Slackware vs. Gentoo vs. Ubuntu

I have never used Slackware but I have quite some experience with both Gentoo and Debian.

Indeed, apt-get and cousins are not the best alternative to portage, they are imho better than portage and therefore the best package management software in the world.

My vote goes for Ubuntu.

I love portage, and love Gentoo Linux more than any other GNU/Linux distribution, but I do recognize the advantage of apt-get and respect it big time.

Gentoo. blah.
Ubuntu. I ordered cd's several months ago but didn'g got them yet.
All distro's are falling behind when compared to Slackware, as far as what I need.

If you're afraid about dependencies, instalation of new programs and such, have no fear, go to www.linuxpackages.net There you'll find packages 4 everything you need precompiled for the last (3) version(s) of Slacware. At dropline.net you can find dropline gnome... Actualy, go to www.userlocal.org and read on.

It's the best all around distribution, suitable for everything (except posibly for novice linux user trying to work without hustle).

Hmmm, somehow I failed to find any evms packages, if I could just find these I'd surely try slackware for my new server.

Well, according to this and what i researched around the web, i got everything now :-) I mean, ubuntu combines the friendliness of MDK/SuSE/Fedora and other rpm based distros and the powerful package management of Debian (it basically is Debian). Slackware is.. well Slackware (the "special" kind of linux), Gentoo is advanced, hard to grasp but powerful and Mandrake is what it is - and i just got them all to play with :-)

The worst case that can happen to me is that i decide to stay with MDK (and RPM). However, i will probably be evaulating and choosing between ubuntu and Slackware with gentoo being my tinkling box. ;-)

I will install Ubuntu and Slackware along with Mandrake and use them at the same time so i'll see what's the best for me :-)

Here's my pros and cons for all of these:

Mandrake:
pros: Friendly and easy to use, i'm familiar with it, up-to date
cons: I don't like RPM deps problems

Ubuntu:
pros: apt-get system, easy to use (i guess), up-to date
cons: no kde, i feel ockward to the fact it doesn't have root user (all with sudo), only one cd (too much to download with my modem)

Slackware:
pros: stability (according to reputation), 4 CD's of software, good reputation..(?)
cons: package management is a mystery (?), not very up-to date

Any more info is welcome of course. I should get the ordered slackware and ubuntu tommorow. I will let you know how i felt about them :-)

Thank you
Dan

MEPIS may be worth a try, too.
It is debian-based and has good KDE support, not to forget that it comes as a LiveCD.

Ubuntu does have a root user, but that user cannot login. If you want to have a normal root user, you should do something like this (didn't try it...)

sudo su
[your password]
passwd root
[password you want for root]
visudo
[remove line that gives first user permission to do anything]
exit

that should do the trick, but, as I said, I didn't try it.

If you just want to have to type a password every time you use sudo, do this:

sudo visudo

then change this

Defaults !lecture,tty_tickets

into this

Defaults !lecture,tty_tickets, timestamp_timeout=0

have fun!

I glanced at MEPIS site and shots and it sure looks very good and i think i'd order it if it was available in the convinient www.mojcd.com online store here in Croatia. (just order and get in a day)

Anyway, if i get a chance i might try it.

Well, i might try it some day, but it's not a big deal really :-)

I have tried Ubuntu and Slackware now and i can say i am impressed with the ease and look and feel of ubuntu. It's very fast, shows GNOME in a very good light and i love it's startup screens :-) However, it still lacks software i would like to have, lacks KDE which is to big for me to download and install on my own and my modem doesn't work with it. Actually, it seems to be a problem with the kernel source. It seems like the source is in kernel headers packages, but none has menuconfig utility and is not recognized by the "make install" of my conexant modem driver.

However, i must say i kinda lost interest in Ubuntu and left it installed mainly because of it's boot loader (lolz) and aptget if i again try to install modem on it.
The reason for this is slackware which, at first seeming a bit unfriendly as it wants me to configure things editing the xorg.conf manually or using the not so good xorgconfig or xorgsetup utilities, now got me likeing it. I configured the X the way i wanted and i can now save the backup file of xorg.conf in case i reinstall it. I have a beautiful freetype antialiased fonts in KDE, it runs fast and has alot of preinstalled software (having KOffice instead of OOo though).

I am starting to like it's flexibility combined with fair amount of user friendliness. I also found out that, besides pkg tools it has slapt get and emerde, it's own versions of the best package management systems around. However, i also think that it's pkg system is already better than RPM because it doesn't wines about deps all the time leaving you to install what you want and find out about deps when you actually try to run the program. Hey, at least you installed the program, you can catch and install the deps after it. (that's something i heard, not tried yet).

Anyway, slackware seems to be a distro who wants to be and have everything (this the portage and apt get ports), seems very flexible and advanced, but still not so hard to grasp and maintain as gentoo.

I also had no problem installing my modem driver to it's 2.4 kernel.

Anyway.. i think i'm gonna like it.
I left Ubuntu and made empty partitions for Gentoo so i'm gonna tinker with them and use Slack as my primary distro in the mean time.. I dumped Mandrake though :-P

I'd like to hear your opinions on Slackware and it's package management and your overall experience with slack.

Thank you

I didn't try slapt-get and emerde, but without them managing a slackware system is a PITA, unless you just install everything.
Anyway, my favourite distribution is archlinux. It's fast and configure-it-by-hand like slackware, has two tools that are BETTER than apt-get and emerge (pacman and abs) and is surprisingly easy to configure by just editing some files unique to archlinux.
Still, I use ubuntu at the moment, because everything works out of the box with that, and I don't feel like configuring stuff right now.

There is a Kpackage tool in KDE suit that makes installing software in slackware much easier. Although it's not that hard to do it manually as you just have to type "installpkg " and that's it. It will install the pack even if it has some dependancies and in such cases you can see what's missing when you try to run the program. Then you install what's missing and that's it. RPM system has an opposite approach as you can't install anything without finding and installing ALL deps before. Slackware .tgz approach is much easier.

There is also a big repository of slackware packages at www.linuxpackages.net.

Now, i agree that apt-get, portage and some other package managers are better than slackwares, but comparing to rpm i think i still made a progress by switching to slackware until i get to boot gentoo succesfuly and know it better. :-)

Thanks
Daniel