I love Slackware but it really is a relic of days gone past (not in a bad way but a nostalgic way).

Back when Slackware launched you didn’t just download an .iso file and gigabytes of updates/new software from repositories like you do now. The internet was far too slow and data caps too restrictive to download anything serious. This was a time where even RPM-based distributions didn’t have a package manager with proper dependency management. RPM hell was a thing and even Apt was ahead of its time when it came out. You also didn’t have the internet to find information as you know it now, you used HOWTO guides if you were lucky or you actually read the man pages and liked it.

Instead of repositories you downloaded from, you ordered a stack of floppies or CDs via snail mail and you just installed and used whatever software was on them. You would only download additional software if you absolutely needed it, usually on the universities network or from others at your LUG. You might have even gotten CDs on the cover of a magazine, that’s how I got a copy of Red Hat and tried that distro for the first time back in the day. If you were really lucky your ISP would have a quota-free FTP server you could slowly get stuff from but that only became a thing here post-2000.

A nice, curated stack of CDs like Slackware was the absolute bomb in these times and something you got if you were absolutely serious about running Linux on your PC. Having a set was practically a status symbol around other like-minded nerds and being lent them to make a copy was like being gifted their firstborn child. Ubuntu for one became popular partly because of their program to send CDs out to anybody anywhere in the world free of charge, usually with some free merch included to boot, that’s how much we all relied on physical CDs themselves.

Today however, I wouldn’t actively choose to run Slackware anymore. Like the internet itself and mailing physical media, distros have moved on to bigger, better things and unfortunately beyond nostalgia Slackware hasn’t kept up. These days distros like Arch Linux provide a similar nostalgia hit with more modern tools and functionality at your disposal.

Ah Slackware, the first time that I learned software could damage hardware. It has the option to also configure hsync on your CRT monitor, and if said monitor didn’t correctly validate the range it would permanently fuck it up.

First distro I ever used. Downloaded it from a BBS onto about 40 floppies. Fun times.

It is so nostalgic, although I struggle to see a good reason to use this as a daily driver other than if you need stability that might even exceed that of Debian Stable.

I need some tips on how the old-timers manage installation of packages without dependency management.

This is probably one the most Unix-like Linux-based operating systems ever. Gentoo probably comes next with Void being third in said list. If one didn’t want to run BSD but still wanted similarities with old Unix systems, this is probably it.

Thanks to the Slackware team for such a fantastic distribution.

That was my first distro… in 1993! Because I bought a book with a CD in the back that had the whole thing instead of having to download a bunch of floppies!

great distro.

I’m not that old of a linux user, I think Slack may have been the second distro that I tried in probably 2000 after starting on Mandrake

Cool to see.

I am curious though, does Slackware do anything that other Distros can’t?

Is there a reason to choose it over say Debian or Fedora aside from it being around for so long and the nostalgia factor

Praise “Bob” and Slack off!