SLS
The first Linux distribution was the SLS distribution from Soft Landing Software in canada. It provided convenient, pre-compiled and ready to run sets of packages that could be installed in any combination. SLS reduced the steps that were previously required to install software on Linux systems-search for the source code, download it, extract it, compile it, and hope it installs and works correctly-and saved so much time and effort that many people had no problem with its $100 price tag.
However, it was still rather unfriendly to install, especially from the standpoint of someone migrating to Linux from a DOS backgroud.
SLACKWARE
The next major distribution answered many complaints that people had about SLS by simplifying the installation and offering a package management system called pkgtool.
For installation, instead of running a command-line program and passing the names of the package sets to be installed as in SLS, Slackware offered a full-screen, menu-driven interface. It enabled the user to browse the package sets that were available for installation, and went the extra mile by offering users the capibility to select or deselect individual packages within those sets.
One of its biggest boosts to the Linux distribution world wa the management of installed packages. Using plain tarred and compressed archives (.tgz files), the pkgtool program did a fair job of making the installation and removal of software packages more painless. The main problem that occurred-and still occurs because Slackware hasn't really changed much in this regard-is that some files from individual packages are inevitably left behind when packages are removed. Without a database to keep track of where all the installed files are (such as those used by Red Hat and OpenLinux's RPM package manager or Debian's dpkg), it is impossible to know how to cleanly remove files after they are installed. Regardless, Slackware's package management system does a good job, considering that it just uses ordinary archive files.
Slackware uses a BSD-style initialization scheme. The benefit of this is a simpler system for loading services at boot time. A drawback is that the user does not have very much control over the services that are being started up. For instance, in SysV initialization you can have a over the services set to start with different runlevels, not unlike the runlevel menu you sometimes get when a Windows 95 system becomes corrupted (Safe Mode with Networking, Safe Mode without Networking, and so on). You cannot do this with BSD initialization such as the one used by Slackware.
Slackware is favored by many as the most traditional of the Linux distributions. Nostalgia and inetia (keeping what is familiar on one's system) seem to be doing a good job of keeping this distribution alive, not to mention the fact that it is typically quite current with its software versions and technical fortitude. It provides its user base with consistency and an unflinchingly familiar installation system from version to version.
YES, THERE ARE OTHERS
Just when you think all the distributions have been made, another one pops up. These distributions all have their own focuses, each one being created to fill a perceived gap.
For instance, there it Stampede that is optimized from top to bottom to run on pentium based systems. There are also distributions targeted at non-Intel platforms such as Yellow Dog for PPC distributions targeted specifically at Microsoft Windows users such as DragonLinux, and distributions targeted for inexperienced users such as easyLinux.
For a comprehensive list of Linux distributions, including over 120 different distributions, see the Linux Weekly News Distributions page www.1wn.net.
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