What features/changes would you like to see in future Slackware?
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I won't agree. Installing gentoo requires lots of time. Installing Slackware almost none. You can tweak things already having usable system.
LFS & Gentoo = building machine from the parts
Slackware = getting already built machine, but then replacing the seats, the gears and the engine
I would put it differently:
LFS = Custom build vehicle, high degree of "personalization"
Gentoo = F1 race car, pure hightech, VERY fast, but needs intense care
Red Hat = VW Golf
Debian = VW Touran (Minivan)
Ubuntu = VW Golf GTI station wagon
SuSE = SUV, flexible, suitable for occasional off-road trips, easy to drive on the road
Slackware = Hovercraft: All-terrain vehicle, huge pay-load, most flexible, but steering requires a bit of practicing...
OpenBSD = Dreadnaught
Solaris = ISS, ie pure hightech, but not a very comfortable place to be
MS Windows = Titanic
Tux = the penguin that lives on the iceberg that the Titanic decided to mess with...
gargamel
EDIT 2007-01-08 22:33 MET: Added a few "explanations"
Last edited by gargamel; 01-08-2008 at 03:33 PM.
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Gentoo = top fuel dragster with a little too much nitromethane in the fuel mix. I think you may have seen a few of these on TV, the ones where the engine explodes part way through the race.
They are "Microsofting" in the way that everything is more and more supposed to be done with their graphical tools, and you're less and less allowed to deal with things in command line. That's OK for many people, especially people coming from Windows or Mac, but not always suitable for people with a more Unix background. For these ones, Slackware is probably much more appreciated.
In any case, this discussion has very little to do in a Slackware forum IMO. People who want Ubuntu's type of distros should just go for it. People who like Slackware like it, I guess, for the very reason it does not work like Ubuntu, but more like a Unix system.
...but they are not Microsofting the distributions for the reasons the luddites are claiming they are.
Slackware is not for a new users, who don't wish to learn. Slackware doesn't make you stick with console. You can always use whatever DE you wish. You're Dropline maintainer, so what's the problem. Implement those features you think are necessary and problem is solved. Users happy, you happy, that's all. I can't see the problem. Slackware is base. You create whatever you want from it. You can't create anything from Ubuntu.
Correction: I'm "a" maintainer of that. While I've done huge piles of work with it lately, I am not the sole maintainer and there are other people involved who without, I would quickly burn out and simply switch to using Ubuntu for my desktops.
The basic problem here is that change and particularly progress are being viewed by a portion of this userbase as inherently evil. Thinking like that is just a fast track to becoming as obsolete and irrelevant as BSD. If something makes life easier for 80% of the users, while making things (proportionally*) more complex for the remaining 20%, it should likely be included rather than making 100% of the users have to do more work that otherwise wouldn't be needed. To this end, we're to the point now where X should at least be given a shot at configuring itself correctly, because that doesn't preclude the user from going and redoing it themselves if they want--but that sort of thing almost instantly starts people complaining because it might fail for them and it appears that they feel that if X automatically configures itself, that their knowledge is now somehow less useful or something.
If you want a really painful example, you've seen how many people bitched and moaned about HAL and dbus being included, but for pete's sake these things are being incorporated right into the kernel to put an end to a whole slew of tasks that are generally pointless for users to deal with since modern hardware takes the guesswork out of identification and operation tasks.
* - as in not disproportional. If some people still have to manually configure things, they're no better off than before, but they don't get the benefit that the other 80% do. I am not talking about the case as with RedHat for an example where you not only have to know what you're doing, but how to use the GUI tool for it as well because the configuration files that hold the "real" data are not only user-unfriendly but designed for users never to touch directly.
...oh and you actually can create something from Ubuntu, which is why there's literally a million crackheaded spinoffs of it now. It's still Debian underneath, it's just even less documented.
Last edited by evilDagmar; 01-09-2008 at 02:49 AM.
Honestly, I think your points are valid, evilDagmar, but I'm not sure Slackware users are really that much against novelty and easier stuff when they're proven robust and unfailing. After all, modules autoloading is now commonly used and it's quite more pleasant than when you had to figure out by yourself which ones to load.
Just as you are, I would indeed appreciate that X does load with Vesa or autodetects correctly the device and then allows you to change the driver on the fly. I'm sure it'll come in time and I think everybody will be pleased.
But I appreciate the possibility to set up manually a configuration easily when automatic things fail. Just as I appreciate that my manual settings are not reset everytime I use the graphical configuration tool (just as Yast used to do).
After all, Slackware users use it also because it provides a properly preconfigured system. HAL and udev have been added once they seemed robust and stable.
If something makes life easier for 80% of the users, while making things (proportionally*) more complex for the remaining 20%, it should likely be included rather than making 100% of the users have to do more work that otherwise wouldn't be needed.
If you target the whole Linux population, yes. But Slackware targets only a subset of that population (probably that 20%). It's not possible to make a system that makes everyone happy, that why it is great that there are "very userfriendly, but can get in the way" distributions like Ubuntu and "not so userfriendly, does not get in the way" distributions like Slackware Linux.
Each to his/her own. Of course, a lot more people would grok UNIX if they ran Slackware Linux or some BSD .
...oh and you actually can create something from Ubuntu, which is why there's literally a million crackheaded spinoffs of it now. It's still Debian underneath, it's just even less documented.
Million of Ubuntu versions with default Desktop Environment replaced. They even share the same repos, so they are not so different.
How can you be so sure that config files will be stored in human readable form?
...but they are not Microsofting the distributions for the reasons the luddites are claiming they are.
We're luddites now Arr, dadnabbit Seth! let all God-Fearing Yeomen band together and burn down that Accursed Cotton Mill! If we don't take action soon, why even Slackware will be using that Tool of The Devil, autoconfiguration!
EDIT: I'm not opposed to things that make your work easier, but the image of a horde of enraged Slackers storming a cotton mill was too good to pass up
Last edited by Eternal_Newbie; 01-10-2008 at 07:02 AM.
That's already been addressed in this thread and elsewhere.
What?? That didn't make sense.
I think we need live in geeks with the IQ of 180 and teach newbies.Not! But other wise slack install is ten times easier then Ubunto it must be I spend every other day fixing peoples Ubuntu auto install mistakes. as long as slack keeps the self dependency to the user but gives a dependency read out like puppy I think that would be grand.
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