I've failed you, Slackware...

So, I’ve just shared my personal Slackware repository, and yet I distro-hopped. My betrayal goes deep, because not only I’ve left Slackware behind, but also moved to a distribution that comes with systemd. But let me explain…

For quite a while now I was trying to strip anything I can from huge base set of packages that comes with Slackware, but as long as I was using Xfce + i3, the huge KDE library wasn’t my problem, but then I was drawn to it. And then problems began. It seems that Slack comes with any KDE app imaginable, so there was a lot to trim down. I removed whole kdepim (kmail, and many apps basically having to do with kontacts), but the problem is… that without dependency management (base Slackware packages don’t have dependencies information) it is quite hard to tell if I’m breaking something before it is already broken. And it kept happening.

The final thing that broke was me, it seems. I decided to finally fall for the temptation I had for a while and try Arch. At first, I was trying to install Artix, but for some damn reason I wasn’t able to make the USB stick with Artix to boot. It was either not even recognized, or was just failing. I was quite frustrated at this point, so I’ve downloaded Arch iso, burned it on the stick, and guess what… It worked just fine.

After the feared Arch installation process I was up and running in no time (I almost wiped the wrong drive, but nothing was lost in the end), and I must say I like it here. What seemed funny to me, was that I already knew some things about Arch from the memes. The great thing is definitely the software availability. Although I can’t say that Slackware lacks in that manner… It actually has more packages available than Debian (at least without adding countless ppas), through SlackBuilds. There weren’t quite there on 15.0 launch, but they are now. Of course they aren’t as cutting edge as Arch packages, but surely way more up-to-date than Debian or Ubuntu LTS ones.

So, as far as Arch Linux users elitism goes: I switched to Arch, because it’s way easier distro than Slackware. It’s also easier than Debian, maybe excluding the installation process… But you might just get Arcolinux if you’re afraid of ttys, or some of the eye-candy Arch-based distros.

I still would prefer runit to systemd, but it’s not that terrible. It works, but maybe at some point I will give Artix another shot.

As for ditvhing Slackware, I still have a persistent live USB, which I’m planning to keep, and I will for sure cover Slackware here or on my YouTube channel, although I wouldn’t particulary count on my Slackware repo anymore. Most of the stuff there are built from SlackBuilds, so you might as well use sbopkg or slpkg and build it all yourself.

There’s only one thing left to say: I use Arch, btw. :Clown Face: