Hi Richard,

 RF> I wish Slackware had a more predictable release cycle 
 RF> and better communication with users. You can't be 
 RF> perfect, I guess. On the other hand, OpenBSD's 
 RF> communication is usually along the lines "if you don't 
 RF> understand it, go read the source code and stop 
 RF> bothering us with stupid questions" :-)

You do know the Slackware Philosophy, right?

Slackware is:

- A distribution that can be installed entirely offline with the CD/DVD set.

- A distribution which is released when stable and not according to a fixed
schedule. Every release of Slackware Linux is thoroughly tested by the Slackware
team and the community. Slackware places high value on stability rather than the
"newness" or "freshness" of software.

- A distribution where simplicity is preferred over convenience. The lack of GUI
helpers (common in many other commercial distributions) for system
administration tasks is a case in point.

- A distribution where system configuration and administration is done through
simple ncurses helper scripts or by directly editing well-commented
configuration files through a text editor.

- A distribution that prefers to package vanilla software or software that
hasn't been modified from upstream development. Little or no patching is done to
upstream software and as a result, the software found in Slackware works as
closely to what was intended by the original creators as practically possible.

- A distribution that does not add layers of abstraction or complexity on top of
existing solutions. For instance, Slackware package management is handled by
simple scripts acting on compressed tarball package files (*.tgz, *.txz, *.tbz)
and there is no dependency handling for package management.

- A distribution which abides by the common-sense dictum "if it's not broken,
don't fix it."

- A distribution where the major decisions are taken by the BDFL (Benevolent
Dictator for Life, the current chief maintainer Patrick Volkerding) and where
the development process is more closed than purely community based
distributions. As a result, Slackware is highly focused on its core strengths
and values and does not cater to every preference of its community or others.
For this reason, there is less pressure on the Slackware development team to be
popular and cater to the larger mass market.

For these reasons and more, that's why I like Slackware.  I hate rolling
releases, having to modify software configuration to work with the latest
rolling release, et cetera.

You can always see what's going on with Slackware development by checking the
changelog page at http://www.slackware.com/changelog/.  You pick which version
of Slack you want to monitor and read it.

Do you participate in the official Slackware forum?  Pat hangs out there as do
all of the major Slackware developers (as well as yours truly).  This forum is
at https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slac...  It's quite active.

Now if you don't mind being both an unpaid beta tester and guinea pig for Red
Hat, Fedora is the way to go for new stuff though if you're really hardcore, I'd
go with a distro with a monthly rolling release.

Not me.  I like stability on all of my Slack systems.

 RF> Devuan is quite ok. I use it when I am writing an 
 RF> article and I need a Debian - like platform for testing 
 RF> things, but I don't want to deal with systemd. 

I was using Devuan for several months but got tired of the dependency hell
(something Slackware doesn't have, thankfully).

Later,
Sean


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