Hari's Corner
Humour, comics, tech, law, software, reviews, essays, articles and HOWTOs intermingled with random philosophy now and thenSlackware 14.1 review (32 bit)
Filed under:
Software and Technology by
Hari
Posted on Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 14:28 IST (last updated: Mon, Mar 23, 2015 @ 20:24 IST)
| In this series | < Previous |
I never thought I would install Slackware on my father's laptop, but that is what I did today. I already have Slackware installed on my office machine, where I wanted a stable, no-frills distribution for my office needs. Background: I'm not unfamiliar with Slackware, having used it off and on over the years, but it's never been my preferred distro for a few reasons, some of which I've mentioned in this review.
Yesterday, I installed Slackware 14.1 (32 bit) on my father's old Sony Vaio laptop, removing the defunct Windows XP partion on it. I wanted to choose Debian, but then I had only the first Debian CD for x86 and I'd have to install KDE from the online repositories. With Slackware, since I already had the DVD downloaded, all I had to do was pop it into the DVD drive and I was ready to go.
Slackware's installation remains faithful to the old school. It's basic and no-frills but anybody familiar with Linux will pick it up with reasonable ease. The ncurses UI is always very responsive and makes it a breeze to install on older hardware as well. One notable feature I noticed in 14.1 (I am not sure since what version it has been included since I've been away from Slackware since 13.1) is that network can now be configured with NetworkManager during installation. This makes it far easier to set up Wifi without having to fiddle about with text configuration files. In other ways, it remains traditional and quirky like the preference for LILO over GRUB as boot manager (of course, you can always choose to skip boot manager installation if you so prefer).
Post-installation, I had to set up Slackware to log in to kdm (edit /etc/inittab to set the runlevel to 4 instead of 3) and then install libreoffice and skype (which requires compiling pulseaudio and its dependencies from SlackBuilds.org).
Slackware 14.1 remains faithful to the tradition of simplicity over convenience. Some of the things I really enjoy about Slackware are:
- No abstractions. Every customization is a simple configuration file edit away. This might require some reading manual pages etc, but it's not all that difficult to accomplish.
- The entire distribution can be installed without a network connection. For distros like Debian this requires downloading a dozen or so CDs or DVDs.
- Defaults are sane and packages are (more or less) pure builds from upstream sources. There are no extra branding or patching by Slackware to its packages. This means that you get software that does not have any changes from upstream.
- SlackBuilds make it easy to compile extra software as needed. However there are always some community binary packages of popular software available.
- It is the distro of choice for KDE-centric Linux installations. KDE remains one of the more feature-rich and customizable desktops on the *nix platform till date.
In many ways, Slackware has actually become easier to use, thanks to the automatic configuration of network by choosing NetworkManager instead of manual configuration, particularly for Wifi connectivity. Also Slackware does include the firmware for Wifi chipsets which means that you can easily connect to the internet without having to get the firmware separately. In Debian, this is an issue because of the Debian licensing policy with respect to non-free software.
The one difficulty with Slackware remains third party packages. It is a bit of a hit-and-miss approach when the dependencies become complicated or when some applications require strange or non-standard build environments. As a Debian user used to the comfort provided by the huge online repository of official (binary) packages, it can feel quite limiting with Slackware. The good thing is that SlackBuilds.org provides thousands of build scripts for applications that you might need and there are a few unofficially maintained packages of popular appliations as well by senior Slackware devs. However, even if all else fails, most Slackware users would swear by manual compilation of software and creating Slackware packages from the official package tools provided by the distribution. I personally wouldn't recommend such a course unless you have time to waste. Again, if you're a Gnome user, you're better off with some other distribution.
All in all, I would recommend Slackware if you need a stable distro with a fairly full set of applications and one that is self-sufficient and fully installable without requiring network connectivity, particularly if you are a KDE user.
In this series
Comments closed
The blog owner has closed further commenting on this entry.
5 comment(s)
Thanks for your review and have a nice weekend.
Comment by Roger Comply (visitor) on Sat, Aug 30, 2014 @ 17:53 IST #
The additional time in compiling software and tracking dependencies is sometimes too much for me because I have a load of additional software that is not found in Slackware and those need to be installed with quite a few dependencies too. To me, while I can manage all that, it takes too long for me to set up the system the way I want it.
Otherwise, I'd be glad to use Slackware for the other reasons I mentioned. In fact, on my office desktop I have Slackware because the only additional software I use that is not found in the Slackware repository is Libreoffice.
Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Sun, Aug 31, 2014 @ 20:18 IST #
Comment by Christofer (visitor) on Mon, Dec 22, 2014 @ 19:44 IST #
Comment by Javier (visitor) on Sat, Jan 31, 2015 @ 21:41 IST #
Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Sat, Jan 31, 2015 @ 22:00 IST #