LinuxQuestions: Why Slackware Will Always Matter

“Several months ago, some gormless weasel from somewhere stirred
up a fuss when he wrote an essay on one of the Nixer sites asking
whether the Slackware distro mattered any longer. Its not really
worth googling to find the author and the site where it ran, since
it seems to have created an inadvertent meme in the Linux community
as advocates, fanboys and editorial writers picked up upon the
concept of Slackware ‘mattering.’ Misguided and myopic as the essay
was, it certainly provoked a reaction. For a number of very good
reasons, the question stuck in many a craw, and triggered a
defensive barrage of articles telling the clueless author just why
Slack remains a vital distro and a necessary flavor option in the
distro hit list, despite the fact that most other distros are
moving on to DVD size releases and trying to outrace each other to
be latest and greatest.

“The premise of this essay is simple: the question is not
whether Slackware matters, but WHY it does and WHY it will continue
to do so as long as it remains in ongoing development. I suppose
the ‘always’ part is a bit of hyperbole; should a distro become
defunct and all development cease, it would be as useful as a
Ygdrassil install floppy in 2006. But perhaps not. The question
posed by that one article was not whether Slackware was useful or
current or important, but whether it ‘mattered…'”

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