Actually visual style has nothing to do with my choice. I used Xfce for more than a year reasonably happily but only because it would run KDE apps like Dolphin. I really didn't care much how it looked... only that it had the depth of control and features that Thunar sadly lacks.

That said I get it that some folks aren't as shackled to a File Manager as the center of almost all workflow so for them I guess Thunar is sufficient, but that's now I came up. I LOVED OS/2 but I hated the Object Orientation and gladly paid good money for a truly serious File Manager (Clear & Simple's Disk Jockey) despite free ones with lesser capability being readily available.

I actually was skeptical of Dolphin coming from Krusader with KDE-3, but within a month it won me over. As for resource usage I've made the same argument as you, Eric, many times because so many people who abandoned KDE when it first hit v4 and never tried it but still assumed it hadn't been both fixed and improved. Xfce is a decent DE but I still think it's a bit like a framework as most of the important apps, at least for my usage, affecting workflow are either Gnome or KDE. I suspect I'm not alone in that assesment and preference.

Slackware is true.

So, i mean where we talk, Ubuntustudio.org make a 20.10 (daily) distro with Plasma 5.19.5 and later get 5.20.
Also i always work in Slackware 64-bit, and XFCE is not a dogma, but is where hi stability and secure.
See internet around, and you can found a many, like a Zenwalk, 4MLinux, Puppy, EasyOS (Australian !) and many other's.
Ex: latest 4MLinux 34.0 use JWM desktop at single, and is very nice and good work's, and stability.
His size a ~939bm to all.

I started working with computers in 1991-1993.
It was a clones of the PDP-11: ES, SM, BK-0010.01 and DVK-2M, at the Far Eastern State University.
Then I was still a schoolboy.

I was go to Unix and Slackware 64-bit , from QNX RTP 6.0 and old RedHat Linux in 2000'y.
And you know what interesting at olds ? JWM !
http://joewing.net/about.html
It work's !
Be cause PLASMA 5 not a dogma. But need latest, today is 5.20 .

VLC and Audacious as default media, LibreOffice 7.0 edit and BASIC for School's.
Mozilla SeaMonkey like a classic html pig and code editor. Geany app also too.

But i think about JWM desktop style ex 4MLinux 34.0 today.
Example here:
https://4mlinux-releases.blogspot.co...-released.html
https://sourceforge.net/projects/lin...s/34.0/livecd/

JWM no big differ to XFCE, but it less size.
EasyOS more workable, is classic style.
https://distrowatch.com/images/ktyxq...jab/easyos.png
http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd.../buster/2.4.1/

My lovely GhostBSD, use XFCE in communiti edition. Is Classic FreeBSD, but with driver's additions.
Is live FreeBSD and nice pkg mgmt tool.
https://ghostbsd.org/
Latest build at http://download.ghostbsd.org/development/amd64/latest/

FuryBSD use XFCE by one in default desktop, in one him edition. Is live FreeBSD. Is Classic FreeBSD, but with driver's additions.
https://www.furybsd.org/

Slackware derivative Salix OS Linux, with XFCE defult desktop (today is 14.2.1) ~1Gb size iso .
slapt-get pkg tool.
https://www.salixos.org/


Thank we to all !
Be a Slackware !

ex future view Slackware desktop like a Ubuntustudio.org (bar at up) and KDE PLASMA 5.19.5:
https://sun5-4.userapi.com/GJPU4b6Xv...ivFgyR7NtM.jpg


Get the users, get donation, get money..

I will. It is quite trivial to build.

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Just my 2c on the subject; XDM is fine, xinitrc also, any default desktop is fine as long as it can be changed to some simple WM with no additional services.
Things like 'startkde' and 'startxfce4' I don't like and never use them because I prefer the desktop to start instantly after login.
When startkde loads this and that service, refresh cache, index files; it feels like standing in line. Modern windows does this exact same thing, too.
Guys who invent startkde; I don't think they ever log out unless they upgrade to new KDE.
IMO, running KDE4 programs via RazorQT was a better experience for me than plasma, and it started much faster.

GNOME I used for a month and gave up. These days, when one says one doesn't like GNOME; everyone assumes one doesn't like GNOME 3 and say something like:
Like that's going to make any difference to a user who didn't like GNOME or GNOME 2 in the first place.
But I've tried it anyway, icon theme is cool and that's about it.

Xfwm4 was great, but new versions remove themes and other features to fit the new GNOME 3 features. So, not that great anymore.
Move to GTK3 was rushed, I get that GTK2 is declared obsolete by GTK devs; but even GIMP upstream did not finish the move to GIMP ToolKit v3 yet.
Until GIMP stable branch transition to GTK3 is complete, I don't think I'll be making a move in that direction either.

TLDR: More worried about the toolkit limitations than default DE in Slackware, but maybe it'll help the OP decide to make his own default.
It's not anything like win32 OP, nobody here will decide AERO is best for you and force it on your HDD.

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The situation is diabolical and unacceptable, mostly because there is no communication with the userbase about a 15.0 release, even a beta. The community, those who post regularly in these forums, are ever-giving and ever-forgiving of the BDFL, however, it is exactly these points which are also its weakness. Those of us who saw that things were awry with stable several months ago, or longer, already jumped ship - I am now beginning to wonder if there will ever be a Slackware 15.0 and, if there is one, if the wait till 15.1 will be even longer.

Comments such as "well, what can't you do on 14.2?" are becoming increasingly redundant: 14.2 is now over four years old and, in the words of Eric, is just "too stale" for production use. All the main distros, as in all of them, have newer versions. Meanwhile there is no communication from Pat on the status of 15.0 - even a "sorry, it's just too much, I'm going to focus purely on -current" is better than silence. If stable has to go, so be it, I doubt whether the community would see it as so great a loss, Slackware is a hobbyist distro and those running servers can just migrate elsewhere. But this silence is terribly unfair, and it's not right on the community to have them running round in circles guessing the status, being unable to plan for the future and donating at the same time. It's like Slackware is becoming a social experiment on just how dearly people will cling to something they value before they grudgingly relent.

I have personally moved to Ubuntu and Debian on my main machines, with no qualms whatsoever. A couple of older machines still run Slackware but I don't use them very much. I sincerely hope that the BDFL makes the choice to update the community about what is really going on with Slackware.

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Interesting Post.

Well I be one of those darn, startx guys. I've never used startkde ot startxfce either, like to set my default. I like to boot to runlevel 3. Starting with runlevel 3 just feel right to me. I've been booting to the CLI since my first adventures with Slackware back in 1993. That said, I have a laptop I maintain that does not belong to me, there are two other users, I have the laptop start with runlevel 4. I really don't see much difference in start up time. Of course most of the time that laptop is hibernated by closing the lid anyway so start up time is pretty fast. I also have my wife's laptop and son's computer also start with runlevel 4. Just little old me using runlevel 3. LOL.

I don't mind standing in line. My system boot fast enough for me. There are times when I will take care of some maintenance task before running startx. Like today. We lost power this afternoon, when I got home, and fired up my computer, I remembered I had to take care of some updates (that required being out of X). So su -'d to root and did the deed, back to being a user and here I am. If it wasn't for being a slackware64-current tester, you are probably right about never logging out. Since I am a slackware64-current tester I log out quite often to drop to the CLI and do an update or reboot after upgrading the kernel. I don't do all updates from the CLI, I do many from Konsole as root. Normally only logout to the CLI if the updates may effect the DE or have to do a reboot.

I used GNOME when it was part of Slackware, was quite happy with it, was not to happy when it was removed. I got over it. Tried Xfce for a while, then KDE, and decided that one fit. Plasma 5 even fits better. GNOME just does fit me anymore.

Funny thing is, the corporate sector actually prefers production systems that are stale.
Ask the folks working in industrial engineering how come they are using COBOL in 2020.

Well yes, it probably is a hobbyist distro, which kind of contradicts everything else you've written. Or Pat is just a whole lot more relaxed about things the rest of the world needs yesterday.

I can't be sure, but was there a clamour for communication in the early 90s, when Slackware was first released? Did communication channels fast enough to announce a release the same year as the release itself even exist then?

1 members found this post helpful.

I wrote a few programs in Cobol in the seventies, punched in Hollerith cards then compiled on a mainframe. I had to be careful to avoid mistakes, as I was allowed only one batch per day. Still one of these programs has been praised by the teacher as there wasn't any "goto" in it, only "perform"s. Structured programming, they said. My mother wrote programs in Fortran. Compilers for both languages are still available in Slackware.

OK, I was not even planned back then. But I've read a lot on industrial systems, mechanics and that sort of thing.
None of the old engineers wanted anything digital for a long time, and some of their hardware still uses those same programs from the 1970.
I think it's simply a question of how viable it is to replace critical systems with modern things such as IoT devices and software such as electron.
Answer would be not viable at all, because it's nowhere near as secure as the old tech that was tested for decades.
Even if the mainframes of old can fit in one's pocket today it does not mean they're just as secure, quite the opposite.

I was thinking that perhaps Plasma 5 somehow delays Slackware new version shipment. But more probably it is about modern network solutions.

2 members found this post helpful.

There is always some truth in the argument (more so with minimal needs), but it becomes weaker as time passes and there are growing examples of build failures, lack of hardware support, etc. I sometimes wonder how many years without a release it would take for people to abandon this line of reasoning

I'll be hanging around for the next release for sure, but if this is the new normal I will most likely jump ship eventually (I'm pretty lazy to change my systems, but Devuan, Void, and Guix are all potentially interesting to me). It's a shame, but I just don't think the Slackware dev style works when it's stretched out over years. The unusual part of it is that you get no release over a long period of time, minimal communication, but there's also no serious way to even contribute. I mean, evidently you could package Plasma 5 for years and get completely frustrated but still not even know what's happening!

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Ditto

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Surely, having a more open way to show whats going on, like a github slackware development tree or a bug tracker , a wiki where all the next releases are scheduled with a release date and estimate would surely help to get a good idea of what will happen and when.

I use slackware for my work and I have still everything on 14.2 with dropline gnome and aliens libreoffice , and still all it works
but sometime you get a feel that the system is old, and unless you are ready to update everything by yourself it is impossible
to guess when you will get a new ready to use packages of the whole system.

But from the other side, it is a lot , and I say a LOT of work to do all that alone. I think also that Patrick should open up a litle
bit the development and contributions with some modern tool, permitting to the community to submit push requests and fix up things.

I think also that Linus is not the only one who is developing the kernel today.

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or at least open up a bit about the -current* situation and plans...

---
* pun intended

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