[lug] There must be a better way

John Karns jkarns at csd.net
Tue Jan 22 16:57:20 MST 2002


On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, Sean Reifschneider said:

> On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 06:28:41PM -0700, ljp wrote:
> >Go Slackware, it's not a very good beginners distro. But the filesystem is
>
> As somone who used Slackware after 8 years of professional sys admin
> experience, I'd wonder who Slackware *IS* good for.  ;-/

It's been a few years since I've installed Slakware (that was on a 486 /
100); but there was a time when it was installable via floppies made from
floppy images supplied on the distribution CD or whatever - that may no
longer be the case, I have no idea.  That was one advantage it had.
Another is that many consider it suitable (again, particularly some of the
older editions) for use on older machines; e.g., from a recent series of
articles on the linuxworld site authored by Colin Mattoon, entitled "How
to create a Linux-based network of computers for peanuts" - the part below
is in relation to setting up older machines as X workstations.  I can't
vouch for the veracity of his assertions, but it may be of interest to
some here:

=======================================

   I prefer Slackware. I usually use version 3.5 on the oldest machines
   and the smallest hard drives with 8 or 12 megabytes of RAM and 7.0 for
   slightly newer hardware as well as any box with 16 megabytes RAM and a
   hard drive larger than 200 megabytes. Slackware provides a highly
   reliable NFS installation, a couple of useful methods to probe for the
   model, irq and io of network cards, and represents a good compromise
   between ease of installation and low memory requirements. In addition,
   Slackware rarely requires manual intervention by an administrator
   after an improper shutdown. Like Debian, X terminals powered by
   Slackware almost always reboot and run fine with an automatic check
   and repair of the file system with fsck. (As you might expect, it
   doesn't take long to fsck small hard drives).

=======================================

----------------------------------------------------------------
John Karns                                        jkarns at csd.net

"You need only two tools. WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and
it should, use WD-40. If it moves and shouldn't, use the tape."




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