What do you use for WM/DE? I can't recall if Fluxbox preloads (I doubt it tho I've never experienced major problems there) but there is a checkbox in Xfce for either or both KDE and Gnome support upon load in. In any case it should be obvious that not having KDE services running, which I assume to mean not actually running KDE, is not KDE's problem. Frankly I haven't seen "many odd flaws" running KDE apps in any WM/DE that supports them and so fare not many reported here even by those who don't prefer KDE, thus my question of "which many odd flaws".

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I use a custom version of Blackbox and my programs.

My experience with KDE is limited to the Calligra suite. I found that the best solution was to move away from Calligra entirely. LaTeX replaced Calligra Words; Inkscape replaced Karbon; and I write programs instead of using Calligra Sheets. I can't comment on the rest of KDE, but it is a problem that KDE apps do not start up cleanly unless the services are already running.
Ed

I suppose you realize that those elite few who use WMs and Tiling managers are exactly that, elite and few, and are unlikely to ever get a distro that only addresses their minimal needs and desires. For those of us who prefer a mixture of CLI and "pointy-clicky", the larger percentage of all OpSys users, distros are required to include at least one Desktop Environment. It is my regarded opinion that KDE, and in this I am including all it's apps as well as the configurable DE, offers the most reliable, refined and polished of all the DEs.

To address this thread, KDE can be pared down to be even more minimalistic than Xfce and still function or blown way up for those other few who almost never engage a terminal. To address this specific tangent of >many odd flaws" I still maintain that at least from my experience, KDE has a lesser percentage of bugs relative in proportion to it's many options, services, and apps. So I reiterate... I cannot imagine Slackware abandoning KDE, even temporarily, since Gnome presents far more problems for Slackware than KDE, and Xfce depends heavily on one, the other, or both. On one hand I salute PV for his choice to keep KDE, but really I don't see much room for choice and I think this poll highlights the fact that KDE is essential for the majority, unless the choice includes Slackware's future rapidly dwindling.

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Maybe I am jumping the gun here, but if Plasma 5 and future releases actually require Wayland, then at that point I would say fsck it and drop it as I think having Wayland and xorg alongside sounds like it would be a hassle to maintain? I don't know, I am not a maintainer and if anyone who is more well versed in distro maintenance or worked with Wayland feel free to correct me on this, I will retract that statement.

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Wayland can be there for a dependency, but you don't have to use it. It's actually quite a small package (as is the wayland protocols you'd also need to satisfy builds). The only detriment is that it becomes a dependency you can't lose. I'm not saying that's insignificant, as I HATE unwanted dependencies, but it's not the end of the world.

I'm just bringing up a new Linux from Scratch system (still a WIP) and I did a git build of xorg because it was easier than putzing with hundreds of little tarballs and I was having trouble building the cloned Mesa without Wayland. It was still wanting "wayland-scanner" so I just gave up, bit the bullet and built wayland and installed wayland-protocols. It's just libraries I can't delete that are going to sit on my system. Laziness I know, and I feel silly for conforming, but what's done is done.

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Plasma5 does not require Wayland. On the other hand, KWin_x11 is not getting functional updates anymore (not that I think it needs new functions) and all development effort goes into making KWin_wayland stable and robust.

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Ok, but is it a REQUIRED dependency or optional for Plasma 5?

Ok so I guess there is that; so I partially(?) retract my previous statement then I guess?

I should mention that Pat has made no public indication (that I've noticed) about Wayland... I was just thinking of what other potential things could be getting worked on behind the scenes.

However I find it odd that Pat would not have given some kind of signal that he is working on Wayland for Slackware at all, I don't see what there is to gain for such 'secrecy'.

He might not be working on it at all or he might be toying with it to see what repercussions could be felt in the distro if it is included. Why mention it publicly if he has no idea if it will make it in the distro within this release?

From his previous posts, he had been toying with the idea of including PAM/kerberos before he announced he was considering it in the thread about the Slackware Store ripping him off. Who knows how long he'd been toying with that idea... We also had no idea on his intentions with QT5/Plasma5 until mentioned it's a matter of "when, not if". And again, we had no idea pulseaudio was going to be added until it was actually added (and for the most part, it went pretty smooth).

I can understand the desire to be working quietly on potentially disruptive things and keeping everything to just him or maybe him and his dev team. If he mentions publicly that he's trying something out, some will say that he's poisoning Slackware while others will bombard him with questions on when usable builds will be out. And that change may never see a public release! Just look at your statement at the mere thought of me mentioning that it's possible he's considering it. And in the thread about PAM/Kerberos, there's a lot of talk about how it shouldn't be included in Slackware and it hasn't even been announced that it would be included, just that it's being considered!

I haven't been keeping up. Is Wayland even robust yet? I know it's been around a long time but I've read some stuff is just easier with Xorg and frustrating to Wayland. What's the current consensus?

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All good points, as for PAM I don't care either way - and if it is going to be in /extra , then I don't see what the issue is from a purist point of view as it is still not installed initially, one has to manually install it.

I do not think that it will go on /extra ...

Mr. Volkerding said somewhere that if PAM and Kerberos will be adopted, that will be on the main tree. And there will be no non-PAM alternatives officially supported, contrary to this pure-alsa thing.

So, the "purists" will have no other choices other than to enjoy the simplicity of AD logins offered by PAM and Kerberos under Slackware.

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I don't think it's ever been said whether or not it'll be in extra. However, from what many are saying, it will likely require a lot of programs to be recompiled that it might be infeasible to maintain both a PAM and PAM-free system on the installation media (and for the many years of updates that Pat provides for stable systems). Pure-alsa already requires 18 packages that need to be maintained separate from the main install, and I'm not sure it'll be worth Pat to support both a with-PAM and without-PAM system.