Slackware: what was old is GNU, again

I shouldn't be too snarky. This article, Midnight Commander in Action, is very comprehensive and well illustrated.

I just got a bit harrumphish when I realized that Linux is old enough so that the young'ins don't remember a time before the GUI. The same argument that shied folks away from early Linux is being raised in the face of the latest distros.

I cannot use a PC unless it has pictures and a mouse pointer. That is why I am sticking with Windows er, uh, Gnome or KDE.

MC is the very reason that I have such an allegiance to Slackware. From the first day MC, or should I say mc has been my best Linux friend. Allowing me to traverse the file system. Providing easy access to compressed files. Copy, move and rename at a keystroke. MC even gave me access to the mystical chown/chmod attributes with just a couple of keystrokes.

All of that brings me to this insight... Slackware, in its most fundamental state, is not about the end-user experience. Slackware is about Linux, the kernel, running the on a computer platform.

Quick, someone get the men in white coats and butterfly nets. Papa has really lost it this time.

While we wait for the funny-farmers to arrive let me meander on ... To over-simplify, Slackware is old school. Slack came out of an era when only mainframes ran *nix and users all enjoyed the same interface: green characters on a black CRT display. The Slackware distribution sought to emulate that stable, robust mainframe experience while running on a PC.

I will surmise that Patrick Volkerding sought then, and still seeks, to provide an environment in which the Linux kernel runs as well as humanly possible. I would even go so far as to suggest that this is his first priority. I predicate my assumption on the premise that if the kernel runs well then everything that runs subsequently will do so at an optimum level.

Modern Linux distros and modern users have succumb to the Madison Avenue ploy of selling the sizzle while Patrick Volkerding and Slackware are in the business of selling the steak. Users are welcome to enjoy any GUI sizzle that they like when running the old-school prime-cut Slackware.