Subj : Re: Skype video calling
To   : Boraxman
From : Arelor
Date : Wed Dec 28 2022 02:25 pm

  Re: Re: Skype video calling
  By: Boraxman to Gamgee on Sat Dec 24 2022 11:45 pm

 > What is it about Slackware that draws you to it?  I was interested in it a w

I can't talk about Gamgee's, but for me, Slackware has two big strengths:

1 - The base system is very consistent and more free from bugs than average.

2 - Slackware can be used in conjunction with ports-like package managers,
which is great if you want to use weird software. In a typical binary
distribution such as Debian, you are mostly limited to what is available in
your repositories. If you want a newer or older version of something in the
repositories, you either get a binary package from a different branch of the
distribution you are using (risking breakage due to library incompatibilities),
manually compile and install without a package manager (which conflicts with
the package manager and causes a mess of the system or create your own package
manually (which is time consuming as heck). With something like SlackBuilds,
you get the source code, hack the SlackBUild scrpt of a similar program, run it
and you are done. Your copy of the package will be built against your installed
libraries, freeing you from most issues.

Another core strengths most SLackware fans are fond of:

* Base components have no customization or barely any, so general documentation
for a package is guaranteed to apply to Slackware (as opposed to distributions
that patch their packages in such a way that they don't work as upstream claims
they work).

* No package manager breakage, because the package manager is too simple to
break.

THe biggest drawback is that release engineering just plain sucks.


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