Distribution Finder

Quoting:Shouldn't a distro chooser/finder show all available options, and not downplay Ubuntu or your so called "onesy-twosy Base distros", that don't appeal to you personally?

Quoting:> Distribution Finder is another good tool.

Nice selection tool that AVOIDS emphasizing Baboontu and its wannabes like how some other How-to-Choose-a-Linux-Distro selection tools and how the BeerkleyLUG blogposting all seem to do! Only major weakness with this tool seems to be the inclusion of overly large number of tha onesy-twosy Base distros here, like Android, CRUX, DSL, KNOPPIX, KuBOOboontu, LFS, openSUSE, Salix, Thinstation, TC.

Quoting:I've written before, the degree of newbie-friendliness, user-friendliness, performance, upgreadeability, a host of others factors in a Linux distro is like brewing beer.

1. You've got your Beginner-level in which the process is as easy and automatic as possible but the outcome is fixed and usually less than optimal. 2. You've then got your Intermediate level in which the process is a mix of automatic and manual steps. The outcome is more variable and yet is usually closer to optimal. 3. You've then got your Advanced level in which the process is as fully under your complete control as possible. The outcome is variable and yet can be perfectly optimal (or absolutely horrible if you mess up too many manual steps..... then the bad batch of brew will deservedly get poured out!)

I'd put some of the LiveCD distros in the Beginner-level or for-newbie camp. Get the ISO CD of PCLOS, Ubuntu-Live, DSL, Puppy, Knoppix or whatever, pop this into your CD-ROM drive, boot-up and you're good to go..... a no brainer.

I'd put Linux from Scratch and Linux distros making heavy use of direct sources in the Advanced-level. No argument there.

Slackware, Debian, their offshoots such as Vector and Zenwalk, and most other installable Linux distros -- and I've also used many of these on different HW levels -- these would all fall under the wide Intermediate-level range. Many of these Linux distro certainly CAN be installable by newbies, but even the simplest ones (thinking of Ubuntu at the moment) could easily require an outside helping hand if the initial disk-partitioning steps are confusing, package selection and X-configuration is bewildering, or Heaven-forbid a device should remain unrecognized after installation!

As non-newbie-friendly Intermediate-level distro, Slackware sure remains consistent in its Setup program and the continued use of its CLI/ncurses tools.

Quoting:Quoting:I am going to finally finally finally get started with Linux From Scratch soon, that will put wrinkles on my brain gosh darnit!

Isn't Arch enough?

Quoting:Triple-booting Ubuntu, Debian and Slackware -- I might just do that.

Quoting:Slackware is easy to learn. It, depending on what you want to do with it, can be frustrating to setup/use.

Slackware is missing many of the "ease of use" and "enterprise" features of many other distro's. It doesn't do dependency checking/installation for you. It doesn't include PAM. It doesn't include SELinux. It doesn't have Gnome. It doesn't preconfigure everything out of the box the way some other distro's do. Its repository of precompilled software is smaller than most other distro's. But, IMO, it is easy to learn, and if you only need what's included by default (true for probably 80+% of home users), it's pretty much as easy to use as any other distro.

Quoting:The three advanced user distros I could argue for would be Debian, Gentoo, and Slackware. Both Debian and Slackware are far easier for beginners than they used to be, but neither is ready for the absolute newbie. I've never used Gentoo, so I can't speak for it personally, but people I trust recommend it.

> A review, any review, needs to make clear that a distro like Slackware just isn't for everyone.

Which you did a fairly good job of doing. And I agree that it's not for everyone, nor possibly even for most people. And especially not for the fresh from Windows new user.

Quoting:> Because if you use one of the so-called "user-friendly" distributions, you'll never learn anything, and you'll always be a "newbie."

Which is, unfortunately, what many people want. They don't want to learn, they just want their machine to work. For them, Slackware won't be the best distribution.

For those who want to learn, however, Slackware is ready and waiting.

Quoting:> Slackware is a great base on which to build a distribution. For most people it is anything but a great distribution in and of itself.

Well, it's more accurate to say it won't meet the needs of most people. Whether it's a great distribution or not isn't the same thing. A great horse still won't meet most people's needs for transportation in today's industrialized world.

Slackware isn't what most users trying out Linux for the first time will expect. It won't meet the needs of most new users. However, anyone with a moderate degree of Linux experience will get by fine. It may not be their preferred system, but they will be able to make it work. You are correct not to recommend it to most people, but I think you're overstating the difficulties most people will have.

Quoting:So apparently we can categorize distros into Ubuntu and its family, Ubuntu-based, Debian-based, and -- wait for it -- everyone else and remain oblivious to the fact that Red Hat and Slackware and their derivatives consistently and historically have contributed far more than the vowel-laden poseur.