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| KDE Main Screen |
I never envisioned myself trying out any of the more advanced distributions like Slackware, Arch, or Gentoo, but having tried derivatives like GNU/Linux Utopia, Chakra, and Sabayon, I think I'm ready to try Slackware and Arch, and I am writing about the former today. Hopefully, the latter can also happen soon. (I'm still not going to try Gentoo.)
Note: this review will be heavy on images, so don't be surprised if the page takes a little time to load.
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| LILO |
Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distribution, and it brings with it, alongside its famous rock-solid stability, a couple of quirks and anachronisms. For example, it is one of the few distributions that provides no form of dependency management; users need to install all dependent packages manually. Another example is how its ncurses-based installation interface dates back from the 1990s/early 2000s. Furthermore, it still uses the old Linux Loader (LILO) instead of GRUB; LILO is quite limited in terms of configuration and the number of operating systems and types of file systems it can handle, and making it play well with other non-Linux-based OSs (like Microsoft Windows) as far as I know is still a herculean task. Finally, unlike most distributions, Slackware provides no official route to installing GNOME, though it provides a plethora of other WM options alternative to KDE and Xfce.
With all these things in mind, follow the jump to see how my experience with the grandfather of distributions (well, not quite) turned out. I tested this in a VirtualBox environment with 1 GB of RAM and an available 10 GB virtual hard drive.
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| Ncurses Installer |
Slackware doesn't have any official live media; it needs to be installed. However, these installation media go way back; in fact, on their website, there are still references to installation
floppy disks. Wow, that's old-school! Anyway, I downloaded the full installation DVD (a hefty 4 GB download) and started looking through the website for installation help.
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| Dolphin in KDE |
The hardest part was probably partitioning, and even that wasn't bad, as it was just the fdisk CLI program; I haven't used that in a while, so I was a bit out-of-touch with CLI partitioning. After that, I saw the standard ncurses installer that I got to work with in GNU/Linux Utopia. The installation went well, and I selected a "full" installation. Interestingly enough, the installer offered to create a live USB (
UPDATE: it's not a live USB, it's just a bootable installation USB) of Slackware on-the-fly as well; as I didn't want to do that, I just selected "no" and moved on.
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| Xfce Main Screen |
After the installation was done, I rebooted the machine from the hard drive. Contrary to my expectations, LILO was themed to look quite nice and not at all primitive. Afterwards, I was thrown into a command prompt and made to log in. As I was just testing this distribution and wasn't planning on using this regularly, I did what most Linux users shouldn't do: I logged in as root. Oh well, nothing bad happened. I started the X session and was put into a KDE 4 environment.
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| Mozilla SeaMonkey in Blackbox |
There was nothing spectacular about this. Unfortunately, a couple bad things happened (some KDE-related, some not) here. The biggest issue was that Slackware didn't automatically recognize my wired ethernet connection. I fixed that this morning by running "netconfig", but it was still a pain. Also, Akonadi crashed a couple times every time I started KDE, and Plasma crashed when I started the KDE System Settings program. Not good. Otherwise, the KDE session was pretty unremarkable. I had the usual assortment of programs, like Mozilla Firefox, Konqueror, Pidgin, Kopete, KDE Games, and other stuff. All of these seemed to work well (though the non-Qt applications like Mozilla Firefox and Pidgin stuck out like sore thumbs).
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| Calculator in FVWM |
Because I just fixed the Internet connection issue this morning, when I was testing Slackware yesterday, I got a bit bored and decided to see what other DEs and WMs were present. I was in for a bit of a surprise when I saw just how many different WMs were included. The full list is KDE, Xfce, Blackbox, FVWM, Fluxbox, MWM, TWM, and WindowMaker. I decided to go next into Xfce. It was a vanilla Xfce session, and as all programs are present across all WMs, there's really no reason to pick one over another except for differences in fundamental WM functionality or preferences. In any case, Xfce was nothing to write home about.
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| XSnow in FVWM |
I next tried Blackbox. Blackbox is the WM that gave rise to Openbox, my favorite lightweight WM. It honestly didn't look that remarkable; again, nothing here to write home about.
After that, I tried FVWM. Boy, was I in for a shock. FVWM is quite an old WM, and it certainly looks the part. Although it has 6 virtual desktops, it has no panel of any kind, and the menu is brought up by left-clicking (as opposed to right-clicking) on the desktop. Furthermore, the window buttons are really weird; the minimize button is on the leftmost side of the title bar, while on the rightmost side are the close and maximize buttons, in that order (going right). That one confused me for a while. After a little time, I got used to it. I looked around in the menu to see what else I could find and found...XSnow! Yes, folks, before Compiz and KWin existed, FVWM had a desktop effect allowing for snow falling on the desktop background (and allowing for other applications to run at the same time)! Wow!
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| KWord in Fluxbox |
After that came Fluxbox. It worked much the same as Blackbox (as it, like Openbox, originates from Blackbox), so there really isn't much to say here.
After that came MWM. It seemed to operate much the same as FVWM, so after a quick glance I exited the session.
After that came TWM. TWM is the oldest surviving graphical WM for Linux, and it has its share of quirks. For example, its terminology (e.g. "iconify") dates back to the Microsoft Windows 1.0 days. Also, it has a window button layout similar to that of FVWM. I again didn't spend too much time here.
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| Mozilla Firefox and XTerm in TWM |
Finally came WindowMaker. This is slightly closer to the modern WM, as it has icons on the desktop representing application launchers and open applications. It's also highly themeable. Once again, I didn't really spend too much time here, given that all applications are present across all WMs.
So what's the deal? Slackware is certainly best for the intermediate to advanced Linux user with
a good deal of patience. This applies to issues like the ethernet issue as well as quirks like LILO and the lack of dependency management (though there are third-party tools like Slapt-get and Gslapt). I had fun working with Slackware and its myriad included DEs and WMs, but I could honestly never see myself using Slackware on a regular basis and being patient enough to deal with its numerous foibles.
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| Mozilla Firefox (working) in WindowMaker |
