Comments on: Arch vs. Slackware, a friendly comparison

By: Bill Allen

Bill Allen — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 01:23:15 +0000

Having been a long time Slackware user, since 1996, and more recently an Arch user, I would say this comparison is very fair to both distributions and “spot on”. Good job!

By: Bill S.

Bill S. — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 16:02:37 +0000

Outstanding comparison, Thanks!

These distros are not for the faint of heart. I’ve been trying to get x to work for longer than I care to admit now in my Arch install. And, yes I know how to read…and have done so.

(There are dozens of Arch users forming a line.. as we speak…to tell me to go to the Arch Wiki and me to read the guides.) Speaking of which, there are too many guides. A little consolidation would go a long way.

By: sadotmd

sadotmd — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:52:47 +0000

Thanks for detailed information

By: beej

beej — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 00:44:32 +0000

@Xerxes Lins Yes! If you do, send me a link, and I'll link to it.

By: Xerxes Lins

Xerxes Lins — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:50:05 +0000

Hello,

Great article.

I wonder if I have your permission to reproduce this material translated into Portuguese at vivaolinux (www.vivaolinux.com.br), which is the largest website of Latin America about Linux.

Thank you.

By: mattallmill

mattallmill — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:58:46 +0000

@kunto aji I totally agree. Slackware is the way to go. I have LXDE running on top of Slack and the combination results in a functional,good-looking, lightweight desktop on top of a simple, stable distro. Can't get better than that, IMHO.

By: slackdwarf

slackdwarf — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:20:00 +0000

Thank you for this really informative comparison, which made me curious on trying archlinux on my private Desktop.
After having tried many different distros, i always land again on Slackware, especially for machines that have to run really reliably at all points.

By: debaser

debaser — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:56:12 +0000

Excellent article, very nice summary of 2 of the best distro’s. I tried Slackware last year on 12 and 13. I loved the KISS philosophy and the whole ‘Church of Subgenius’ is pretty funny. That said, when I’d finished the installs I thought they were too vanilla for my personal liking and wasn’t inspired to keep them going (package management just seems a bit fuzzy to me in Slack – there are too many ways and tools to go about it). I’ve been using Arch for a couple of weeks. I love the 686 speed, the fact packages are always bang up to date and the Arch Wiki is absolutely brilliant for easily learning how to do just about anything. (compare this to slackbook which has been threatening to be updated to version 3 for years). Arch is the top ‘serious’ distro on distrowatch for a reason. Anyway, no offence to Slack and Pat, it is also brilliant and has a place – it just depends what your priorities are as Beej has so well summarised in this article.

By: slava_dp

slava_dp — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:11:03 +0000

Slackware for the win! :-)
I use Slackware since 2005 and haven’t been happier since. Although it wasn’t my first distro (it was SuSE 9.3 for the ease of use), I love slack. Never tried Arch, because I like having versioned releases with stable software set in them. If I’m installing a really old box I can easily pick slackware 11.0 (which is the latest one using linux 2.4) and fire it up. While for the latest hardware the latest Slack runs awesome.
Get the official Slackware 13.0 DVD at the Store: http://store.slackware.com/
You get a dual-sided disk with slackware-32bit on one side and slackware-64bit on the other one!
Multilib packages are available from http://connie.slackware.com/~alien/multilib/
Join us in ##slackware on irc.freenode.net!

By: optic

optic — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:55:29 +0000

@u64 long time xp user/manipulator just switched to xubuntu and couldn't be happier. messed with puppy and liked it, then xubu. interested in arch, but xubu is so cut and dry seamless install and damn fast compared to a tweaked xp box I am sold. gonna build a powerhouse and play with 64bit soon...