Hari's Corner

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More on Slackware and Debian

Filed under: Software and Technology by Hari
Posted on Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 14:49 IST (last updated: Thu, May 7, 2009 @ 21:08 IST)

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I had earlier posted my comparison between Debian and Slackware (see this article). All I left out in the comparison was covered by another appreciative member of LinuxQuestions.org, imitheos, who wrote this very interesting comparison and filled up most of the gaps left by me. I am much obliged to this member for granting me permission to use his post in my blog. Here are the main points comparing Debian and Slackware. I have reformatted the post for readability, but essentially the material has been pasted verbatim. Again, many thanks!
1) Package Manager Slackware has pkgtools. They are some shell scripts that untar the .tgz files and also write the contents of the package in /var/log/packages. It doesn't handle dependencies.

Debian has apt-get/dpkg I have used Slackware, Mandrake, Suse, Redhat, (Free/Net/Open) BSD, AtheOS, DGUX, Solaris, CRUX, YellowDog It is imo the best package manager that exists in the unix world. Many will say that RPM is good. First RPM doesn't handle dependencies well. For the majority of People who use Redhat/Mandrake/Suse/etc RPM is good For people like me who mess with the OS to see how it works, i have broke RPM many times and even render my system unusable (glibc :P)

I have yet to break apt/dpkg. Whatever i do it simply works. Gentoo's Portage/Emerge is also very good and handles dependencies, but apt is 10 laps ahead in F1 terminology.

1 point to Debian

2) RC System Slackware uses BSD init scripts. That is some scripts in /etc/rc.d Debian Uses SystemV init scripts. That is the scripts are in /etc/init.d and there are symbolic links of them in /etc/rcX.d for the X runlevel.

SystemV are not difficult and with the rc-update and some RC editors, they are very easy, but I (my opinion) prefer Slackware's

1 point to Slackware (Subjective Point)

3) Completeness Debian is a complete os (especially good for a desktop system) for example. You install the "elvis,vim" packages in both Slackware,Debian. In Slackware vi symlinks points to elvis and if you want you change it to vim. Debian has the "alternatives" system. Thatis /usr/bin/vi -> /etc/alternatives/vi -> /usr/bin/elvis There is the "update-alternatives" command which changes the symlink to which one you like. Very good solution imo.

Also, the scripts of every program are very complete. For example, sendmail' script (/etc/init.d/sendmail) even checks if i have a dialup connection and when it is up it configures the sendmail.cf with my new dynamic hostname.

1 point to Debian.

4) Dependencies As i said, Debian honours dependencies while Slackware does not. This good both good and bad.

The good of dependency checking is that when you check a program in Debian all its dependencies are calculated automatically and installed too. With Slackware you must find what they are and install them (from the website or Readme or ./configure ) The bad thing is that sometimes you get to install some things that are not necessary. For example, when i tried to install mjpegtools it needed the libdv library which is not absolutely necessary for the program to work and in Slackware i didn't compile it. This is again because Debian wants to be complete so it enables all the dependencies of each program when compiling.

I guess 1 point to Debian for most people (although i prefer to have an option like Slackware gives me)

5) Point of view Debian is a complete os (have i said it again ? :P). It has an awful large amount of packages (15490 according to Debian Website, but more if you count the "unofficial" packages in www.apt-get.org)

Slackware is a minimalistic os with the point of view that i give you a simple os and you install only what you want from there (NetBSD is the same)

1 point to Debian for desktop system. 1 point to Slackware for server system (Also subjective. Some may disagree)

6) Installation Difficulty and Time Both use simple ncurses interfaces with description and everything so they are very easy to install. (I don't know why many people say they are hard)

Debian Installer is more complete and it has many translations (Although many computer terms are always english it feels good to install in your native language) Debian takes more time to install because of the huge amount of packages you have to choose from (for a custom installation)

7) Packages Update Debian is updated very frequently (Testing/Unstable). Slackware was being updated very frequently too,but now due to Pat's health reasons it has fallen behind a little.

Slackware tends to be among the first distros to include something. Debian wants to be stable than to be bleeding edge, so some packages take a little longer to be included. (Also, for a package to be included it must be stable for all architectures is mentioned in the policy i think, so that takes time) for example Debian Sarge uses Xfree86 4.3.0 while Slackware uses Xorg 6.8.2

1 point to Slackware

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6 comment(s)

  1. very good comparison. I like the fact that Slackware doesn't do dependency checking because that allows me to have to have multiple versions of a libraryif I , for example, want to compare different versions of an application package orif 2 different applications simpy require different versions of a certain library. Theone thing I would like to have in slackware is a few more choices in their "best-of-breed" approach, i.e. Postfix MTA instead of Sendmail MTA. But I do believe fundamentally in the best-of-breed approach.

    Comment by shan (visitor) on Tue, Jun 14, 2005 @ 18:22 IST #
  2. Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts, shan!Yes, I guess that the differences between Debian and Slackware represent two different kinds of needs and philosophies in the Linux community and that's what makes Linux great!Regards.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Tue, Jun 14, 2005 @ 19:52 IST #
  3. You're last comment about Debian being more stable because it waits until the package is stable on all architectures. Slackware has the same policy, but since Slackware is only supported on i386 and the IBM 390, it doesn't need that sort of testing period.

    Comment by murdock (visitor) on Thu, Aug 4, 2005 @ 19:16 IST #
  4. Hi, murdock,Thanks for dropping by. Yes, interesting point. Debian has many more official ports than Slackware and that is a reason why releases to stable take such a long time...Regards.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Fri, Aug 5, 2005 @ 06:22 IST #
  5. Hi all,10x for the good article, and for avoiding tactfully flame wars :) . I've been a Slackware fan from 2001, but regularly I'm testing other distros around. Being a Slackware fan, I must say that I greatly respect the work being done for the Debian project (imagine how are managed 15490 packages and dependecy/library/toolchain/arch problems for 11 architectures and 9999... etc languages/locales). I managed to install and configure 1-2 Debian servers (and of course a lot more with Slackware), but installation of them wasn't so easy as on my favourite distro (I didn't have so much experience in Debian, and that was the only problem). A friend of mine said, that the only reason that Debian seems hard is that it's learning curve is very steep from the beginning. But, just before a 2 months, I bought a UltraSPARC I for personal use and the only one distro I could install easy, the same way as x86 box was Debian. This built my respect to Debian - amazing work. I know what is to support enormous count of software for several architectures, and these guys just do it! I wish to have more time to learn that distro... So, I like both distros :)Best regards to all!

    Comment by PicMaster (visitor) on Mon, Oct 17, 2005 @ 02:53 IST #
  6. PicMaster, thanks for dropping by with your comments. Yeah, Debian project is indeed massive and the good people who work on this distro deserve applause for the way they maintain it year-in year-out.As to difficulty levels, I guess Debian is pretty similar to Slackware. I wouldn't say that either is easier or more difficult, but just different. Their philosophies are quite different.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Mon, Oct 17, 2005 @ 19:56 IST #

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