Linux @lemmy.ml boem @lemmy.world 12 mo. ago

Slackware wasn't the first Linux distro, but it's the oldest still alive and kicking

Who needs a graphical desktop manager anyway?

This week the Slackware Linux project is celebrating its 30th anniversary. It is the oldest Linux distribution that is still in active maintenance and development.

36 comments

I mean sure, but Debian is far more active, relevant, and only like two months younger...
- When I started playing around with Linux 25 years ago Debian and APT was a small revolution in how good it worked out of the box.
  
  I tried to get into Red hat and SUSE and I always wanted up in trouble even before I got any Windows manager up and running. Don't get me started on RPM and dependency hell
  
  Debian just worked. I had stuff up n running BEFORE I had to go down the rabbit hole to understand how all things was connected.
  
  For a beginner that was a game changer.
  
  I wish I had known about Debian and apt back then! I spent years distro-hopping because I was so tired of chasing down RPMs in redhat. Like seriously, you can't just tell me everything you need, and grab all those files at once when I try installing a package?
  
  I disagree with suse. suse was the first distro where I was able to get a laptop working completely without having to download additional drivers.
- Debian has a lot of other things going for it - but Slackware still beat it by two months, and Linux wouldn't be the same without it. Worth celebrating! 🎉
  
  You aren't wrong :)
  
  Also, wasn't SUSE Linux originally based on Slackware?
praise "bob"
- If you don't laugh, you didn't get it, but if you ONLY laugh, you didn't get it.
  
  I only got it because I watched Brodie's video. Although I am thinking of switching to Slackware.
After getting my hands on unix at work but unable to afford the cost to run it at home, I discovered a version of Slackware that installed in a folder on my Windows desktop. It only took a few weeks of playing around before I set up a dedicated server (which was then hacked within the first week, pushing me to learn about this thing called a "firewall") Whew it's been almost 24 years now and I've been happily using Debian for nearly half that time.
- What do you mean by the cost? Because you didn't want to wipe out your Windows OS? I've been running distros on my personal PC for 23 years now. Can't say I've ever spent money on it except for some cheap CDs. I think I even got distro cds for cheap that came with linux magazines.
  
  I assume the cost was of Unix and not Linux.
  
  If you wanted to run actual Unix, there was a significant licensing fee. That's one of the reasons Linux took off, because it did all the same things but was free.
- Topologilinux?
  
  Took me weeks to get my modem to work with that. Had to keeep rebooting back to windows to disl up to the net and check documentation and tutorials…
  
  After that things picked up, though.
  
  I never heard of that one. A distro that I used for a few years was called "Mage" though, which provided what I thought any of them should have been doing. I eventually stumbled on Ubuntu, but they burned me so many times trying to run servers, that's when I finally got on Debian. Nothing worse than having their security updates destroy all network access, and still having the ticket open at least 15 years later (I was still getting pinged from other people running into the same issue on bugzilla).
I think I still have disks for Slackware 11 and 13 floating around somewhere. I even ran 13 for almost 2 years as a daily driver... And then got pissed off trying to update packages.

I'll admit that these days I just run Ubuntu, because it's easy, and it works without hours of googling how to fix some random dependency that I can't actually find for some reason.
Slackware 10.1 was my first time taking Linux out on the town. Had IBM Thinkpad T23. Thought I was pretty hot stuff. I still have massive respect for the project. They’re one of, if maybe the only, Linux distro out there that comes close to the quality of documentation as FreeBSD and because of that they’re the only distro that still feels like I think Unix felt like, or should feel like… idk maybe that’s nostalgia speaking…
I think the last slack install I did was in 1996; from floppies! <-- beatdown
Okay, so, silly question: What was the first linux distro, regardless of current activity?
- TAMU was an early one I used. There were lots that were one and done too so it's hard to keep track.
- I think it was MCC Interim Linux.
  
  Interim Linux would be a neat modern distro name.
  
  Neat! I'll have to look into that, thanks~
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