Hi, > http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major written about > Slackware "...if you need help with your Linux box, find a Slackware > user. A Slackware user is more likely to fix the problem than a user > familiar with any other distribution...". Is it true?
well Slackware is the distribution with the least hand holding - so a slackware user has to solve a lot of probs for himself, that are simple mouseclicks in others. But do not think that debian is a great start... debian teaches you the debian way .. nothing that will help you with suse, redhat&co. > This is one > question. Also, it seems most of current gentoo users had experience > with other distro, so they have rich experience in linux, and this > help them to solve linux-generic problems. In my case, I would like to > learn linux as deep as possible. Is it ok if I use emerge-like, > apt-get-like comfortable tools? That was my second question. What you > recommend for those, who would like to learn linux from fundamentals? > In order to do so, I think, learner has to do everything manually. I > haven't installed LFS distro before, so I don't know is it like > Slackware or not, but as the name says, this is "linux from sratch", > like gentoo... I started with SuSE, stayed there, tried Mandrake, OpenBSD (three times!), FreeBSD (two times), switched to Slackware (the best learning experience ever) and contemplated about LFS, which was very popular back then, when gentoo 1.0 came out. Since I 'tuned' the slackware-binaries for my own taste, I was very, very tempted, to switch something else, because.. well I did not see much sense in a packet mnager that time, after fleeing from rpm hell, and having worked around slackwares packet managment from the beginning... LFS WAS tempting, oh yes - so many people wrote, how easy it was, how great it was, to have a personalized desktop... but... I do not have a printer also.. and gentoos installation instructions took less than a sheet of Din A 4... (and the gentooers were way more well behaving, than the 'my dingdong is longer than yours'-LFSer in some places, I visited regularly.. sadly, some/most of them are gentoo-users now *sigh*) Since gentoo 1.0 I have stayed there.. no need to try other distris... pure happiness. True. There are bugs and problems (I am ~x86 with almost daily updates) but there was never the need for a reinstall (and I did the gcc 2.9.5 to 3.x switch), except the two times a harddisk died... (reinstall because of hardware reasons 2, reinstalls because of software probs 0). And compared with the hours of toothpulling to get certain stuff in SuSE running (or make Mandrake less braindaming colourfull), it is like seeing a cloud on the sky while walking in a park... I have a little SuSE installed, at the moment, because a friend of mine has it on its laptop (working better there, than gentoo), but after installing it, and a test session, I was not persuaded, to switch. On the contrary, the dia show while installing was nice, but the packet selection was pure pain for me.. oh yeah... and after that, I was back, where I fled from years before... RPM HELL. (In my humble opinion, it is just wrong to install a lib, without the headers, and put them into well hidden *-dev-packets) SuSE paved me the way, but I have grown out of it a long time ago, so no happiness there and no switch back. Hm, did I learn much about linux? Something I did not know before? Maybe one ore two little details, but Slackware was the way greater learning experience. With gentoo you do not learn much, besides using the distri-tools, but that is true for a lot of other distributions, too. Exspecially debian... I consider debian as a bad distribution for learning, because it has (had) so many special cases and comfort at the same time, that you learn A LOT about debian, but not much about linux in general... So, my conclusion is: for a desktop, I will always choose gentoo, but for learning, I recommend Slackware (of course not for newbies.. newbies are sent to suse,mepis&co), and LFS for everybody with a spare box, a spare printer, spare time, too little ego and a hardenend soul, to go through it, without going mad. But from a pure learning point, it may be a worthwhile experience. Sometimes I get an itchy feeling about installing Slackware again... it WAS the distribution where I had the most power.. but at the same time.. I do not want again have to managing a overflowing /usr/local... or recompile some packages to get certain stuff in - or out. Glück Auf Volker -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
