Why Salix is still the best for ---> this guy <---

Other talk about Salix
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Dennola4
Posts: 172
Joined: 7. Sep 2010, 18:25
Location: San Diego, CA, USA

Why Salix is still the best for ---> this guy <---

Post by Dennola4 »

Hey there,

Here's a Salix story for you, just for the plain geeky romance of it. Back in the 90's I asked my teen students (I'm an art teacher) "why do people tolerate the standard, legacy OS? I'm sure there must be a better solution. What is it?" They laughed and said, "Uh, why don't you just buy a Mac?" Unlike these privileged American youth, I simply couldn't afford to join the Apple family (notice I didn't say cult?) with all of its divinely white, futuristic iDevices. I just waned a PC, not an "overpriced BMW of PC's". In other words, I was kind of envious and wanted a cost-effective alternative to Mac.

That's when I learned that a young gent from Helsinki named Linus Torvalds had the same idea, and personally championed a modified version of Unix, called Lin-ux, and that he was cool enough to share it. And then GNU came along, and you know the rest. My first Linux Distro was Peanut Linux, which led to Puppy Linux, and finally I dedicated my time and energy to seriously learning Linux by learning Slackware.

It was a learning curve, but a fun learning curve, because everything I was doing suddenly made sense. Programs ran properly, no more viruses or trojans (or any of that crap), and each task I labored over was a thing of beauty when completed. I discovered the joy of perfecting an infinitely customizable OS to meet my specific needs, as well as the power of root. Being the omnipotent master of my virtual experience was awesome, and only increased my distaste for the legacy approach. It was something like love, only with a manic touch of addiction. But *you* know that already, don't you?

I test-drove many distros, and ultimately decided that for my personal needs (and taste) it was a draw between Arch and Slackware. It was extremely difficult to commit to one as my primary OS, but I chose Slackware for its stability over Arch's seductive rolling updates and extensive community support (oh yes, and "Pacman" package manager). Once having chosen Slackware, I stayed with it, until the one day when I stumbled across a brand new Slack-based distro called SalixOS.

It was love from the very first day. The vibe of the community was right for me. It was everything I had liked about a similar distro called ZenWalk, only with a bit more respect for upstream activity, and in my opinion a more mature long-term vision. I have used Salix ever since, and have never been disappointed. Never. Gapan, Thenktor, Akuna, Mimosa, and many others involved with the development and maintenance of this system have demonstrated a mix of personal care and basic professionalism that is -- in my humble opinion -- unrivaled. I swear by this OS.

This said, it is now 2014. I live in San Diego, CA, USA and have slowly been earning more and more cash. And so, when it came time to buy a new laptop for both personal and professional use (and deprecate my Dell Inspiron 6000 to hobby status) I ran into a problem. The problem was that I didn't want to walk into a Best Buy, purchase a PC, and then go through all of the trouble of putting it all together again from scratch. I wanted something simple, because I no longer had the time to tinker. Without fully understanding what I was doing or why, I found myself walking out of the store with a brand new MacBook Pro. This is the very first computer I have ever purchased new (rather than building from parts).

It was -- and is -- amazing. No wonder Linus wanted to try to build his own version (from a geek perspective). Unix is excellent and Mac products are visionary. The price? Well worth it, if you have it. There is, however, a certain looseness.... a lightness..... a freedom that I feel on a Linux box that I don't feel on a Mac. I don't feel like the god of my machine. It's like the difference between owning your own car and driving your parent's car. It's really nice, but if something goes wrong that doesn't have an easy fix I'm screwed, and it's off to the dealer for an expensive fix to what might be a simple problem. Still, it's a fair enough exchange when held against the standard set by the legacy OS 's cost-to-performance ratio.

And so I have been using my Mac at work, and an old XP box I had lying around as a beater for doing basic tasks at home. Well, as it turns out, the legacy box performed these simple tasks so inefficiently (restarts, screen-freeze, annoying messages, weird IE vs FF browser conflicts, etc) that last night I cracked. I wiped the HDD and installed an old 13.37 XFCE ISO I had lying around.

Oh. My. Goodness. WHY did I ever leave you??! I can now say, in all honesty, that as much as I respect my MacBook as a lightweight laptop which allows me to coordinate seamlessly with others in a professional environment dominated by Mac users, I realize with certainty that I will never abandon Linux again as a personal laptop solution. It's really a stand-alone phenomenon, not just a "poor-man's Unix". And to date I find that Salix carries the torch for Slackware/Linux quite well -- so well in fact that I wonder if they aren't becoming an imitable model for folks upstream.

Good job, guys.

-Dennis in San Diego
Last edited by Dennola4 on 25. May 2014, 00:58, edited 4 times in total.
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gapan
Salix Wizard
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Joined: 6. Jun 2009, 17:40

Re: Why Salix is still the best for ---> this guy <---

Post by gapan »

Thank you Dennis. Very nice post. :)
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rokytnji
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Joined: 12. Sep 2014, 22:47
Location: Chihuahua Desert

Re: Why Salix is still the best for ---> this guy <---

Post by rokytnji »

Student Netbook running Salix 14 32 bit Fluxbox flies like the wind. Even runs Vilvadi browser.

Code: Select all

$ inxi -M
Machine:   System: manda (portable) product: Intel powered classmate PC v: Gen 1.5L
           Mobo: N/A model: N/A
           Bios: American Megatrends v: CM94515A.86A.0024.2008.0715.1716 date: 07/15/2008
http://i.imgur.com/sybqnT9.jpg

Been buying wiped Texas school netbooks for a song (less than a 30 pack of beer). Howdy and Welcome. 8-)
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