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Slackware 7.1

Kernel Version: - 2.2.16

KDE Included: - Yes

KDE2 Included: - No

Gnome Included: - No


Installation:


Booted from the CD into the text-based manual installation. You are given a list of the applications you must run in order to configure and install your system. You must first run the command-line ‘fdisk’ and configure your hard disk. You must then mount your root partition under /mnt. You may then configure PCMCIA (if required) by typing ‘pcmcia’. You can then configure the network by running ‘network’ and using a floppy disk which you need to create from ‘network.dsk’ on the CDROM. You can then run ‘setup’ and actually install your system.


The setup prompts you to configure your keyboard, swap partition and root partition. You are then required to tell Slackware where you are installing it from (!). I told it that it was being installed from a CD and it searched for it and was unable to find it! The CD was in the drive and it was a standard IDE drive which it had just read 5 minutes ago when it booted from it! I decided to give up at this point.


Software Content:


Because I did not manage to install Slackware I can not comment on the software content although I do know that it included KDE.


Conclusion:


I was quite annoyed when the installation failed to read the CD as by this time you have already formatted your partitions. Slackware is designed to be a highly customisable D.I.Y. system which would be fine - if it had installed. Unless you happen to need a highly customised system (and most people don’t) then I suggest that Slackware isn’t worth the trouble.


Added:  Tuesday, October 30, 2001
Reviewer:  David Johnson
Score:
Related Link:  Slackware
hits: 129
Language: eng

  

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Posted by pakman on Feb 03, 2002 - 03:33 PM
My score:

Sounds like the CD was corrupt. I've had this problem before using cheap CD's to burn the downloaded ISO. I've also had friends mail order slack .iso's which have arrived corrupt.

Slackware is a great distro, not for people who need it customised but for people who want a working, reliable system. The slackware team don't move all the libraries and configuration files around so everything is in the places it should be. This is useful if you ever need help from HOWTO's, which I suspect most people do.

It's not very good for beginners, theres no automatic install and you need to set most things up yourself although the setup program can do most important bits.

The main good thing with slackware is it's solid, very few compiler/library issues, and easy to customise if you know what you're doing. We use it at work for all our nameservers running lids (www.lids.org) for security and reiserfs (www.reiserfs.org) so that it can be hard rebooted with no loss of files.

This review was pretty bad, couldn't you have applied for another CD? Although its not easy to use slackware is by far the best distro in my opinion for the reasons given above.
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