I have a place reserved in my heart that only Slackware Linux fills. Strange as it might be, Slackware was the first Linux distribution that seemed to understand me and, I it.
I recently read an article which brought to mind, the time that I started my venture into the Linux community as a new user.

In the beginning
I was introduced by a friend who was on class and studying a Linux course. He told me of the stability and the fact that Linux was free and open source. I really had no idea what he meant by this except that I could download and install an operating system onto my computer with out fear of it expiring but, without having to pay for it.
After my first install of a couple of RPM based distros, I stopped at a book store and picked up a copy of “Linux for Dummies”. This was an awesome book to me. From cover to cover and, I had build my own kernel within a week.

Something was missing. I still felt confined with in the Operating system, I thought that Linux had the potential to be cleaner, simpler, even more light weight than what I was getting from Mandrake and Red Hat.

Along came Slackware

Slackware is the oldest Linux distribution still with us and has a loyal following among those long term Linux users who pine for the old fashioned virtues of simplicity, straightforwardness and lack of bloat.

Slackware certainly isn’t for the faint of heart. And it isn’t for the everyday user. An install of Slackware is a simple, clean and stable machine that expects more of you. Slackware isn’t the Desktop Linux that you might want. There are no bells and whistles. There are no shiny blinkies. The installer is clean and simple CLI. No over-bloated, CPU hog of a GUI installer here.

I cannot explain why this was the OS that brought me into the Linux world with ease. I just understood it and, it really seemed to just work. That is what Slackware does. It just works.

The asset most valued by the Slack user, and most often claimed for Slackware Linux, is system stability. If you install Slackware on a backroom server you expect it to stay there, and be unnoticed.

Slackware is just right for a back-end system admin that wants a server that is up and stable in 15 minutes or, a simple, fast workstation with the install of the default KDE DE or, Fluxbox WM. Mind you, I said workstation. Yes I also said 15 minutes. After just a few installs, I can have a GUI-less server up and screaming in 15 minutes. I have many times set up Slackware as a Samba file server and had the network sharing files in a very short amount of time. The most time consuming was the Samba config itself.

A little history
Slackware remains true to being the most similar to Unix of any Linux flavor available. Patrick Volkerding cleaned up a version of SLS for a professor at MSU to use in teaching LISP. This was the start of a beautiful thing. For many years, Patrick was the sole maintainer of Slackware Linux. This is still largely true to this day and has it’s advantages. Nothing goes into Slackware unless it’s ready. Packages must require little or no tweaking for maximum performance. Even Gnome was dropped because it required too much configuration.

Slack users would argue that simplicity is its own reward. Slackware is minimalist and transparent and works as the user wants it to work, which from a Slack user’s point of view, is as it should be.

So that is my ode to Slackware. Inspired by the article found here of which I also quoted. Thanks to ITPro.co.uk for a great read.

Happy Slackin!
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