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Original post by seanw Quote: Original post by python_regious Quote: Original post by seanw Quote: Original post by Strife But that's exactly my point. Slackware isn't hard to learn! The only "hard" thing about it is that there's less autoconfiguration going on and a little bit more of editing files by hand... And even that is relatively minimal, provided you don't make major changes to your system after installation. I've not used Slackware, but why would you not want autoconfiguration and why would you want to edit files by hand? I've used distros like RedHat and Linux for the last few years and I've rarely had to do any manual work to set everything up. I can understand wanting to learn Linux, but I don't see why you'd want to waste time tackling problems manually when automatic solutions have been available for ages. More control. What can you do with Slackware that you can't do with other easier distros though? I'd much rather stick the CD in, install and boot straight into KDE with all my hardware working automatically (e.g. like Suse and Mandrake) and also have good package management systems like urpmi and apt-get. I just don't understand why everyone seems to recommend the easier distros and then says you should move onto things like Slackware/Gentoo later once you have more experience. Why not just stick to the easier ones so you can actually do some work on your computer?

Ok, granted, you can't do anything more in debian than you can in say Mandrake, but you can from off the hat.. i.e., from the start. As for package managers, apt and portage are the best at the moment ( can't wait for portage-m to come out properly ), thats why I recommend debian or gentoo to people.

One more thing, you say you can boot straight into KDE... I know alot of friends who use linux who dispise KDE with a passion ( they use fluxbox ). You might not even want to install XFree86, if you're running a server or something.

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Original post by python_regious One more thing, you say you can boot straight into KDE... I know alot of friends who use linux who dispise KDE with a passion ( they use fluxbox ). You might not even want to install XFree86, if you're running a server or something.

When I installed Mandrake, you get a choice of Gnome or KDE, as well as WM like Fluxbox. You can install others from a GUI after the main install and they appear as options at the login screen.

I wasn't talking about specific distros, I just don't understand why people actually want to manually install packages and edit files before they have an actual working environment.

Fair enough for the server comment, but you know most people are not going to be asking for first time Linux advice for running a server but about desktop usage. As far as I know, you can set Mandrake up as a server with no GUI environment too. I'm not just advocated Mandrake by the way, just easy distros because I like things to be easy always if I can.

Well, if you learn everything when you install, it becomes alot easier to fix things when it breaks.

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Original post by python_regious Well, if you learn everything when you install, it becomes alot easier to fix things when it breaks.

As long as you don't have exotic hardware, GUI admin tools like Suse's YAST and Mandrake's are actually very comprehensive. You're never going to learn everything so let the admin tools fix most of your problems and then go and read up on things when unique issues crop up. Doing it all manually looks like making life hard for yourself for no real benefit.

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Original post by seanw Quote: Original post by python_regious Well, if you learn everything when you install, it becomes alot easier to fix things when it breaks. As long as you don't have exotic hardware, GUI admin tools like Suse's YAST and Mandrake's are actually very comprehensive. You're never going to learn everything so let the admin tools fix most of your problems and then go and read up on things when unique issues crop up. Doing it all manually looks like making life hard for yourself for no real benefit.

I accept that, however, I've always done it the "hard" way as you put it. I've never used GUI admin tools (unless I'm configuring KDE or something), so I don't really know much about it. I still think that learning how to do things in the raw will help you, as they're cross distribution, and cross WM.

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Original post by Strife The whole "you get more control with (insert distro here)" argument is a complete and total myth.

I use Linux from scratch. You can't get more control than with that. My computer boots in 10 seconds (I timed it). It takes another 2 seconds to get my WM fully loaded once I login and type my alias for startx. I'd like to see any distro which can do that. The fastest I ever had (probably Slackware) running on the same computer was about 30 seconds. I'd like to see anyone do that with any distro.

That being said, I don't recommend anyone to install linux from scratch because it took me days to set up and, frankly, wasn't worth my time. Now that I have it installed, though, it would take something pretty major to convince me to erase it and replace it with a distro.

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Original post by clum Quote: Original post by Strife The whole "you get more control with (insert distro here)" argument is a complete and total myth. I use Linux from scratch. You can't get more control than with that. My computer boots in 10 seconds (I timed it). It takes another 2 seconds to get my WM fully loaded once I login and type my alias for startx. I'd like to see any distro which can do that. The fastest I ever had (probably Slackware) running on the same computer was about 30 seconds. I'd like to see anyone do that with any distro. That being said, I don't recommend anyone to install linux from scratch because it took me days to set up and, frankly, wasn't worth my time. Now that I have it installed, though, it would take something pretty major to convince me to erase it and replace it with a distro.

By control, I mean control over what you have on your system, what will run at startup, etc. Yes, you can get a system that goes extremely fast on LFS because you fine-tune everything to your system. But you can do this for ANY distribution if you so choose. It's just "easier" in a sense to start with the bare minimum and go up from there than to pick and choose what you do not want.

Besides, LFS is a whole 'nother ball game.

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Original post by Strife By control, I mean control over what you have on your system, what will run at startup, etc.

That's what I mean, too.

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Original post by Strife Yes, you can get a system that goes extremely fast on LFS because you fine-tune everything to your system. But you can do this for ANY distribution if you so choose. It's just "easier" in a sense to start with the bare minimum and go up from there than to pick and choose what you do not want.

That's purely hypothetical. If its easier to control, that's the same thing as having more control. The fact is, some distributions are easier to control the nitty-gritty details than others, but those are a bit harder to do the simpler things. Its a trade-off that anyone who chooses a distribution has to decide between. I definitely would want to sit around with SuSE's boot-up scripts and decide what is important and what is not.
BTW, has anyone noticed that we have gone totally off-topic from the original topic of discussion?