That is very true, and as I said, I wasn't familiar with the file manager before it was mentioned in this post. I'm now curious what audacious is used for with the file manager and why the maintainer felt it was important enough to require it (or maybe the maintainer doesn't understand optional/required dependencies).

But the gist of my comment was to say that the people who maintain the packages for various distros decide what dependencies to require. They may or may not match upstream's desires (maybe the maintainer prefers a lean and mean version with little extra bells and whistles while upstream prefers to have most the bells and whistles or vice versa) nor the desires of all users of that package. And this is an issue you can see in all distros including Slackware. However, that is certainly one of the beauties of SlackBuilds over using pre-built binaries... you can easily decide what dependencies you want to use, even removing optional dependencies that the maintainer marked as "required".

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I don't really qualify for these questions as I never stopped using Slackware, for both personal & business related needs, but had some periods in my professional life (which was not all technical) when I considered switching.

1. Why did you stop using Slackware?
As mentioned, I never stopped using it but kept an open mind about alternatives, trying some. Convenience, foolishly believing (lack of experience) that some other distro, with more automation, would allow me to deploy faster and ease the systems maintenance.
Industry/Enterprise Demand/Job-Market(specialists) related trends. There were/are some "gurus" (opinion leaders) every now and then lobbying for the use of a specific distro (RedHat, Suse) and there was always demand for specific distro specialists, still is.

2. Are you going to switch back again and why?
Always did, never actually stopped using it. Mainly because of the issues I've encountered with other distros that focused on adding layers of automation over the system configuration and the lack of transparency/flexibility, that's allowing me to manually fine tune some of the system parameters without interfering with my actions. I still do not fully trust any configuration scripts and apps just because I've had enough trouble with them not doing what was requested and coding quality (incl. exception handling), testing quality (if any) and the lost of oversight/control caused by the rise in complexity are issues that are never fully resolved. KISS always rules.

3. Which distribution did you switch to and why?
Redhat and Suse for Enterprise Level demands, Slackware based Vectorlinux for workstations, looking for a full graphical DE for SOHO use that I could configure as a kiosk. Debian, Ubuntu for fun, just testing, never survived 24h. And, while not a Linux distro itself, I used Solaris, some years before it got bought by Oracle and "killed".

Mention:
@SCerovec
Back around 1996 when I was a BSD(FreeBSD) devout, it was a Serbian Slacker, that was contracted to do some user migration and install a Slackware server at the company I was working, who introduced me to Slackware. I do remember him heavily using the console and switching the terminals like crazy. He presented me the elegance, flexibility and transparency of Slackware and I got hooked. At that time I remember him saying that Slackware was widely adopted ant trusted in Eastern/Southern Europe.
These bloody Serbians...

2 members found this post helpful.

There is something wrong with Slackware. Just like with every piece of software ever conceived. And Slackware being a whole distribution, there’s plenty of places where something can go wrong. And your comment isn’t unique either: ‘You’re holding it wrong’, ‘You didn’t internalise internal workings of the system’ etc.

All those examples are false dichotomy. Debian doing it wrong does not mean that Slackware is doing it correctly.

I haven’t just yet but came very close the other day after spending two hours or so making my system bootable again. I’ve upgraded the kernel and forgot to rebuild initrd which resulted in system not booting at all. How hard can it be to fix though, right? Apparently very. Getting Slackware install USB was the first hurdle (first Google result assumed a working Linux system, result with ‘Windows’ added to search query made you download dd and some other stuff, but fortunately removing ‘Slackware’ from search terms leads to Rufus which just works), Slackware 14.2 was released what might just as well be last century which means that its install ISO doesn’t recognise my storage, then once I finally managed to rebuild initrd kernel started panicking for some reason, running eliloconfig on the install disk made it worse, but fortunately through sheer will I managed to get it working in the end.

If it wasn’t for some weird nostalgia, I would probably have moved on to distributions where I can update kernel with a simple command. Even if I had to use systemd…

If Slackware had an easy and reliable post-install script for the kernel which rebuilds initrd and copies everything that needs to be copied to EFI partition, I wouldn’t have any reasons to consider switching.

I’m using Debian at work so that would probably where I would go if I were to switch. Testing release has all the software in fairly recent versions and I rarely had any problems with that distribution.

Either Debian or I would look at something like NixOS or QubesOS to investigate their security and privacy properties.

1 members found this post helpful.

I imagined that too. It is still going too far with extending a simple package. I chose Slackware because its packages don't go that far. There is simplicity.

Isn't that the reason why they're slackbuilds and not precompiled binaries? So you can check them and customize them before they are packaged?

This reminds me of a reasonably famous cartoon which shows Moses parting the Red Sea. The towering sea is parted on each side showing a path to the promised land for the refugees from Egypt. But Moses is looking back into the crowd behind him and saying with some asperity: "What do you mean 'Its a bit muddy!'???".

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Ha ha ha! Good joke, Sir!

Because meanwhile, the honorable Slackware community ask you to install everything. Everything as in everything. All of its wonderful 10GB.

And is not about that poor Audacious. You like or not, you need or not, you shall install EVERYTHING on your home desktop. Including Apache, PHP, MySQL, Postfix, Bind and even FTP servers.

To be honest, from my knowledge today the Slackware is the single distribution where you shall install everything. Good luck to want a XFCE only desktop, with no servers, KDE leftovers, stray libraries and so on...

Even if you install everything (I would hazard a guess that most of us do not), it hardly matters because Slackware doesn't enable everything at startup just because you have it installed. But you already know that, and we don't need to go down this road again.

2 members found this post helpful.

Firstly, that article doesn't say that he stopped using it.

He outlined some reasons that he was considering a switch. The conclusion was that he was going to continue.

Secondly, he doesn't know what he's talking about:
Remember this?
Someone who has used Slackware for so long should know this.

1 members found this post helpful.

Not quite.

Those of us who spend our free time to help people in this forum, tell newbies to install everything.

If you don't install everything, you had better fucking well mention that fact when you ask for help here.

5 members found this post helpful.

News to me. He originally stopped supporting slackroll because he wasn't using Slackware any more.

And there's...

Later on, there's...
(emphasis mine)

1 members found this post helpful.

this was epic!!

When I was using Slackware I never installed everything. I understand that it helps the new users but that is wasted space regardless of how much you have. Though, I did install all from the L series to avoid problems when compiling.

Thank you all for posting in this thread. I really didn't expect so much feedback. So far it has been very interesting and insightful.

Thanks for the cartoon, I really like this kind of humor ! It feels good, at work...

1 members found this post helpful.

Almost none of this is true. And even if it was true (which it isn't), you haven't given any reason why it is a problem. And I don't like the argumentative tone of your post.

No other distribution makes it so easy to remove exactly what you want to remove.

The advice for beginners is that they should install everything, until they have enough skill to remove things safely. And when they report problems, please tell us that they don't have a full installation.

3 members found this post helpful.