On a recent IRC discussion Pat discussed Slackware’s future and the restructuring that will happen for Slackware 11. Regarding the removal of Gnome from Slackware, he said: “GNOME is not easy to build into packages, lacks decent documentation to build, and requires many undocumented system changes for things to work 100%“.
Patrick J. Volkerding on the Future of Slackware
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Gnome isn’t the easiest thing to build, maintain, or to deal with from a packaging point of view. We’ve had quite a time getting a handle on everything with Dropline, but we’re doing alright. Of course we have a number of volunteers working on dropline around the world.
Considering Pat’s health, time constraints, and Slackware’s focus on KDE for the desktop, I’ve expected this for a while.
It’s really good to see Patrick is back on top of things, not just for Slackware but for himself. Interesting to see comments about some increased co-operation in the Slackware community…maybe dropline could maintain GNOME rather than Slackware dropping it’s support altogether?
I expect Dropline to continue. Really, GNOME’s inclusion in slackware has been fleeting.
I have begun to suspect that the core is less stable in order to make Gnome build.
Right or wrong, I have to give him credit. It’s a pretty bold move. He knows he’s going to get alot of critcism from the Gnome camp. It takes alot of guts to make that decision.
Personally, I’m a KDE fan. And, I don’t actually use Slackware right now either. So, the impact on me is going to be next to nil. Never the less, I do like Slackware’s philosophy and its BSD init. And, even though I’m not using it at the moment, I do respect it.
Personally I think it’s a good move (no offense to any Gnome fans). If you want Gnome, there are plenty of other distro’s that offer a much better experience with that particular DE. Now that The Man is back, I’m looking forward to Slackware 10.1 and beyond. 😉
I am a Gnome user but in the end I have to admit that the Gnome project aren’t exactly making things easy for maintainers. I hope at least Patrick plans to include enlightenment 17 when it’s released
Well,
Personally I’m a Slackware and GNOME fan…but I always install dropline right away anyways… I really think its a good move by Pat since most people who used GNOME on slackware already use Dropline anyways. ^_^
I can’t wait for a new Slackware!
–luzer
—cheers to Pat’s health!
I read osnews everyday…. as long as I know, you ( eugenia ) are Slackware current user and prefer Gnome than KDE. What are you going to do when gnome is removed from Slackware??? Using Dropline? Changing distro?
If GNOME is hard to build or pat is just lazy (:P), he has his motivations and it’s his project. And the slackware users have Dropline, it will not be a lose at all.
Am I the only one who cannot read the cited dialog. What s/w is appropriate to read it?
>What are you going to do…
I have already changed distros: I am now into Arch Linux. I only have one machine running Slackware-Current and I haven’t touched it for a long time.
I still appreciate the stable nature of Slackware over Arch Linux’s though. Arch Linux feeds lots of broken stuff every week (which keep pissing me off), but I like the fact that it’s updated more frequently than Slackware, it’s more open to cool stuff (e.g. Howl/Rendezvous, Bluetooth) and it supports Gnome.
Even if I was to stay in Slackware, I wouldn’t use Dropline. I don’t like the fact that they replace default packages, like X and GTK. Dropline should not do that, in order to avoid compatibility problems with slackware packages/future (it already has a lot such problems). Dropline should only ship packages on top of the current ones, not replace slackware’s packages with its own.
More here: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=8761
As much as I have always loved Slackware — it’s the distro that really got me excited about Linux — a few months ago I made the difficult decision to switch. Like Eugenia, I’m a Gnome person and I need a distro that fully supports Gnome. I also dislike Dropline; it made Slackware too unstable for me, and stability was the number one reason for running Slackware in my case.
I am now running Ubuntu, and I simply love it. The only things I miss from Slackware are the 2.4 kernel — although I am getting more used to 2.6 every day — and the amazing stability. Ubuntu has locked up on me more than once, and so severely that even my keyboard was locked up. I suspect this is simply a hardware flaw that never revealed itself under Slackware, but nonetheless it can be a show-stopper. I have forced myself back into the habit of saving often and early. Slackware allowed me to get lazy in that respect.
I have tried Arch, and while it was very nice, something about Ubuntu is making me stick around for a while. I think it has a great future as one of the leading GNU/Linux distros in the years to come.
As for Patrick, I am very happy that he is getting his health back, and I wish him the best with Slackware in whatever direction he takes it. Even without Gnome, it is still the most versatile and powerful distro in my opinion, and I am sure it will serve its non-Gnome users very well as always.
I don’t see this as a big deal. I’m a Slackware and Gnome user, but I don’t expect to notice the removal of Gnome from future Slackware releases.
I use Dropline Gnome, so as long as they don’t close up shop, I’m okay.
I’ve been very happy with Dropline Gnome, infact it’s the only version of Gnome I’ve used on Slackware. And for me it’s been the best desktop Linux solution I’ve been able to find. I’m very content with Slackware / Dropline.
Our reason for including our own gtk and x packages is one largely of performance and installation concerns. On our lowest end machines especially, the optimized X server performs better than Slackware’s own. It also allows us to keep certain packages up to date as Gnome requires them. Lets face it, before now, if Dropline didn’t replace Slackware default packages, it wouldn’t exist at all.
Many of our users also install onto a Slack installed without the duplicate files. This allows people to do a 2 CD install, instead of a 3 CD install (this probably won’t be an issue from this point on). In the case of PAM and the various packages related to it, the primary issue is one of desktop usability. PAM support does seem to be the big difference between Dropline and Slackware.
Most of the differences between a stock Slackware and Dropline are to allow us to get Slackware to do the same kinds of things you get out of more Gnome desktop-centric distributions, Howl/Rendevous support, Hal/Dbus, GUI configuration tools, etc.
If anyone does know of any current Slackware/Dropline compatability problems, or crash bugs, I’d love to know about them. We do tend to be quite bleeding edge if you keep up with all the updates. This is something we’re working on.
I should also mention that for the 2.8.2 release, we tried to stay as close to what Todd gave us to begin with as possible.
This development has given us something to think about, and we may shake things up more in 2.8.3 2.10 than we were originally planning to.
To Quote Pat…
“<volkerdi> GNOME heads: there’s this thing called Ubuntu…”
Partly the reason why I finally changed distros from slackware to ubuntu. Yeah, If i want a KDE distro.. i probably go with SuSE.
You can also try these alternate GNOME 2.8.2 packages for Linux Slackware 10.0 :
http://antesis.freecontrib.org/mirrors/slack-fr.org/packages/slackw…
No PAM, no X, no i686 (packages compiled for i486 and with i686 optimization as the whole Slackware packages set), no Linux 2.6.x required (and so, at the cost of no gnome-volume-manager and no hal). They integrate well in Linux Slackware 10.0. Build scripts included for people who knows how to use them.
I confirm that GNOME is a real headache to package. Probably the last time I package GNOME, unless my girlfriend don’t want to get rid of GNOME
Now that Dropline is a community endeavor, we intend to make some changes (hopefully improvements) to it. We can’t please everyone (though we wish that we could), but our aim is to make Dropline Gnome into the best Gnome desktop available.
It’s not been an easy process, by any means, but it’s a great experience. There are a few quirks to building Gnome and its supporting libraries, but we’ve got a great team of developers and testers. The initial response to our first release was very pleasing, especially since we were pressed for time to release things promptly. Todd gave his announcement right before the release of Gnome 2.8.2, so there was a lot involved in making things work within a timely manner, and keeping things stable as well.
Our aim is to make a desktop that is user-friendly and reliable. There are several changes going on that will improve Dropline Gnome, and we really look forward to ideas and suggestions from everyone.
As a Dropline user of more than two years, and now as a developer, I hope that other people can get as much enjoyment out of it as I have. I hope that those who dislike Dropline Gnome will at least keep an eye on our future release.
Am i the only one who’se not lazy enough to build my own gnome in slackware? or heck if im lazy, get pre compiled packages from say, linuxpackages.net ?
So what if gnome was out, it doesn’t mean you CANT use it on slackware at all.. it just means you’re going to share a bit of the effort it takes to set it up.
It is a simple text formatted document. The reason you may find it hard to read is that it is a log of an IRC session, and there are several different people having several different conversations. The log starts near where Pat enters the conversations. Sometimes it is a bit tricky to work out who is talking to who because that is the nature of an IRC session, unlike here where the references to posts are more visible.
no gnome, but gtk and xfce will be included, so what’s the problem? i like xfce, hopefully it will get a decent file manager soon.
Gnome has got to be the most under documented platform. I especially like the undocumented environment variables you have to set before your session, to get Gnome-vfs going (maybe only in development versions, but still undocumented). They should stop all development and get some decent documentation for developers (and maybe users), instead of those half-baked release-notes. (I dont expect anything until Novell/RedHat wants them to).
Whoever posted this, could have at least
a) wrapped the long lines
b) filtered out the secondary lines-of-discussion
from his IRC log. An IRC log posted on web does not make an interview. I did not even finish reading it..
Gnome is Gnome and xfce is xfce, they are different… so… yes, for people who like gnome there is a “problem”.
For a decent file manager in xfce try rox.
For me, it’s not a matter of laziness, but rather of productivity. I use GNU/Linux and Gnome on a production machine. Time is money for me, and I simply can’t afford to build or package Gnome myself. Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to if I had the opportunity, since the hobby aspect of Linux, and Slackware in particular, is what got me started using FOSS in the first place. Once I discovered how much it could simplify my work and boost my productivity, I dove right in. Now, to keep that simplicity I need a distro that “does it all” for me.
If one day I need a server of some kind, or some other GUI-less setup, I will definitely use Slackware. I know it inside and out, and its stability is unmatched in the Linux world. However, without Gnome it will simply be useless to me as a desktop OS. And yes, I’ve tried Xfce and Fluxbox; I love many things about each of them, but Gnome *just works* for what I need.
Am I the only one who’s getting tired of all the ass kissing of Pat and excuse making? Personally, I think it’s a cop out – if you can expend the time and energy to package one of the monstrosities known as kde/gnome, you can spend time with the other.
since people have figured this out, why aren’t we filing bugs with the documentation included?
>since people have figured this out, why aren’t we filing >bugs with the documentation included?
Because gnome’s developper and maintener just don’t care ??
gnome’s Bugzilla is the “opium of people”, really.. juste have a look to the number of critical flaws which are still unsolved……… so the documentation problem is the least of their problems
There will always be a special place in my heart for Slackware and all the hard work that Pat has done in maintaining the integrety of Slackware’s philosophy throught a time when the distro with the kitchen sink included have exploded. I have tried too many distro’s to count and I have always gone back to Slack for all my Linux needs large or small and wouldn’t hesitate to again if I had to use Linux for something again.
I have since moved onto my new favorite OS which is just about almost the equivalent of Slackware and that is DragonFlyBSD. BSD’s are more my style and DragonFly’s goals and philosophy seem more solid. And for being so new (well about 1 and half old) it is wonderfully stable.
Anyway.. Glad to See Pat is back to full health and wish him and Slackware the Best.
What I’d like to see in Slackware :
1. A more sophisticated rc start/stop scripts
Now you must edit system files to add a new service.
2. The adoption of the pkg_src from NetBSD project for managing packages.
3. One big handbook, like FreeBSD or NetBSD without the needs to surf the net to search howtos.
I think that taking a look to FreeBSD and NetBSD and integrate these superiors features would make Slackware better.
IMHO, of course.
Because gnome’s developper and maintener just don’t care ??
—-
pure hogwash.
1. A more sophisticated rc start/stop scripts
Now you must edit system files to add a new service.
How exactly would you like them implemented? I quite like the way they work, they are simple, easy to understand and modify compared to the scripts from a lot of other distros, and they work just fine. You only need to edit them if you install a service that isn’t included with Slackware otherwise it’s usually just setting execute bit on the script with chmod.
I typically use KDE on Slack anyway, and GNOME on certain other distros – don’t see a problem with the division really – get the best out of both on a variety of distributions – good to see Xfce improving too
Oh yes, I agree with you.
I appreciate the simplicity of the start / stop scripts.
At now I have create two distinct custom start and stop scripts where I put my own services and I have called these two scripts in Slackware system scripts.
Adding also support for keywords : PROVIDE, REQUIRE, BEFORE, KEYWORD (from NetBsd and FreeBsd) would be nice.
Regards
totally agree.
i have always thought that it would be nice to have a gui to controll the rc. scrpits in slack
No, I don’t think so. In big corporate network infrastructure, LDAP is like heaven.
So I can’t understand what Pat says about LDAP.
How would he administrate a big network with different clients and servers?
Sorry, not everyone can use Linux/NIS/NFS
PS: btw, postfix (+spamassassin) should be in Slack 11.0 as an option (or to replace) sendmail
> 1. A more sophisticated rc start/stop scripts. Now you must edit system files to add a new service.
False, you don’t have to as Slackware also supports SysVInit scripts for years. Create the /etc/rc.d/rcN.d directory, with N being the runlevel for which you want to use start (SXXservice) and stop (KXXservice) scripts. Then populate it as you wish with symlinks/scripts. More info at the top of /etc/rc.d/rc.sysvinit.
> 2. The adoption of the pkg_src from NetBSD project for managing packages.
*kof* *kof* *kof*
> 3. One big handbook, like FreeBSD or NetBSD without the needs to surf the net to search howtos.
I have heard that Alan Hicks and Co are working on a revised, up-to-date Slackware book which may be ready for the next Slackware major release (11.x).
Same applys to KDE, slackware shouldnt be thrown in this DE war, the same way i fealt it was wrong to push slackware to the X/xorg issue(for that i blame PAt).
What i miss is waimea, but theres, kahakai or for the bb lovers fluxbox, that i have been using a lot lately. Ratpoisong seems a little extremist, and xfce too UIiiish.
All those are fat colestrol free like becel butter, and i like it that way.
I went from slack to fbsd and i left some time ago fbsd for slack, because running fbsd was starting to be more an academic proof than a fair use on real life, since BSD’s dont fully respond to all my needs.
Since now im mainly using slackware (4 boxes) and 2 fbsd box, i was starting to get worried about the end of it, and was thinking on giving a try to arch or maybe that new ubuntu that some ppl keep talking about.
But im glad pat is back on his own feet.
I hope to see 6.10 in 11, as i hope to get a new patch set on the new 10.1
Another bit i miss in slack, and for someone like me (or worst a sysadmin) that has alot of machines to get updated quickly and on a reasonable fashionable way, its the packaging/autoupdating of a bunch of linux slackware boxes.
I moved from ftp mirroring of current tree from a batch file from my local national slackware official mirror to build swaret repos and sync it in all boxes via nfs. But theres some issues with that approach either. That so, still one point where slackware lacks to others is on the package/autoupdate of the entire system, and for that i credit the BSD approach mainly net/FREEBSD ports sys.
I totally agree that Slack should learn from Free/NetBSD. The binary/source system is truly flawless.
te26 wrote:
> Another bit i miss in slack, and for someone like me (or worst a sysadmin) that has alot of machines to get updated quickly and on a reasonable fashionable way, its the packaging/autoupdating of a bunch of linux slackware boxes.
Although i don’t know about any buildscript for it, maybe try:
http://www.systemimager.org/
Is there any linux distro as stable as slackware…
Personally if removing GNOME means a more stable and frequently updated slackware, I’m all for it. WindowMaker is plenty for me, GNOME and KDE seem to suck the life out of my hardware. I use slackware as a server anyway, fitting all utilities on one CD rocks!
What are people’s impressions of other distros in terms of stability? I have read about Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Gentoo, and Debian, but are any of them anywhere close to being as stable as slackware? Actually I tried Debian and Gentoo, Gentoo has potential.
I think LFS is going to be my next linux version.
I think is better for GNOME in Slackware to let Dropline team handle it, Mr. Pat has to much work with the Linux Kernel packages itself and KDE at the same time, so having DropLine to take care only of GNOME mean that will have more atention to the details in GNOME and GNOME users in Slackware will be more pleased.
Ty for the tip, but for a soho or in my case i fail at the 2nd rule of the requirement list to run systemimager. That will work for large envs like unis or companys, where you buy hardware in trucks all from the same supplier.
But for that, managing a big park of pcs, i would go with rembo pxe system deployament, to get an always fresh copy on boot and manage all client sofware snapshots from one point.
what i would love (why not doing it myself some might ask?) it would be the combination of the power of a versioning control system with some capabilities of remote deploying bits of source/bin files.
The same way fbsd ports system and cvsup deals with ftp+cvs to answer all their needs.
Why not combining the power of subversion for rollbacks and maintaining the proper version always updated, applying patches by diffing the current trunk, with the bittorrent protocol for rapidly and not network stressfull deployament?
With the option to building the packages locally before installing/upgrading instead of downloading them, as binaries, from one spot.
ricardo
i heard wonders of arch, but as already someone pointed it out here, with lots of packaging updating you get it unstable pretty soon.
rather, i would love to have more time to get deep into lfs.
ricardo
which irc server is that?
Slackware is the Linux distro I like at most but, perhaps, Pat could modify the package system to make it a bit more versatile. For example, having templates for classes of packages that should be read by the package script to set some things like default locations, optimizations, and options (levels of completeness for large packages) to be instaled.
And these things should be changed in command line if desired. This could simplify the instalation and mantenance of 2+ versions of same packages.
Other than that, I have no complaints. The things are kept simple as they are supposed to be.
Kudos to Slack, thanks to Pat.
GNOME is not easy to build into packages, lacks decent documentation to build, and requires many undocumented system changes for things to work 100%”.
No wonder commercial unix desktops like to use gnome as a foundation…. I’m a KDE fan
Even though I prefer to use GNOME, I applaud Pat for his desire to provide a more focused and cohesive distribution, that is more tightly integrated and more stable. KDE probably does fit better with the vanilla Slackware architecture, and the effort saved in supporting two DE’s in one distro can be better spent elsewhere I am sure.
Pat’s point about Ubuntu is also a very good one. If you are someone who enjoys using GNOME (like me), there are distributions out there that specialize in providing a great GNOME-based experience (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc).
It takes courage to make decisions like this, and Pat’s choice to provide a more focused distro will almost certainly benefit his users in the long run.
One thing I do find silly, is deriding a project like “Dropline GNOME” for “polluting” Slackware with its changes. Alterations like Dropline have their uses, especially now that long time Slack fans who do use GNOME will be running out of options otherwise. If you don’t like Dropeline’s approach, nobody is forcing you to customize your Slack install by using it. If the itch for Dropline wasn’t present in the Slack community, then obviously it would not exist.
Personally, I think it’s a cop out – if you can expend the time and energy to package one of the monstrosities known as kde/gnome, you can spend time with the other.
There is a HUGE difference between KDE and GNOME in terms of packaging.
KDE has far less source packages than GNOME, and they are all available in the same place. Tracking changes and stability across the multitude of GNOME packages is likely to prove a nightmare for anyone.
This makes it much easier to build and track changes for a KDE system than a GNOME system. If there are just a few people working on these core packages then it makes perfect sense to concentrate efforts on one rather than the other.
Google for “slackware_howto.pdf”
But it is German;-)
regards, Ludwig
You’ve obviously never built GNOME or KDE. KDE is extremely easy and uncomplicated to build, it just takes a long time. GNOME, on the other hand, is the exact opposite while still taking a long time to build.
Slackware stable hasn’t seen official updates for quite a while now. It is about time they appeared on the Slackware server. Instead of focusing on a new release he should release updates to existing versions.
If he cannot do that due to his health condition, he should organize some backup and communicate about that. There are at keast 2 good teams out there that could take care of that, so let them cooperate to take over that part of Slackware as long as it is needed.
And when Pat thinks (is sure) he is able to do that part properly, he could take over again.
But the situation now is that he announced to be back and announced stable updates will be soon there (current changelog, some weeks ago) and no updates appear other then current.
The ‘official’ backup team stopped updating and the unofficial team stopped updating as well as soon Pat announced to be back again. So there’s three of them not updating anything regarding stable releases.
So Pat, if you are reading this, please take some action.
i been lurking here and reading comments for a day, and i have to agree with those that dont use Gnome and wont miss Gnome, i once used to Like Gnome back in the 1.4 days, when 2.x came around i thought ok this is new but just a little bloated and maybe it will take a couple of .x releases for the Gnome developers to streamline it and it will lighten up on the bloated feel of it, but nope, it just stayed topheavy all the way from 2.2 to 2.8
so i am not saying gnome is a total loss, there are some Gnome apps i like so i hope they still work if i install em on SLackware-10.1, if not i will just have to look for alternatives, afterall that what Linux is – an alternative to Windoze to me, a few years ago when XP was close to release and the Product Activation was part of it and there were some other issues about XP that i did not agree with i never bought XP and Win98 was getting old and dated i finally wiped Win98 off my harddrive and been using Linux exclusivly ever since, with all the vulnerabilitys with XP i read in the media i do not regret my move to abandon Windoze completely…
anyhow back to the subject of Gnome, bye bye Gnome i wont miss ya, since Gnome lost the Philosophy of Linux of being simple and elegant, instead it became a bloated,slow and complicated, i look forward to a Gnome-less Slack, i only bother with KDE so other users that use my computer can have a full featured desktop, i dont care what wm i use, right now i favour xfce4, but will be happy with any of the light bare-bones WMs like blackbox/fluxbox or WindowMaker, its all the same to me as long as i have a menu i can customize for the applications i like to run and multiple virtual desktops…
Normally, I try to keep my posts “on topic”, but I feel the need to say something about ArchLinux. I keep seeing people talk about Arch in that broken packages are abound. I have been using it for over a year, and I have never experienced any broken packages.
Maybe because I only have installed on my machine what I use, or that I only update my machine one a week.
anyhow back to the subject of Gnome, bye bye Gnome i wont miss ya, since Gnome lost the Philosophy of Linux of being simple and elegant,
Since when it’s a philosophy of Linux? It’s fatter than ever. KDE is anything but simple and elegant. To me, it’s as bloated, “slow” and complicated as GNOME. Nevertheless, I use both…
I really can’t understand why most people feel the need to call “bloated” the software they don’t like. Why gnome is bloated? kde is as bloated as gnome, the only difference is that kde calls kde-base a huge package with everything in, while gnome prefers a single package for every program or utility.
I don’t know but I installed Arch about three months ago and I got broken packages the second day… and I only installed KDE and its dependencies! I guess I was just unlucky.
Any problems with any distro Just ask a slackware user. No I am not kidding ! If Mr Slackware is complaining about Gnome Something is WRONG! I also miss the useability of seemingly ancient but useable Gnome apps. I usually use Icewm or Kde. I cannot use Gnome After 2.6 it locks all the time? Without Dropline Gnome I would not have bothered to learn the Mysteries of Gnome. I want a clear precise repeatable action not a core dump.
I’m not trying to claim that anyone is a novice, but it should be pointed out that Arch Linux is designed to be an expert distribution. That’s not to say it won’t make a good base for more user friendly distros (possibly dEv and Frugalware), but in it’s raw state you should count on a high level of user intervention for the first month or so, and on some level, forever.
I think most broken package claims are the result of overwritten configuration files. You need to keep an eye out for this whenever you -Syu, and when it happens, copy the original back (Pacman always backs up), and adjust accordingly with a NoUpgrade in your pacman.conf.
_____
As for Gnome in Slackware, I commend Pat. I’m not a Gnome or KDE user since they’re both heavier than I like (I prefer Enlightenment, with Fluxbox, PekWM, and XFCE4 in certain situations), but I do prefer Gnome to KDE (it’s what I install for friends and family).
Honestly, Slackware is Pat Volkerding, and he has to follow his philosophies, not what the community and it’s infinite fragments believe Slackware’s philosophy to be. If he thinks Gnome is leading to instability and isn’t worth the work, that’s his choice and he must be right! Besides, if there are people who aren’t happy with Dropline, it just leaves room for another Gnome packaging project, and maybe even an Ubuntu-like Slackware based distribution.
I’ve long believed that the future of Linux is in single CD, one of each app class distributions. Pat certainly isn’t cutting Slackware to that level with this move, but I think it’s a decision in that direction (if he intends it or not, he’s seeding the need).
Anonymous wrote: “No, I don’t think so. In big corporate network infrastructure, LDAP is like heaven.
So I can’t understand what Pat says about LDAP.
How would he administrate a big network with different clients and servers?
Sorry, not everyone can use Linux/NIS/NFS
PS: btw, postfix (+spamassassin) should be in Slack 11.0 as an option (or to replace) sendmail2”
I Totally agree. LDAP and PAM is a must if you want to keep on the track. F.e. the upcoming samba release (4.x) will make use LDAP AND PAM (there is nothing bad about PAM. Once more: A Linux distribution without PAM is NOT better!!! PV only does not integrate it because he finds it too difficult!)
Otherwise a real Active Directory support will be impossible. Then PV could also drop the samba package.
As Mailserver I also prefer Postfix as its much easier to handle. Other distributions like SuSE already replaced the old sendmail dino – so why not Slackware. PV always talked about simplicity: sendmail is NOT simple.
I hope to see these features in the upcoming release.
Best Regards
Marcus
i realy liked slack, but i think Pat shoul consider to take some things from ArchLinux and CruxLinux. Those distributions are realy “slack-like” but with nice features. and one big plus for pat could be better management of package building. one thing i realy didn’t like in slack, were the original SlackBuild scripts (some packages installed directly to system root etc.) This is something like VidaLinux could bring to Gentoo. Pat is man i could believe to that the distro core i perfect and the arch-like infrastructure could give me nicely designed port system i could use and extend with my own packages. and this could bring plus for repositories like linuxpackages.
that are mi thougths about slack, now i experiment with oter distros to find what new is where, but… best time i had with slack.
I think it is not bad, that pat has stop the support for gnome. Dropline is doing an execellent. I had the honor to be a part of it for the 2.8.2 release. There are some really talented persons included.
Slackware will never be replaced by distros like arch or ubuntu, because they aim different aims. Slackware is slick and stable, no annoying depencies packages management. I hope it stays that way…..
Greetings to all DLG developers…
Installing GNOME is a work of art. Yes, it can be a headake.
But one thing that you can live without is GTK+ .. One goog thing would be the removal of both GNOME and KDE and theire replacement with XFCE, witch is compatible with both of them. You can very easly run all the apps, and XFCE is the fastest desktop enviroment.
After Pat’s IRC visit, both SlackSec and GUS-BR are getting back in the game… probably for the long haul. We’re going to try and work more closely both with each other and with Pat himself to reduce our workload and see if there’s some way we can provide a more coherent place for Slack users to get their updates.
SlackSec is down at the moment while we get our new server ready. All of us are currently busy with other projects, as well, but we hope to have the server back online within a week with patches and stuff up.
Another place you can grab security updates is slackware.fi. Larhzu seems to know what he’s doing with these packages, although they aren’t as well tested as some others might be. They’re definitely worth checking out, though, if you don’t feel like rolling your own.
But, worry not, SlackSec and GUS-BR are getting back in the saddle…
Not having gnome is another reason for me to stay away from slackware, I dont like KDE as the only main desktop, xfce is
okay but gnome is still the one i like.Suse does a pretty good job with all their managers.
Great to hear that AthlonRob, it’s nice to know Pat isn’t all alone out there:) Btw, #slackware looks like a cosy place:)
I don’t like Slackware because it is the only nostalgic distribution. It doesn’t use shadow passwords, system V scripts, no gnome, no graphical installer, no package resolution system, etc.
All improvement suggestions made here already exist in other distributions and you don’t depend of one only guy. Why not use another distribution ? What Slackware has that others don’t have ?
Slackware has a lot going for it. While slackware doesn’t have a graphical installer, it does have a very good curses based installer, along with quite a few similar configuration tools that make it easy to set up. The package issue doesn’t tend to be as big of a problem as some people suggest, there is swaret and slapt-get which make it easier to keep up to date, and if you want to build your own packages slackware + checkinstall is the way to go.
Slackware is kind of the old volvo of Linux distributions. Its stable, it runs forever, and in general your average person who uses it, tends to know quite a bit about it, and its easy to fix if it breaks.
Bill Allen (IP: —.user.veloxzone.com.br) wrote:
I don’t like Slackware because it is the only nostalgic distribution. It doesn’t use shadow passwords, system V scripts, no gnome, no graphical installer, no package resolution system, etc.
All improvement suggestions made here already exist in other distributions and you don’t depend of one only guy. Why not use another distribution ? What Slackware has that others don’t have ?
I for one hope Slackware never gets a graphical installer. Why? Because a graphical installer actually limits the type of hardware you can install it on. A good example is Suse 9.1. Its graphical installer looks nice, but is actually less versatile than Slackware’s, and if you try to install it on anything less than a P4/Athlon XP with 256MB or greater you are in for a long day. What if I’m installing Slackware as a server or other non-desktop-oriented use? I certainly don’t need a graphical installer then.
Slackware’s current installer provides the most compatibility with your hardware. It’s not hard to learn either. If Slackware were meant to be a desktop-only distro I could understand having a graphical installer; hopefully Slackware will never become so limited.
One other thing: If you are so dependent on point-and-click, then maybe Slackware isn’t for you in the first place. There are so many good desktop-oriented distros out there with good graphical installers for the people who are more comfortable with that. Slackware has a very important place in the world of Linux, and hopefully it will stay there for a long time.
That wasn’t meant to be posted as Anonymous. That’s what I get for being in a hurry.
Thanks for your answer AthlonRob. I’ve managed to find my way in the finnish menuś
Glad to hear that things are getting started.
You know, sometimes you have to replace the broken packages to make things work. By broken i mean packages that are 2 versions behind and have tons of bugs, ie. XORG in Slackware 10.0.
But to the point, if Dropline did not replace some packages it would not exist in first place. One thing that i do not understand how some of slackware users are bashing Dropline project like it’s very bad when they did not even attempted to try it in first place?
Then they try other GNOME offerings that do have optimized X, PAM and other things and they are all in awe how it all works nicely.
Don’t you folks agree?
We’re not here to screw folks over with our GNOME offering, but to make their experience on Slackware that much better saving their valuable time (so they do not spend weeks compiling latest sources).
Dropline exist *not* against Slackware users but *for* Slackware users and those who never tried it, please at least don’t go bashing if you never experienced it.
As a developer who dedicates a lot of time with other developers to provide others with a solution, it is a bit dissapointing to hear the baseless bashings and evil things that Dropline does.
All we ask is, please let us know how can we better serv you the Slackware community and what should be improved?
With the recent Community release of the 2.8.2 series many have said nice things about our team effort and i thank you for the kind words.
Eugenia,
You ought to give Dropline another try and see for yourself, letting go the old grudges because of the old incompatibility with the libiconv that Dropline shipped at one time.
There is also a new LIVECD called Mutagenix which uses Dropline GNOME 2.8.2, worth a try. And soon GONX project will offer LIVECD with DLG GNOME offering.
I realize that we can’t win everyone but the future looks bright, regardless of Slackware shipping with GNOME or without.
Thanks for reading and cheers to DLG devs!
>I don’t like Slackware because it is the only nostalgic >distribution.
Nostalgic ?
>It doesn’t use shadow passwords,
crenard@chronos:~$ cat /etc/slackware-version
Slackware 10.0.0
crenard@chronos:~$ ls -l /etc/shadow
-rw-r—– 1 root shadow 563 2005-01-13 10:18 /etc/shadow
and it has been there for long.
I think you are mixing shadows passwords and PAM which Slack does not use.
>system V scripts,
It supports System V scripts if you need them, but they are not the default system. I find Slack start system being one of the reasons I love this distrb : they are very simple to maintain.
> no gnome
Gnome is currently part of Slackware, if it is dropped, from the main distrib, Dropline Gnome has been providing an excellent Slack “plug-in” for Gnome for a while.
>no graphical installers,
Those are so nice when moving around racks without a fscking mouse that I wont go in it (also they are memory voracious).
> no package resolution system, etc.
“Package resolution system” is usually the issue raised by people who never used Slack.
RPM systems seems to have a will by itself to become corrupted.
And while Apt-get has admitedly been superior in its ease of use for a while, swaret has become the Slack must-have that works very much alike.
Slackware choice of package management(particulary on granularity) is different but I never encoutered a problem with it (particulary not one of those nasty circular dependancies).
For me, Slackware is simply easer because more “transparent” than most distros.
And if P.Volkerding says Gnome has become to difficult for him to support, I really believe that a man who has been managing one of the main Linux distros the last TWELVE years has a point view worth listening to!
—
My 2 euro-cents
Look at ftp://slackware.fi/unofficial/slackware.fi/ to skip Finnish menus. 😉
I did not mean to sound like i dont like slack, i do but i
like gnome, and the slack runs very well on very old computers
and i am running it on a fairly weak computer right now and it
runs quite well. however on my more powerful computer i use
suse.
>Nostalgic ?
Yes, because Slackware is one of the linux distributions more reactive to innovations.
>I think you are mixing shadows passwords and PAM which Slack does not use.
Yes, I made a mistake. But why not use PAM if it is good ?
>It supports System V scripts if you need them, but they are not the default system. I find Slack start system being one of the reasons I love this distrb : they are very simple to maintain.
What difficult is to use chkconfig, create some symlinks and rc.local (if you prefer simply add some lines to this script) ?
System V also use scripts and it is a de-facto standard in commercial Unix world. Only *BSDs and Slackware still not use this.
>no graphical installers,
Those are so nice when moving around racks without a fscking mouse that I wont go in it (also they are memory voracious).
But almost all distribututions which have graphical installers also offer ncurses-based installers as OPTION, like Fedora, etc.
I understand that text installers are better and important for some cases but DON’T OFFER ALSO a graphical installer is not good for some users.
> no package resolution system, etc.
“Package resolution system” is usually the issue raised by people who never used Slack.
Slackare was my first linux distribution in 1997 but I changed for Red Hat in 1998.
> RPM systems seems to have a will by itself to become corrupted.
rpm –rebuilddb
if rpm database corrupts.
>And while Apt-get has admitedly been superior in its ease of use for a while, swaret has become the Slack must-have that works very much alike.
Slackware choice of package management(particulary on granularity) is different but I never encoutered a problem with it (particulary not one of those nasty circular dependancies).
Maybe because the packages on Slackware are bigger. Gentoo, Debian and Red Hat-like distributions with apt-rpm don’t have problem with dependencies, except for packager errors (human error).
“For me, Slackware is simply easer because more “transparent” than most distros.”
All linus distributions are transparent because all are opensource and use scripts (therefore human readable).
Slackware is a good distribution and I respect it but you can do the same with another distributions.
“And if P.Volkerding says Gnome has become to difficult for him to support, I really believe that a man who has been managing one of the main Linux distros the last TWELVE years has a point view worth listening to!”
This is the problem: it is a one man distribution basically, not a community project like Debian or Gentoo. Yes, I think Patrick is not human but nobody is perfect and the best in linux is community sense.
Will this mean that Abiword, Gnumeric, and Totem will be cut as well? I use these apps under XFCE now, and I’d hate to see them go.
>Yes, because Slackware is one of the linux distributions
> more reactive to innovations.
?? I’m surprised, I could say that of “Debian stable”
(kernel what ? 2.2 ?), but I think you are wrong. Slack is
keeping up very well but is not taking ALL innovations, only
those thought appropriate (I’m running current on most of
my machine, and I don’t feel so far behind).
> Yes, I made a mistake. But why not use PAM if it is good ?
The usual answer is : why add some more complexity when it is not required. I think PAM is one of the issue where Slack will probably change, because 1) PAM really has improved 2) more and more services are PAM dependant (LDAP/SAMBA integration being an example).
>What difficult is to use chkconfig, create some symlinks
> and rc.local (if you prefer simply add some
> lines to this script) ?
Well I simply find easier do a chmod -x to disable a daemon,
and I really apreciate to have the whole scripts in /etc/rc.d when I need to tweak some start order (I hate those trees of oddly numbered links )
> System V also use scripts and it is a de-facto standard
> in commercial Unix world. Only *BSDs and Slackware
> still not use this.
ONLY BSDs ? well …. by the way argument by number sounds
odd : 95% of desktops are Ms owned, does it automaticaly
imply that I should switch to Windows ?
But I’m running some Suns too, and each time I have to play
with startup scripts, I like Slack a bit more.
>But almost all distribututions which have graphical
>installers also offer ncurses-based installers as
>OPTION, like Fedora, etc.
you are right, my anger is more oriented against products
requiring some X11 support to install on servers
(who said oracle ?).
But if I remember well, even if I install a RH through ncurse X11 will be required by many utilities that are multimode X11/Command Line/curse (up2date ? I think it even needs some sound oriented packages).
> I understand that text installers are better and
> important for some cases but DON’T OFFER ALSO a
> graphical installer is not good for some users.
Well they are, but would I recommand Slackware for
users requiring a graphical install ?
World of Linux distributions is not really a “one
size fits all” world, and I think Slackware is more
oriented toward technical users. I would recommand
Slackware to someone willing to learn a bit about
the underlying system, there are other distros for that.
I like Slack because as a professional IT guy it feels simpler to me (particulary to debug problems when they surface), I don’t pretend it is appropriate for everybody, but I would think that trying to satisfy to large an audience, Slack would lose its purpose.
>> RPM systems seems to have a will by itself to become
>>corrupted.
>rpm –rebuilddb
>if rpm database corrupts.
Yep but I shouldn’t have to rebuilddb (I’ve been using some
RH since 5.2 I think and I can’t count the number of time I
had to do that).
>>Slackware choice of package management(particulary on
>>granularity) is different but I never encoutered a problem
>>with it (particulary not one of those nasty circular
>>dependancies).
>Maybe because the packages on Slackware are bigger. Gentoo,
>Debian and Red Hat-like distributions with apt-rpm don’t
>have problem with dependencies, except for packager errors
>(human error).
I mis-expressed myself, I meant that I encountered circular
dependancies with other distros (RH mostly, but once in NetBSD ports, and another time on a Suse if I remember well) that never surfaced on Slackware.
I also believe that most package manager problems are caused by human errors, but the more sophisticated they become, and the more likely they are to produce hard to solve/understand errors.
>>”For me, Slackware is simply easer because more
>>”transparent” than most distros.”
>All linus distributions are transparent because all are
>opensource and use scripts (therefore human readable).
I meant that it add less layers of customisation around applications, which make easier to trace problems.
>Slackware is a good distribution and I respect it but you
>can do the same with another distributions.
Indeed
>This is the problem: it is a one man distribution
>basically, not a community project like Debian or Gentoo.
>Yes, I think Patrick is not human but nobody is perfect and
>the best in linux is community sense.
You are right to say that a one man project is more vulnerable.
But it is also more coherent and more able to adapt quickly.
Comitees do not protect from error, very often they protect
more from responsability than from mistake (may not apply to
Freesoftware world) and tend to favorise compromises between
involved parties.
I also believe that would he encounter a …longer term problem and cease to maintain Slackware, some other(s) would continue (and would probably make the distrib evolve differently of course).
So I guess choosing between the two systems is more a matter of personal philosophy/preferences.