On Monday, 28 June 2004, at 18:16:13 (-0400),
Bradley Reed wrote:

> Of course I have to disagree. :)

No, really?  I never would've expected that....  ;-)

> I think Slackware is perfect for the control-freak who wants to get
> his system up and running quickly. The small selection of packages
> are rock-solid, and the distro is extremely stable.

To be fair, a number of other distributions offer the same.  (Trustix
was, I believe, already mentioned.)

You might also be interested in cAos (www.caosity.org).  The
entirely-self-hosting core OS weighs in at 512MB (most of which is
stuff needed to build it) and will have a maintenance lifetime of over
5 years.

> LFS is for the control-freak who doesn't mind spending a month to
> get his system compiled and fine-tuned.

Most people I've encountered who use it are doing so to learn, much
like those who chose Slackware over RH/Debian.

> Gentoo is for the person who wants to claim his system is 'fastest
> 'cuz he compiled everything himself'. Gentoo, IMNSHO, is only for
> people with wide-band internet connections and lots of time to waste
> compiling everything per someone else's emerge scripts.

Can't argue with you there.  Nevertheless, it is a very hands-on
distribution.

As it happens, I encounter far more obnoxious Gentoo users these days
than I do Slackware users.  If current and future Slackware releases
don't cause me the amounts of frustration and stress the previous
ones did, then by all means, use it.  I just get fed up with people
who don't understand how their distribution functions and yet expect
us (e.g., #E) to solve their problems.

Personally, I don't care what people use as long as they know what
they're doing.  It's the people whose clue is in short supply and who
chose a hands-on distribution anyway that annoy me.  Given what I've
seen from you on this list, you are certainly not in that category.

> Redhat/Fedora, Debian and all other dependency-checking
> package-based distros have the annoying problem of claiming to know
> your system better than you do. God forbid you ever compile
> something from source without packaging it and using the
> package-manager to install it. I detest package managers always
> insisting I need to downgrade my system or install totally
> irrelevant packages to support imaginary 'dependancies'.

I agree, which is why I specify few (if any) package dependencies in
the packages I...package.  (Wow, talk about redundant redundancy....)
I would like to point out, though, that at least RPM has support for
filesystem-level dependencies, like requiring /usr/bin/enlightenment
rather than the "enlightenment" package name.

> Slackware is also rather unique, although one could make LFS
> similarly, in its BSD-style boot up scripts. We have no /etc/init.d
> or /etc/rc.d/rc#.d, we have no runlevel 5 for that matter. I find
> the simplified boot-up much quicker and easier to modify for my
> needs.

Well, the SysV init is much cleaner, IMHO, and is far more package-
friendly.  It's certainly not ideal, though, and has some rather
painful issues.  Lesser of two evils is a very subjective
conclusion. :)

Michael

-- 
Michael Jennings (a.k.a. KainX)  http://www.kainx.org/  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
n + 1, Inc., http://www.nplus1.net/       Author, Eterm (www.eterm.org)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 "The Swiss have an interesting army.  Five hundred years without a
  war.  Pretty impressive.  Also pretty lucky for them.  Ever see that
  little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with?  Not much of a
  weapon there.  Corkscrews.  Bottle openers.  'Come on, buddy, let's
  go.  You get past me, the guy in back of me, he's got a spoon.  Back
  off.  I've got the toe clippers right here.' "     -- Jerry Seinfeld


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