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Slackware 13.1 Released
Several readers made sure we are aware that Slackware 13.1 release is out. Here's the list of mirrors. "Slackware 13.1 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.6.1, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy-to-use desktop environment, and KDE 4.4.3, a recent stable release of the new 4.4.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment."
Slackware hasn't officially packaged GNOME since 2005. There are various community projects which allow you to use GNOME on Slackware, however.
It created a lot of extra test/patch load for Pat. He uses KDE typically, so it gets a lot of daily use on his desktop. Not so much GNOME.
The "lightweight" desktops (of which XFCE is probably the heaviest) don't involve as much code, or configuration management, so they are shipped in their stock forms. Bugs found in Slackware's XFCE/Blackbox/Fluxbox/etc. should be reported to the programmers.
I've been running current, which is now equivalent to 13.1 and it's working well.
A reminder to all: please seed the SW torrents and come to Linux Questions to discuss problems.
No, I think you're confusing it with Gentoo.
Lazy may have little to do with it. Between fundamental changes in the way kernel handles various parts of the systems (what the heck is /sys anyway) and the move from actually setting something up to having things automated there are very few underlying fundamental things you can now change yourself when tinkering with a modern user friendly system like Ubuntu.
For one thing try and get Ubuntu to StartX with no screen attached. With older distros some level of xconfig would allow me to run X on a virtual framebuffer, but not Ubuntu. If Ubuntu isn't able to detect it via hotplug it just doesn't exist. Suppose you manually massage your fstab file then the gui filesystem utility in ubuntu breaks. In my case it's able unmount but not remount any file systems.
I, personally, would drop my jaw if he dropped KDE from the default package. I may be a rarity but I do use Slackware for my day to day email reading, movie watching, and music listening. It is nice to have that extra bit of eye candy available as an option for us who want to use it.
Being a slackware users and still love to follow slackware release and love to see that 'The Man' the living legend is working hard to give the community the stable and secure Linux. I salute you Pat and congrats on releasing Slackware 13.1
http://askaralikhan.blogspot.com/
You're acting like it's either KDE or GNOME. Neither is also an option, you know.
Even for regular users, it's easy to pull together a simple workable desktop using for one example, a ~/.fvwm/.fvwm2rc file that has everything they need. New programs are easily added to the start menu as needed with a simple text editor. But that isn't even necessary for regular users.
But I know. I know. It doesn't have the complexity of a 'modern desktop' from Microsoft or Apple. It's not at all 'cool.'
He's a living legend in Linux history, and he had the guts to make the right call to drop GNOME when it became too convoluted to maintain.
Pat's a great guy, but his dropping GNOME pissed off a lot of people too, though I understand his reasoning. KDE was at the time a lot easier to build, while GNOME was riddled with circular dependencies that made maintaining it a bitch of a job.
Fortunately for GNOME fans, the job was ably taken up by maintainers of the Dropline GNOME distribution. I have the impression they're getting a bit tired of it now, but others are around to fill the gap.
> Fortunately for GNOME fans, the job was ably taken up by maintainers of the Dropline GNOME distribution.
Well, for the record Dropline had already existed at that time. In fact, BECAUSE it existed Pat saw the need for GNOME on Slackware already taken care of and chose to remove it from the main distro ('if you want it, then install Dropline!).
ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-3.3/ :-) Floppies!!!!
Times and expectations change. Slackware is now capable of meeting the needs of a very wide range of people, and showcases lots of new functionality. However, nobody said you have to install everything, and if you're installing onto an old system it's still i486-compatible. The best bet is to pop a DVD-ROM drive into Ol' Bessy (or whatever you call the system liberated from storage) and install only those applications you're likely to use. It's a much safer bet than dealing with RedHat 6.