Several months ago, some gormless weasel from somewhere stirred up a fuss when he wrote an essay on one of the Nixer sites asking whether the Slackware distro mattered any longer. Its not really worth googling to find the author and the site where it ran, since it seems to have created an inadvertent meme in the Linux community as advocates, fanboys and editorial writers picked up upon the concept of Slackware 'mattering.' Misguided and myopic as the essay was, it certainly provoked a reaction. For a number of very good reasons, the question stuck in many a craw, and triggered a defensive barrage of articles telling the clueless author just why Slack remains a vital distro and a necessary flavor option in the distro hit list, despite the fact that most other distros are moving on to DVD size releases and trying to outrace each other to be latest and greatest..

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