Interesting list

Story: 5 Linux Distros You Should Watch Out For in 2013Total Replies: 41
Author Content
caitlyn

Jan 07, 2013
6:02 PM EDT
This is an interesting list. I agree with four out of five. Interest in Sabayon is pretty much holding steady and I don't really expect it to grow or change. The other four are growing in terms of interest from the community and seem to be doing interesting things. To me they really are ones to watch.
kikinovak

Jan 08, 2013
5:52 PM EDT
One distro you should watch out for in 2013:

Slackware Linux.

Because like in the french Nutella ad, "20 years of experience make all the difference".

On July 16th, Slackware will celebrate its 20th anniversary.

http://www.slackware.com/announce/1.0.php
caitlyn

Jan 08, 2013
5:57 PM EDT
Sorry, no. I have 17 years of experience with Slackware and it's still stuckin the 1990s. I've tried every version up to and including 14 and I think I have finally given up onit. Who has time to perpetually tinker with their systems? I don't. The lack of modern security (no SELinux or AppArmor) also makes Slackware a no-go for me.
kikinovak

Jan 08, 2013
7:51 PM EDT
Your mileage varies. I'm running a business based solely on Linux and FOSS, and I'm choosing Slackware specifically because I don't want to tinker with a broken distribution. Standard Slackware is a healthy base, and it's very easy to build upon it. Yes, I know Debian and RHEL and Ubuntu LTS well (even published a book about CentOS), but today my #1 choice remains Slackware.

Of course, it's like with so many things in life (music instruments, books, even love). You're getting out of it what you're willing to put into it.

http://www.microlinux.fr/slackware/14.0/README_MLED.TXT

If a robust, reliable, perennial no-bullsh#t distribution is "stuck in the 1990's", well, long live the 90s. Other distros may be the future, so I guess I'll use them... in the future :oD

Cheers from the sunny south of France,

http://www.microlinux.fr

slacker_mike

Jan 08, 2013
11:43 PM EDT
@caitlyn, even as a Slackware fan I certainly wouldn't say it is a distro to watch in 2013, although it will be interesting to see how they deal with the increasing Red Hatisms being adopted like systemd.

You are absolutely right that Slackware misses some of those modern features like SELinux or systemd, etc (Gentoo actually will use SELinux) but for me that is fine because when I have ran into SELinux errors in Fedora it was basically a blackhole trying to investigate. The most common solution I could find was people saying to disable it altogether.

As far as tinkering goes I will say that I tried Gentoo last weekend and I spent way more time tinkering to try and get that working than I ever have with Slackware. In the end my stupidity lost out to the Gentoo "installer". :)

tracyanne

Jan 09, 2013
12:31 AM EDT
I've installed both Mageia
tracyanne

Jan 09, 2013
12:34 AM EDT
I've installed both Mageia and ROSA for different People and am very impressed with both
kikinovak

Jan 09, 2013
6:41 AM EDT
I guess it's the same thing with Linux distributions and motorcycles. Harley riders and the likes will always hold my "classic" no-bull 1000cc BMW in contempt, no matter how far it takes me across European roads without ever failing me. Curiously enough, this only seems to be true on sunny days, because I never see these folks around in winter, or when it rains. Same thing with Slackware :o)
Fettoosh

Jan 09, 2013
11:23 AM EDT
Quoting:I've installed both Mageia and ROSA for different People and am very impressed with both


I installed ROSA on USB thumb drive and my first impression does NOT[edited] match yours @TA.

They way I see it is nothing more than bastardizing KDE. I will dig deeper over the weekend but would be interested in and nice to know what impressed you the most.

KLook is nothing more than Stupid file browser menu that I have on Kubuntu 12.10 KDE 4.9.5. Or may be Quick Access Widget that comes with KDE.

The desktop icons filling main screen is nothing more than a folder view. I am not sure what they are trying to do, make it look like Unity/Gnome 3? Or do they have other plans for future features?

But like I said, I will investigate more in case I am missing something important.

I am also going to look at Mageia, which contrary to ROSA, might be more interesting to me.

caitlyn

Jan 09, 2013
12:04 PM EDT
@slacker_mike: First off, I agree with you that Gentoo is way more tinkering that Slackware. Everything is relative. I supported a shop for five months where an admin had put some Gentoo servers into production against the will of management and corporate policy. The idea that patching and compiling would go on for hours when the business was supposed to be 24/7 was really, really unacceptable. In general, running Slackware is an absolute pleasure compared to running Gentoo :)

re: SELinux in Fedora: Fedora is always bleeding edge and is more likely to have issues that Red Hat/CentOS/Scientific Linux. I'm not sure what you mean by "black hole" here. SELinux is well documented and really isn't hard to troubleshoot and fix once you know it and it's well supported.

Disabling SELinux altogether is, IMNSHO, hugely, incredibly stupid and shows a lack of understanding of even the basics. If you simply put SELinux in permissive mode it will log everything and block absolutely nothing. From a security perspective permissive mode is exactly the same as disabling SELinux entirely but at least you get an understanding of what SELinux was doing when you did have issues and why. The log should provide all the information needed to then make the configuration changes required to fix whatever issues you have and put in back into enforcing mode later. The log, effectively, becomes the template for your policy.

There are other tools besides SELinux that can be used to enhance security. For example, SUSE uses AppArmor and doesn't support SELinux. That's perfectly acceptable. My gripe with Slackware is not that they don't support SELinux or provide tools for it. My gripe is that they also don't provide an acceptable alternative. They provide exactly nothing and the reality of today's Internet makes that unacceptable in business. Frankly, it isn't even acceptable for my home machines.

Oh, and yes, I know I can tack anything and everything onto Slackware. That's what Slackware, IMHO, is all about: tinkering and doing it yourself. It's a great learning tool. It's not a great production environment or a great distro for anyone who wants things to "just work".

I spent about four hours on Monday troubleshooting an issue and determined that a newer version of a piece of software we use would fix the problem. I then had to build an rpm for the new version (not available for the enterprise distro we use) and learned that it wouldn't compile on the OS version we run without some patches. Pulled the srpm for the old version, modified some patch scripts and the spec file, ran through the build process in stages to test it, corrected some of my code, repeated process until correct, and finally built and installed the new package. The problem was solved and everyone was happy. Normally that's the type of work I live for but it was done under pressure with some key functionality hundreds of users needed down. I don't like doing that kind of work (including scripting/coding) under pressure. After an afternoon like that the last thing I want to think about is doing similar work on my home machine if I can avoid it. My days of tinkering just to learn or play are long behind me.

Anyway, I'm not out to bash Slackware or Gentoo. Both have a loyal following and both work well within their design parameters. Those parameters are not what I want and I think they are not what most mainstream Linux users want, whatever mainstream means when it comes to Linux users. They are niche distros and they fill their respective niches admirably.

My reason for responding to kikinovak as I did was the topic of the article: distros to watch. In other words, up and coming distros. Slackware is Slackware. It hasn't changed much with 14.0. It is what it is and Slackers will continue to love it. There really is nothing to watch there. It probably will never gain much in terms of popularity nor will it lose much. It just is.
kikinovak

Jan 09, 2013
1:34 PM EDT
Recently I've read "Trop vite" ("too fast"), the latest book of french writer Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber, in which he analyzes the dramatic increase in our life rhythms in about every area (politics, economy, finance, environment, food, relationships, technology) and the negative impact it has on all of us. It's a really enlightening read, full of eurekas on every page. And well-written.

One short example from the book: not so long ago (think: a few decades), companies were proud to put the words "Founded in 1880" on their letterhead. Nowadays, 20-year-olds create startup companies and resell them after a couple of years to the highest bidder.

Similarly, when I look at the release cycle of some IT projects, I just want to yell "Slow down!" at the developers. I think this also explains my special fondness of some projects like Slackware... and also Xfce. Focus on robustness, a sense of perennity, and changes are introduced not for changes' sake, and if so, then only in small incremental steps. That's one value I cherish, and which I like to watch out for. The more so since it has become the exception rather than the rule in all this frantic release madness.

You know, if the Romans had had advertisements at the time, they would have put "OLD" on a new soap box. "Old" meant "reliable" to the Romans, whereas "NEW" meant "untested", "has yet to prove its value".

Sorry for being blunt about that, but a sysadmin who complains about rebuilding RPMS from SRPMS sounds to me like a cook who complains that he or she actually has to peel carrots and potatoes by hand for the job.
gus3

Jan 09, 2013
1:37 PM EDT
I'm reminded yet again of the trope from /usr/share/games/fortune/fortunes.o:

The mistake of the conservative is to think, "This is old, therefore good."

The mistake of the liberal is to think, "This is new, therefore better."
caitlyn

Jan 09, 2013
1:49 PM EDT
@kiknovak: I didn't complain about my job. My point, which you entirely missed, is that I don't want to spend my free time at home doing it as well. I'm not a hobbyist or a tinkerer and, as far as I am concerned, those are the only people Slackware appeals to.

Oh, and FWIW, the distros I use (Red Hat, SUSE, CentOS, openSUSE mainly nowadays) have been around for a long time, as in almost as long as Slackware. It isn't that Slackware is old or tried or tested. It's that it is missing functionality offered by literally all the other major distros. Slackware requires unnecessary work and wastes my time for absolutely no good reason while offering me inferior security out of the box.
kikinovak

Jan 09, 2013
2:44 PM EDT
Maybe one important point here is that many of my clients (schools, small companies, town halls, public libraries) here in South France often have old and/or exotic hardware and try to keep it for as long as possible. The latest versions of RHEL and SUSE often choke on this kind of hardware (not enough RAM, refuses to boot on Pentium-M processors, etc.). Hence my choice of a distro where the installer has an extremely light footprint and doesn't get in the way. Debian also works well on this kind of hardware, but since I also like some comfort, I prefer using the same distro on both servers and desktops, and curiously enough, Debian is too short on long-term support (a bit more than a year if you go for stable now).

This desktop runs OK on a PIII with 256 MB RAM. Which means that on recent hardware, it's extremely reactive:

http://www.microlinux.fr/desktop_linux.php

I'm using it in my office and at home, as well as all my client's machines. Eating my own dog food :oD
jdixon

Jan 09, 2013
6:09 PM EDT
> I'm not a hobbyist or a tinkerer and, as far as I am concerned, those are the only people Slackware appeals to.

I'm not really either, Caitlyn. But I do want my home machine to be fast and reliable. Slackware gives me that more than any other distro I've tried.
caitlyn

Jan 09, 2013
6:25 PM EDT
Funny, I want my system to be fast and reliable as well. I don't see how Slackware does a better job of that for me that, say, CentOS.
kikinovak

Jan 09, 2013
6:38 PM EDT
Here's a 530-page book about setting up and fine-tuning CentOS step by step on a desktop:

http://tinyurl.com/no254g

The second edition will be based on Slackware for reasons explained in detail in the preface.
caitlyn

Jan 09, 2013
6:46 PM EDT
...or you could just download Stella and it's all done for you. That's a CentOS respin for the desktop. No book needed at all and almost no effort needed at all.

Look. I get it. You love Slackware, kikinovak. It is NOT the be all and end all Linux distro for everyone else. The more you push the more I want to point out it's flaws. Just let it go. My point, which you ignore, is that it is NOT an up and comer and never will be. All the praise from a fan will NEVER change that, nor will any criticism I make dent it's popularity with the existing user base.

Oh, and with all due respect to Marcel (and I respect him greatly) there is NOTHING easy about Slackware when compared to CentOS. Besides, CentOS isn't the distro I'd recommend for most users on a desktop. You were talking server in your last post, remember?

Why do I even bother?
jdixon

Jan 09, 2013
9:50 PM EDT
> I don't see how Slackware does a better job of that for me that, say, CentOS.

First, I said home machine. CentOS, as you note, isn't really appropriate for the desktop. Maybe Slackware isn't faster and more stable than the Red Hat derivatives for you. It is for me. YMMV.

slacker_mike

Jan 09, 2013
11:02 PM EDT
Please fellow Slackware fans stop caring if someone has a different opinion of Slackware than you do. It just makes Slackware fans look thin-skinned and overly sensitive.

Accept the idea that perhaps Slackware isn't the ideal tool for every situation or every user. I do and I am a DVD subscriber of Slackware.
kikinovak

Jan 10, 2013
2:40 AM EDT
Suggestion: take a peek at who wrote the book about CentOS (link above) before putting me into the mindless-fanboy-corner.
hunky

Jan 10, 2013
2:46 PM EDT
Gentoo fanboy here. Love the rolling distributions - they are for me. I would argue that gentoo has been fine for servers - unless maybe if your loads are taxing the hardware already. Then a compile might be fool hardy. But I'm not running a nuclear plant. Updating (compiling) software can also be chosen quite selectively or at low load times. Everything still works fine. Using it at home, I'm editing raw images while compiling the latest KDE desktop. (save often...)

That said, I ran Centos at work by my choice. It seemed fine and I had long uptimes. I did notice I had a tendency to not upgrade perhaps as often as I should, in part because of using BlueQuartz and then BlueOnyx, than I might have using a rolling distro. I did try to keep on top of security issues, yeah.. but...

/jim
T3slider

Jan 10, 2013
5:59 PM EDT
While I am a Slackware fan, I think it is pointless and disingenuous to pretend that Slackware is now, or ever will be again, a distro you should watch out for. It will continue to exist in the shadows of a niche market, ready and waiting for those who want to use it, and never thought of by anyone else.

As for security, grsecurity isn't too difficult to get up and running on Slackware, though its goals are somewhat different than SELinux's.
Steven_Rosenber

Jan 11, 2013
2:13 PM EDT
Compiling everything on the local machine sounds good in theory, but I can't stand it.
hunky

Jan 11, 2013
11:19 PM EDT
You should avoid distros that compile on the local machine then. Stay away from the likes of Gentoo, for instance. ;-)
tallship

Jan 12, 2013
7:59 AM EDT
Oh don't be so hard on the old gal...

Caitlyn's just got her knickers all bunched up in a knot over Slackware because of the egg left on her face when an old decrepit webserver went offline, she had a panic attack, and reaped the flaming wrath of hundreds of users across the Internet for being so naive about it.

Don't pay her any mind, she's learned her lesson and will either calm down eventually, or succumb to hypertension.

She's really a good egg otherwise, even though she drank the ewboontew kool-aid.

I hope that helps :)
jdixon

Jan 12, 2013
9:42 AM EDT
> ...even though she drank the ewboontew kool-aid.

Caitlyn is a consultant who supports Linux (and whatever else the job requires) for a living. Slackware out of the box doesn't meet her clients' needs, and she can't make it do so with what she considers a reasonable amount of effort. I agree with her that there are other distros that do a better job of meeting her needs in that regard.

Her only mistake (if you want to call it that) is in generalizing that to saying it is therefore unsuitable for most people. That's a step that involves several unproven assumptions (which doesn't mean she isn't correct, merely that it's unproven). Slackware does meet the needs of a (in modern Linux terms) a relatively small number of people (of which I'm one), and she admits that.

She is not, and never particularly has been an Ubuntu devotee.
notbob

Jan 12, 2013
11:51 AM EDT
Wasn't caitlyn once a slackware fan? Wasn't she going to create a distro based on slackware, but changed her mind? When was that?

I didn't get the entire story, jes the part about her now being heavily involved in some linux distro that seems to exist nowhere except in her resume. ;)
tracyanne

Jan 12, 2013
7:39 PM EDT
what. this thread needs is more gasoline. The flames don't burn hot enough.
kikinovak

Jan 13, 2013
6:13 AM EDT
In my everyday work, I have to handle the "usual suspects" of distributions: I did some training on Oracle Linux for the company that builds the motorways in South France, I've used a fair share of RHEL and CentOS for clients, I care of a handful of public servers running Debian. Like my latin teacher once pointed out: there's no "best" latin grammar. The "best" latin grammar is the one you're most comfortable with. It just so happens that I'm most comfortable with Slackware, because it was my first distribution back in 2001. Now I may not be as proficient as some others who have used Slackware since 1789, but so far, I've setup middle-sized networks for 50 to 100 users around, 100% Slackware on both servers and desktops, and, well, no complaints so far. Just works(tm). And since this is the base of my company's products, I went so far as to voice my opinion (watch out for Slackware) since it's one of the rare distros which focuses on values like perennity and stability while keeping a human size. I also value it for its flexibility, since unlike many other distributions: 1) the installer never chokes on anything 2) it installs on any kind of low-spec hardware 3) it doesn't make me jump through burning loops whenever I need a particular kind of software in some particular version. So many reasons to say "it's great, watch out for it". But posting it here makes me feel a bit like walking into the "Café de l'Olympique de Marseille" (headquarters of the eponymous football team here) and suggesting that the PSG (Paris Saint-Germain) is a gifted team. Wrong place, wrong time. My bad.
caitlyn

Jan 14, 2013
1:39 PM EDT
Oooh looky, personal attacks. If you can't attack the message the go after the messenger.

Yes, I used to be a Slackware fan, or more precisely, a fan of Slackware derivatives which added the missing pieces. I always considered Slackware to be a good basis on which to build a distro. @tallship is referring to the fact that Slackware's website went offine for a couple of weeks. It was reported in the Linux press, including LXer.com, with suggestions that the distro was in financial trouble. I wasn't the one who started that story or wrote the original article. I did comment on DistroWatch that the little private distro I was part of (used in small businesses by several consultants but NOT released to the general public) was going to rebase off of Slackware. The Slackware community, including Mr. Tallship, or so it seems, went absolutely nuts about my comments.

Sorry, tallship, there is no egg on my face. My comments were aprospos to the situation at the time. It's insane to base anything used in business on a small distro with a small development team and absolutely no transparency. That incident was instructive. Up until that point I thought that, aside from a few loudmouths the Slackware community was mostly helpful and friendly. That indicdent taught me that the Slackware community is almost as toxic as the Puppy Linux community. True, I didn't receive any death threats, but the abuse and the fact that you are continuing it all this time later proves that I should warn people away from Slackware for just that reason: the community is absolutely intolerant of criticism. Let me add an old Yiddish saying:" A fish rots from the head." In this case I learned the intoerance comes from the developer community on down.

You know why we kept Yarok private? We just don't want to deal with the community that would likely develop. I doubt now it will ever be released to the public.

My main objection to Slackware in business remains 1) lack of commercial support and 2) lack of modern security tools. Nothing more, nothing less.

My objection to kikinovak's original post wasn't a critique of Slackware per se, but rather that it really does not belong in a list of up and coming distros. Red Hat doesn't belong in such a list either. Neither does SUSE. They aren't new and don't need to be watched for something revolutionary. They will continue to advance and progress, but in an evolutionary way.
jdixon

Jan 14, 2013
2:38 PM EDT
> That indicdent taught me that the Slackware community is almost as toxic as the Puppy Linux community. True, I didn't receive any death threats,

Then it can hardly be consider almost as toxic, now can it? There's a lot of room between even personal attacks and death threats. I think you owe the Slackware community an apology for that comparison, Caitlyn.
notbob

Jan 14, 2013
2:54 PM EDT
[quote="cailyn"]Oooh looky, personal attacks[/quotes]

Ooooh looky, self flattery.
caitlyn

Jan 14, 2013
4:10 PM EDT
@jdixon: No, I don't owe the Slackware community anything. The e-mail and web based attacks I've had for months now do rival the Puppy Linux community for venom with the exception of that one death threat on DistroWatch. They far exceed the Puppy Linux community in sheer volume. If anything, I'm being restrained in my criticism. You'd really not like it if I said what I really think.
jdixon

Jan 14, 2013
4:22 PM EDT
> They far exceed the Puppy Linux community in sheer volume.

That's undoubtedly a factor of the size of the respective communities. While small my Red Hat standards, Slackware still has a reasonable following. They're also loyal to a fault.

> If anything, I'm being restrained in my criticism. You'd really not like it if I said what I really think.

Probably not. But then I'm not the one comparing email flames to a death threat, so what do I know?
caitlyn

Jan 14, 2013
4:54 PM EDT
E-mail flames or public posts questioning my qualifications, my intelligence, my sanity, and several other things? Yeah... it's not worth mentioning, is it. Your "to a fault" bit is spot on. Religious zealotry over a piece of software I don't need.... ever.
jdixon

Jan 14, 2013
6:06 PM EDT
> Your "to a fault" bit is spot on.

Of course. That's why I said it. Everyone and every group has faults.

Except for Dino, of course. :) But he's the exception which proves the rule.
T3slider

Jan 14, 2013
6:36 PM EDT
I think it is abundantly clear that Caitlyn will always actively discourage people from using Slackware based on her own opinions of it. While I do not agree with her attitude (she seems to think her opinions are somehow more worthy than others' opinions, though the same can definitely be said of many in and out of the Slackware community as well), she does have a right to dislike Slackware. Aside from her crude hyperbole that Slackware is stuck in the 90's, she hasn't said anything that isn't true here and does not merit some of the responses she has received. I think many of the arguments in the past were rooted in factual inaccuracies or half-truths, which evoked anger from those that were concerned that Slackware was being wrongly portrayed to those that may not know it intimately. Slackware does not have a huge market and in order for it to continue to exist, people need to keep using it -- I think this is the primary source of (frustration? fear?) from current Slackers that fear that not just the negative press, but the negative spin put on that press may threaten its existence. I think Caitlyn fails to understand the root of the problem and I think the community is not particularly good at addressing it.

While Caitlyn clearly wishes to denounce the Slackware community as being wholly abusive, unhelpful, and overzealous, I think it is unscrupulous to let personal tiffs get in the way of truths. I think you'll find that the Slackware community -- or at least LQ -- embraces newcomers that seek help or advice rather than starting off by insulting or making arbitrary distro comparisons. I can think of a lot of other communities that are actively hostile towards newbies, even if those newbies are not hostile themselves. I've seen many newcomers come to LQ that seem to be actively hostile (and I wonder why they come there in the first place) -- they maintain their own opinions of what a Linux distro should be, which does not align with what Slackware is, and then criticize Slackware or advise ways of making Slackware fit their needs rather than the needs of people who are already using it (and liking it). Obviously, these devolve quickly into flamewars. However, when a newbie requests help getting started with Slackware, wants to know what Slackware is about, or is looking to solve a problem with their Slackware installation, while maintaining a respectful attitude, they will almost certainly be welcomed kindly and given plenty of help. If you put respect in, your get respect out. If you throw hostility out, you're going to get it back.
caitlyn

Jan 14, 2013
8:34 PM EDT
@T3slider: More mud slinging. Are you trying to prove my point? The reviews that irked the Slackware community were written for O'Reilly and DistroWatch respectively where most of my audience would never have tried Slackware before. The purpose of the reviews wasn't to discourage anyone. The purpose was to let people know both the pros and cons and that included the ways in which Slackware 1) isn't like more popular distros and 2) requires a steeper learning curve for newcomers. That means I have to compare it to other distros. The purpose was never to discourage anyone or anything... until today. Today was they day I became totally fed up with the obnoxiousness of the Slackware community.

I think Slackers shouldn't let their blind fanboy biases decide that I am off on some sort of tiff. I also don't think the Slackware community is wholly abusive, unhelpful or overzealous to everyone, just to anyone who dares criticize their holy writ, which says their distro is unquestionably perfect and any criticism is unjustified and clearly due to a failure of the critic. Oh, and yeah, I don't think anyone should ever be subject to that sort of abuse.

T3slider

Jan 14, 2013
11:02 PM EDT
Woah...I don't know if you read what I wrote or what you wanted me to write but I certainly meant no disrespect. I was riding the middle on this one, defending you and the Slackware community in one breath while pointing out problems with both...I don't know how that can be considered mud slinging. I was trying to intentionally be mild...I agree with most of what you said in this thread and said as much. If you still saw what you did in that post then I don't know what to say except to apologize.

>The purpose was never to discourage anyone or anything

>It's not a distribution I can recommend to most Linux users and it is one that I would actively discourage newcomers to Linux from trying unless they really and truly know what they are getting into.

>I also don't think the Slackware community is wholly abusive, unhelpful or overzealous to everyone, just to anyone who dares criticize their holy writ, which says their distro is unquestionably perfect and any criticism is unjustified and clearly due to a failure of the critic.

I have to assume I'm included in that description, but I think your automatic jump to zealotry (which seems to happen every time) is unfounded. I don't think Slackware is perfect and I have said this before. If you point out legitimate problems with Slackware, I will agree with them. Your point about SELinux/AppArmor was fair. I mentioned grsecurity as a potential replacement but acknowledged that it isn't a perfect replacement. Slackware's lack of PAM, while keeping things simple, also makes LDAP setups prohibitively difficult. These are legitimate, rational points against Slackware which, if important to a potential user, could make Slackware a less-than-ideal distro. Neither I nor any other rational person could suggest otherwise. Thus, I have just admitted that Slackware has serious flaws. I could similarly name flaws in every other distro, and choosing one requires a balancing of pros and cons. My *opinion* is that Slackware fulfills my needs adequately, while acknowledging that it may not fulfill others' needs. Nowhere have I said that Slackware is the 'best' distro or that it is beyond critique.

What I thought was a fairly middling post apparently evoked a very negative and unexpected reaction so I suppose I must stop talking. You definitely read much more of a negative tone to my post than was written or intended. For the record there is absolutely no ill will in this post either so if you manage to read any...then either your reading comprehension or my writing skills are in need of improvement.

(Note: the use of the word 'tiff' in the previous post was meant to imply personal altercations, ie. rare personalized experiences/events that may not reflect the whole of the Slackware community or you in general; I did not mean to imply a 'fit of anger', a personal vendetta, or some other similar definition that would imply you were 'out to get' the community. Perhaps another word would have been more appropriate.)
kikinovak

Jan 17, 2013
5:46 PM EDT
The point is often made that Slackware is an "amateur" distro (project website hosted on smartphone perpetually low on battery, sole distribution maintainer regularly crossing highways in front of buses for relaxing, community members eating little kids for breakfast) in opposition to "professional" distributions (RHEL, Oracle, SLES and similar distributions driving airports, moon missions and nuclear plants).

Let's not forget that Noah's Ark was built by amateurs, while the Titanic was a professional project.
tracyanne

Jan 17, 2013
6:07 PM EDT
None of Microsoft's vapour ware ever failed either.

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