, #33245)
In reply to: Slackware 12.0 released by peace
Parent article: Slackware 12.0 released

> What makes Slack the finest around? Slack was the first distro I used but
> have since settled on apt based distros. Why would someone choose Slack
> over deb or ubuntu?

Just to mention a few things. Slack is simple and straightforward, damn fast, puts the admin in control of his/her box, doesn't try to hide what's "under the hood" with fancy config tools, just exposes the config file of each app. Slackwares packages don't do dependency tracking (yes, that's a good thing!). Every package tracks upstream closely, little if no custom patching.
Ohhh and then there's that very important fact that it just works and is rock solid.

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Slackware 12.0 released

Posted Jul 6, 2007 0:11 UTC (Fri) by lysse (subscriber, #3190) [Link]

> Every package tracks upstream closely, little if no custom patching.

Which means that even though there's no package dependency stuff, grabbing source code and typing "./configure && make && sudo make install" will usually just work too.

I've been a fan since 4.0, and I can't quite put my finger on why I stay with it. It just feels nice, like an comfy old sweater that magically keeps up with new fashions and never frays or unravels. It doesn't look down on me for liking the command line, either, which is always nice.