Jack Wallen / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
ZDNET's key takeaways
Slackel is a user-friendly take on the otherwise challenging Slackware.
There are four different desktop variations to choose from.
Slackel is a great distribution for learning Linux.
Slackware has been around since 1993 and has served as the foundation for many Linux distributions, such as the early iterations of SUSE. What sets Slackware apart from other Linux distributions is that it tries to be more UNIX-like than not. Slackware makes as few modifications as possible to upstream software packages, does not anticipate use cases, and provides no GUI installer.
It's that lack of a GUI installer that keeps some users from giving Slackware a try. That's a shame, because Slackware is a remarkably stable operating system. Fortunately, there are always distributions based on Slackware, one of which is called Slackel.
Slackel borrows some tools from Salix (another distribution based on Slackware) and has a user-friendly GUI installer. Slackel can be installed to an internal drive, to external media (such as USB drives), or run as a live instance. In other words, Slackel is the most Linux-like of the UNIX-like distributions. Make sense?
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Think of it this way: Slackel is to Slackware what Ubuntu is to Linux. This distribution aims to make what might otherwise be challenging much less so, and it succeeds.
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