[jballanc]

I agree. I think that those who feel that Linux should be a "main stream" OS (for whatever definition of main stream you choose) are missing the point that it was, and always has been, primarily a hacker's OS.

That's not to say that distros like Ubuntu don't have their place, but there's so much automation going on in these "modern" package management systems that you really aren't going to learn anything. Sure, you'll end up with a very nice, very functional computer, but that (IMHO) isn't the point of Linux. I'd go so far as to say that I feel like Ubuntu is no longer "Linux", just like Mac OS X is no longer "BSD". Based on? Yes. Is? No, Slackware is Linux.

[trezor]

Sure Linux may be a "hackers OS", but I'd still argue the opposite.

For people who work with Linux for a living, like system administration, you want your Linux distro to absolutely minimize the amount of work needed. When your server-park scales, manually having to fiddle around 200 Slackware installations simply isn't an option.

[jballanc]

Right, which is why you'd be using RHEL or some such. When we get into the open source world of BSDs and Linuxes, it's hard to really say what qualifies as the "OS". My point was that the original "Linux" that Linus wrote to learn more about his machine had a purpose, I think, much more in line with Slackware than SuSE/RHEL/Debian/Ubuntu/etc.

[lsc]

and dealing with YUM breakage is?

dealing with thousands of servers takes quite a bit of extra scripting, no matter what package management tools you use. I've used both slackware and RHEL, and while RHEL is super easy to manage when nothing goes wrong, slackware is a lot easier to fix when something does break.