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Software and Technology by
Hari
Posted on Fri, Jun 10, 2005 at 09:49 IST (last updated: Thu, May 7, 2009 @ 21:09 IST)
I had originally intended the second part of this article to cover the differences between Gentoo and Debian, but recently I had posted a comparison between Slackware and Debian at LinuxQuestions.org in response to a thread and I thought I should post it here as well, since a kind member responded appreciatively to it. It's rare when you get such praise in a competitive, highly knowledgeable community like LQ, so I thought it would be a good idea to blog it. Feel free to leave your own comments and thoughts as well. I'd be very grateful if you could.
Here it is:
If you are big into the "manual configure" thing and you don't mind the down-and-dirty, often repetitive tasks of installing dependencies by hand, editing configuration files manually and so on, use Slackware.
Slackware is the "hacker" oriented approach to Linux. It's clean and is tailored to allow you manual configuration of your system. GUI tools are minimal for most configuration tasks. There are 3d party package manager tools for Slackware, but your success will be 50-50 with automated tools.
It's logical approach can be easily learnt though, though you might start wearing of installing dependencies by hand as your system builds up 
With Debian, you get convenience and power (if you choose to use it). Apt package management will give you 99.99% success if you choose to use only the official repositories and are relatively conservative the chances of breaking your system are nil.
As with Slackware though, system administration can be done manually, but you do have the choice of installing *a lot* of tools from the huge repositories of Debian and this might help to administer a Debian system more easily than Slackware.
Debian == Easier to maintain, upgrade and manage. Suited for general purpose power users with a wide range of needs. If you are the kind of user who wants to constantly keep installing/uinstalling/upgrading/removing software from your system, choose Debian.
Slackware == Suited for tweaking and learning, can be more involved when you upgrade. Suited if you don't need too many applications and if you aren't going to constantly install/upgrade/delete applications. Tailored to be lightweight, configurable and yet powerful.
Both are excellent mainstream distributions each focussed in different areas and each following a different set of priorities and philosophies.
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