What are the Slackware benefits?
by Zvonkovich from LinuxQuestions.org on (#53R9F)
Hello, guys. My first post here for a long-long time. Unfortunately lost my old acc.
Short version.
Why do you use Slackware and not any mainstream distro like debian, ubuntu, opensuse? Please, don't post something like "I've used it for 10 years now so that' why". Personally, I don't thing this is a real benefit and a reason to use Slackware. I'd like to see real benefits for real users.
Long version.
I've used Slackware-current for about a year and a half. I dive into it, I've started to use it on all my devices (2 servers, 1 desktop, 2 laptops).
I have no experience with releases, because my hardware is pretty new and I usually do upgrades once per 2-3 years. During this year and a half I got 4 breakages of system (3 minor, that i fixed my self, 1 major after some upgrade when I couldn't even load elilo). I've found that default init system is just awful. Some init scripts that comes from SBo seems like was written by people who started to learn bash a couple of days ago. Multilib and most of really necessary stuff are not in official repo and I had to compile it myself most of the time.
TBH most of day-to-day soft that comes with default installation is crap. Mplayer that hangs every time I open file more than 20 Gb and that can't properly render custom fonts in subs. XPDF that can search only in english and has no button to rotate/move through pages. No office. No office, Carl. In 2020. No office suit.
Do you know that Slackware can't proper umount partitions with luks+lvm? Yeah, it cant. I have to do it manually every time not to lose my data.
Network manager, that comes by default has no advanced settings that allows to set auto vpn connection after certain interface.
I don't want to slam Slackware. Its just my own experience. The only benefit i found so far is a bit (really, a bit) more control over dependencies. The other thing for me... just awful.
I'm not trying to hurt anybody or something of that kind. I just really want to understand, why people use Slackware.
Short version.
Why do you use Slackware and not any mainstream distro like debian, ubuntu, opensuse? Please, don't post something like "I've used it for 10 years now so that' why". Personally, I don't thing this is a real benefit and a reason to use Slackware. I'd like to see real benefits for real users.
Long version.
I've used Slackware-current for about a year and a half. I dive into it, I've started to use it on all my devices (2 servers, 1 desktop, 2 laptops).
I have no experience with releases, because my hardware is pretty new and I usually do upgrades once per 2-3 years. During this year and a half I got 4 breakages of system (3 minor, that i fixed my self, 1 major after some upgrade when I couldn't even load elilo). I've found that default init system is just awful. Some init scripts that comes from SBo seems like was written by people who started to learn bash a couple of days ago. Multilib and most of really necessary stuff are not in official repo and I had to compile it myself most of the time.
TBH most of day-to-day soft that comes with default installation is crap. Mplayer that hangs every time I open file more than 20 Gb and that can't properly render custom fonts in subs. XPDF that can search only in english and has no button to rotate/move through pages. No office. No office, Carl. In 2020. No office suit.
Do you know that Slackware can't proper umount partitions with luks+lvm? Yeah, it cant. I have to do it manually every time not to lose my data.
Network manager, that comes by default has no advanced settings that allows to set auto vpn connection after certain interface.
I don't want to slam Slackware. Its just my own experience. The only benefit i found so far is a bit (really, a bit) more control over dependencies. The other thing for me... just awful.
I'm not trying to hurt anybody or something of that kind. I just really want to understand, why people use Slackware.