Slackware 14.2 RC2 Now Available

[Shimon]

Slackware's best, period.

As for PA, you only need it if your sound chip doesn't support hardware mixing. I remember having no such problems in the year 2000 thanks to Soundblaster Live and OSS drivers.

[xnor]

Things that speak for Slackware:
- it's old.

[magika]

Okay, you guys like Slackware, we get it.
But whats its appeal?

[Sylvester Ink]

Okay, you guys like Slackware, we get it.
But whats its appeal?

It's a combination of several things. It tends to be very stable and has great performance. Configuration is more nuts and bolts (you tend to go edit text files more often than pulling up a gui), but it actually feels cleaner and makes more sense once you learn it. While many other distributions tend to roll their own versions of included software, adding their own tweaks and customizations, Slackware uses the plain vanilla software from the upstream, meaning that although many of the packages may not have a unified theme, interface, or features, they will work exactly as expected. (No additional, distro-specific bugs will be added, which is an issue I've noticed in other distros, especially Ubuntu.)

Default installation comes with tons of packages, and for everything not included, there are usually build scripts (slackbuilds) available to help download and build third-party packages. You do have to manage dependencies manually, which can seem frightening at first, but since Slackware includes most of the dependencies by default, it's often less trouble than it seems. (And there are several tools, like sbopkg, which make the job easier without losing any of the advantages.) The only time package management becomes a bit of an issue is if you're trying to create a very customized setup, say for a minimal install, on smaller hardware profiles. Figuring out which packages to cut out can be challenging. But in those cases, you'd have to do a lot of customization in any other distro as well, and more often than not, it's better to just use a distro specifically configured for the task, like OpenEmbedded. (There are several Slackware forks that have been created for these purposes.)

It's definitely not a distro for everyone, and there are distros like Arch and Gentoo that share some of the governing ideas that Slackware has. But they have their own peculiarities that make them less attractive than Slackware for many people, including myself.

As for my choice to use Slackware, I'm not an older user that has been using it since the dawn of time. I only discovered it within the past 5-6 years or so, after having been a regular Ubuntu user. There were just a lot off issues I had with Ubuntu, and when researching distro alternatives, I came across Slackware. I thought it would be MANLY to try it out, but after using it for a while, I realized it was the perfect distro for me.

Also, with regard to the PulseAudio thing, the only reason for PA's inclusion in Slackware is due to a dependency by the bluetooth libraries. Everything else runs just fine through ALSA. There's a page on the Arch Wiki which describes how to configure PA to operate as a dumb pipe, only being used by software that depends on it, while forwarding all other audio requests directly to ALSA. From what I gather, this seems to work nicely, so I don't think PA will be much of an issue in Slackware 14.2