Cheap Slackware Linux 7 (Software) (Windows NT, Macintosh, Unix, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows 98) Price

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Customer Reviews of Slackware Linux 7

the "Hacker's Unix" of Linux distributions
One day there was a little boy named Linus Torvalds. He liked to play with computers and get them to do things. And on one very special and fateful day, he was astounded by a friend of his who was using something called UNIX. It was better, faster and did more than anything he'd ever seen before. "Where can I get this UNIX?" he asked? "And for how much?" That day he learned that not everyone could use UNIX. It was expensive. So, being a savvy, industrius and inventive little tyke, Linus set about writing his own version. It would be called LINUX, it would be every ounce as powerful, and would be free! And every little boy and girl could make their own improvements because he would give away the source code! ...Of all the LINUX distributions, SLACKWARE has been defined as the most 'UNIX'-like. It is also among the oldest, most developed and often the most advanced of the LINUX flavors. All of that aside, I found it to be the most useful way to learn to use LINUX. Let me explain... The installer is a script, with a less than impressive 'DOS' looking interface. But do not let the look fool you. Under the hood, it is every ounce the musclebound goliath you want it to be. Don't judge a distribution based on this; they may look different, but most installers have the same general set of options. Pay attention to the screen when linux is booting whether off of floppies or CD. This will tell you some valuable things (like what additional kinds of starage devices the kernel has already recognized in your machine). This makes less work and less confusion later on. If you have another drive with Windows on it, SLACKWARE can usually detect it and make it available from within your LINUX session. If you can set up SLACKWARE, you will do fine. Setting up XWindows is a great first lesson in your new environment. Find out what kind of hardware you have in your machine. SLACKWARE takes nothing for granted. You will need to tell XWindows what kind of mouse, video card and monitor you have, and d which display settings you would like to use. Why all the fuss? When you are done you will already have a good working knowledge of how LINUX and XWindows works. Using SLACKWARE means that you have a better idea of what's going on inside LINUX. Other distributions tend to remove you from the command prompt, which is LINUX in it's truest form. This means that you don't really get to see how things work, and you're not 'really learning' anything but the difference between Windows and XWindows. XWindows is not an operating System. It is a Shell or window manager. Explorer.exe and it's related components are the Windows Shell (the start button, Task Bar, System Tray, Desktop and its own kind of Window Manager). This is where the similarities end. LINUX is a much more powerful OS than Windows. Hands Down. The operating system is the command prompt. You need to learn the LINUX command prompt in order to understand how LINUX works. This will help you know what's wrong when something doesn't work, and it will empower you with a dynamic command of the LINUX OS. You almost can't set up SLACKWARE without actually learning how it works. The books are fine and the 'man' command can save your life, but nothing is as rewarding as realizing that you are the reason it works. The learning curve here 'is' the reward. Other distributions do not offer this kind of trial-by-fire approach, but when you come out on the other side of the installation of other distributions, you haven't learned much, if anything. Q) Why learn SLACKWARE? A) It's the Most like UNIX. It costs next to nothing. And it is a first rate powerhouse of an OS. Oh yeah, and you might actually 'learn' LINUX. SLACKWARE is for those of us who want to know how things work and how to 'make' things work. like what, you ask? Almost 90% of the internet is composed of UNIX or LINUX clients and servers. No kidding, when asked what he thought of the growing public interest in the internet, Bill Gates said, 'It's a phase'...'that will pass'. Boy, he was wrong on a GALACTIC scale! But this gave LINUX developers the opportunity to write the protocols and environments that are the internet as we know it. LINUX out-sold Windows in Japan last year in new OS purchases. Why? You can make LINUX anything you want it to be. Router (internet traffic) software and Tivo (record days of Television at a time digitally) machines and the SONY PlayStation2 (Everything from videogames to DVD player to internet box+ a lot LOT more) software development kit use LINUX. For example, after Microsoft had owned HotMail for awhile, they decided that it looked silly for them to be running a mail service on LINUX. So they set everything up on WindowsNT. And crashed for three straight days. Now it is being run on LINUX again. Enough said. If you do not want to know how things work, but want to use a powerful distribution, use something else. But if you are serious about 'learning' LINUX, SLACKWARE is as close to UNIX as you can get. And that's what's keeping us all connected.

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Choose your Slack carefully!
It isn't clear from the product description if this is the CDRom only or the book and CDRom. Locally the CD Rom only goes for ...and the book and cdrom for ...[$10 more], so I suspect this may be the CD Rom only.

I have the Dummies version, which just came out May 2000. The book is great! Not as dummed down as most dummies books. It sells for ... on Amazon.

There was a review on the Slackware distro book (with CD Rom) in boxed set in Maximum Linux. They said the book was a great improvement over the prior book. I haven't seen it, so I can't comment. However, for what its worth the books that came with other distros - Mandrake, Suse and Caldera - were pretty useless. Too detailed and arcane for a beginner (like me) and not comprehensive enough for someone more experienced.

The moral dilemma is that the only way to support Slackware, which is apparently really just one guy who works really really hard, is to buy a distro from Slackware, i.e., this distro or the one with the book. Buying the Dummies book doesn't compensate the guy who maintains Slackware at all, since there are no royalties due to the GNU license and the only way to pay your bills is to sell an actual product, that is to say, this kit.

I have probably, at this point, put more money into supporting Linux distros than most, since I buy boxed sets rather than books, or disks from reprint houses etc. But with Slackware the Dummies book was just too helpfull...

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Slack rules.
Slackware is the greatest Linux distro available. Within a few minutes a person can have a fully working e-mail, web, ftp, and telnet server running. Add to that the rock-solid stability of Linux, this baby is good.