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Review: Slackware 10 - first impressions |
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Friday, 16 July 2004 |
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My first experience with Slackware Linux came with version 9.1, after 4 years of using various versions of Red Hat and SUSE Linux. I disliked the general direction these distributions were moving in and didn't see their increasing focus on the "big end of town" as auguring well for either myself or clients of my small one-person IT consultancy business. I quickly became a Slackware convert and have since used it exclusively for all my server deployments. Check in for more and 15 screenshots from Slackware 10.
These are typically file and intranet servers on small to medium sized networks of up to 50 or so clients, typically providing additional services such as DNS and DHCP. Above all, I am impressed by Slackware's stability, clean layout, easy customisation, and excellent package building and management system. Slackware 10 has now arrived after much anticipation, and my initial assessment is that the latest offering is even more appropriate as a server platform than the previous one. Generally speaking, the overall layout and inbuilt Slackware tools have not changed much, which is a good thing, while the software selections represent a balanced mix of old and new. At the time of writing, all software was also fully up to date in security terms, which is always nice. The installation process using the standard Slackware installer was a breeze, as it was with the previous version. I honestly believe that Slackware's reputation for being difficult to install is not just undeserved but quite wrong, particularly in the case of servers being installed by system administrators who presumably have a basic level of Linux knowledge. Overall, the process is certainly no more demanding than any other mainstream distro that requires users to make choices about their installation. Read more at OSNews |
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