Once again, I've changed Linux distros on my test PC at the office. This time, it's back to Slackware and release 9.1 which came out a few days ago. As usual with Slackware, it took me three tries before I got the OS installed properly. The first time, I screwed up the partitions and it didn't boot at all. On the second try I installed LILO to the / partition, forgetting that my previous install of Mandrake 9.x had written GRUB to the master boot record. It took me a few minutes to figure out why the word "GRUB" showed up on the screen at bootup and nothing else. Finally, on the third try, I put LILO on the MBR and everything worked. I like Slackware because it makes me do things the hard way; while I appreciate Red Hat and Mandrake's ease of installation, sometimes I like a distro that forces me to work with text files and learn how the guts of the OS operate. Now I need to find time to play around with the new install and see what it can do that previous Slackware releases couldn't. I've heard rumors that there is an automatic software update tool in the product this time around. My biggest complaint about Slackware 9.0 was that I couldn't easily patch packages or upgrade to newer versions of utilities. I must seek out this mysterious upgrade tool and understand it.
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