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Add to SafariWhen comparing MS-DOS vs Slackware, the Slant community recommends Slackware for most people. In the question“What is the best laptop OS?” Slackware is ranked 13th while MS-DOS is ranked 62nd. The most important reason people chose Slackware is:
Uses stable, plain-vanilla packages from upstream.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Use old editor Edit
The grandfather of Notepad, very easy to use, hassle-free text editor.
Pro Brings back memories to older developers
Pro Best OS to run QBASIC on
While QBASIC works on newer operating systems, such as Windows 95 and Windows 98, it was designed for and runs best on MS-DOS.
Pro Stable
Uses stable, plain-vanilla packages from upstream.
Pro Strong adherence to UNIX Principals
Pro Ideal to learn more of Linux
Follows the original Linux roots. It still sees Linux as a free clone of UNIX so the distribution tries to be UNIX-like.
Pro Package management
Uses standard tar archives with shell scripting as packages.
Pro One more distro which is init based
Some users don't like to install systemd based distros because they increase booting and processing speed.
Pro Oldest surviving Linux distro
Besides Debian (which was first released in August 1993), it is the oldest still maintained Linux Distribution and was first released in July 1993.
Pro Super fast
Pro No systemd
Cons
Con Not a modern OS
If you need to know how to run legacy software that will run on DOS (crazier things have happened, there's probably still some ancient, leviathan, software out there that requires it), go for it. Otherwise you're practicing skills that are out of date and are using an operating system that is woefully insecure.
Con Literally horrible
MS-DOS is terrible -- just read about real mode. It was an almost decent solution for its time, but not anymore.
Con Way too simple
A stripped down version of Unix, some commands just got renamed and advanced options removed.
Con Dead
Ended in the 21st century.
Con No internet support
Using Internet with MS-DOS is not trivial.
Con Not user-friendly
It is made to be KISS (keep it simple, stupid), so you have to do everything by hand.
Con Large size live ISO
One needs to vain 3GB+ data for downloading one slackware ISO.
Con Narrow repos
Doesn't offer the same amount of options as other distros do.
Con Niche/small community
Slackware is its own niche and has a small community.
Con Very slow release cycle
Hasn't updated in 3+ years.
Con Dependency issues
When it comes to dependencies, Slackware shows more issues than many other distros.
