@ gdiazlo - Some decent suggestions above but I am confused a bit by

" - try to get rid of unsupported software, even if it still works "

Technically that may for example include LILO and I find it an example of software so fundamental and so efficient that it doesn't need any further support. It's The Wheel. One can alter it with rims and whitewall tires, but it's still a wheel and a simple circle will still do just fine. Why abandon such a thing?

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@enorbet yes I understand. I use elilo every day, it works on most computers. It is not that I just want the latest and greatest, but using supported software with a community which actively maintains it, so at least, it is possible to collaborate if there is problem. It is not something to be done lightly or at first chance. Also, it is my impression, but that the reasoning behind the comment. I have had my frustrations with elilo though .

I suggested removing unsupported software because being unsupported is a sign that software is no longer useful. The response was overwhelmingly negative. Slackware users are highly resistant to change.

The reality is that LILO will soon become useless on BIOSes that lack the CSM.

The X toolkit programs are already nearly unusable on HiDPI monitors.

I did not play the BSD games while I was at Berkeley. I never imagined that I would be unchecking the box in an OS installer nearly four decades later.

I ignore the "programs of historical interest" only because the base OS is modern and highly useful.
Ed

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Somewhat like if you are retired or not employed, then you should be removed because that is a sign you are no longer useful?

Yes, that is a very bad analogy. I admit it.

However, now that I might have your attention, software that isn't supported simply means that the person who used to support it doesn't wish to do so any more for whatever reason and that there has been no pressing need to update that software by whoever is using it. It could be the case that said software is no longer useful, but that is not the only reason. I'll point out that there is quite a bit of unsupported COBOL mainframe programs out there that are still in use today. That software does what it is supposed to do and the users see no reason to change it. (In fact, those users may have even lost the original source code or no longer have anyone with the expertise to update it!)

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I don't know about the VM portion, but I imagine the first part is that I'm guessing RHEL is set up for a large repo of pre-compiled software out of the box. You need to install separate software and configure it to enable that functionality in Slackware (at least slackpkg+ if not something more in-depth like gslapt). Slackware only offers slackpkg, which interacts with official repos, which would only contain what's on the installation disk and any patches.

Speaking for myself, I tend to resist change where it comes about just for change's sake.

I'm 100% against "make-work" projects, and in particular I despise change which brings layers of complication for little to no net benefit. I'd take 80% of the functionality for 20% of the complication every day of the week.
This is true... but how many older machines are out in the wild which are still useful? Shouldn't they be able to run modern & up to date software?

We had a stack of retired desktop machines piled up at the office... I wiped one and re-deployed it as an OpenVPN server. If it quits, we've got enough spare parts to last decades.
It doesn't cost you anything, aside from a relatively small amount of disk space, to have them sitting there.

Some people might say that mtools should be removed... but I still use it for "mount-less" access to USB sticks on headless/GUI-less machines. If it were removed, I'd add it back.

Utility is relative. I'm all for more tools in the toolbox!

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The Mona Lisa is 517 years old; people still look at it¹. People still play Chess and that arguably started around 1500 years ago, though admittedly the rules changed as the years passed.

Besides, the bsd-games package provides an easily accessible ROT13 implementation, so even if one doesn't have an historical, nostalgic, or whimsical interest in the early games, it's worth keeping for that alone.


It's not the X Toolkits fault if things don't scale correctly for hi-dpi, X was designed to be device independent. All the drawing functions lend themselves to scaling very well. It's only when developers take a short-cut and embed fixed pixel-size pixmaps, or specify pixel coordinates, or font sizes, without consideration for dpi that things fall apart.

The irony is, given the recent trend towards using monochromatic and more diagramatic icons again, the traditional Xlib drawing functions would, IMO, actually be a good fit for this minimal style that is now in favour - that is, if only people didn't consider them "Obsolete".


¹ To be fair, I've never understood what people see in it, but I'm an uncultured pleb.

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Ditto.
I've seen it two or three times, at least. It is behind glass or plastic... In those days, it was most likely glass. I've stood and looked at her, and looked at her, and looked at her, and I just don't get it...... Maybe it is the attention to detail for the time in which it was painted??????
Must be an acquired taste?

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About the subject: we'll all gonna die.

Well, I just looked at this post. Back in 2019 you suggested removing at least two apps that I still use to this day: x11-ssh-askpass and cdparanoia.

The former comes in handy for scripting access to hosts when their admins have yet to understand the advantages of public key authentication over password authentication.

The latter remains useful to me because even though it's 2020 I still buy and rip new and secondhand CDs to build my digital music collection because renting^Wstreaming music on Spotify sucks.

Then there's bbkeys. That provides keyboard-control functionality for the blackbox window manager.

Procmail is useful for people who use fetchmail to download mail from POP3/IMAP hosts and send it to their local spool for viewing with cli mail tools like mailx, mutt, xmh, alpine, etc.

aalib is for ASCII art. It's still fun for some people and still works; why remove it?

ppp-setup is useful for people who have no other option but dialup for internet access (such people do still exist even in the USA) and will get them online long enough to install wvstreams and wvdial from SBo.

rpm2tgz is still useful because many scripts on SBo don't build from source, but simply convert RPM packages to tgz for installation on Slackware.

I could keep going, but I've got to get back to my day job and I think I've made my point: it might not be useful or relevant to you, but that doesn't mean other people have no use for it.

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I completely agree.
Some programs haven't been updated in a long time, simply because there hasn't been a need for a new version. If it is still useful and still works, why dump if just because it is old. Especially if there aren't any replacements that offer the same functionality.

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Ladies and gentlemen, and there we have the shark jump!

As every one suspected, any "thoughts about the future of Slackware" would derail on the noble art of... ASCII art.

Man, in the first two or three years was maybe interesting, but after you insisted to keep saying same things in the last 10, I learned every possible statements of yours.

Hell, I can continue myself worth of 10 pages with your usual praises of antiquities...

Warning OT... or at least a tangent

LuckyCyborg please forgive me but I'm curious. You seem to have intellect and some experience but quite often it seems some of your posts are somewhat incoherent or mistaken and almost always in the several that are self-aggrandizing personal attacks on others. In the above case you don't mention to whom you are referring and the only clue is you cherry-picked ASCII art from seven other examples listed by demifiend. You mention "in the first two or three years it was interesting" and then mention 10 years but his data says he joined a year ago, just like you. Do you two have other history?

Since there is such a Jekyll/Hyde difference in how you present yourself I have to ask - Are you one who occasionally is the modern equivalent of a "drunk dialer"? In any case I imagine you'd do some better if you tried to be more objective and actually help somebody here.

Whatever examples demifiend used and any of our opinions on those examples, the underlying fundamental of what amounts to "different strokes for different folks" is irrefutably true since there is no actual losses in keeping around old software that someone may find useful. Why would that bother or offend you?

Probably just an eastern European directness and abrasiveness. I'm never offended by it, nor should anyone else be.

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I don't think I've ever trusted rpm2tgz enough to use it. I've always un-archived the RPMs with rpm2cpio and then repacked them into TGZ's myself.