there is still dependency, but, comparing to arch that you wouldn't need to know its dependencies and the options to it, now you have to. you can install everything from source and make -> make install or use the correct slack way of installing by using slackbuilds which are just bash scripts to creating slack packages.
personally i find gentoo more interesting to use than slackware but i got stressed out ONE TIME with those CFLAGS so i decided to not use gentoo anymore and use, instead, slack.
So... > Is it a binary distro like Debian with no dependency handling or is it like LFS where you have a blank canvas?
there is dependency handling. you can install rpm packages but it will only taint your distro in my opinion. use slackbuilds for everything, there is always a slackbuild for what you desire, and it mostly installs from source, compact in a .tgz package so you can use the slack package manager to install it.
when our guy says so
ps: i'm no slackware expert, just have been using for a while.
Colton Gray
Thank you for the explanation. I'll definitely give it a try if I get tired of Gentoo.
James Gutierrez
also, i have 2 more things about slackware to say.
first, its community is incredible friendly on linuxquestions dot org, there are big names there giving you support like alienbob himself (you WILL learn about this guy once you give slackware a try).
and second, there is no easy way of installing it minimal. what i mean is, they recommend ~fiercely~ that you install a full installation (you can select which group of packages to install) because their installation ISO contains packages that are not in slackbuilds or (mostly) anywhere! So, me been a minimal user, thought "oh lets not install anything, just the core, then i'll download everything later". nope. I had a very hard time and decided in the end to reinstall with full installation.
When it has been christened as ultimately, and completely stable, By Our Lord and Savior Patrick
Noah Russell
I've been thinking of swapping to Slackware (From ArchLabs) I know of the dependency problem, but is there any other things I should be concerned about? How easy is it to use?
Austin Cooper
i found it much more easy than any arch flavor.
Bentley Morgan
Another question, with my old laptop that I tried slackware on (For like 5 minutes) my intel wireless card didn't work, how would I fix this with my current laptop with an intel wireless card as well, and can Slackware do full disk encryption?
Brandon Jones
Do you have any log that describes the problem?
Nolan Moore
I run Slackware Current and my Realtek wifi card (which has problems with almost every distro) works perfectly.
Gabriel Morris
Absolutely rock solid reliability and great performance (60fps in ShaderToy compared to Windows 7's 30fps on average on the same hardware), Slackware set the standard for Linux for me, couldn't believe it when I saw other people's Ubuntu installations crash. I only ever had stability problems with it when the underlying hardware went shit, like during those times of everything having shitty capacitors 10 years ago. Used Debian for a while because of apt-get, but I feel the call of "Bob" when it comes time to replace this Windows 7 installation, and will probably go with Slackware again.
