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Slackware was my first introduction to Linux. I initially investigated it as a way to get around my parents setting a password on Windows. Thanks, mom and dad

by sjs382 8y ago

Slackware was my first introduction to Linux. I initially investigated it as a way to get around my parents setting a password on Windows. Thanks, mom and dad, for the (very unintentional) motivation that set me on the career path I'm on now.

nextos 8y ago
Same here. IMHO, Slackware is close to the local maximum in the space of imperative distros. I think adding dependency resolution is the only thing it misses vs Arch or Void. But like those, it's barebones and it ships simple lean binary packages. Going back to Slackware was a brisk of fresh air when Ubuntu and friends got too complex. Sometimes things break, and it's hard to understand why due to the overwhelming amount of things they ship with. There's nothing like having total control of what you are running, and Slackware is really good at this. I think the future are functional distributions like NixOS or GuixSD. For many use cases, they are just ready for prime time. For others (e.g. R or Julia), where heavy patching / wrapping of packages is needed, there's still a bit of work to be done.
- jolmg 8y ago
  I could think your entire post might've been written by me if you replaced Slackware with Arch. I haven't tried Slackware, but this makes me wonder how similar it is to Arch. What do you mean it's missing dependency resolution? Do you need to install dependencies of packages manually?
  - nextos 8y ago
    Yes. For various reasons Slackware doesn't have dependency resolution. This is why I've been using Arch and other distros since long ago. But in the late 90s there was no Arch. Besides, the amount of libraries was an order of magnitude smaller, so it wasn't such a hassle.
    - danieldk 8y ago
      ...and X11 and GNOME weren't split up in a gazillion packages.
  - cyphax 8y ago
    Out of the box, you do have to install dependencies manually, but you don't have to track them, which is the part I would dislike about dependency resolution. Assuming you have a full installation (where all dependencies will be met), and you find your package on slackbuilds, dependencies will be listed and can be installed with about the same ease as you would install a package on, say, Debian.
- enriquto 8y ago
  > I think adding dependency resolution is the only thing it misses vs Arch or Void Please, no! Having independent packages is a huge plus! I moved out of voidlinux because I could not install the X headers without python2, due to some silly "dependency".
  - nextos 8y ago
    Arch usually gets this right, and most stuff are optional dependencies.
paulie_a 8y ago
Same here! I recall my dad complaining that it was causing issues to windows when dual booting when I was a teenager. But damn getting a modem working in that era was tremendous bitch.
- philsnow 8y ago
  > getting a modem working in that era was a tremendous bitch My "hand-cranked modem" story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6576823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6576823 > To this day, whenever the network is slow, I twirl the mouse in little circles subconsciously. I still do this, it's theraputic
  - userbinator 8y ago
    Also known as "manually pumping the message loop". I'm almost certain that that program was handling communications events on the same thread as the message pump, and only relying on a very slow timer to move them through. There was probably plenty of such badly-written software back then, because 16-bit Windows was cooperatively multitasked and had no concept of threads. Related article and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625957 http://web.archive.org/web/20140105042459/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/168702 http://web.archive.org/web/20140105042459/http://support.mic...
- hermitdev 8y ago
  Circa mid 1990s, I tried to get my hands on Linux and tried to dual boot to a separate hard drive that I bought with chore/spare job money. Boy, did I fuck that up. Rendered both installs useless. Don't recall how, but had to manually edit the partition tables on the main Windows drive. As long as they had that PC, it never did report the correct partition size in several places...but it booted & worked, so I wasn't grounded. Wasn't really until college in 2002-2003 that I experimented with *nix again, but that was with a dedicated 2nd hand laptop running FreeBSD so I could access OSS VLSI tools. What a time...
- isostatic 8y ago
  > But damn getting a modem working in that era was tremendous bitch And of course help was available on the internet. On dialup. Which you couldn't get working without the modem.
Theodores 8y ago
You were lucky that you only knew Windows and had concerned parents. At around the same time I had people show me various flavours of Linux with great enthusiasm. I was supposed to be impressed but I had SGI Irix plus applications for it. From my perspective I could not see the point of this 'toy operating system'. It was a bit like one of those cloned Chinese cars that we used to laugh about, with stupid names for programs that were sensibly named in real UNIX. As a consequence I missed the boat and only started with Linux when Ubuntu came along.

by sjs382 8y ago

nextos 8y ago

Same here. IMHO, Slackware is close to the local maximum in the space of imperative distros. I think adding dependency resolution is the only thing it misses vs Arch or Void. But like those, it's barebones and it ships simple lean binary packages. Going back to Slackware was a brisk of fresh air when Ubuntu and friends got too complex. Sometimes things break, and it's hard to understand why due to the overwhelming amount of things they ship with. There's nothing like having total control of what you are running, and Slackware is really good at this. I think the future are functional distributions like NixOS or GuixSD. For many use cases, they are just ready for prime time. For others (e.g. R or Julia), where heavy patching / wrapping of packages is needed, there's still a bit of work to be done.

jolmg 8y ago
I could think your entire post might've been written by me if you replaced Slackware with Arch. I haven't tried Slackware, but this makes me wonder how similar it is to Arch. What do you mean it's missing dependency resolution? Do you need to install dependencies of packages manually?
- nextos 8y ago
  Yes. For various reasons Slackware doesn't have dependency resolution. This is why I've been using Arch and other distros since long ago. But in the late 90s there was no Arch. Besides, the amount of libraries was an order of magnitude smaller, so it wasn't such a hassle.
  - danieldk 8y ago
    ...and X11 and GNOME weren't split up in a gazillion packages.
- cyphax 8y ago
  Out of the box, you do have to install dependencies manually, but you don't have to track them, which is the part I would dislike about dependency resolution. Assuming you have a full installation (where all dependencies will be met), and you find your package on slackbuilds, dependencies will be listed and can be installed with about the same ease as you would install a package on, say, Debian.
enriquto 8y ago
> I think adding dependency resolution is the only thing it misses vs Arch or Void Please, no! Having independent packages is a huge plus! I moved out of voidlinux because I could not install the X headers without python2, due to some silly "dependency".
- nextos 8y ago
  Arch usually gets this right, and most stuff are optional dependencies.

paulie_a 8y ago

Same here! I recall my dad complaining that it was causing issues to windows when dual booting when I was a teenager. But damn getting a modem working in that era was tremendous bitch.

philsnow 8y ago
> getting a modem working in that era was a tremendous bitch My "hand-cranked modem" story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6576823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6576823 > To this day, whenever the network is slow, I twirl the mouse in little circles subconsciously. I still do this, it's theraputic
- userbinator 8y ago
  Also known as "manually pumping the message loop". I'm almost certain that that program was handling communications events on the same thread as the message pump, and only relying on a very slow timer to move them through. There was probably plenty of such badly-written software back then, because 16-bit Windows was cooperatively multitasked and had no concept of threads. Related article and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625957 http://web.archive.org/web/20140105042459/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/168702 http://web.archive.org/web/20140105042459/http://support.mic...
hermitdev 8y ago
Circa mid 1990s, I tried to get my hands on Linux and tried to dual boot to a separate hard drive that I bought with chore/spare job money. Boy, did I fuck that up. Rendered both installs useless. Don't recall how, but had to manually edit the partition tables on the main Windows drive. As long as they had that PC, it never did report the correct partition size in several places...but it booted & worked, so I wasn't grounded. Wasn't really until college in 2002-2003 that I experimented with *nix again, but that was with a dedicated 2nd hand laptop running FreeBSD so I could access OSS VLSI tools. What a time...
isostatic 8y ago
> But damn getting a modem working in that era was tremendous bitch And of course help was available on the internet. On dialup. Which you couldn't get working without the modem.

Theodores 8y ago

You were lucky that you only knew Windows and had concerned parents. At around the same time I had people show me various flavours of Linux with great enthusiasm. I was supposed to be impressed but I had SGI Irix plus applications for it. From my perspective I could not see the point of this 'toy operating system'. It was a bit like one of those cloned Chinese cars that we used to laugh about, with stupid names for programs that were sensibly named in real UNIX. As a consequence I missed the boat and only started with Linux when Ubuntu came along.